Mahu (26 page)

I sat across from her. The chair was hard and a little too low for the table, so I felt like a misbehaving kid called into the principal’s office. “You can look at my files,” I started to say.

“You don’t have a voice at this time,” Peggy said. “There’ll be a hearing, and you can have counsel then, if you wish. That’s when you can give your side of the story. For right now, you just listen.”

I looked at Hiram, and he nodded. The way they sat, three of them on one side of the table and me on the other, I felt like I was all alone in this. “You’re being suspended, effective immediately,” Peggy said. “Your salary will continue through your suspension period, provided you observe certain conditions.”

“They are?”

She held up her hand and ticked them off on her fingers. “No contact with police officers other than those specifically designated to communicate with you. In this case that will be Lieutenant Yumuri. No contact with any of the suspects or witnesses in the case you were handling. No comments to the media about the case or your suspension.”

“What about police officers who are my friends?” I asked. “Akoni Hapa‘ele, for example.”

Peggy looked at Yumuri, who nodded slightly. “As long as you don’t talk about this case or other cases pending,” she said. “Not without Lieutenant Yumuri present.”

“I can do that.”

“You’re going to have to.” She pushed a couple of forms at me across the table. “Sign these and we can get out of here.”

I looked at the forms. They seemed to spell out in further detail the conditions she’d set. “Got a pen?” I asked.

She gave me a pitying look and pushed a blue ball point over to me. The end had been chewed savagely, and I had a quick memory of her in tenth grade physics class, chewing her pen and puzzling over problems of velocity and motion. I signed the papers and pushed them and the pen back to her.

“Your badge and your weapon,” Lieutenant Yumuri said.

I took my Off-Duty .38 Special out of my holster and slid it across the table to him. He flipped open the barrel and took the ammunition out, then slapped the barrel closed. I opened my wallet and pulled my detective’s shield out. I realized I was doing something that was going to reverberate through every part of my life, but I had no control anymore. I just had to do what I was told. I unpinned the shield and slid it across the table.

“You can go,” Peggy said. I wanted to talk to her about what was going on, to explain or apologize, but she was all business. She wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

I decided not to wait for the elevator. The service stairs were next to the conference room, and I could avoid walking back through that dismal room, hearing the conversations rise and fall around me. I walked slowly down the stairs, wondering what to do next. I wasn’t a cop anymore, and probably would never be one again. I couldn’t go back to surfing full time and I didn’t think I knew how to do anything else. I worried about how long my savings would last, and how I would identify myself to the outside world, to myself. I was a gay man, a faggot, a cocksucker. I had accepted that, but in the context of who else I was. Now it seemed that was all I was, at least to the Honolulu Police Department.

I came out of the stairwell into the lobby, and maybe it was my imagination again, but I couldn’t seem to make eye contact with anyone. It was like they all knew me and wouldn’t look at me. Then I said to myself that I was a fool, my imagination was running wild. I took a deep breath and walked outside.

I was expecting clouds, rain, wild thunder. Instead there were flashbulbs and the clamor of news people. “Detective Kanapa‘aka,” a Chinese reporter said. “Is it true you’re being suspended from the police force because of your homosexuality?”

I was stunned. How could they have found out so quickly? I just stared at the guy, my mouth agape. “Detective, have you hired an attorney yet?” a Hawaiian guy, who I recognized from my brother’s station, asked. “Will you be suing the police force for reinstatement?”

“Do you think this is a discrimination case?” asked another.

I just stood there. They called out more questions, but I couldn’t answer them and I couldn’t seem to move. Finally a desk sergeant came out behind me and propelled me away from them, and another sergeant ordered them to disperse. I got my sense back and got back to my truck. The Hawaiian guy from Lui’s station ran along beside me as I was driving away, still trying to get a comment, and I wanted to do something, give him the finger or yell something, but I knew it would just end up on the news and so I drove off.

