“But Rocky, there are no native Cubans!”
“There are no indigenous, Malía, but what the hell do you think we are? What the hell do you think I am?”
As it turned out, the luau came off fairly well. I’d brought spices for the pork, and between Dionisio and Rocky they’d found taro leaves and something they said was a butterfish (it didn’t look quite right to me but Rock swore by it). The Cubans were skeptical, made faces about it, but polished off every last shred of meat nonetheless. We also made lomi lomi salmon and cold mac salad, which didn’t seem to do much for them, but they were knocked out by our fried rice — not Hawaiian or Chinese but a Mercado family recipe that included all of those crazy influences (like huli huli sauce and chorizo). Tom Mahler ate with enthusiasm.
“So long as he keeps eating, nothing to worry about,” Raúl whispered to me as his chin aimed at the family’s pet foreigner. The guests lounged about the courtyard, oblivious to the plastic-covered cement bags lining the walls.
Most importantly, everybody loved Eddie and Myrna Kamae, both of them impish and kind: Eddie’s twinkly eyes nodded approvingly while sipping from his iced red wine, Myrna bravely trying on new Spanish phrases and laughing heartily. With them was Eddie’s accompanist, a boyishly handsome Hawaiian named Ocean, who the Cubans adored for his playfulness. After much eating and drinking, Eddie slipped his ukulele into his arms and — the Cubans again unabashedly skeptical — graced his fingers across its strings. As he played, the Cubans’ astonishment was obvious: Their mouths eased open as Eddie pulled sounds from that little box that not one of them had ever imagined. Clearly loving the way Eddie had upended expectations, Ocean grinned and followed on guitar. All the while, Mahler’s eyes glistened without his usual malice.
“He plays the cuatro so well!” exclaimed Raúl, reappropriating the ukulele, if not for Cuba then for the generalized Caribbean.
I don’t know how long Eddie and Ocean played. I know that I was flush with satisfaction, the closest to happiness I’d been since arriving in Havana. I looked up, past the enthralled group, leaned on Myrna’s shoulder, and found the sky. Like Honolulu, Havana glowed right back at the stars, a duel of lights canceling each other out in a shimmer. The air smelled of a dark sweetness, like molasses. And the faces, familiar to me now — even Mahler — were, I knew even then, the touchstones of future memories.
“Ake a e kamanao e ike maka,” sang Eddie and Ocean. I closed my eyes and joined them: “Ia Waipi’o e kaulana nei.” The mind yearns to see / Waipi’o so famous.
“What’s the song about?” Dionisio asked, leaning across Myrna to me. I looked around: Rocky was nowhere to be seen. He smiled, unconcerned.
In English, I explained Waipi’o: its fecundity, its five deafening waterfalls, the tension between the water’s beauty and our volcano, how Pakaalana — the ancient place of refuge nestled in the valley that protected innocents during wars — is now nothing but a rumor. I didn’t tell him about all the weekend camping trips my family took to the Big Island and Waipi’o, trespassing onto what is now private land to look for Pakaalana and other signs of Hawai’i’s glorious past. We’d pick opihi — those stubborn little limpets that attached themselves to rocks — by prying them off with knives. I loved them grilled over an open fire but Papi would just salt them, like the few natives left on the islands, and pop them into his mouth whole and fresh.
“Huli aku nana i ke kai uli,” I whisper/sang, my eyes closed — Turn and gaze at the dark sea. “Ua nalo ka nani o Pakaalana...” The beauty of Pakaalana has vanished.
When I lifted my lids, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: Rocky was dancing hula, dipping and swaying, her torso liquid, fingers fluttering. Eddie, Myrna, and Ocean beamed but she was somewhere else: back in Hawai’i, back in misty Waipi’o perhaps.
“Haina ia mai ana ka puana / Ua ike kumaka ia Waipi’o,” we sang as she turned her back, its slope a wave. Let the refrain be told / The mind has seen Waipi’o.
The Cubans went nuts. They clapped and shouted. Rocky laughed. Then the policeman cousin started tapping out a rhythm on his chair. It had the same wooden tone as Hawaiian meles but I realized immediately he was building a rumba, the beat hiccupping, sparkling. Dionisio palmed his thighs. Mahler, who was squatting during Rocky’s hula, stood up and raised his arms in jubilation, as if the Cubans had won some kind of competition.
I thought Rocky would stop then. But instead, she stamped her feet, twisted her heels like they do on Moloka’i. “A la ’a ko ko i ke a u!” she shouted in Tom Mahler’s direction, and he grinned, not realizing she was taunting him.
“That means a swordfish is jabbing you,” Myrna explained, and Dionisio nodded but I wasn’t sure he got it.
Rocky bent her knees, thrust her pelvis, and aimed her ass at him. While I sat agape, she mercilessly slid from hula ku’i to guaguancó.
“Eh mamá / eh mamá,” the Cubans chanted.
Now it was Eddie, Ocean, and Myrna who stared wide-eyed.
Suddenly, everybody was up — Raúl had acquired actual bongos, Dionisio’s mother was scratching at a gourd with a thin stick, and a crowd of friends and neighbors I’d barely noticed before were singing. I couldn’t understand any of it. It was as if they’d excised every consonant from the words. Out on the floor, Dionisio and Rocky mesmerized us with their turns and twirls, their busy feet. When Raúl finally slapped the bongos to conclude the dance, his hands like starfish across the skins, there was explosive applause.
Dionisio leaned on my sister and put his moist cheek on her shoulder for an instant, then made a motion for us to calm down. “We have... we have an announcement,” he declared in English between labored breaths. Rocky leaned down and giggled something into his ear. I noticed Mahler, his arms across his chest.
“You know, when Raquel and I met, well, it was like east and west, the four cardinal points coming together, all the distances reduced to nothing,” Dionisio said.
I translated his Spanish/English mishmash as best I could for our guests from Hawai’i.
“We promised to be together and, you know, she threw her lot in with us, she stayed here... in Havana!”
“That’s love!” interjected a sarcastic neighbor, and everyone laughed.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dionisio continued, so giddy he seemed a little drunk. “That is love... Hey, she has bathed with just one cup of water!”
Rocky nodded, bending at the waist to acknowledge the Cubans’ spontaneous applause.
“And stood in line with us for eggs!”
The Cubans continued with their merriment but Mahler was shaking his head now, scowling.
“What’s wrong, huh?” I asked him.
“What’s special about any of that? Cubans do that every day, it’s ridiculous that they’re making such a big deal out of her doing what they do every single day here as part of the revolutionary project.”
“God, Tom, do you ever get off your soapbox?”
“This is wrong,” he said.
“Relax,” I told him. But when I went to uncross his arms, he shook me off. “Oooookay,” I said, and backed away.
“So now... after three years, it is my turn,” Dionisio continued.
“Yes!” Rocky said in English, pumping her fist in as American a gesture as I’d ever seen on her.
“My Cuban sister... disappeared!” I joked with Myrna. “Who is this woman?”