Rani Patel In Full Effect. Sonia Patel
he whispered into my ear, “Isn’t that your dad, Rani?”
Pono’s hands are on my body!
My euphoria burst out like when you drop Mentos into a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. I took a deep breath and nodded. I whispered back, “Wonder why’s he in this place.”
Dad picked out a bouquet of a dozen red roses. My heart began beating like war drums and my thoughts raced like the dude Pheidippides from that Robert Blacking poem.
I knew.
He never bought flowers for my mom. Ever. Plus they’d been fighting more than usual.
Dad sashayed over to the line at the cash register. He looked as happy as that day last April, the first time he came home at 4 a.m. The night before he told me he’d be out late at a water activist meeting. I saw him creep back into the house early in the morning. He was like a teenager trying to sneak in without waking his parents. Not that I’d ever done that because the only reason I’d be up at that hour is for homework. Which I happened to be doing since 3 a.m. that morning. As he tiptoed past my room, I saw the spark in his eye. That spark was the first time I noticed something had changed. I knew fighting to preserve Moloka’i’s water from the careless clutches of the Ranch and Kaluakoi Resort made him feel like he had a purpose. But elated? That seemed sketchy. He was like a different person. Not the stoic Gujarati man I knew.
And Dad’s been pretty much MIA since then. At home less and less. Working less and less, and recently not at all. All the while, Mom’s continued to work at the store and restaurant twelve to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. I’ve maintained my after school and weekends work hours.
Last year he’d gotten into water activism as a way to “stick it to the Man.” That’s how he described it to me. “The Man” was the Moloka’i Ranch. The Ranch owns about one-third of the island and most of the west end, including the land, houses, and business buildings in the tiny town of Maunaloa. Back in the day, when the Ranch leased a large portion of their land to Libby McNeill & Libby and Del Monte, Maunaloa mainly housed pineapple workers. Today the Ranch rents the houses to their own employees, Kaluakoi employees, and former pineapple workers or their families. And they rent the store and restaurant buildings to my parents.
Dad’s pissed because the Ranch didn’t renew our lease on the store or restaurant, leaving us only two more years to run the businesses. Well, only one more year now. Dad’s been fixated on revenge ever since. He knew that the Ranch and Kaluakoi had been wanting full access to Moloka’i’s only source of fresh water to irrigate and expand the tourist potential of the dry west end. He also knew that many people on Moloka’i didn’t want the island’s limited water supply to be wasted on tourist development projects. Especially when many Hawaiian homesteaders didn’t yet have access to the water for their agriculture. I’m no local but I’ve always agreed that the water should be for the Native Hawaiians first and foremost. You don’t have to be Einstein to see the logic in that. Dad eagerly jumped on the “no way in hell is the Moloka’i Ranch or Kaluakoi getting our fresh water” activist train. He even became one of the conductors. For him, it’s been the perfect “fuck you” to the Ranch for “fucking with him.”
Anyway, Dad’s in line at Moana’s. He turned his head and dug around in his front left pocket for his wallet before realizing it was in his back pocket all along. That’s when I spotted his new beard. So George Michael. Short boxed, closely trimmed. I inhaled sharply. In the two weeks that I hadn’t seen him, he let his five o’clock shadow grow. He never allowed himself to keep any kind of facial hair before. Come on now, the guy used to ridicule guys with hair.
Rani, what do you call a man with a beard?
I don’t know, Dad. What?
Unemployed.
Oh the irony.
I snuck up behind him and tapped him lightly on his shoulder. “Hey, Dad!”
He spun around. The gigantic bouquet brushed my face. “Oh, hi Rani. What’re you doing here?” he asked, pretending to be unphased.
“Pono and I are ordering some lei for school. Who are the roses for?” I asked, my fingertips touching the red velvet band that held the stems together. I tried to sound calm though my heart was pounding.
Dad didn’t skip a beat. “Your mom, of course,” he said, then gave me a self-righteous smile.
Yeah right.
How could he straight up lie to me—with absolutely no hesitation? After he left, I paraded back and forth in front of Moana’s, debating. I decided a call to Mom was in order. I rushed to a nearby pay phone and dialed. Like a sportscaster, I laid out a play-by-play and wrapped it up with my hunch about Dad’s two-timing.
Mom refused to believe my girl’s intuition.
The roses were on the kitchen counter when we got home from work later that evening. Duh. Obviously he had to drop them off. He’d even scribbled a fake ass card.
To: Meera. From: Pradip.
Pathetic. No “Love, Pradip,” of course. Mom didn’t say a word. Her face remained impassive as she filled a tall, crystal vase with water and added an aspirin.
I pushed the mop faster. The scowl on my face grew as I thought about the smug look on Dad’s face as he held the bouquet that day. For me the roses were the penultimate piece of the puzzle. B.R. (Before Roses), I was skeptical. Seriously, since when do activist meetings run all night? A.R. (After Roses), I was completely done falling for it. But I had no clue that the final piece of the puzzle would be revealed in less than two hours.
Mopping done. Moping, not so much. I rinsed out the mop and bucket and propped them against each other on the floor to air dry. Mom was wiping down the sinks. She wrung out the towel and hung it, then sat on the rusty metal chair in the corner.
“I’m starving, Mom. Time for Kanemitsu’s. You want anything?” I asked, smiling, trying to be cheerful.
“No, I’m tired.” Her face was sour like amchoor. I watched her massage her swollen left ankle.
She had twisted her ankle here three weeks ago running around as both cook and waitress. Time to rest and heal her ankle? Ha! That’s a luxury Mom hasn’t had since we moved to Moloka’i five years ago.
Mom yawned. “I’m going home. I’ll eat the leftover shaak and bhatt.” Her eyes were vacant, as if she were peering through the paneled wall.
By then it was 10:30 p.m. It was the earliest we’d ever been pau on a Saturday. We locked the back door and headed down the ramshackle stairs to the unpaved parking lot shared with the Big Wind Kite Factory and the Maunaloa Post Office. Besides those two businesses, a gas station down the road, a Moloka’i Ranch office, and our store and restaurant, there aren’t any other shops or offices in Maunaloa. My eyes adjusted to the night. I saw a thick, eight-inch centipede zip past my mom’s feet and make its way under the raised restaurant building.
She didn’t notice. I walked more cautiously, deliberately lifting my kicks a few inches higher than normal. Didn’t want any centipede guts on my Adidas beauties. I climbed into our green 4runner. My waterworks started when I saw Mom lift her ankle into our dusty Cressida so carefully. I cried in the darkness. My mind went straight to that summer day in ‘87 when we still lived in Connecticut, the day Dad came home from work and dropped a bomb.
“I’m moving to Moloka’i. Come if you want.”
He left the next day. That’s exactly how it happened. Without telling Mom or 12-year-old me, Dad had purchased Maunaloa General Store and West End Café, leasing the buildings they were in from the Ranch. And, despite every fiber of her being rejecting the idea of leaving the East Coast and her Gujju social network, the strong Indian subservience flowing through my mom’s veins took over. On her own, she packed everything, sold the house, and said her tearful goodbyes. Dutifully she and I boarded one of the first of several planes, setting out on our journey to the remote Hawaiian island we still couldn’t