J.L. Bramble
Mermaid of O'ahu
The happiest days were when we first moved to O'ahu, before the night that I was attacked by the giant sea mollusk. Before that, I could play with Kenan all I wanted without feeling weird. Kenan was probably the first boy I ever had any sort of crush on, but I don't really know. Maybe I just thought I had a crush on him and maybe everything was really all Mom's fault for being sick or Daddy's fault for working all day long. Anyway, I only know that I liked seeing him and I wanted him to like seeing me.
The first time I ever saw him I had walked down to the beach even though Mom
told me not to go far because she was going to take a nap and didn't feel like
worrying about me. It was lonely there, but not as lonely as it was inside the
house. I guess that's why I noticed Kenan in the first place, because he looked
like he was my age and I really missed people my age. It was funny—I didn't miss
anyone especially, just people my age in general. I decided to look busy by
collecting bits of washed up algae and things near the small wave cove to make
a necklace. I am a mermaid, I sang to myself. I am made of green seaweed.
I wanted him to look over and think how pretty I looked, but he was busy in the water paddling around on a surfboard that was at least three times his size. He had shaggy hair and wore a white shell necklace, what I would later learn was puka shell. I watched him all afternoon and I thought about him on my way home that day. And that night. And the next day. And the day after that, when I saw him riding his bike around the neighborhood.
Obviously, this was a sign that we were meant to be together, or at least become the best of friends. I got all my guts together and called over to him.
"Hey!"
"Hey?" he slowed and turned his bike around. His voice was scratchy.
"Hi. I saw you on the beach. I saw you surfing."
"Who are you? Are we neighbors?"
"I guess so. I just moved here from Seattle. I'm Julie."
He came closer. He was the exact same color as our coffee table. I thought he was beautiful. If I went out everyday at sunrise and used special suntan oil with no spf, I wondered if I could turn that dark. Then I got really bold and held my arm out next to his. He felt smooth and warm like a polished pebble. "You'll never be the same color as me, little haole," he laughed, snatching his arm away.
"I am not little," I answered. "I'll be 11 in December. And anyway, I'm taller than you."
This was the summer before fifth grade, and Mom was sleeping all the time. We had come to Hawaii so she could get better, but she seemed even worse than she did when we lived in Washington. At least there she was awake; she was crying most of the time, and sometimes she'd go completely wild and throw books and food and anything handy and then cry some more about remorse and entitlement, but she was awake. On her good days she'd actually do fun things with me like watch cooking shows and try to make the recipes, and I loved her so much then. Now she just slept. I think it was her new medicine that made her do it. Her bedroom had the most windows and Daddy had ordered big palm plants for every corner, and she was barely awake to enjoy any of it. But if she was sleeping, then at least she probably wasn't having any of her "disordered thoughts." Daddy said we should hire a nurse to take care of her, but it never happened, at least not any time before I met the sea mollusk.
I started to hang around a lot with Kenan, and when his mom Roselani found out that I hadn't been eating anything except jam sandwiches that I made myself, she started inviting me over for dinner. It was mostly pork or steamed shrimp and rice, though sometimes we'd have Spam, which honestly made me feel like vomiting unless I smothered it in soy sauce. We ate around a heavy table that was low to the ground and had benches you could slide across, like a picnic table. Roselani was massive and strong and I think she hunted wild game when she was our age, back when Hawaii was still a territory. She didn't need medicine or have episodes as far as I could tell. Kenan's dad was much smaller in stature and he had a long gray ponytail he wrapped in twine so it hung straight down his back like a bundle of sticks. He knew everything there was to know about the fruits and flowers that grew on their property, especially the healers like arrowroot and ginger, and he used to quiz us on them sometimes. All the conversations at Kenan's house were lively and fun, and his parents never talked to us like we were little kids.
They joked a lot and made fun of politicians and sometimes the two of them would smoke after dinner; these fat, stubby cigarettes they'd roll themselves that gave off a wild green smell that I hated at first but eventually started to love. I was always careful to be very nice to them and use my best manners. I started saying mahalo instead of "thank you" just to be especially polite. After all, if Kenan and I were ever to be married I had to make sure his parents liked me.
