The Tattoo (26 page)

“C’mon, Dad. You must know how it is.”

He sighed.“Not really, bradda. Dat swordtail of yours is not like your madda was. Your madda grew up hard, so she neva need any kine. But your girl, she kinda spoiled, ah? Her madda probably gave her whateva she wanted from little kid time. Das da problem wit’ swordtails. Some of dem need pump, gravel, wata filta, and live food. Sometimes dey even need plastic plants and dose ceramic castles in dea tanks.”

“Mom wasn’t a swordtail?”

“Yeah, she was one swordtail, but da kine you find in da riva. She was strong, rough, not like da aquarium kine.”

But she died, I thought, as my father continued talking about Claudia. But she died.

The next day
Koa called and asked if I wanted to surf. Since Claudia was still ignoring me, I decided to go. Before I left the house, however, I noticed that the katana was out of its glass case. Then I heard the sound. It was that “chain gang” sound, the sound of a prisoner striking stone with a giant sledge hammer. It was coming from outside, behind the house. After I put my surfboard on the roof of the Pathfinder, I walked to the backyard to see what was going on. My father was standing in front of a stack of large, thick bricks, while Claudia stood by him with the unsheathed katana in her hand. My father saw me and smiled. “Come Ken, I showing Claudia someting.”

I walked and stopped beside him. “Claudia,” he said, “try again.”

Claude lifted the sword over her head and swung down on the brick. The blade hit the stone and small pieces of brick popped into the air. My father smiled. “Look at da blade.”

I walked to Claude and inspected the blade with her.There wasn’t the slightest blemish on the shiny metal. “I hit the brick like five times,” Claude said. “And still, there’s nothing.”

My father gently took the sword from Claudia. “Yup, our ancestas really knew how to make swords. You see dis katana? Da guy who made ‘um neva just hamma and sharpen da blade one time. He heated, hammered, and folded. Heated, hammered, and folded. Da guy probably folded da ting ova hundred times, each time pressing da metal togetta, making ‘um stronga and stronga. When he finally sharpened ‘um, da sword was so strong dat even stone cannot ding da blade. Nothing can. You see, no matta what you do to da sword, da ting always going stay sharp and shiny.”

“How come you didn’t show me this before?” I asked, wondering why he was showing Claudia instead.

“Neva need.”

Claudia was still staring at the blade. Without giving warning, she grabbed the katana from my father and swung down on the brick again. The brick cracked in half and my father laughed. Claude inspected the blade again. I looked, too. There was nothing there. “Where you going?” my father asked.

“Surfing.”

Claudia looked at me. I turned to my father. “Probably only for a couple of hours. I feel like I need to get out in the water.” I looked at Claude. “You wanna go to the beach?”

“Who else is going?” she asked.

“I’m supposed to pick up Koa and his brother Ikaika.”

“I’ll pass.”

“No worry about us, Ken,” my father said. “I can entertain her.”

I shrugged and looked at Claudia once more. She gave the sword to my father and walked into the house.

When I picked up Koa and Ikaika, they put their boards on the roof and threw a cooler in the back. “I bought couple cases beer,” Koa said.

Both of them cracked open two cans of Miller Lite and offered me a cold one. I shook my head. “C’mon, bradda,” Koa said. “Jus’ have one fo’ da road. Where we goin’ anyway? Sandys?”

“Fuck Sandys,” Ikaika said. “We go town.”

I looked in my mirror at Ikaika. He was a lot bigger than he had been in high school. Though he wasn’t nearly as big as his older brother, he still easily exceeded two hundred pounds. His clean-shaven face was framed by a head of curly black hair. It reminded me of Freddie’s hair. “What Freddie stay up to?” I asked.

“Cruisin’,” Kaika answered. “I tink he went town fo’ business.”

“What you was doin’ last night?” Koa asked. “I call your house but your fadda said you and Claudia went dinna or someting.”

“Yeah, we went dinna. Why, what you guys did?”

“I was hangin’ with Freddie,” Kaika said.

“I was looking fo’ my fuckin’ wife,” Koa said. “She was out till late. When she came home, she told me she went out dinna wit’ Cheryl.You rememba Cheryl, Ken? Ho, she wanted fo’ jump your bones.”

“Wanted your hot beef injection,” Kaika said.

“Wanted fo’ ride your boloney-pony,” Koa said.

“Wanted fo’ take old one-eye to da opt... opt... What you call one eye docta?” Kaika asked.

Koa turned around and slapped Kaika on the side of the head. “Shut da fuck up arready. I tol’ you you should’ve finished high school, you dumb motha-fucka.”

“No slap me,” Kaika said.

“Shut da fuck up,” Koa said, pointing his finger at his brother. Then he turned back to me. “Fuck, you rememba da movie
The Godfadda
? Fuckin’ Kaika back dea is like our Fredo.” He turned back around to face Ikaika. “No make me haff to send you fishing wit’ Ken ova hea.”

Koa and Ikaika got into a slapping war. I laughed and said, “Both you guys, shut da fuck up arready.”

“Yeah, Kaika,” Koa said.“Befo’ Ken send you to da pig farm.”

I turned to Koa. “Hey, nuff arready.”

