NIGHT MUSIC

Part One: The Wave

Keanu ran into the wave with outstretched arms, hitting the wall of water like a conqueror, then folding under it, tumbling between the force of water and swirling sand. She opened her eyes in darkness and saw the froth pushing above her, and as the wave settled, sunlight prismed through the water like volcanic diamonds. Her tumbling slowed. Just in time, she thought, her lungs nearly empty, the foam around her going black along the edges. She floated upright, then catapulted through the foamy crust of water, gasping for air.

Her grandmother—tutu—had told Keanu her name means “cool breeze over the mountains,” but Keanu was a water girl, a barefoot beach girl, and wished her name to be Kailani, Kai for the sea, lani for beauty. This was her fantasy, as she romped and played in the sand and waves at her beach at the foothills of the West Maui Mountains, in the town of Olowalu, as she’d done for all of her twelve years.

Keanu wiped salt from her eyes and looked up the beach where the patch of sand disappeared into seaweed-laden tidal pools. Tutu waved from a folding beach chair with a closed book on her lap. Her orange-flowered muumuu was pulled up off the sand, exposing dark brown knees. Tutu never wore a bathing suit. She never went into the water, in fact, and told stories of Keanu’s grandfather, who’d waded out into the water one evening fishing for moi, and never came back.

“The mano came and took ‘im.” Tutu often tells and retells Keanu the story of the shark, the aumakua, who took her husband to join his ancestors and how, although she misses Papi, their shark aumakua protects their family from the ills of white man’s society. Tutu allows Keanu to play in the waves, but not to swim out where the mano lives. For although they are blessed, the family aumakua is powerful and greedy, since theirs is a shark, unlike the aumakua of other Hawaiian families, such as an owl, a bird, or a dog.

Keanu ran up to Tutu’s beach chair. “I caught the biggest wave, Tutu! Did you see?” Keanu’s papa was a surfer who often paddled out past the rocks into deeper water where the mano—and Keanu’s dead grandfather— live. Tutu disapproved of her son-in-law’s recreation, but Keanu’s father was haole—a white man, whose soul “doesn’t contain the depth of Hawaiiana,” Tutu often says about him, resulting in exasperated looks on her mama’s face.

“Ah, my Kiki, looks like the wave caught you! But you handled it okay.” Tutu gripped Keanu’s hand with her own leathered hand. “Come now, Mama will be home soon. Nearly time for kau kau.”

Keanu’s mama worked at the Royal Lahaina Hotel front desk, and her surfing, haole papa was a mechanic at the Lahaina Shell station. Both decent jobs by Hawaii standards, and they all lived with Tutu and Keanu’s big brother, Kimo, in the old family wooden house. Keanu and Kimo attended Kamehameha School, the local school for Hawaiians (attendance dwindling), since they contained Hawaiian blood from their mama’s side of the family.

It was an idyllic life for a native Maui girl. But Tutu reminded Keanu every day that there was so much ino loa—wicked evil—out there, and she must be careful. Now embarking on her teens, Keanu sometimes doubted her tutu, as maturity will cause you to do. Maybe her tutu exaggerated, if only a little.

The two held hands along the narrow road. “What’s for dinner?” Keanu asked.

“Chicken long rice and spinach.”

Keanu wrinkled her nose at the spinach. “When are we gonna have fish again, Tutu?”

“When your brother catches us some fish. I tink the waters are empty, so much ino loa out dere.”

Keanu didn’t know why ino loa would make the big blue ocean empty of fish but she did not ask. Tutu often talked in riddles like this. But mostly Tutu was very wise, so Keanu listened.

The crickets brought in a melancholy dusk as Keanu set the patio table for dinner. The family ate outside together while two coils of green punk burned in bowls to ward off buzzing mosquitoes, and several lit tiki torches illuminated the scrubby yard. Otherwise, it was pitch dark on their tiny street, the nearest house blocks away. Keanu liked looking past the dancing orange light of the tikis, where the night swallowed up the West Maui Mountains. These mountains a wall of protection from the big mainland across the Pacific Ocean to the east. That land, Tutu says, is full of ino loa, and they were lucky to live behind such large mountains to protect them from it.

