The Tattoo (2 page)

A lot of felons like to hear themselves talk, and it seemed Ken was no exception. But his references to haoles or Walkman motor, jailhouse tats didn’t offend Cal. Cal had been here for so long, seen so much crazy hatred that little offended him at this point. He liked the way Ken talked, there was a strong rhythm in his deep, scratchy voice. He kind of talked like a book. Wanting to hear more, he carefully stepped toward Ken and picked up his tattoo gun and bottle of black ink. When he got everything together, he looked at Ken.

Ken smiled. “Sounds good. Let’s start after rec time tonight. The idea I got for a tat might take a few days. I’ll tell you what, while you put it on, I’ll tell you my story. It’s a pretty good one, I think.”

Cal nodded. Ken picked up A Book of Five Rings from his box and began to read. Cal plopped down on the other mattress and decided to nap before dinner.

Dinner went smoothly. Ken ate quietly with Cal, while Nu‘u talked the entire time. He told Ken how he’d killed two Filipinos at the projects in Kuhio Park Terrace. “Fuckin’ flips,” he said, “Fuckas like pull knife. I was jus’ goin’ fuck ‘um up, until I seen one of ‘um pull knife. I tol’ da judge dat and nex ting I knew, murder one. Fuck, if I neva kill dem, dey would’ve killed me. And jus’ because I knew, knife or no knife, I was goin’ win befo’ da fight even started, I get life.”

Ken smiled. Cal knew Nu‘u was trying to flex his muscles. He went on to tell Ken that after he got sentenced, he flipped the judge off and threatened his whole family. Cal sat quietly, watching Ken not show the smallest sign of being intimidated.

After dinner, the three sat at the table in Quad Two and played dominoes. Ken was rusty at first because there were no dominoes in special holding, so he lost several games before he got the hang of it. Nu‘u laughed. He seemed to enjoy beating on Ken. Though Ken seemed to be keeping a straight face, something about him told Cal that he was a guy who really didn’t like to lose.

After rec was over, and the dominoes were put away, Ken and Cal waited for the buzz of the door. They got in their cell. Like the tick of a clock, another day in prison gone. Ken grabbed his A Book of Five Rings, turned to the back and showed Cal a page of Japanese writing. There was one big symbol in the middle of the page and a vertical series of smaller ones on the left side. The symbols were obviously done with a brush. “This was written by Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest samurai who ever lived,” Ken said.

Cal nodded. “This,” Ken pointed to the big symbol in the middle, “means The Book of the Void. It’s kanji. I want it big. Three times as big as the one on the page. Can you do it?”

Cal took the book from Ken and nodded. A lot of tedious inking. The lighting was bad, but the moonlight helped. But beyond the small window, beyond the walls, beyond the two fences, the moon seemed an even farther away place. Cal shook his head and concentrated on the page of the book. Cal figured the writing on the side said the title of the book and the author. They smoked cigarettes while Cal started on the big symbol. Ken began to tell Cal his life story.

chapter one

“I’m nobody’s child, I’m nobody’s child,

Just like a flower, I’m growing wild.

No mama’s kisses, and no daddy’s smiles,

nobody wants me, I’m nobody’s child.”

Nobody’s Child

Kapena

THE GROUND BOOK

M
y father told me I was a C-section baby cut out during the summer of sixty-nine. Tripler Hospital. The Year of the Rooster. Like Macduff, I was from my mother’s womb untimely ripp’d. I imagine my birth differently. I was not born in some pristine-pink military hospital alongside white and black G.I. babies. The only gook-looking baby in the germ-free nursery. I was delivered in purgatory.A soul not going up or down. Only me. It was a room with walls covered in aged blood. My mother lay unconscious, stirruped in the middle of the room, while my father and the doctor worriedly gazed above her. As the doctor readied himself to make an incision, beads of sweat dripped from his head and fell upon my mother’s ripe stomach. As the droplets rolled off my mother’s round abdomen, I surprised everyone. Nobody had to cut me out of her peach belly. I am samurai. Momotaro. Not baby out of stomach, but rooster out of egg. I see it now...

I slice my way out of my mother’s womb armed with the Hideyoshi family katana. Aiahhh! There’s actually a moment when I fence with the doctor’s scalpel. Don’t cut Ma. Blood gushes out of her. It doesn’t stop. A flood. Soon my father and the doctor are waist-deep in her blood. I am armed with my father’s sword and armored by my mother’s blood. I am not naked. I see my father. He’s wearing one of those doctor masks, the cheap elastic arms hug the back of his head. He doesn’t like what he sees, and he knows the mask will not protect him from my infection. He fears the sword which he once wielded. He takes a step back. There is anger on my child-face, deadness in my ancient eyes. My father gains his composure. He picks me up and throws me into the pool, which was once a room. I sink. The ripples I leave subside. The surface is like crimson glass, unbroken, unshattered. My father wonders whether I can survive, whether I am worth keeping.

