Hula by Jasmin Iolani Hakes

Author:Jasmin Iolani Hakes
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

It was not difficult to hide the pregnancy. At practice, her mother watched only her arms, her feet, the snap of her skirts. Laka swallowed her nausea, blamed her fatigue on the exertion of her training. She knew little about prenatal care, but with discretion took the precautions she’d seen countless aunties take, removing the gold necklace she’d always worn and being careful not to cross her legs whenever she sat down—both to prevent the baby from being strangled by its umbilical cord. She refrained from putting chili pepper water on her food and, in response to the sudden swell of her breasts and their new extreme tenderness, started to hunch. Ever since the burning of the honu, Laka and Hulali took deliberate caution never to be caught in the same room at home (they had to be with each other at the halau, but they treated that as business, both just showing up for work). Her father gave her a funny look as he passed through the hall and found her eating soda crackers in the middle of the night, but he was fishing so much that he was too tired to say or do anything beyond getting himself a beer and going to bed.

Her brothers and sisters were more difficult to avoid. Now that she knew she would be leaving them soon, tears gathered in her eyes when they left their dirty clothes on the floor or spilled their juice or picked their nose at the dinner table. She found herself studying them, memorizing the shapes of their toes, the smell of their skin, the rumble of their laughter. She found secret ways to say goodbye that she hoped they would remember. She hugged Lilinoe extra tight until the girl squirmed her way free. She picked Moku up and rubbed his back whenever he pulled at her hand. She answered Pua’s unending questions with newfound patience. She even went out of her way to make plates of food for Butch whenever he skipped meals to go surfing, covering them with a kitchen towel and putting it where the ants couldn’t reach. She blamed her sentimentality on the hormones, but it was more than that. There was no way to leave Hulali without leaving them, too. She knew they would not understand. Leaving wasn’t in their dictionary. In Hilo, Keaukaha especially, you stayed with the tribe. It was the only home, where you belonged.

Eventually, she wrote David a letter and sent it before she lost her nerve. In it she explained nothing, asking only that he not come to the stadium to watch the competition. There was no telling what Hulali would do or say to him if she saw him there, and Laka didn’t think she could handle a confrontation. She knew she was taking a chance by not telling him in the letter; David needed to know she was pregnant before Hulali got to him, but when it came time to write it down, she couldn’t. Telling someone they were going to have a baby was something that should be done face-to-face.

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