Keanu, Kimo, Mama, Papa, and Tutu dished up their plates in the small kitchen and settled in at the round table outside. Talk of the day began, which Keanu tuned out, instead listening for the hush of waves washing the small patch of sand at Olowalu beach, filling the tidal pools with green cellophane seaweed. In the morning, she’d search among the seaweed for prize shells and sea urchin spines.

When the conversation began to drown out the sound of waves, Keanu’s attention returned. Kimo was in the center of the strife. Oh no, Keanu thought. Her brother suffered from what haoles call “rock fever.” He wanted to go see the world. Or the rest of the United States—“the mainland”—as the other states were called, across the ocean behind their protective mountains. To Keanu, the mainland was a place so foreign—and therefore exciting—she couldn’t even imagine it. At the market and the beach, she sometimes heard the harsh accents from haole tourists, but she couldn’t picture their homes or their lives. She, too, wanted to go get an education somewhere big, like California, and learn about marine life and the earth. Then she’d return home to help the Hawaiian beaches and the deteriorating flora and fauna. She saw no harm in that. But Kimo was a dreamer and wanted to go make it big in the white man’s world. Naturally, her brother’s announcement made Tutu angry.

“So you want to go rot in the parched earth with the haoles do you?” Tutu hadn’t touched her chicken long rice.

“Tutu,” Kimo pleaded, “it’s not like that. There are so many more opportunities over there! Schools! Jobs! So much to learn, and I want to see it all.”

“You are greedy, boy.”

“Mima!” Keanu’s mama said to Tutu, “David and I have discussed this. Kimo can get a scholarship. He’ll learn, then come home and share his knowledge with his people.” With this, she shot her son a stern look.

“And what will a hapa-haole like you study, boy?”

“Political Science,” said Kimo proudly. Kimo was class president of his senior class, and often, and bravely, debated politics with Tutu.

Tutu had lifted a forkful of chicken but dropped it, crashing to the china plate, and making Keanu flinch. “Hogwash! Politics? Do you plan to join that animal in Washington now? This is the haole blood in you, boy, this devil—”

“Now, Tutu! Keanu’s papa pushed his chair back and stood. “I support your old ways, your ohana is my ohana, but these are modern times. Kimo wants to see the world, he needs to see it. You cannot stop him.” He sat back down, making peace.

“Suit yourselves. Let him join that kepolo, the devil over there. Bad enough his evil reaches us all way to our islands. Only protection we got, is distance, and you boy, you go heading over there.”

That night the dream came again. In it, Keanu stands on the roof of their house, frozen at the sight of a fiery-orange horizon, even though the sun has not yet climbed up over the West Maui Mountains. Sirens wail thickly through the air, and she pushes her palms to her ears to keep them from hurting, like at school when the sirens are tested. But this time they don’t stop, and another sound, a low rumble, begins to vibrate in her. She scans the bruised horizon for the wave she knows is coming for her and her family. A wave as large as the entire ocean.

Part Two: The Drive

The next morning, when Keanu returned home from the beach, Tutu was sitting in front of the television. She clicked it off as Keanu entered the house. Tutu read the papers and watched news channels daily, which is why she was so wise. Keanu’s parents were always working, so she didn’t think they knew as much as her tutu did.

“Kiki, let’s take a drive,” she headed to the kitchen for her purse without waiting for an answer.

“Lemme rinse off the sand, Tutu.”

“Sure, I’ll be waiting in the car.”

At the end of their street, Tutu turned left onto Honoapiilani Highway, the two-lane road that follows the coastline along the leeward side of Maui. Usually, they turned right and followed the coastline into Lahaina for groceries, school, or appointments. But today Tutu turned toward the Pali mountains, which would bring them through a lighted tunnel where Keanu always held her breath (for good luck), to the towns and beaches of Maalaea, Kihei, and Makena.

“Tutu, where we going?”

Tutu turned toward her granddaughter and smiled. “Let’s go see your Auntie in Kihei. And look at our beautiful island along the way.” Keanu looked out her open window to the empty beach whizzing by and capturing the salty wind in her mouth. Her hair blew wildly all around her face. She didn’t see her Auntie Lei often, her dead grandfather’s sister, and she was excited for the adventure. Often, while driving, Tutu told stories of the old days, and Keanu liked that.