I made it back to my apartment though I’m not sure how. I think my truck was on auto pilot. Seeing the guy from Lui’s station reminded me that my brothers would know what happened to me, my parents would know, my friends and my Punahou classmates and the guys I saw when I was surfing. I wanted to go back to that night when I went to the Rod and Reel, stop the movie, rewind, go somewhere else, anywhere else. I wanted to make it stop.

Almost as soon as I walked in the door, the phone rang. It was one of the TV stations again. I unplugged it from the wall and sat down on the bed. I knew I should call my parents and warn them about the newscast, but I just couldn’t. I tried to take a nap, but I just tossed and turned on the bed for a while, and then finally I got up.

This
was
stupid, I thought. I c
ould
n’t do this, I c
ould
n’t just hang around waiting to see what happen
ed
. I put on my bathing suit and got my short board, figuring I would challenge myself with the small waves off Kuhio Beach Park. If I could get out on the water, force myself to pay attention to the surf, then I could forget all this other stuff and maybe, in the forgetting, find a way to deal with it.

I felt better already. I was still a surfer, no matter what else I was, and surfing was how I was going to get out of this mess. But as soon as I opened my door the reporters were there, taking pictures and calling out questions. I shut the door fast.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to call anyone, not even Harry, who was the only person so far who had taken my news well. My head was throbbing and my throat was dry and I wanted to cry but couldn’t make the tears come. I took a couple of Tylenol P.M. and lay back down on the bed, and eventually I dozed off.

I slept fitfully, with half-waking dreams of hounding newsmen and disapproving policemen. I was trying to get to the beach, and they lined Lili‘uokalani Street like a gauntlet, yelling at me, refusing to make eye contact, saying things like “You’ll never be a cop again, Kimo. Who are you, now that you’re not a cop?”

When I woke up it was dark and I felt woozy. There was someone banging on my door. “Goddamn it, go away!” I yelled, and tried to bury my head under the pillows. I knew there had to be a law against the press harassing you. They wouldn’t stop, though, and finally I had to get up and go to the door. I didn’t even bother to look through the peephole, despite all the times I’d asked crime victims, “How come you didn’t look before you opened the door?”

“No comment!” I yelled, opening the door. Staring back at me was my father.

“Finally!” he said. Automatically I stepped back to let him in. My mother was just behind him. She took the door from me and closed it.

I just looked at them. They were the last people I’d expected to see at my doorstep and I didn’t know what to say. Then, finally, the tears I’d been trying to cry all day came, and my legs got weak and I had to sit down.

“We saw on the news,” my mother said, rubbing her hand across my shoulders.

I was embarrassed and ashamed. I tried to wipe away my tears and succeeded only in dragging wet streaks across my face. My mother gave me a tissue and I blew my nose.

“They are terrible,” my father finally said. “Those reporters. I told that one, from Lui’s station, my son is your boss. Go away. He wouldn’t. I told him I would call Lui and have him fired if he didn’t leave us alone, and he laughed.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t want this to happen.”

My father paced back and forth in the small room, and my mother and I squeezed back into the corners to get out of his way. “This cannot be happening,” he said. “I did not raise my son to be a māhū. You must go back to the police and tell them they’re wrong. We’ll call your brother, he can bring a camera crew over to take your statement.”

“They aren’t wrong,” I said. “It’s true.” I swallowed. “I’m gay. I’m sorry it happened this way, but I can’t change who I am.”

“How can this be?” my father asked. “We didn’t raise you this way. You were a normal boy. A little quiet, sometimes. Maybe we let your brothers tease you a little too much. But you’ve had girlfriends. Many girlfriends. Why have you changed?”

“I haven’t changed. I’ve always been this way. I just haven’t had the courage to face it until now.”

“I wish you were still a coward,” my father said.

“Al, that’s enough,” my mother said. “Kimo, you must pack now.”

“Pack?”

“We want you to come home with us for a while,” she said. “These reporters outside. You’re upset. You should come to us.”

“I can’t. I would just bring more of my troubles down on your heads.”

My father walked over and opened my closet door. “Here are some shirts,” he said. “Lokelani, find the suitcase.”

