“Whatchu goin’ do wit all them frogs?” Reno had asked when I told her I planned to sell my mother’s house.
“I dunno,” I told her. “Goodwill, I guess.”
“Girlie,” Reno said, “let me have em. I sell em, fifty-fifty. All the old customers goin’ want a souvenir from your maddah, the famous frog psychic. I find all the frogs good homes.” Reno laughed like she’d said something funny, then said the same thing she told me when it came time to make funeral arrangements: “Your maddah woulda wanted it dis way.”
I visited Reno at her old apartment off Punahou only once. It was before we thought of installing the double locks on our apartment, and my mother had wandered away while in one of her trances. I buzzed Reno from the lobby and waited by the intercom for her to come down and help me. Then Reno moved to Hawaii Kai, and the few times I drove over to drop off money for her to deposit, I waited on the porch, watching the long-haired cats she had tried breeding watch me through the large picture windows.
In my first visit to the house that loops off Kahala Avenue, I circled the courtyard of the angels, waiting for her to come and help me dress my mother’s body. In all the years I have known Reno, I have never been past the entrances of any of her homes, though I suppose she would have invited me in had I asked.
“Sorry, sorry, girlie!” Reno called out as she wrestled empty boxes and several glittering dresses cellophaned in Hakuyosha Dry Cleaning wrap out the front doors of her home. “Eh, come help!”
I ran past the fountain and picked up the empty boxes she kicked out in front of her. “What?” I teased, jerking my head toward the clothes draped across her arms. “You can’t decide what to wear to the service? Gotta outdress the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral?”
Reno folded her lips downward and looked to heaven. “Dis for your dearly departed maddah, may she rest in peace.”
I almost dropped the boxes. “Don’t tell me you actually bought these!”
Reno clucked her tongue and held the dresses up like an offering. Her underarms wobbled under the burden. “Puh-lease, honey,” she said. “You tink dey make glamour like dis now-days?” She sniffed, her eyes skittering disdainfully over my T-shirt and cut-off jeans. “Dis from my Hong Kong glory days. Had um made special when I was deah years ago wit dah Royal Hawaiian Dance Company. I was keeping um for when I lose some weight, but… you know how dat goes. And Vegas, she no want um, telling me, ‘Ma, out of style,’ as if she one fashion arbitrator. I telling you, you young kids dunno the meaning of classic.”
I looked side-eyed at Reno’s jowls, her wildly gesturing arms, her ample apple-shaped torso, and when she caught me, I raised my eyebrows.
“Shaddup, you,” Reno growled. “I know whatchu tinking: your maddah and I slightly different size. But a tuck heah, deah, fold dah extra under dah body, and nobody goin’ notice. Not like she goin’ dance around in deah, right?”
Reno laughed, but I didn’t say anything. I opened the hatch on my Tercel, threw the boxes in, and took the dresses from Reno.
“Eh, watch yoah fat fingahs!” Reno screeched. “Watchu tinking? Dat beadwork fragile, all hand-sewn-no treat em like one football.”
I laid the gowns in the back seat, careful to keep the plastic around each of the glittering skirts, the sequined and beaded bodices.
I cannot imagine my mother wearing Reno’s old bar girl clothes, cannot imagine her in the sequins and flash I once dreamed of wearing myself. Though it is true my mother was accustomed to wearing clothes assigned to her by others. When my mother lent her body to the spirits, they each demanded a different color. The Seven Stars preferred the yellow robe, a tent of sunrise that swallowed my mother’s body from neck to toes. The Birth Grandmother craved the clarity of blue. And Saja, the pig of death, grabbed at anything red, forcing my mother’s body into whatever material—my T-shirts or shorts, a torn pillowcase, a fabric remnant from Kress my mother had planned to sew into a border for our drapes—red his desire for red.
When I found my mother’s body, she wore an orange-and-green mu‘umu’u bought from Hilo Hattie’s Christmas sale. The bright flowers, the mix and clash of colors, was a sign that she was in her body before she died. Yet I cannot believe that in the end she died alone, without the spirits she lived with surrounding her, without the daughter she had trained to pray over her journey holding her hand.
Everything that my mother had taught me about protecting the dead, preparing the body and spirit for the final transition, I forgot when I saw her body. “Remember the Heavenly Toad,” she had said, and I did, but it only made me afraid without telling me how to save her. I knelt beside her bed and draped an arm around her waist. “I’m sorry,” I said, half apologetic, half accusing. “You said you would remind me what to do when the time came, Mommy. But you didn‘t, and I don’t know what to do.”
Someone once told me that you have to weigh down the eyelids of the dead so that they will sleep forever in peace. After a while that was the only thing I could think of. I dug through my pockets for some change and, though her eyes were already closed, placed a penny on one and a dime on the other. And then I noticed her dress was twisted around her body, tangled about her thighs. She would have been embarrassed to be so exposed. I tugged at the hem and had to wrestle her hips to get it down around her ankles. The coins slid off her eyes and nested in her hair. I plucked them up, deciding they made her look undignified, like a cartoon character. I arranged the hair around her face, folded her arms across her chest in the correct posture of the dead, and called the paramedics.
Not once did I think about changing her clothes. The mu‘u-mu’ u was the dress she had chosen for herself; I would not assume the same power that the spirits did, as Reno did, by dressing her as if she were a doll to be played with, then posed and displayed behind a case of glass.
I left the engine running in front of Borthwick Mortuary, partially blocking the traffic pulling onto Maunakea Street. “Reno, I’m not going.” I surprised her and myself with what came out of my mouth.
“How come?” Reno says. “I get everyting—makeup, dresses, ax-cessories. You supposed help me decide how for present your maddah for her final show on dis earth. All her regulars goin’ come for pay their respects, so your maddah, she gotta look her best, right?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “But—”
Reno held up her hands. “Nevah mind. I so insensative. Painful for see dah dead body, yah? Some people don’t even like for touch em, the dearly departed, all cold and ooh-jie kine. I understand. Go.” She waved at me, shooing me away. “I do em, dis last ting for my old friend. Don’ worry. I can handle.”
Reno unfolded herself, pushed her bulk out of the car, and peeled her dresses off the back seat. She held the hangers above her head, fluffing and fluttering her prizes. “Do watchu need for do,” she said. “No worry about me; I get my own ride home.” She cradled the dresses in both arms and marched into the mortuary, looking like she was bearing the headless corpse of a queen.
I drove without thinking, down Maunakea—Chinatown’s street of leis and the homeless—to the harbor, turning Diamond Head, then mauka, away from the sun. As if pulled by the mist and the rain that perpetually crowned the range guarding Manoa Valley, I found myself returning to the home where I once lived and my mother died.