MY MOLOKA’I GRANDMOTHER could pray you dead. It didn’t seem as though she had any power, since she was a half-foot shorter than me because of a curved spine. I was of average height for a boy of thirteen. Despite her diminutive size, you didn’t want to mess. She had a vindictive nature and the power to communicate with spirits. She smelled of ginger, garlic, and Chinese black bean, a symphony of aromas that dominated a kitchen with a view of the pasture. Gramma had slanted eyes and white skin as translucent as onionskin paper. I could see blue piping in her arms. She’d cast spells that put cattle rustlers in the hospital and sent a poacher to the grave, according to her ex. She’d threatened me after I confessed to prying diamonds out of her hapa haole mother’s wedding ring.

“Mistah Kirby,” Grammma’d said, “what kinda flowahs you like bess?”

“Yellow roses,” I had answered.

“Will find ‘em fo’ yo’ funeral,” she’d promised.

Sarah the Kahuna Woman lived five miles east of our ranch. Gramma had saved her life during the Tsunami of ’46 and always stopped to say hello when driving to Halawa Valley. I wondered if Sarah had shared her knowledge of anana, the death prayer. I’d visited Sarah’s bungalow a few times, where she showed me baby stones that had been birthed by a lava boulder favored by King Kamehameha.

***

Gramma married Bible passages with the native language in monologues during morning coffee. Spotty, a fox terrier, camped under her table during these recitals. I picked out key words such as make, pepehi, and ino. She was connected to the other world, one where she asked advice from her dead mother through the screen door leading down to the lanai. I’d heard her from my twin bed next to the open storm windows; Barry, my big brother, had a bed against the opposite wall but he slept through everything. Gramma would use a regular pack of cards like a tarot deck and read the futures of pineapple workers visiting from the west. I didn’t want my grandmother reading my cards. I feared she might shape my future, in a bad way. I was glad she disliked Barry more because he’d get it first. He’d gobbled up half of her minced pie from the Yum Yum Tree in Kahala. He’d made things worse by devouring the  bottom row of her Mrs. See’s Candies. One thing I knew about my grandmother was to never mess with her sweet tooth. If she perceived you as a competitor, she maintained a dislike all summer that could extend to Christmas. Twice Barry had received less than the usual $50.

***

My grandmother had chased a cowboy to Moloka’i and drove cattle with him until he gave in to marriage. Chipper Gilman wasn’t my blood. But I thought of him as an uncle. She’d given him a life estate on the eastern edge of Hale Kawaikapu, within smelling distance of her dump. I relied on Chipper to fill in the blank spots in my grandmother’s life, things she kept secret such as her divorce.

***

“You kids look like damn hippies,” Gramma said after oatmeal breakfast. “Time to look like real men.”

“What’s a ‘real man?’” Barry teased.

“John Wayne,” she replied.

Haircut Day meant driving west past Kaunakakai and up a forever hill of kiawe. Gramma parked her Scout beside a pair of gas pumps. Barry and I jumped out of the truck’s bed and followed our grandmother to a shop with pale green walls crouched next to Kualapuu Market. There was a barber pole outside the front door. The pole’s red, blue, and white stripes were frozen. Inside, I was greeted by the sharp smells of Brillantine Pomade and blue antiseptic in a long jar. Queenie, the Filipino barber, kept his combs submerged in the blue. He placed a large rice bowl over my brother’s head and proceeded to trim off the exposed hair. I was jealous of my brother because the sun had made his hair sexy while mine remained a mousey brown. The wahines on the west end couldn’t take their eyes off him. Gramma gathered hair off the linoleum. She dropped blond clumps into a white envelope and slipped it into the side pocket of her black purse. 

***

At sunset, Gramma stood on the lava groin fronting the beach house. She held an envelope and a cowboy match. She struck the match against lava and carried the flame to the envelope. I watched the flame engulf the paper. She dropped the burning envelope into the ocean. 

At dawn, I beachcombed the shore and found a white sliver of paper with an intact pocket. A clump of blonde hair was tucked inside. I pulled it out. The hair was wet. I rolled the clump between my fingers until the strands separated and fell onto the sand. One part of me wanted to warn my brother. Another part, a bigger part, wanted him punished. I wanted to watch some other worldly force toss Barry around like a rag doll. He was a wheel at Punahou School because he was a bigger kid since he’d been held back. It wasn’t easy having him in my class. He’d invent derogatory tags slurring my given name and pass them on to our classmates. A wave rolled up, grabbed my brother’s hair, and dragged it out to sea. 

***

I felt a tension whenever Gramma and Barry were close. I felt the most in the living room at night, when Gramma switched on her “big set” color TV. Barry made idiot faces while sprawled out on the pune’e against the far wall, usually after Gramma unleashed a laugh-inspired coughing fit during The Dick Van Dyke Show and I Dream of Jeannie. She’d chain-smoke Chesterfields from early mornings to late afternoons but it caught up to her in the evenings. Occasionally she’d glance over at my brother—his faces disappeared until she returned her attention to the screen. Comedy would trigger more fits and Barry unleashed more faces. With my brother camped in the room there were two shows going on at the same time. I was certain Gramma was aware he was mocking her because she frequently turned her attention to the picture frame window beside her, using it like a mirror. 

“Whacha lookin’ at?” I’d asked her once.

“Lizards,” she’d replied. 

***

I heard Gramma mumbling Hawaiian interspersed with Bible passages in her bedroom after Lawrence Welk. Her voice was punctuated by gusts from a wicked wind shaking coconut fronds. The fronds rattled like bones. I hoped she wasn’t planning something evil for her grandsons. I wanted to find the good in her and to stay in the good long enough to drive the bad out, but I could tell too much of her was in the dark to live in the light. She was that yellow slipper moon floating on the eastern horizon that mocks the sun by appearing before dawn. 

***

“I feel sick,” Barry called from his bed at dawn. He was tall and lanky and his feet hung over the edge of the mattress. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“My feet feel numb. It’s starting to creep up my legs.”

“You hungry?” 

“Not at all.”

“Could you eat a malasada?” I asked.

“Not in a million years.”

“Feel like barfing?”

“No,” Barry winced. “I feel like dying.” 

***

My brother didn’t go to the great beyond. The spell wore off by noon and he struggled out of bed.

“I feel drunk,” he admitted, stumbling across the lanai. 

“You wobble like an alchy,” I quipped.

But Barry soon regained his balance and started using normal strides. He gobbled down two tuna sandwiches, chocolates, and the last piece of mince pie to make up for breakfast. Gramma didn’t scold him. She determined he’d defeated her curse and treated him like a pup that deserved pampering. When he teased Spotty, she said nothing and took a deep drag off her Chesterfield. 

hapa haole: part Hawaiian

ino: evil

make: dead

pepehi: kill

wahines: girls