“No,” I said.

I stood up, and my father glared at me. “You don’t know what’s best for you right now. We do. You’re coming home with us.”

I felt as if all my will power had drained from me. Too much had happened to me in too short a time, and I couldn’t process it anymore. I said, “My suitcase is on the top shelf, in the back. I’ll pack it.”

“Good,” my father said. “Do you have any brandy?”

I nodded toward the kitchen. “In the cabinet over the sink.”

While I packed my suitcase, my father poured brandy into juice glasses for the three of us. When I was finished we lifted our glasses together and my mother said, “You are our son, and you always will be. We love you.”

My father drank his brandy in one shot, and so did I.

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN

I randomly picked out aloha shirts and polos, shorts and khakis
,
and bathing suits I would probably not get to wear to the beach. I took my uniform, and the one suit I owned, a simple navy one that served for funerals and weddings and family command performances.

I scooped a haphazard pile of books I hadn’t yet read into a knapsack, and placed it by the door with my short board and my long board. I always carr
ied
extra books with me when I travel
ed
, afraid of landing in some distant place without something to read. What else to take? My roller blades? The half-eaten box of chocolate-covered Oreos from the kitchen? My pocket knife, camera, a deck of playing cards for solitaire? I took them all, without discrimination. By the time I was finished there were four bags by the door along with a pile of sporting equipment.

“I’m ready,” I said finally.

My mother went around the room, turning off lights, checking the windows and the burners on the stove. “The reporters will still be there,” she said.

I took a look around my apartment. It was only one big room, with the kitchen off to the side, but it was my home, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave it, even though I knew it would be easier to stay at my parents’ house, where at least I could move from room to room, talk to people when I wanted to, even sneak out into the backyard when I wanted to feel the sun and the wind.

Iacta ilea est
, I remembered from some long ago history class. The die is cast. I slung my knapsack over my back, put my boards under one arm and grabbed my roller blades with the other. “I’m ready to go,” I said, and walked out into the glare of flashbulbs.

My mother drove us home in her Lexus, and I knew the TV crews would find us soon enough. It was just sunset and the day had turned beautiful, as it often does on this island of microclimates. You c
ould
start in Honolulu, head Diamond Head and beyond, to the windward shore, travel along the coast as far as Laie, land of Mormons, ride along the North Shore, then head back through the central valley and pass a dozen different types of weather along the way. Stay in one place, and the weather change
d
around you, often gorgeous, but with passing showers, winds, and clouds alternating with brilliant sunshine.

If I hadn’t been dogged by reporters, I might have spent the afternoon at the beach. The morning clouds and rain would have brought stronger waves; I remember often waking, when I was surfing in earnest, hoping the morning would bring rough weather and with it rough surf, and being disappointed at another gorgeous day.

The weather seemed to me also to symbolize people’s lives. Somewhere on the island people enjoyed the sun, baking away the troubles of the week on the beach or washing them away in the cool Pacific. It happened every day in Hawai‘i. And somewhere someone was having a bad day, like me, full of emotional storms and cloudy thoughts. Microclimates, both natural and emotional.

I wondered what kind of day Tim had experienced, if he’d seen my name in the paper, on the radio or the TV. Would he try my phone, not realizing I had unplugged it? When would I find a few private minutes to call him?

Once home, my mother took a casserole out of the oven and we had dinner, all the time not talking about anything that mattered—a job my father was bidding, some antics by Ashley and her sister, even, God help us, the weather forecast. My troubles were like an unwelcome guest at dinner, one we had to feed but tried hard to ignore. There was no word from either of my brothers.

Finally we were finished. I stood up to help clear the table, then paused. “I don’t know how this is going to end,” I said. “I’m gay. I can’t change that. But I don’t think I did anything wrong, and I don’t deserve to be suspended. I want to fight, but I don’t want to do anything that will hurt you.”

“I think you should give this up,” my father said. “There are other things you can do where they won’t care about you. Be a decorator. A hairdresser. Something like that, that māhūs do.”