As the engine began to groan against the fast rise in elevation, Keanu’s heart began to leap. She hardly ever went to South Maui. Sometimes she’d ride into Wailuku with Papa to the auto supply, but that was hardly an adventure. Why were they going to see Auntie Lei today? Tutu hardly spoke of her. It never seemed like the two were close. They had widowhood in common, not much else.

“Tutu, can we stop at the pali lookout and look for whales?”

“Ah, no, Kiki. The lookout is closed. There was a landslide at the tunnel last year, and it’s only one lane now; no can stop at all.” She shook her head and mumbled, “So much ino loa.” Which halted Keanu’s excited heart with sour drops of dread.

And because the one-lane traffic was so slow going through the tunnel, Keanu couldn’t hold her breath that long. Now, bad luck would curse them! Once they coasted down the mountain, Keanu was thinking of her brother leaving, how her tutu was unhappy, and how maybe Tutu didn’t like Papa since he was haole, and maybe Tutu didn’t like her either because she was hapa haole, and maybe she should leave forever too to see what the fuss is all about. Then she looked out to the horizon and wondered about the foreign lands to the west. She’d learned in school that migrant workers had come to work the sugar cane fields a long time ago from China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines. Many of those people were integrated into Hawaii and even considered Hawaiian now.

“Oh! Will you look at that!” Tutu’s voice broke Keanu’s thoughts.

Keanu jerked her head away from the window and looked mauka, toward the mountains. Tutu put on her turn signal and slowed. Smashed against the wall of the cliff was a black plastic bag of trash, contents spilling out like organs from a split corpse.

“You stay here,” Tutu idled for a moment on the curb of the beach, then got out to wait for traffic to pass so she could cross the highway and retrieve the litter.

Another bad omen, Keanu thought. Tutu hated litter. And Keanu agreed that people who came to their beautiful islands and tossed their trash all around had no right to be there. She wondered if the streets on the mainland were covered in litter.

Tutu, successful in her mission, slammed the trunk and got back behind the steering wheel. “Such dirty people they are! Before, you’d see rental cars and hippie vans just tossing things out windows: bottles, cans, you name it. Like our beautiful Maui was a garbage dump! It wasn’t even considered wrong back then! Finally, laws were created against it, and fines were levied. Laws? To prevent throwing trash into paradise? You’d think common sense would drive humanity, but no. And whoever threw this big bag of trash all over the highway—”

“Maybe, Tutu, it fell out of the back of a truck or something? Accidentally?”

“This was no accident,” Tutu spat, white knuckles gripping the steering wheel. “Those people should stay on the mainland!”

A few minutes of silence as they headed into Maalaea town. Finally, Tutu said, “I’m sorry, Kiki, this is supposed to be a fun time, a time to get away from ino loa. I’m just sad it seems we can’t get away from it. Let’s go down to the harbor and see if any boats have come in with fish, yes?”

This was one of those times when Tutu’s disdain for the white man was so strong. Keanu wondered again if Tutu hated her papa since he was haole. One day, Keanu would ask her. Not today.

After wandering the harbor and admiring a large mahi mahi on one boat, Tutu and Keanu were back in the car, driving toward Kihei. The empty stretch of beach along the road called out to Keanu, and she asked if they could stop and look for shells.

“Not here, Kiki, there’s nowhere to park and the kiawe trees will make thorns in your feet.”

Tutu slowed around the bend going into Kihei town, and at the stop sign, Keanu listened for the whisper of wave caressing sand.

Part Three: The Beach

The moment Tutu turned off the engine in the parking lot of Auntie Lei’s condo, Keanu was out of the car and running barefoot toward the shimmering sand.

“Kiki, wait!” Tutu grabbed her purse from the backseat. When she got to the water’s edge, Keanu was sitting on the hard-packed sand with her legs out in front of her, waves washing over her dark feet. “Kiki, you are being rude, girl. Let’s go inside and see Auntie.”

“Then can I play out here?”

“Maybe later.”

Auntie Lei’s condo smelled like paint and cardboard. It reminded Keanu of all the imposing hotels and houses that Tutu hated. But there weren’t many places locals could afford, and Auntie Lei was lucky to live on the beach, with a swimming pool. One of Tutu’s newspaper-inspired outbursts came to Keanu’s mind:

“Serves those Japs right eh? No staff for their big hotels? Where’s staff supposed to live eh? Maybe they shoulda thought of that before they raped our beaches with their concrete and windows!”

