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 mahus do.”
“I don’t want to be a decorator. I want to be a cop.”
“Well, you can’t be,” my father said, yelling. “They don’t want you. They can’t be any clearer than they have been.”
“I won’t back down,” I yelled back. “What I do on my own time doesn’t make a goddamned bit of difference when I’m on the job!”
“Please, no more yelling,” my mother said. “Now, Kimo, bring those dishes to the kitchen. Al, go into the living room and sit down.”
We watched a couple of silly sitcoms together, the tension between me and my father simmering, my mother always ready to jump into the breach between us. The occasional calls that evening were from family friends, some close, some merely curious. My mother or my father would answer, give a brief explanation, and then beg off.
We watched the eleven o’clock news together in the living room, Lui’s station, of course. The reporter who had harassed me did a live shot in front of the Waikiki station, all professional and business-like. All he had to say, really, was that the department had uncovered improprieties in my handling of an important case, the murder of a prominent Honolulu businessman. The official department statement said that was the cause of my suspension. “But our own inside sources say Kanapa‘aka was suspended because of the discovery of his homosexuality,” he said. “Starting Monday, a new series will investigate gay cops, here and on the mainland. Stay tuned!”
My parents and I went to bed soon after the news, still without hearing anything from Lui or Haoa. I thought it was very strange, though I imagined Lui might be working. Haoa ought to be home with Tatiana and the children, and even if he didn’t want to call I was sure Tatiana would make him.
I was back in my childhood room, Town and Country Surf posters on the wall, long forgotten books on the shelves. I picked up a few-a couple of Punahou textbooks, some Ursula K. LeGuin and Ray Bradbury from a brief flirtation with science fiction, two dozen paperback Agatha Christie mysteries, a handful of novels by second-rate writers I’d stumbled on in the course of trying to discover my own literary tastes. Even a half-dozen oversized children’s books, bright colors and not too many words. I remembered Babar, King of the Elephants, his monkey friend and the withered old lady who was his teacher.
I slipped under the covers with Babar, trying to lose myself in the innocence of childhood. I read all the way through the book, smiling at the rhinoceros in his three-pointed hat and the monkey Arthur dressed up for skiing. When I started yawning, I put the book down, but I still could not fall asleep for a long time. I kept going over what I had done, trying to see if I could have done anything differently, and how that might have affected what happened. No matter what I thought I could do, however, the end was always the same.
My room was right over the front door, and I woke to the ringing of the doorbell, adrenaline coursing through me. I looked at the clock; it was almost three a.m. Who could it be? Surely even the television crews went home to sleep at night.
I put my robe on and walked down the hall to my parents’ bedroom, where the light was on. My parents both had their robes on, and my father led the way out into the hallway. “Who do you think it is?” I asked.
“There’s only one way to find out,” my father said. I followed him down the stairs, my mother behind us. The bell rang again before we could get to it. “All right, all right. Keep your pants on.”
He looked through the peephole first, then pulled the door open. It was Haoa, looking tired and disheveled, like he’d been in a fight. There was an ugly red bruise under his left eye, and though the night air had turned chilly, he wore no jacket, just a t-shirt with the name of his landscaping firm on it, and a pair of drawstring pants in a wild zebra pattern.
“What’s the matter!” my mother said. “Haoa, come in.”
My father stepped aside, and my brother came in, not looking at me. My mother took him by the hand and led him to the kitchen, where he sat in the harsh light of the overhead fluorescents as she started to minister to his bruised face. “What happened to you?” she asked. “Have you been home? Does Tatiana know where you are? You should call her. She’s probably worried sick.”
“She doesn’t care where I am. She told me.”
“Did she do this to you?” my father asked. “Tatiana?”
He shook his head. “This is not her fault.” He nodded toward me. “It’s his.”
My parents both looked at me. I held my hands out. “I’ve been with you.”
“You’ve been with men,” Haoa said. “That’s your problem. Mahu.”
“Haoa,” my father said. “This is your brother.”
“He can say what he pleases. So who did this to you? Another mahu?”
Haoa sneered, and the act of turning his mouth up caused him to wince with pain. “Hold still,” my mother said. She dabbed at his wound with cotton dipped in hydrogen peroxide, and he winced again.
“Tell us what happened,” my father said.
“We finished the landscaping around the pool at the Mandarin Oriental,” Haoa said. “I took the crew to a bar in Waikiki to celebrate.” He paused while my mother applied mercurochrome with a q-tip. It looked like he was being decorated with war paint, preparing for a big battle. I wondered if she could do the same for me.
“The news came on while we were in the bar, and one of the guys recognized Kimo. ‘Hey, Howard, it’s your brother,’ he said. We all watched. It turned my stomach.”
I looked at him, and he held my eyes for a long minute and finally he had to look away. I wondered how I could feel so connected to him, through bonds of blood and familial love, when he seemed to hate me so much.
“We had some more to drink,” he said. “I got angrier and angrier. The guys teased me. Somehow we got the idea to go out and beat up some fags.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“We raised you better than that,” my father said. “A hooligan. A common criminal.”
“It wasn’t my fault. It got out of control. We went to this bar, the Rod and Reel Club. We hung around outside and waited to see who went in or came out. This mahu came out and, I don’t know, a couple of us must have started to hit him.”
“He hit you back,” I said.
“Not him. A bunch of them spilled out of the bar. Big guys, mean-looking, wearing leather and chains. One of them hit me.”
“You have more bruises?” my mother asked.
He shook his head. She started to pack up her first aid kit.
“Then?” I asked.
“The police came. They hauled us down to the station. I wanted to stick up for my men. Some of those guys, they don’t have much. A couple of them already have records. So I said it was all my doing, that I conned them into joining me.”
It was funny, but I believed him. I remembered as a kid how he and Lui used to stick up for each other, even as they picked on me. He was capable of loyalty, and of kindness, too. He treated his employees well, giving them bonuses and advancing them wages, and even giving them good recommendations when they quit.
“You came here from the police?” my mother asked.
“I called Lui. He came down and bailed me out, and drove me back to Waikiki so I could get my truck. I went home, must have been about midnight.”
There had to be more, I thought. “So what are you doing here?”
“Tatiana,” he said.
My parents looked at each other, and then at me. Haoa had married for love, this beautiful, exotic, Russian- American hippie who had floated down from Alaska and bonded to my big Hawaiian-Japanese-haole mixed-up