Suddenly I float up, face first. My body is like a single drop disturbing the entire pool. My new presence catalyzes waves, breakers. I stare at my father. After the first set washes over my infant body, he sees that the sword is imbedded in my belly. My father and the doctor step back in horror. My mother is still asleep. This is where the vision of my birth ends.

I know it couldn’t have possibly gone this way. I remember being a scared child, the kind that has to be dragged kicking and screaming onto an amusement park roller coaster ride. Not a rooster, but a chicken. I wasn’t born with a warrior’s spirit. I don’t really know when it was, but at some point in my life the fear began to seep out of my pores, like a rigorous flow of sweat, and I rehydrated my dried flesh with the salty concoction of hate and pride. What is a warrior, after all, without these weapons? Unarmed, naked. A warrior must hate his enemy. He must feel that his enemy is not only trying to strip him of his life, but his honor as well. This is the only way that one can destroy without remorse, instead to destroy with pleasure. The volatile potion is the only thing that can neutralize the disease of fear. Damn fear.

Did you know my name isn’t really Ken? It’s Kenji. Supposedly I was named after my father’s grandfather, the first Hideyoshi who came to Hawai‘i. I think it’s a crock. My father probably named me Kenji just to make sure the kids in school kicked my ass every other day. Fucking Dad. I remember the first day of kindergarten. Roll call. “Kenji Hideyoshi?” The other kids stopped picking their noses and looked up. “Kenji?” they all said in unison. Fucking Hawaiians. It took the samurai in me years to beat the name “Ken” into their goddamn heads. Like I said, I was a scared kid, weak, I’d throw up in airplanes, I was afraid of the ocean. My house in Ka‘a‘awa was right across the street from the beach.

My father, I think, pulled most of the fear out of me. In fact, he transplanted the hate. Armed with the scalpel-katana, he cut my cranium open and removed the malignant tumor of fear. Lobotomy. Exorcism. He spit on the hole and sewed me right up. The fertile saliva blossomed red.

Or sometimes I’d see him like a man with syringes for arms. With his left syringe-arm, he would jab me in the head and suck out the fluids of fear. With the other syringe-arm, he would puncture my chest and in would flow the antidote. My father was no southpaw. Straight up, classical boxer. Jab, jab, overhand right. Jab, double left hook, K.O. right hook. He was a good boxer. He taught me what I had to know. I learned how to take and throw a man-sized punch. I was never the surgeon that he was, though, never as calculating and controlled. But at the end I was better, stronger, faster, younger, crazier. There comes a point in combat when you realize you are willing to give up your life to win. Nothing else matters. You see death for a better fate than defeat.

I suppose an example of a jab from my father was when he threw me into the ocean when I was about three. I didn’t know how to swim, hated the water, and he threw me right in. “Eh, you betta learn fo’ swim arready. We live by da beach, what if you drown?”

I refused to go in. How the fuck could I drown when I wouldn’t even go near the water? In the tub? Why wasn’t he concerned about my drowning as he forced me into the waves? I learned at an early age to keep my questions to myself. He wouldn’t have it, a scaredy-cat kid afraid of the water. For him, my death would be better. He picked me up, lifted me over his head, and threw me about seven feet in. He hadn’t checked the tide. The water was about two feet deep. I fell softly on the hard, rock surface, like only kids can, no torn ligaments from the landing, no sprained ankles. It was the closest to cat-like I ever got. My father was furious. I don’t really know why, but I was no longer afraid of the water. Now it was just deep water that petrified me.

This was one of his jabs. It sucked a little fear out, and I don’t think I hated him for it. Shit, I can imagine some of the haoles on the mainland. “Oh, it was so traumatic! I’m scarred for the rest of my life! Oh, I won’t go near the water!” Fucking haoles. Spoiled-rotten, easy living, sick suburbia, white-picket fence mother-fuckers. I can’t believe these are the same people we worship in the movies. The heroes! Gibson, Costner, Ford, Cruise. White men who can outrun explosions and fire, the Devil himself:“Oh, I do most of my own stunts, until it gets a little too dangerous.”

Fuck you! My whole life has been one stunt after another, fight sequences, car chases, run-for-your-life action. They should cast someone like me in their high-budget action movies. A crazy Japanee who doesn’t give a fuck. A guy ready to stop running, turn around, and face the red. A guy that’s his own man, his own shrink.