Koa put up both of his hands and smiled. “O.k., o.k. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, fuckin’ Kahala. She tryin’ fo’ tell me she went dinna wit’ Cheryl. Fuck, we neva see Cheryl fo’ yeas. I heard she one lawya or someting. Big shot. Like she would all of a sudden want to have dinna wit’ Kahala.”

“So what you tink, den?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t tink anyting, but den I found two hundred dollas in her purse.”

I bit my bottom lip and felt Koa’s eyes on me. “How’d she get dat?”

“I don’t know, maybe she get one shuga daddy. What you tink, Ken?”

I kept my eyes focused through the windshield.“Nah, Kahala would neva fuck around on you. She not crazy.”

Ikaika leaned toward the front and rested his forearms on the backs of the seats. “Yeah, she would. Fuckin’ Koa treats her like shit. Her shuga daddy probably treat her nice, give her money, and he probably get one dick twice da size of Koa’s.”

Kaika’s laughing was interrupted by an elbow to the forehead. Koa was trying to climb over his seat to get to Kaika. His ass hit my shoulder and the Pathfinder swerved to the side of the road. “Koa, get your ass back in da front,” I yelled.“You goin’ get us all killed.”

Koa sat back down. “You shut up fo’ da rest of da trip,” he told Kaika.

Kaika sulked in the back. “So, what happened?” I asked Koa.

“What you mean, what happened?”

“Wit’ Kahala.”

“Oh. Me and her got into one big fight. She left wit’ da kids. I tink she went to my parents’ house. Ah, fuck ‘um arready.”

When we got to the Sandy Beach, Kaika stayed in the Pathfinder and drank beers while Koa and I paddled out. I had to paddle slow because Koa was slow and out of shape. When we passed the shorebreak and got to the second set of breakers, I heard Koa huffing and puffing. When he tried to duck underneath the first set, the small two-foot wave knocked him off his board. I shook my head and paddled past the breakers. I looked out toward the horizon and thought about seeing Cheryl the day before. It was funny, I hadn’t felt any attraction. I was just thankful that I hadn’t hooked up with her in high school and pulled a Koa and Kahala. I would’ve fucked up her life. But why didn’t she tempt me? Maybe because her position as a new upper-class attorney kind of made her the enemy. Maybe it was because I was so hung up on Claudia. I didn’t know why I was asking myself these things. I should’ve been glad that there wasn’t an attraction between me and Cheryl. My life was complicated enough.

Instead of thinking about it anymore, my mind turned to the prospect of work the next day. I sighed just as a wave knocked me off my surfboard. When my head emerged from the water, I looked back at Koa and Kaika. I thought about Freddie, and saw, instead of my friend and his brother, two blue cats treading water. I wondered if I was the one that had gotten away.

Over the next
several months Claudia’s belly grew. And with it grew her unhappiness. I wasn’t having a good time of it myself. She was big and she hated it. She didn’t glow, she glowered. She seemed to feel tied down by her growing belly, like it kept her from doing all the things she wanted to do. It seemed like roots grew from her stomach, roots which drove downward and wrapped themselves around the huge rocks under the Ka‘a‘awa soil. She spent some of her days reading the classifieds, looking for jobs in the field of art. She spent other days staring at the television screen, seeing worlds which were not hers. She spend every day pissing constantly. I think the nights were even worse for her. Every so often, she’d get this really bad, cramp-like feeling. Sometimes it would come when she’d simply roll over. She’d try to bear the pain as best she could. But the worst part about the nights for her was that the doctor told her, a woman who had spent all of her life sleeping on her back, to sleep on her left side. The doctor had told her that sleeping on her back would put pressure on the vein which gave the baby oxygen. He told her that the baby was pushing her organs to the right side of her body, so sleeping on the right side put pressure on these organs. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t sleep. Through these months I think the only thing that made her happy was that Kahala had ended up leaving Koa. She had moved out with the kids and was staying at Koa’s parents’ house. Claudia felt like she had made a contribution. But besides that, she wasn’t liking her situation. What made matters worse was that she and my father weren’t getting along.

After about a week the politeness which two strangers share had passed, my father started in on her. Most of it was jokes, but sometimes it sounded like my father was dead serious. Some of it was about her weight, or how much she ate. He said things like, “Eh, no eat da whole refrigerator, ah. I scared that when I go work, I goin’ come back and da whole house goin’ be gone.”

At first she laughed, but soon the laughter faded to indifference, then to retaliation. “Don’t lie,” she’d say, “the only thing you’re scared of is that I might take down your liquor collection with it.”

Soon his laughter faded. After a while, most of their conversations sounded like spiteful insult contests. The worst appeared when my father got on Claudia about being Korean. Every time Claude did something wrong, like burn food or not tighten a faucet enough, my father told her,“Must be da Korean blood.” Sometimes he got her for the haole blood, too. These came when she didn’t wash her dishes or she left a newspaper scattered on a table. “Must be da haole blood,” he’d say.

One Thursday night, about seven months into her pregnancy, they had a real race war. The night started off quiet enough. When I got home from work with my father, Claudia was in the shower and my father looked on the stove and saw that Claude had cooked his favorite, ox tail soup. He tasted it and smiled. I walked to the bedroom happy. It seemed like Claude and my father were not going to get into it tonight. As I was undressing, the phone rang. It was Kahala.