Keanu didn’t know how Auntie Lei had acquired her condo, or if she rented or owned it. Despite its newish smell, she liked the few times a year they came here because the beach had smooth yellow sand, and sometimes she even went into the pool to wash the salt from her body.

“Hi, Auntie,” Keanu beamed.

“My, have you grown since the last time I saw you!” Auntie was big, brown, and round, and took Keanu into her ample arms. Her muumuu smelled sweet of Tide. She then stepped back with her hands on Keanu’s shoulders and inspected her. “You are growing into a beautiful young woman.”

“Not so fast, Leilei, she’s only twelve. There’s still time.”

“Oh, Kula, you are so dramatic, what ARE you talking about?”

“Never mind,” said Tutu. “Kiki, you wanted to play on the beach, you may go.”

“I’m hungry,” Keanu looked at Auntie Lei. She sensed an explosive conversation was in the air, and she didn’t want to miss it. If anything else, Tutu’s outbursts were fascinating, and eavesdropping on a rare conversation between sisters-in-law was more interesting than the beach.

While Auntie Lei prepared a tuna sandwich and potato chips, Keanu stood awkwardly in the living room and looked at the picture of her dead uncle on a small side table. A young and handsome man, posing under a palm tree with a bright yellow surfboard stuck upright in the sand like a pal. His hair reddish from sun and salt. She only remembered him from this picture, not from real life; she’d been so young when he died of an illness she did not understand.

Finally, Auntie Lei set down the sandwich and positioned Keanu at a small dinette on the balcony. The two ladies made drinks, making small talk in the kitchen, then sat across from each other on rattan couches in the living room. Tutu got up and slid the glass door closed, claiming too much breeze at Keanu, but Keanu could hear them anyway. She ate slowly. Chewed ever so carefully so she could listen.

“So, Kula, you only come and see me when you’re distressed. To what tragedy do I owe this visit?”

“Oh, nonsense, I come see you all the time.”

“Hm. I must have a twin living in Kihei I do not know about.” She took a sip of her drink, staring at her sister-in-law over the lip of the glass.

“Leilei, Kimo will move away after high school. To the mainland.”

“Well, I think that’s inevitable, Sis, don’t you? Not like there are a lot of opportunities here,” she waved a hand around to clarify, “here.”

“Yes, but I—”

“I know. You can’t stand not being in control of everything. You couldn’t control my brother, and you can’t control your family. But that’s normal, Kula, you can’t control everybody, or anybody, really.”

“So what, just let him go? And let Keanu go when she’s old enough? While the rest of the world goes to shit?”

Keanu’s ears perked at the mention of her name. Stopped crunching potato chips to better hear.

“Kula, the world is, well, maybe the world is going to shit, but we’ve got the islands. It’s no longer perfect here, but it’s our ohana, our home.”

“Yes, and the kids should stay because it’s safe here. We may be the fiftieth state,” (here she used air quotes) “but we are not part of all that nonsense. Only what touches us indirectly.”

Leilei sighed and shook her head. “Kula, what is really bothering you?”

“I’m afraid if you must know. These are terrible people! And these people hate Americans now, and unfortunately, we are in that group by default since we are a state.” She downed the rest of her drink. Rattled the ice and stared at her glass as if the answer melted there with the ice.

“Well, WE haven’t done anything wrong. The gods will protect us from all that. Don’t forget our aumakua, hey? Besides, it’s all so far away. In the Middle East, for heaven’s sake, that’s another world. We live in this world. Where our greatest ire is finding a parking space at the beach and affording a five-dollar loaf of bread.”

“Well put, sister, but those people are full of hate. Have been since the Bible. And now they hate us. And they have weapons. Weapons that go far. And that man is making everyone angry. What are we to do?”

“Kula, you shouldn’t worry so much about things you can do nothing about.”