My second bout with the ocean happened a year later. When I was about four, my family went camping at Kualoa Beach Park. This was before there was that huge parking lot, before you needed a permit to pitch your tents. This stretch of yellow sand, the left cheek of the mouth of Kaneohe Bay, was open to all. My father and uncles, with their sons, captained their little flat-bottom boats from Kahaluu, which was a few miles away, while my mother, the daughters, and the aunties made the short drive from Ka‘a‘awa with most of the camping supplies. I was a son, and despite my mother’s arguments with my father, her saying,“He’s too young,” my father still demanded that I go on the boat.

I stood in front of the boat ramp. The concrete slab inclining into the water was cracked and broken. There was moss on the lower part of the ramp, and I was afraid I’d slip and fall. My father held on to the bow of the fiberglass boat and waved me toward him. My father’s friend from the army, Sonny Fernandez, and his son, Junior Boy, were already onboard. Uncle Sonny was showing Junior Boy how to pull the cord to start the outboard engine. I walked toward the brown water. When I took my first step off the ramp, my foot sank into a thick patch of mud. When I managed to pull my foot out, everyone laughed because I had lost a slipper. My father shook his head, picked me up by the shirt, and lifted me into the boat.

It amazes me now that I think about it that I was never afraid of being on the boat. Yes, the thought of being in the water petrified me, but somehow the small fiberglass craft always seemed like land to me. My father, controlling the twenty-five horsepower Johnson outboard engine, fearlessly charged the small waves of Kaneohe Bay. The bow rose above the surface and when it descended and slapped a wave, the salty water sprayed up and showered our hot faces. It was refreshing and it felt safe. It was strange that I didn’t feel fear.

By the time we got to the campsite, the women and their daughters had much of the gear set up. The thin stretch of sand turned into a sparse forest of pine trees and dirt. Thousands of little poky acorns about the size of marbles were spread across the ground. Not knowing any better, I jumped out of the boat and charged the campsite to look for my mother. I stepped on one of the acorns and my knee buckled. I cried out. The older kids, the daughters included, laughed and said I had “haole feet.” As the older kids and adults pitched the tents, the younger children held in their pain and trained their feet to endure the acorns like the older kids and parents did. After the tents were up and the blue tarp was roofing the make-shift kitchen and dining area, the men, along with an older son or two, prepared to take the two boats out and lay their monofilament fish nets. Before they went to wall off a section of the Bay, they said they’d return for dinner.

Junior Boy was depressed because his father didn’t let him go with them. He was about a year older than me, chubbier, but Uncle Sonny just told him he’d get in the way. Both of us were left on the beach watching the boats get smaller. “Was that your first time on a boat?” I asked.

He laughed. “No way, I was on boats choke times. Shit, I went help my fadda pull up da nets jus’ last week.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I think my dad took me plenty times before when I was real young. Even before he taught me how to swim.”

“Me too, me too.”

Just then a sand crab scurried in front of us. It ran to the edge of the water. It was smaller than a marble. Junior Boy ran after it. He slapped his hand over the crab and grabbed a handful of sand. He walked back to me with his dark fist clenched and I watched as he sifted out the crab. It was hard to find because the color of its tiny shell was the same color as the sand. Finally its two eyes protruded. Junior Boy grinned. “Hey Kenji, go get one cup from your madda so we can keep ‘um.”

I ran to my mother. She was squatting in front of the shore, rinsing off cooking utensils. I told her I needed a cup so that I could catch crabs with Junior Boy. She grabbed my hand and we walked back toward the campsite. Uncle Sonny’s wife, Aunty Jana, said, “Hey no bodda your madda too much.” My mother told Aunty Jana not to worry and when the sand ended and the acorns began, she lifted me into her arms. Her bare feet squashed down on the poky acorns. Aunty Jana shook her head.

Instead of giving me a cup, my mother gave me an empty glass gallon jar. She patted me on the butt and said, “Don’t wander too far.” I smiled and ran towards the beach. When I reached the acorns, I slowed down and looked back. My mother smiled and waved me forward. My face flinched with each step, but I made it through.

Junior Boy and I caught about ten crabs that day. When our fathers returned, Junior Boy proudly presented the gallon bottle to Uncle Sonny. Uncle Sonny rubbed Junior Boy’s curly brown hair. “Ken helped, too,” Junior Boy said. My father looked at me and said, “Right on.” I walked back to the campsite to see what my mother was doing.

When I found her, she was sitting on a lawn chair reading a book. She had a blanket wrapped around her. It was getting dark, so she had a lantern by her. She looked up from her book and called me over. She pulled me toward her and sat me on her lap. She wrapped the blanket around us. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m reading a play by a man named William Shakespeare.”

“What is it called?”

“It’s titled,
Macbeth
.”

“What is it about?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m reading it for school. My students are going to have to read it, so I have to brush up.”

I crinkled my brow. “But you’re the teacher.”

She laughed. “Even high school teachers have to study.”