To Row to Hawaii

[Right: Proto-Wesley.]

The first visitor to the House in Shirley was an army officer who came to meet with my parents over drinks the day before my 4th birthday. The conversation started off on a subject I knew nothing about, mostly affairs at Fort Devens and goings on at ASA headquarters. But eventually they started talking about Hawaii. That got Alaka'i's attention, and he took over completely.

[Left: Vampire hunter Wesley.]

The talk meandered around about things to do with Hawaii that I didn't care about at the time, like fire dancers and hula girls. Then my Father mentioned that he picked up quite a lot of Hawaiian during his time there.

My Mother, who was getting mildly drunk by then, butted in and said, "He'll tell you what a great linguist he is, but the boy is the linguist. The boy is fluent."

My Father said, "Yeah, right. When I hear proof I'll believe it."

I kept quiet while they argued a while more like that. I'd learned there was no point in expressing my own opinion. But then my Father said, "I really wish I could learn more Hawaiian, it's a beautiful language. It's a shame there's no way I could continue studying it here." [Right: Ensign Wesley.]

As Alaka'i I said, "You can learn it here. Talk to me and I'll teach you. I'll teach you a lot better than you know now." I imagined that the practice would do me good, too.

[Left: General Wesley.]

That was not a diplomatic thing to say. My Father turned red, then he yelled at me and backhanded me across the face. Our guest protested that I had only been offering help, and my Father snapped at him, "You stay out of this! You don't know how much this kid hates me! He's deliberately insulting!"

That night Alaka'i made plans to return to Hawaii.

Now, that was unrealistic thinking. But I'm not sure it's fair to say my poor reality perception was evidence of psychosis. This is a 4 year-old we're talking about.

[Right: Her Wesley will save her.]

The idea was to follow the setting sun and walk due west until I arrived at the Pacific ocean, then look around and "borrow" a row boat or something and sail yet further west until I ran into Hawaii. I wasn't sure how I'd get the borrowed boat back to it's owner, but I thought maybe I could get Lani and Lono to help with that when I saw them again.

There was a misjudgment about how long the walk would take. I thought that by walking straight, instead of making a lot of detours the way we did when we drove east, I could do it in 3 weeks. I would live off berries along the way. I thought the rowing might take an hour or so.

Probably the biggest misjudgment concerned the fate of Kona if I carried out my plan. I thought Kona would be able to remain behind with my parents, so nobody would really miss Alaka'i. One Wesley is as good as any other to these cretins.

The biggest mistake Alaka'i made in planning this break was a mistake of a different kind, not to do with the practicality of the plan, but with the advisability of revealing it. I made the mistake of thinking that though my Father was a jerk, he was nevertheless entitled to know that Alaka'i was leaving and why.

I know better now. We learn by making mistakes.

[Above left: Maniacally-grinning Wesley.]

Rains Bleed

[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. Today I'm relating events that happened shortly before my fourth birthday. The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]

At first I had excellent company in my isolation on the farm. I had my two personalities!

I've read that people with dual personalities often go through stages in which the personalities strike many radically different arrangements of body sharing, as if looking for the best way to manage the problem. That was my experience.

In Hawaii it was like this: If we're home, I'm usually Kona. If we're away from home by ourselves, I'm Alaka'i. If we're away from home with our parents, we wing it.

At the House in Shirley, Kona and Alaka'i had conversations. It seemed to me that whenever I was one, the other was behind me and could step forward, and the first would go back behind. We had conversations like this where we took turns speaking for long periods of time.

Once my Mother was in the hall upstairs and overheard me doing this while I was in the playroom by myself. She walked in and asked me who I was talking to, knowing full-well the correct realistic answer had to be "myself', since no one else was there. My answer was "Alaka'i." She had never heard that name before, and she had trouble getting the pronunciation right. So she said, "how about I call him Alex, instead?"

Alex was fine, I said. For all I knew at the time, maybe Alex was English for Alaka'i. If you think Alex comes from Alexander the Great, a case could be made that the connotation is the same, even if the root meaning is entirely different.

After that my Mother eavesdropped on our conversations regularly. When I was outside we would be talking and I'd catch her peering out the kitchen window at me.

The conversations outside would be conducted almost as if in a trance. Just south of our house was a house sized rectangular hole in the ground with concrete walls where another house had been. Near it were other holes where there may have been a shed or an outhouse. I developed a route that took me around those ruins in a figure eight, and just followed it over and over again like a caged bear at the zoo, carrying on my dual person conversation. We mostly talked about how much we missed Hawaii and Lani and Lono. Sometimes Alaka'i would sing a Hawaiian chant and then explain it to Kona.