The sisters-in-law sat in silence for a moment. Auntie Lei got up and made a second round of drinks, allowing Keanu to crunch on her chips (now soggy in her mouth) without missing any of their conversation. Keanu gazed out at the swell of waves and wondered about the things that scared her tutu so. The not knowing made her feel anxious, and the notion of running up into the mountains and hiding in a cave made her feel safe. Yes, that’s what she would do, if —or when—anything happened.

Keanu never made it to the beach on that visit. After her lunch, she and Tutu were back in the car, driving home over the Pali road. That night, she dreamed again of the giant wave. This time, instead of standing on the roof of their house in Olowalu, Keanu ran toward the West Maui Mountains, the wave in hot pursuit of her. She awoke in a cold sweat.

Part Four: The Night

Keanu sat up in bed, her dampened sheets pooled around her like deflated clouds. She kicked them from her feet, then sat still for a moment, recalling the dream, resenting the dream, wondering why the dream occurred so often now. Something to do with her grandmother, always the impending doom that hung around her, reminding her of things none of them had any control over. Except maybe Kimo. Maybe he should stay in the islands, ignore that outside world where the ino loa lived. Like sea animals that live in protective shells, surely they were all safe here, weren’t they?

The air sounded thick in the dense dark, not the bamboo trickle of crickets but a low hum of multiple octaves. Deep and penetrating, like a heavy truck rumbling up the street. She got out of bed and looked out the open window toward the street, where the sound came more forcibly. There was no moon, and the street had no lights; only blackness greeted her curiosity. Keanu jumped into her shorts, tiptoed through the house, and quietly shut the door behind her, closing off the heaviness of the house. Fast-walking toward the beach, she felt like a feather in the still night.

She heard more layers of sound. It was music! Ukulele and song mostly, some percussion, either a pahu drum or an ipu. But who was out on the beach so late, and why were they at her beach? Maybe she should bolt back to the house and climb back into bed, but she was curious, so ino loa be damned. Tutu was fast asleep; she wouldn’t notice her absence.

The orange glow of a fire drew her toward the beach. The music was clear now, three, maybe four musicians. People milling around, some sitting. Talking and laughter under the song. Keanu stood at the edge of the sand. Despite the fire, the air was unusually chilly, a sensation she at first forgot, for she feared she’d be noticed. But no one noticed her.

True to Hawaiian music, the song threaded the beauty of the moonless sky, slick waves, and the rustling of palms above them through her soul. As her watering eyes adjusted to the milky light of the fire, she saw the people were dressed oddly, the ladies in tapa print muumuus, the men in lava lavas instead of shorts. Had she stumbled upon a late-night tourist Hawaiian show? A costume party? She darted behind two ladies shuffling to the music, and the sand was cold under her bare feet. Her bare arms and legs were dotted with cold, a sensation unfamiliar to her and a little thrilling.

She stood there, happy in the cold, listening to the unfamiliar and beautiful music when a man’s gaze pulled her focus, and she saw his familiar face. Their eyes locked, as her mind swiftly traveled to her Auntie’s house, to the picture on the small side table of the red-haired uncle. Then a violent splash in the shallow waves broke through the calm. Keanu jerked her head toward the water, looking past the people, who all seemed oblivious to the noise, and saw the oily back of a shark heading out toward the deep. The fin reflecting the faintest glow of the orange fire as it cut away through the black water.

Aumakua! She turned away from the beach and ran home.

Part Five: The Day

Keanu awoke to a yellow glow pouring into her window. She heard Tutu bumping around in the kitchen like most mornings, but the rest of the house was quiet. Would Keanu be able to look Tutu in the eye? She felt so much guilt! Mired in confusion! The aumakua. Why had she seen it? Warning her? Protecting her from some unknown danger? Would Tutu know she’d seen it? Was she supposed to keep this a secret? And was that her uncle there at the beach? How? Why?

Sleepy-eyed, she entered the kitchen, mumbling something unintelligible to Tutu, who was stirring something at the stove.

“Well, good morning, Kiki, you slept a long time.”

“I know,” she peeped. “Where’s Mama and Pop?” It was Sunday, family day.

“They’re not here.” Tutu turned, holding two bowls of oatmeal, her black eyes looking directly into Keanu’s eyes.

Keanu looked down. “B-but where are they? It seems like I haven’t seen them in so long.”

“Oh, don’t pretend you do not know,” she set the bowls down on the kitchen table, whose plastic-coated tablecloth was cracked with age, dirty threads crawling out like angry worms.

