GOLDSEA | ASIAN BOOKVIEW | FICTION
The Middle Sonby Deborah Iida
Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, 1996, 228 pp, $18.95
A Japanese Hawaiian middle son comes home to tell his dying mother about his role in the death of his older brother.
EXCERPT
y mother is dying. We live on different Hawaiian islands, and I fly to hers
on the weekends, sometimes with my wife and children but more often
alone. My mother and I have begun to talk about the past, now, more than
we consider the future. Much of a parent-child relationship lives in the
past. On the second day of an infant's life, the parent reminisces about the
first.
As I wait in Maui's modern, open-air terminal for my baggage to be
unloaded, I remember the former terminal and the old banyan tree that
shaded it. The tree is gone, now, but I like to imagine that some of its roots
still spread beneath the concerete that covered them.
Tourists crowd tightly around the conveyfor belt as baggage begins to
revolve. I stand back and wait. My suitcase and box pass three times
before there is enough space to politely claim them. I get a hold of the
suitcase with one hand and a twined box with the other. Of the two, the box
is the more important. It holds pistachio nuts from my recent Las Vegas
trip, kalua pig and cinnamon bread from Oahu fundraisers, and the
pork-filled buns we call manapua that my mother likes. She can no longer
swallow all these foods, but, no matter, her face brightens when she sees
them.
A chauffeured van takes me and a Midwest couple to a car rental firm. They
appear to be about my age, and, as we ride, I notice how differently we are
dressed. They wear matching tennis shoes and flower-print clothes. I wear
a T-shirt, brown shorts, and rubber slippers. The man offers his hand in
greeting. We shake and exchange names.
"Fujii?" he asks, repeating my name. "Is that Hawaiian?"
"Japanese," I say. "My grandparents came here from Japan almost hundred
years ago."
His wife studies my sun-darkened skin, medium height, and large eyes. "You
don't look Japanese," she says.
Her husband nods. "I would have taken you for Hawaiian."
I shrug, used to the mistake. "It's the sun," I tell them. "The sun changed us
all."
We reach the car rental firm and the agent assigns me a white Nissan
Sentra, the rental car of this year, the trunk that thieves seeks out in a
crowded parking lot because they figure it will be filled with camera
equipment and traveler's checks.
Despite this rental car, I feel at home in Maui. The new roads puzzle me, and the airport seems to grow during every absence, but Haleaka and the West Maui Mountains are the same, and as yet no developer owns the ocean. The drive is easy, only minutes through town, and then I am on the road home, the road to Wainoa -- the ocean glinting through the palm on my left, the mountains rising peacefully beyond the sugar cane on my right. Within ten minutes I turn onto a quiet dirt road that breaks the row of sugar. I pass the sugar mill, a few houses, and I'm home.
My mother has anticipated my arrival and waits at her front door. As I climb the front steps, baggage in hand, I nod to her, a greeting that has devolved from the ancient bows of Japan, and she smiles.
"Come inside, Spencer. I been waiting."
I step out of my rubber slippers -- the basic footwear in Hawaii and called thongs and flip-flops elsewhere -- and my bare feet cross the threshold to a familiar wooden floor. My lips pass across my mother's forehead easily, and I set down the suitcase.
"How your trip was?" she asks as she follows me down the long hallway to the kitchen.
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