Hotel Honolulu

64 The Hook

"There was once this young girl named Mahina — after the moon — about your age, who hated her stepfather," Buddy said, in just that storytelling way, after a meal one night. He was seated, as usual, at the head of the table, Pinky and her relations on either side. I was at the far end, marveling at Buddy's poise — and taking courage from him, too, for here was a man, a multimillionaire ("multi-eye"), sixty-seven years old, who recklessly surrounded himself with strangers. But, then, he had always appeared to me like a rock, a slippery rock in the sea, to which many people were trying to cling, the very embodiment of this Hawaiian island.

"Ihe stepfather gave Mahina love, but not enough," Buddy said. "He gave her money, but not enough. He gave her clothes, but not all of them fit the girl. She wanted more, and she wanted the truth — to find her real father."

The stepfather often told how he had received a pair of expensive gloves one Christmas, and how the sight of the gloves made him laugh. Here Buddy paused, waiting for someone at the table to ask, "Why did the man laugh?" When the question came, Buddy explained that the man had a hook where his right hand should have been, and only two fingers on his left hand.

"What was left of the man trembled like jelly at the sound of a lawnmower," Buddy said.

The tip of the man's hook was so sharp he called it "my nail." He gaffed fish with it; he poked holes in the wall; he sank it into an overhead beam and hung on it; he stabbed papers with it; sometimes he accidentally snagged it on a cushion, or someone's pants, and tore through the fabric with a vicious swipe. The hook replaced his hand, but it was also a weapon. Little did the girl realize the man was her dearest friend.

Mahina's natural mother, a tall watchful woman, designed her own shapeless clothes and wrote poems. She had run off with an Episcopal priest, who in marrying her had lost his congregation. He sold insurance now. Mahina had traced her, found her mother's house, and was admitted by the hunted-looking former priest. Her mother acted intruded upon. She scowled and said, "Sometimes it's better not to look," and sent Mahina a poem about a nosy little girl in which this statement was repeated.

Although she refused to reveal the name of Mahina's birth father, Mahina discovered what it was.

Her birth father was just a name, but a nice name. Her stepfather was a damaged man, and the sharp silver hook stuck on his arm stump frightened her, trapped her, and made her think her stepfather was cruel. How she hated the man's gloating over his handicap, brandishing the dangerous hook beak.

I have a real father, Mahina thought, and sometimes said it. And, My real father is just like me.

Her stepfather pondered whether he could ever love her enough. Could he satisfy her desire for money and clothes? He had adopted her, given her everything she had asked for. After his wife had left him, he had raised the girl in the helpless, adoring way of a man abandoned with his little daughter. What sort of a job had he done? Obviously not good enough, for the girl was dissatisfied.

She was unlike him physically, and it wasn't just the hook. She was tall, slender, Asiatic-looking. People said she appeared exotic. She was dark, her fox face hinting of nomads and wanderers, like someone from far away, not American at all but a foreigner with a secret. My father looks like me, she thought. Her stepfather had built up her confidence by teaching her to demand, when she was afraid of someone, What is your name? A stranger, a bully at school, a policeman, an abuser: What is your name?

At this point, Pinky interrupted, saying, "I no understand the story. She got one problem?"

Buddy leaned over and said, "She wasn't satisfied with her stepfather. She wanted to find her real father."

"So, what — she find him?"

"How she found him is the story," Buddy said. "What happened after is also the story. Everything I am saying is the story. So shut up."

"But thing wen go wrong, or else it no be story."

This, from the illiterate Uncle Tony, I found to be an astute insight into the art of fiction.

"Shut the fuck up," Buddy said to Uncle Tony, and he resumed his story of the hook.

The stepfather with the hook loved the girl so much that he finally offered to help her find her real father. Why did he agree? Because he loved her. He would have done anything for her. "When you do something so unselfish for someone," Buddy said, "that is the deepest love."

Pinky said, "So, the girl — she find her father?"

Evie was listening closely, hollow-eyed. She winced at every mention of the hook, every mention of the father, and whenever Buddy paused,

Evie seemed impatient and tearful, searching Buddy's face for a clue as to what might come next.

"The stepfather had many friends," Buddy said, and Evie nodded slowly. One of the friends found out where the girl's real father was living. His address was distant, but near a big city and an airport. So that she would look respectable for the meeting, the stepfather borrowed money and bought the girl new clothes. He gave her some cash in a purse, bought her a ticket, and drove her to the airport, steering the car with his hook.