One of my favorite parts of the summer was the rainstorms. They never lasted for very long, and it was always so hot and humid out that you wouldn't want to go inside, you'd just want to lay there and let it all fall down on you. Kenan and I had a game to see which one of us could go the longest without brushing those first few drops from their face; the kind of game you could never play in the cold Seattle rain. Then, when it was all done, there'd be this king-size rainbow—sometimes a double rainbow—rolled out across the sky, and it would make you feel like everything was going to be just fine. Once I ran home to wake Mom up in time for the rainbows, but she said it was all too heartbreaking.
"Why?" I asked, having no idea what she meant.
"I love you, Jules," she said, reaching for her glasses and giving me a long, sad stare. "And I'm sorry I'm difficult." That made me feel sad too.
During the day Kenan and I mostly played outdoors, snorkeling with the sea turtles or looking for shark's teeth. I also learned to surf, or at least surf the way he surfed, which was not too professional. There were some days when we would give ourselves the worst tummy aches from eating mangos plucked from the trees between our houses. When we weren't outside we were playing in his attic. Kenan had this homemade set of drums that he liked to bang on while I would dress up in Roselani's old muumuus—they smelled like mothballs mixed with dog hair but were so big and bright that it didn't matter. I wanted to take them home for Mom to wear, and tell her to get out of her stupid nightgown and be beautiful again, but I probably wouldn't be able to say it nicely and would only make more problems. So instead I would wrap them around my head like long hair and wear two or three around my waist so they'd trail out behind me like a large tailfin.
I am a mermaid. I am made of patterns and ruffles.
I was afraid that Kenan and I weren't going to be best friends anymore when fall came, since he went to the public school and I was starting a new private school that was just for girls. My school was up and around on the other side of the mountains, and I was taken there by a shuttle bus that ran just for the day students from the island. It was very pretty, especially in the early mornings when everything was all misty and dewy. This was the first time I had to wear a uniform; a navy blue dress and a linen blazer that had to be kept perfectly white. That was only one of about twenty-thousand different rules, but I learned quickly that it was a lot worse for the girls who lived on campus, in these ancient dormitories where I think nuns or prisoners used to live, far from their families who were back home in places like Japan and Texas.
"No be skade, sistah," Kenan said to me the night before my first day. "Dem teachas na goin hurt Julie!" Sometimes he talked to me in Pidgin, which I thought was hilarious (especially when his voice would crack) and made me feel like we had our own language.
"Can you give me your necklace for good luck?" I asked, not actually expecting him to.
"Da kine, puka shel fo de lucky gal," he said, and handed it to me.
Every afternoon the shuttle would come get me and I'd ride back down the mountains, past orchids and strawberry guavas and tall palm trees, their wild green hair shooting out of their tops. I always stopped home to see Mom, but laying in bed with her watching the weather station would get really boring and make me feel like I wanted to cry all day too. So I would only stay for a few minutes then go over to Kenan's to play or do homework until it got dark. This always made me feel really bad for the boarders, because I knew that they had silent study hall before and after dinner, and they couldn't listen to music or act goofy and they certainly weren't allowed to smoke green cigarettes. They also had a lights out rule there that started at 8:30 for the lower school, and this surely would have made me lose my mind. The worst thing about it all though was probably initiation. I only knew a little bit about it, and what I knew sounded awful: the eighth-grade girls would sneak into the fifth-graders' rooms right after they'd fallen asleep and drag them out into the courtyard for a bunch of rituals and ceremonies and stuff that happened on random nights all the way till December. I heard they covered them in honey and tied them to the Lili'uokalani statue and left them there all night to get devoured by mosquitoes. They also made them eat caterpillars and plumeria sap. Naturally, I was very relieved to be a day-schooler, until the night Daddy told me he wanted us to have dinner together as a family.
Mom sat there sipping tea while we gobbled up the fried fish platters and macaroni salad that Daddy had picked up on the way home from work.
"Julie, sweetie, we need to talk to you about something," he said, setting his napkin down. He smiled, and I noticed how red the rims of his eyes were. It was a contrast to their usual bright blue and it made him look like a sick grizzly bear. Mom was taking deep breaths with her head down, occasionally stabbing a single elbow noodle with her fork and generally getting on my nerves. Whatever was coming next, I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be a quiz about native plants or a conversation about the mayor. "Julie?"
