Free House of Many Gods by Kiana Davenport Page A

hair shook.
    “Hello … ?”
    She hung up and sank to her haunches on the floor. The voice sounded soft, educated. A woman out there fooling the world. Then she remembered that her mother
was
educated, that she had earned a degree and had a job.
    She crawled into bed beside Rosie. “She answered the phone.”
    “And you hung up.” Rosie yawned and rubbed her stomach. “You know what that tells her? That she’s still important in your life. You want her to come home so you can forgive her.”
    “She doesn’t want forgiveness.”
    “
Everybody
wants forgiveness. A chance to wipe the slate, start clean again.”
    They lay in half-light, staring at Rosie’s bulging stomach. In the past year she had diligently stopped gorging on food and begun to slim down. Then, a chance encounter, a semi-romance and she grew big again. Just twenty-one now, she announced that she was
hāpai
, and that the child’s father had left the coast. When Aunty Pua heard the news she careened through the house waving her Bible, flicking holy water at the walls.
    “A slut. Just like her mama! We got to pray the devil out of this house of illegitimates.”
    The family ignored her, for “illegitimate” was a Western, not a Hawaiian, concept. The next day Pua moved from room to room, slapping the walls with ti leaves, muttering old Hawaiian chants.
    From his wheelchair, Tito laughed. “Ey, sistah, make up your mind. You one missionary Bible thumper? Or one
kahuna pule?
”
    Week by week, Ana watched Rosie’s body change. Her nipples enlarged and turned brown. A dark line grew upward from the bottom of her abdomen. Another line started down from the top. This was
alawela
, the scorched path, and when these lines met and went into the navel, the baby would be born. Rosie spent restless nights as ancestors entered her dreams, discussing the coming child’s
inoa pō
, its name given in darkness.
    Cousins took turns rubbing kukui oil into her breasts and stomach, for strength and lubrication. They walked her down to the sea, where she stood in calm waters, moving her stomach back and forth to loosen the baby so it would not “stick” during birth. Ana stood faithfully beside her, holding her round the waist during the sea bath.
    “Do you think our mamas did
‘au ‘au kai
like this for us?”
    Rosie nodded. “My mama told me that was when she loved me most, when the ocean took my weight.”
    Ana pictured her own mother in the sea, asking it to take her weight. Take it forever. She pictured her mother pounding her stomach with her fists.
    A powerful old
kahuna pale keiki
, a midwife, came and laid her hands on Rosie to see if the baby was placed right.
    “No more wearing of
lei
,” she said, “or baby could be born with
piko
choking neck.” The
piko
was the umbilical cord.
    “No stringing of fish, baby could have rotten breath. No eating mountain apple. Baby might be born with red birthmark.”
    Strangely, Rosie had no cravings for salt, or sours. What she craved were fresh hearts of bamboo. Day after day, she woke begging for bamboo.Uncles drove to the wet side of the island, chopping down bamboo trees for the hearts. They watched her eat them by the bowlsful.
    “Not good,” Ben said. “Sharpened bamboo our first weapon before we knew metal. Still symbolic of cutting. Means child will be cruel, unkind.”
    The
pale keiki
tranced Rosie, taking away her craving for bamboo. Untranced, she looked around bewildered, and said she wanted squid. Hunks of juicy fried squid, and squid creamed in coconut milk. She craved squid every day and folks sighed out, relieved. It meant the child would be loving and clinging. Ana looked askance at the doings of the midwife.
    “Rosie, you believe all this foolishness?”
    “
Pēlā paha. ‘A‘ole paha
.” Maybe. Maybe not. “But it is better to believe.”
    Then, in the last two months of her pregnancy, Rosie began eating
‘ilima
blossoms and drinking
hau
tree bark tea, lubricants that would help