Soon after we moved in my parents were lucky that the farmer who rented to us agreed to babysit for them so they could have some time out by themselves.

The first time I was turned over to the old man my parents drove me there and dropped me and the dog off in his back yard. The farmer's house was at the foot of a steep slope and rested on a gentle rise up from the highway. There were long stairs up to the porch. It seemed like too many stairs for such an old man.

I vaguely recall the old man's name was Bob. Let's say I'm right. Bob talked with my parents for about ten minutes, then they drove off to have some fun on base. Maybe they were going to a party, or maybe to have dinner at the Officer's Club. As they drove off, the old man sat on a hammock in his yard that was strung between two trees. His wife worked in a garden near the stairs to the house, in the distance behind him. Just twenty feet away an old disk harrow was rusting in overgrown grass.

Once my parents were gone, there was a long period of awkwardness. I had learned to be afraid of Americans. Whether relatives or total strangers, I'd come to think of them as either feeble or treacherous. I didn't think any good could come of talking to this old man.

As it happened, there was just then a beautiful vivid rainbow in the sky to the east. I'd seen countless rainbows in Hawaii. They have many words for the different kinds. Some are called uakoko, literally meaning blood rain, or bloody rain. I thought of it as meaning the rain bleeds.

Bob didn't know I was familiar with rainbows. From the way I was gawking at it he got the false impression that I'd never seen one before. After several minutes, he said, "Well, aren't you going to ask me what it is? Don't you want to know what makes it and what it's called?"

If I was curious about it I certainly wouldn't have asked him, given the lack of trust. But I also wasn't go to say, "No, I don't trust you." I didn't want to get in any trouble. I was sure that anything I said that could be seen as impolite would be reported in detail to my parents. So I didn't say anything.

Then he said something amazing. He said, loud and angry, "Who did this to you? It's that Father of yours, isn't it? This new generation, they're all alike. 'We saved America from tyranny! We preserved freedom in the world!' But they don't know what freedom is! What does he do when you ask him a question? Does he yell at you?"

It was one of the most transforming moments of my life. All it took was for him to realize what was going on and put it in words. I didn't need to be rescued. I couldn't be rescued in that day and age. But he could help me see the leash better, so I could learn to resist it on my own.

After a good cry, I admitted to him he was right, and we got along well. The conversation remained our secret, and I had finally found an American I could trust.

[Below: Shiny polished disk harrow, lovingly maintained in a museum.]

Another Crappy Birthday

OK, it wasn't as bad as the first. It was even better than the second, which wasn't celebrated at all, since animals don't get birthday parties.

It began with my Father getting his photographic equipment out. He set up a tripod in the middle of the living room, and a dining chair was set in front of it.

I was placed in the chair. He had to focus the camera. He measured the light and did his calculations to set the exposure time just right. He had to hang a sheet up to block sunlight from the window.

Then the big moment came. My Mother handed me an oblong object and my Father said, from behind the camera, "Here it is! Here's the ball!" I was excited! I looked around for the ball. I didn't see it, but I was sure it was there somewhere. I was happy, and there was a flash, as my Father got this picture.


After the picture was taken I said, naturally, "Where ball? What ball?"

My Father said, "It's in your hand, silly"

How is a football a ball to a 3-year-old who has never even seen a football game?

I've often wondered how bad it would have been if we were a normal family, and my parents hadn't tried to kill me on my first birthday, and I hadn't only just recently begun to bond with my Father again.

The way things were, it just symbolized everything that was wrong. I had a Father who couldn't see me unless he was imagining me being him. If I couldn't be identical to him, I was disposable. My Father was a football fan. I must be a football fan.

Even before I started crying, my Mother said, "I told you he wanted a round ball." I burst out in tears, and my Father said, "It's a ball! What's wrong with him that he can't see it's a ball!" "It's not a ball," she said. "It's a football." "A football is a ball!"

It took several minutes for my Father to calm down. Mother talked him into promising to get a real ball soon. I was talked down out of my sobbing, as I gradually was convinced that the next time wouldn't be just like this one, and the next "ball" wouldn't be shaped like a donkey, or the Eiffel Tower, or a stupid coat hanger.

Another present was brought out. I got a "kelepona", a telephone. It was a toy telephone with a spinning dial, just like the new one that my parents had recently got, replacing the old wall model.

Below are four photos. In all but the one on the lower left I was Kona. My Mother said something mean about me just before that shot was taken, and Alaka'i came out, protecting Kona from hearing the insult. You can see anger that Kona wouldn't have had. My Mother said to my Father, "See? See what I've been telling you? Look at him. You can see he's different! I told you the freak's got a split personality!"

My father told her she was crazy. "There are no such things as split personalities."