He kissed her sweetly and put her on a plane.

Mahina hated that kiss. She did not think much of the stepfather's sacrifice. He was just a hook to her. At last I'm going to meet my real father, who is like me — this was the thought in her mind, and when the plane landed she rushed to the nearest telephone.

"Hello?"

"It her real father," Uncle Tony said, breathing hard.

"Who is this?" Buddy said in the suspicious father's voice.

"Me — your little girl daughter," Pinky said.

The man was happy when he heard this, and his voice became kind and gentle — kinder than her stepfather, and generous, as though he would give her anything. He sounded sorrowful, too. He explained that he had to go to work, but that he would meet her at his trailer after he knocked off. The girl waited at the airport, and nearer the time, using the money her stepfather had given her, she took a taxi to her real father's address, which was a trailer park, and found his trailer.

The taxi ride cost eighty-seven dollars, but it was worth it, for her real father was much younger than her stepfather. He was a handsome man, but his worn-weary face said that his life had not been easy. Mahina saw her face in his — the eyes, the nose, the chin. He was tall, he held her shoulders in his two strong hands, and when he kissed her she started to cry, she was so joyful.

"That good story, happy story. Family story more better," Uncle Tony

said.

"There's more," Buddy said. He smiled, teasing them with his silence, and then did the real father's voice: "We could go out to eat, okay? I haven't got a lot to eat in the trailer. Just some cans of stuff. How's that?"

"That okay," Pinky said, and glanced at Evie, who had cheered up.

At the diner, the real father said that payday was not until next week, so could he borrow some money? He wanted to pay for the meal — it was not right that his daughter should pick up the check. She gave him two twenties and she ordered the chili. "I'm not too hungry," her real father said. He drank a bottle of beer, then another bottle, and then a glass of whiskey, which he said was much too small, so he had another ("Too much," Uncle lony said). While he was drinking, he told her how unhappy he had been. He was happy now, but why had she run off like that with that rotten priest?

"How could you do that to me?" he asked, not looking up and almost without opening his mouth.

He seemed to mistake his daughter for her mother, and he repeated himself. He growled and grew unhappy and sick-looking.

"Why she no run way?" Pinky asked.

"Her real father held a glass of whiskey in one hand," Buddy said, "and in his other hand he held the girl's fingers and was squeezing them so hard she couldn't get away. She said, 'Please can we leave?"

In the parking lot her real father put his hands to his face and began to cry. He said he was sorry. He begged his daughter's forgiveness and said that he was ashamed of himself. He held her by the shoulders again and looked sorrowful. Then he led her by the hand to his trailer, and when they were inside he grabbed her roughly and got his fingers into her clothes. When Mahina tried to get away, the man pulled the trailer door

shut and shoved the bolt across to lock it. Seeing she was trapped, Mahina begged him to let her go. Now, looking back, she realized how happy and safe she had been before. She wished she had never left her stepfather.

"Please don't," she said, because the man was putting his hands on her. Fighting him off would only make him angry and more dangerous.

"I'm your father," the man said. "You belong to me!"

Though this was unfair, it was logical in a horrible way — the man put on earth to protect you was the one who could do you the most harm, because you trusted him. In this terrible moment she realized why her mother had rejected her, and why her father was hitting on her. She was a child of rape.

Mahina could not cry out, because her father's stinking hand was pressed against her mouth. His other hand was tearing at her clothes. These whole usable hands and all his fingers seemed wicked, like two evil creatures clawing at her body.

Just as Mahina's father had toppled her to the floor and was kneeling between her legs, there was a clattering noise — not a knock at the door, but the metal door itself warping as it was wrenched from its hinges. The whole trailer shook. Mahina could not see past her father's head, but never mind. A silver hook encircled the throat of Mahina's father and lifted his bug-eyed head, choking him. He was jerked like a doll and flung aside, his skull cracking as he crumpled in a corner.

And now the stepfather towered in the real father's place, gazing on Mahina, who was naked and helpless.

"There he stood, looking down."

Buddy let this sink in, another spell of stifled, vibrant silence.

Turning to Evie, Buddy said, "And what do you suppose she did then?"

Evie stared wordlessly at him, her mouth gaping, her fingers on her throat.

"She say 'Thank you'?" Pinky said.

The gravel in his voice made Buddy's words seem dramatic and inevitable: "She got to her knees and put her lips to the hook and kissed it."