The Tattoo (21 page)

I felt her scrub the small of my back. “I know. We gotta get out of here. I was thinking, maybe we should get really far away and start over. You know, no family, but our own. What about the mainland?”

I cringed. There was no way I was going to the fucking mainland. Fucking wall-to-wall haoles there, the rat race, a world filled with people I couldn’t relate to. I turned around, grabbing the soap and cloth away from her. I told her to turn around and began washing her back. “C’mon Claude, you know I couldn’t survive up there. Fuck, up there they expect their Asians to be docile. How many haole asses would I have to kick before I got any respect up there?”

Without turning around, she said, “Well, I don’t know what else to do. I mean, at least up there I could do a PhD or something. And we’d be far away from all of this. To me it seems like the only option.”

I put an extra coat of soap on her shoulders.“I don’t know. For me, I’d rather we stay in Hawai‘i. Here, I’m somebody; here, I’m respected. Up there, I’m just a Jap. Besides, I don’t have the money anymore to send you to school. And what kind of job would I get there? I don’t have a degree. I’m telling you, if I go up there, they’ll make me invisible. I read about how they make people invisible up there. I’ll be invisible and I won’t like it.”

She turned around and grabbed the soap and cloth from me. She lathered up the cloth and began scrubbing my chest. “I don’t know,” she said, “I thought maybe being invisible would be good for us for a while. Besides, what kind of job can you get here?”

“I can get a job. Here, I know people. Up there, with the haoles, shit, they’ll treat me like a damn peasant, and give me a job to match. Treated with that kind of disrespect, I’ll probably go off like those post office guys up there do all the time.”

“And you’re not going off here? And stop saying ‘haole,’ like it’s a bad word. Remember, I’m half haole.”

“Yeah, but not by your mother’s choice.”

At that I felt her suddenly scrub hard underneath my belly button. I grabbed the soap and cloth from her and said, “Hey, watch it down there.” I lathered up the cloth and began scrubbing her chest and arms.

She tried to convince me that the mainland was the only choice, and I was determined to fight her on it. Suddenly, I came up with an idea that would kind of solve our problems. It would be a compromise, and I thought carefully before I pitched it. “Okay, this might sound a little wild, but let me finish before you say anything.” She nodded. “Okay, let’s go and stay in Ka‘a‘awa for a while. I figure we can stay with my father rent-free, we could work and save money, then as soon as we have enough, we can take the first flight to the mainland.”

I looked at her and she frowned.“I thought you hated your father? Why would you want to go back there?”

She was right, I still hated him. But I figured if she was so hot on the idea of going to the mainland, I’d need a good amount of money before we went. I didn’t want to scrounge up there. If I was going, I wanted at least to have some power, some assurance that they wouldn’t be able to treat me the way they’d treated my mother. Also, if Claude was going to convince me to leave, I wanted a chance to spend time in the country, so I’d have a chance to say good-bye. Besides, I was an adult and I figured there was no way my father could abuse me any more. The times I had talked to him on the phone, he seemed to speak to me with respect. Suddenly the idea sounded really good to me. I figured, what could the old man do to me now? I was grown up. And if he did do anything, it would give me a chance to do what I’d wanted to do for years. I’d beat his fucking ass. Then I started thinking about Koa, and how much I missed seeing him around. Yeah, I began thinking, yeah, let’s go to Ka‘a‘awa.

While scrubbing her stomach I said, “Listen, if we go to the mainland, there’s no guarantee we can get jobs. We need jobs. We need the medical. How else are we going to pay to have this baby? I figure I can work with my father in construction. Get a job immediately. It’s bus’ ass, but good money, and the baby will be taken care of. I figure we stay until the baby can travel. Make money, then bam! We get off this rock.”

She stopped my scrubbing hands with hers. “Your mind is set then?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Well, promise me you’ll stay out of trouble when we’re down there. Promise me that nothing will happen between you and your father. Promise me that we won’t get stuck there.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Yeah, yeah, I promise. Don’t worry, there’s no way I’ll let us get stuck there. I don’t want to be stuck there.”

And I meant it. I didn’t want to be stuck there, I just wanted to spend time there so I could kiss the Windward side good-bye forever. So we washed the rest of each other’s body in almost silence. We only heard the streams of water strike the tub below. It was a good quiet for me. I thought about going back over the Koolaus and began feeling anxious. I wondered what Koa and Kahala were up to, I wondered what my father and the rest of the boyz, like Freddie, were up to. We were going over the mountains, going to my territory. Mama-san could not reach me there, not with her lackeys, not even with her town cops. If she tried, her soldiers would get stomped. Her kingdom ended at the foot of the mountains, and beyond this she had no jurisdiction. We’d be safe there, I thought, there was no way she could touch us.

As I scrubbed between Claudia’s toes, I suddenly realized that she hadn’t asked me about last night. I was glad. I began to realize why my father and grandfather had never told me what I wanted to hear about war, about killing. You just don’t feel like talking about that stuff. It’s ugly and boastful. You tell people that you’ve killed and you start feeling like a criminal even if you were innocent. It was great of Claude not to ask. And as I scrubbed the last of her toes, the love I felt for her was even more powerful. I’d do anything for her.

One day later,
we had everything packed and loaded into my new Nissan Pathfinder. I had traded in my Porsche to get some extra money since I had lost what was hidden in my books. In fact I’d sold those books, too, because since that night with the Koreans, I had really lost my desire to read. I think I got like two hundred dollars for over a hundred books at Jelly’s. Evidently, they weren’t worth shit. Anyway, Claude and I were packed to go and, ironically, I was about to travel down the Pali with nine thousand dollars in my pocket.