"Ho wat? Aznuts!" I said, trying to bide time and actually thinking I was pretty funny.
"Excuse me?"
"Aznuts, Fuddah! Watsup?"
"Jules, what has gotten into you?" asked Daddy, looking genuinely confused.
"Da kine!"
"Julie!"
"K'Den! No geev me da stink eye!" I hated them both for not laughing. I wanted Roselani and dinnertime happiness.
Then, out of absolutely nowhere, Mom exploded.
"What is the matter with you?" she screamed. It was the first time I'd heard her raise her voice since we'd moved, and it was embarrassing. I couldn't tell if I was embarrassed for her or for me though. She was staring at me wild and bug-eyed across the table, hands clutching her silverware, pale like paper and probably as flimsy. I had this feeling that Kenan could somehow see the whole scene, then I thought of his room, and how it led right onto the roof of the back deck and you could shimmy on down to get safely to the ground real easy. He didn't even have to sleep in an actual bed, he just had a mattress on the floor. Maybe we could get married now and I could just move in with him. We could have a big shrimp-feast wedding with a trillion flowers and beautiful music and sea turtles and I would even eat Spam if I had to.
I stared back at her and felt my eyes fill up, the first warm drops of the rainstorm that I would not blink or brush away.
"I don't know. I thought you'd think it was funny."
She put her head down and let out this long sigh, and I couldn't tell if she was even angrier with me or if she was feeling a sudden guilt. "It…isn't….funny," she said, and then left the table and disappeared upstairs.
"Don't cry, Julie," Daddy said, watching her go as he slid over into the chair next to me. "I know this has been a hard move for you what with starting a new school and everything. And I know Mom can be..."
"Why does she hate me?"
"Sweetie, you know she doesn't hate you. But look, Mom is very sick. That's kind of what I want to talk to you about."
"I know she's very sick,' I said, probably with a little too much bad attitude. "Why do you think we moved here in the first place?" I reached up and touched Kenan's necklace. I could be a mermaid. I could be made of puka shells.
"Come on Jules, be a big girl and be strong for us, ok?"
I could be a mermaid...
I nodded. Daddy continued, "Julie. We can't seem to find anyone suitable to move in and take care of Mom. We've talked to a lot of very special doctors and given the situation a great deal of thought, and we've also tried to think about what would be best for you right now."
"I don't want to go back to Seattle," I said.
"We're not going back to Seattle," he assured me, then started in about some hospital on the island that specialized in people like Mom and where she could have round-the-clock care and how wouldn't that be better for everyone and all I could think about was myself. Where was I going to live if Mom was in a hospital? "We're all going to have to make a lot of sacrifices. I'm going to be working a little harder at the firm so we can afford the best care possible. And I'm going to have to ask you to do something too, ok?" Oh God. "How do you like your new school?"
So that was what he had in mind. That was his answer for me.
Oh, the rainstorms really started then. I couldn't help it. My nose started to run too, and I didn't have a tissue so I had to keep sniffling in. "Oh Jules, don't cry. It won't be so bad and it's just going to be for this year until Mom gets better."
"You want me to live at school? It's only a half hour away and you want me to live there with the boarders?"
"Sweetie, it won't be forever and it'll be better for all of us."
"But you'll still be here! You'll be all alone in this house! Can't you just let me stay by myself until you get home from work? If you didn't work all night and all day then maybe that would be a much better idea!" If I couldn't stay at home alone, I could live with Kenan and go to public school. Or we could get a nanny to stay with me. Or I could just raise myself; I was almost 11 years old already. But I couldn't live at school. I couldn't leave my afternoons with Kenan, and I couldn't possibly go through initiation. They'd probably be even tougher on me because I was new and had already missed the first two months of torture.
Daddy kissed my forehead and told me I'd feel better after some sleep, but I couldn't sleep at all, so I waited until everything was quiet and snuck out the front door to Kenan's house, plotting the whole way. I could hide in his attic, covered in Roselani's old muumuus. I could run away and get a job on a pineapple plantation. I could go down to Waikiki and panhandle with all the homeless people who slept on the beach. I could be a fisherman or a farmer.