But Keanu wasn’t hungry. Though she couldn’t remember the last time she ate. “What do you mean? Where’s Mama? Where’s Papa?!”

“They’re not here. We are.”

“What do you mean?” her face starting to burn. Her tutu angered her on most days, but now she was being weird. Keanu sat at one of the bowls of oatmeal, this normal action tamping down something rising in her throat.

“WHAT were you doing out last night, child?” Tutu stood akimbo at the table, her back to the stove.

“I-I heard music. At the beach.” She picked up the spoon and began stirring the oatmeal. Outside was silent like an empty shell. No mynah birds shrieking. Had the birds been there yesterday? She did not remember yesterday. Had she eaten breakfast? Time seemed only to occur for her in snippets. Hadn’t they visited Auntie—when was it—yesterday? Last week? Last year? Her head swam. She was pulled under by a wave of confusion and couldn’t climb her way to the surface. “I saw the aumakua! She blurted.

Tutu’s arms came down to her sides, slapping her thighs at this pronouncement. She went silent for a moment, then, in a low voice, said, “We are in a world of trouble, Kiki.”

“What do you mean?” Although she didn’t want to know what Tutu meant, she just wanted to run down to the beach, play in the waves, and look for shells. Assuming the night people were gone. The shark, too.

Her Tutu sat in the chair across from her and put her head into her hands. “It’s happened,” she uttered.

Keanu sat silent and waited. Her stomach churned, knowingly. Death was around them, this she knew. She thought of her dream and the giant wave, and maybe it hadn’t been a dream at all. Maybe the wave had taken her parents and her brother away, and she was left here alone with Tutu, a bird-less sky, and night music.

“We must go and pray to the aumakua,” Tutu said suddenly.

“What will we pray for?”

“We must be allowed to leave here.”

“But why? Where will we go?”

Tutu looked up at her, her black eyes piercing. “Kiki, we are in the land of the not-dead. We need to find our way to the afterlife.”

“What? Did the wave come when I was sleeping? Where’s Mom and Pop? Kimo?” Panic and disbelief shot through her words. She wanted to call Auntie and tell her Tutu has gone insane. Maybe it wasn’t Sunday, and her family was at work after all. Maybe it wasn’t a shark last night, or the face of her dead uncle, maybe she dreamed it all up, along with the night music. She forced herself to eat a spoonful of oatmeal and tried to taste it.

“The aumakua will show us the way there. The white man he’s finally done it to us. May he rot in hell.”

About 5000 miles away to the West, twice as far from Maui as the forty-nine states east of the islands, a dead man’s son knelt at an altar of creatures carved from stone and jade. Well, not creatures, exactly, but deities. Gods, demons, you could say, if you knew the history of his family. The strong grandfather and father now dead, their stolen land left to an unremarkable son. Also left to the unremarkable son money and power to make up for his unremarkableness. And to continue his family heritage of unrelenting power over the people! To crush out the white man of Western ways who dares to control him with sanctions and even war, back when his grandfather tried to grow their land to the south! How dare they!

Through the polished glass window in the expansive room of the family castle, the recently disturbed sea was quieting down, the night’s churn and rumble settled into angry little waves as if a typhoon had just passed over.

“Father! Grandfather!” the son uttered in his native language toward the stone creatures. “I have proven myself to you! Do you not see the power I have!” he got up on one knee and pushed a fist upward. The son was taking all the credit here, for a scientific, military process he did not understand. Only the results he understood, and that he’d commanded: make the missile go farther, use a submarine if you have to, but get it to America. And the fact that he had now wiped out all the little islands between his land and the white man’s land in a single night, he would ride a great wave to power over all.

Marisa Mangani was born and raised in Hawaii and now lives in Florida. Her memoir, Mise en Place: Memoir of a Girl Chef, won the 2023 gold medal for Women's Biographies by the Global Book Awards, and the 2023 gold for Memoir and Biography by the Royal Palm Book Awards. Her essays and fiction have been published in Hippocampus, Aji, Borrowed Solace, Sleet Magazine, In Parenthesis, Sandhill Review, Adelaide Magazine, and others. https://marisamangani.com/miseenplace/