So the black Pathfinder was packed and ready to go. I was anxious to leave. I was surprised how easy it was to tell my father that I wanted to come back. He seemed enthusiastic about it and guaranteed that he’d get me a job. When I told him that he’d be a grandfather, he sounded happy.

I looked through our things. It didn’t look like we’d left anything behind. I even brought Musashi with me. Against Claude’s wishes, I had picked up the crumpled print and tried to smooth it out. It was permanently wrinkled, but I had him reframed anyway. I didn’t know where I was going to put him, if I was going to hang him up at all. I knew my father would’ve probably liked the print if it wasn’t wrinkled, but because it was, I didn’t think it would fly with him to hang it over the swords or something. I stepped back from the Pathfinder and looked to see if everything appeared secure. On the roof sat our queen-sized bed and two longboards. I checked the rope. I looked toward the apartment and saw Claudia walking into the revolving door.

When she came out, she was carrying my shotgun. I laughed at the sight as she walked slowly toward me, acting like a commando or something. She looked like one of those girls in one of those cheesy B-action movies. She put the shotgun in the back and went to sit in the driver’s side. I laughed and went to the passenger side. She started the engine. “Okay, tell me where to go.”

So we drove down the Pali.There was no rain that afternoon, but as I looked toward the mountains, I saw waterfalls brushed on the green mountains. She took the tunnels and a bright sun greeted us. I squinted and put my hand up to shade my face, thinking about my other trips on the Pali. I remembered wondering as a child whether my mother’s spirit lived here. I remembered laughing at the idea as a teenager after my surfboard had launched off my roof. I looked over at Claudia. She was looking over the cliffs. “This might be cool,” she said. “I always thought the Windward side was one of the nicest places on the island.”

“Yeah,” I told her. “When I lived here, me and my friends used to call it ‘God’s country.’”

“I thought you don’t really believe in God.”

I shrugged. The hairpin turn sling-shotted us toward the bottom. We rolled down the steep pour of asphalt, and I heard the wind whistle against the Pathfinder, trying to blow us back up.

Ken stood up
and rubbed his eyes. Cal shook his head. Why had Ken feared the mainland so much? It was an irrational fear, probably motivated by reading old books by dead black writers and the hate he felt for white people in general. Cal rubbed the swastika tattoo on his forearm. If Ken had gone to the mainland, he probably wouldn’t be here, Cal thought.

Ken walked to the stainless steel mirror and turned his back to it. He tried to look over his shoulder to see the reflection of the tattoo.“I hate these fuckin’ mirrors,” Ken said. “You can’t even fuckin’ see your reflection in them.”

Cal tried to imagine what Claudia looked like. Putting together her Korean and Caucasian blood was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. He tried to put Asian eyes with a big haole nose. Then he tried to put haole eyes with long, black Asian hair. He had seen hapa girls before, but it had been a while. This is stupid, Cal thought, what the fuck is a big haole nose or long Asian hair anyway?

Giving up on the puzzle, he looked at Ken. Fucking murdering mother-fucker. Three Koreans dead. Japs killing Koreans, just like before the war. It had made Cal nervous that Ken was discussing his unsolved acts of murder knowing that Tavares was listening. He wondered if Ken cared. He wondered if he would’ve killed, too. He probably would’ve, he thought, because if those guys were left alive, they would’ve come back after him. But then, he didn’t know if he would’ve had the strength. He wondered if he would’ve had the hate to kill three, which was two more than his one.

He remembered the night he’d found out his wife had been sleeping with some waiter in Waikiki. Her sister, who she didn’t get along with, told him over the phone. “Now don’t over-react, Matt. But the whole family knows about it.”

His pride was destroyed. The intense love he felt for her melted to hate. He went straight to a bar, then four hours later staggered home. He didn’t plan to kill her, just kick her out of the goddamn apartment. When he got home, the kids were sleeping and she was sitting on the sofa watching T.V. “Hi, honey,” she said.

Hi honey. These were the words that made him snap. The fuckin’ audacity, the fuckin’ hypocrisy. Cal raised his fist and smashed it down on her nose. She stood up and tried to hit him back. Cal grabbed a fistful of her black hair, dragged her to the balcony, and slammed her forehead on the metal railing. Her legs collapsed, then he pulled her up. Instead of screaming, she clamped her teeth down on his neck. He screamed and shoved her away. The small of her back hit the railing and she flipped over it. Half-gainer onto Kuhio Avenue.

When the kids came out, he turned around.“Where’s Mom?” his daughter asked. Suddenly he realized he’d never even told her why he had hit her. He didn’t even give her a chance to tell her side. He walked past his kids and to the bathroom. He splashed water on his face, then looked up into the mirror. He saw his father staring back at him. Cal had puked in the sink.

Ken sat back down in front of Cal. Cal looked at the kanji on Ken’s back. He’d finished coloring in the big symbol and outlining the smaller, vertical symbols on the left. He only had to color those in to be finished. He wiped off the blood and ink. Cal managed to give the symbols an authentic, brushed-on look. It seemed to be coming out real nice.“Well, looks like we’re on the home stretch,” Ken said.

Cal was glad that Claudia was coming to visit Ken the day after tomorrow. It meant that he didn’t kill her. But Cal also knew Ken wasn’t in prison for killing the Koreans. If he had been, he would’ve probably been a lifer. Who did Ken kill? He knew Ken was doing time for manslaughter. Cal tapped Ken on the shoulder. Ken turned around, but Cal couldn’t ask him. Instead, Cal waved forward.