I could be a mermaid. Mermaids didn't need parents. They didn't need school or initiation or fathers who cared more about their stupid jobs than their little girls.
I could be a mermaid, and away I could swim. Away.
I ran past the mango and papaya trees, heaving and losing my breath the whole way. I tried to keep my cries silent once I got close so I wouldn't wake Roselani, but I also half wanted her to come out and find me anyway and squeeze me close like a real mom is supposed to. I started throwing candlenuts at Kenan's window to wake him up; it took exactly six of them to do the trick.
"Julie!" he whispered loudly, leaning out the window. "What are you doing?"
"Please come ta-talk to me," I managed.
"What time is it? Are you ok?"
"I don't know. N-n-no."
He was wearing a pair of baggy black pants and no shirt, you could see every rib outlined beneath the skin of his narrow back as he climbed out of the window and made his way to the roof of the back porch and then to the ground. He slung his arm around my neck, and it wasn't really a big deal at all because we'd put our arms around each other lots of times before. It didn't feel very much different from any other time, only instead of putting my own arm up back around his neck, I turned my cheek so it rested right on the bone above his chest. It was warm and salty so close to him, I could feel his breath coming out of his nostrils and streaming down onto my shoulder. He had grains of sand stuck to him and I guessed he had been out on the beach while I was being sent to my room. This close up, I noticed the hairs on his chest for the first time. There were only four of five of them, but they were there, looking like long, unwelcome spider legs against his smooth skin. I wanted to touch them but I was afraid to move. I even tried to control my heavy sobs but I started to suffocate so I finally just let it all out, throaty croaking noises and runny nose and puffy eyes and everything,
He started patting my back and then stroking it. I just kept right on crying, the crinkly hairs getting blurry in my teary vision. "Julie," he whispered. "What happened that can be so bad?"
I told him the whole story. About the fish platters, Mom and her tea, the Pidgin, all of it. "And if they make me live at school," I finished, "I won't get to see you ever."
"I'll visit."
"They won't let you."
"You can come here on the weekends."
"It's a disaster!" I screamed, forgetting for a second that it was the middle of the night.
"Shhh," he said, the strokes becoming heavier on my back. I knew that if I looked up he was going to kiss me. I don't know how I knew it; a girl just knows these things.
I took a deep, gurgly breath in and tried to wipe my nose on the back of my hand. He didn't seem to notice. I kept my eyes down as I turned my face up, and our lips touched for a minute. It felt like soft rubber wires. It was okay. It was even nice.
Then Kenan did something terrible.
The only thing I could think about was the mollusks we'd learned about in Natural Science class, the
Phylum Mollusca; squid, clams, sea slugs. Kissing was supposed to be sweet and wonderful, wasn't it? This had stopped being nice and started being slimy. It felt like I was being attacked by an angry, wet creature that had been let loose inside my mouth. How could anyone ever enjoy this? I absolutely could not breathe and started to feel panicky. A hot woosh came over me like I might faint, the tears were still not stopping. I pulled away and as I did, my teeth gnashed into his, making me gag a little. A thread of saliva draped onto my chin, suddenly cold as the air hit it. I wanted to take it all back. I wanted to be far away. I wanted to be covered in scales. I started to move from him, then turned into a full sprint toward the beach. "Julie—I'm sorry! Wait!" he called after me. I felt sad that I didn't slow down and answer him, sadder still that he didn't try to follow me.
I got to the small wave cove and lay down in the breakers. Then I went further out, taking gulps of water as I went, trying to wash everything away, outside and in.
I could be a mermaid, I could be made of bones and fins. I don't remember when I stopped swimming. I don't remember when they found me, or how I got to the hospital, or what it felt like when they breathed oxygen back into my lungs. I only remember how cold the water was on my open eyes and how free I felt flipping around in it. In my head I kept on chanting,
I am a mermaid. I am a mermaid. Mermaids didn't need parents. They didn't need school or initiation or fathers who cared more about their stupid jobs than their little girls.
Mermaids didn't need to have giant sea mollusks in their mouths.
Mermaids can breathe underwater.
I am a mermaid.
©2009 by J.L. Bramble
