Free This Is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila Page A

red plastic blending with the blood. Everywhere I saw feathers. White, ochre, orange, the peculiar blue-gray color down turns when wet: the feathers carpeted the ground. Black feathers melted into the shadows. Brown feathers blended with the dirt. Some of the hens looked like they were nesting, their feet tucked beneath their heavy breasts, while others had their wings spread, as if in flight, silhouetted against a muddy sky. I picked my way to the coop, careful not to step on any out-flung wings. Several had fallen on their backs, legs sticking in the air like two flags of surrender, and these I took the time to turn over, on their sides, in a show of respect.
    In the coop, every egg had been smashed. The wooden walls were yellow and glossy with yolk. I backed outslowly. I didn’t want to touch anything in the coop, didn’t even turn the rest of the birds on their side. I felt filthy. I felt dead myself.
    I didn’t bother to retrieve any of my clothes or belongings. I just climbed into my car and drove away.

    I’ve had six years now to think about vengeance and forgiveness, to ponder my nature and those of the men I’ve known. These days I live in Honolulu, where I run little risk of seeing family or old acquaintances from Maui.
    Three years ago I earned my Culinary Arts degree at Kapiʻolani Community, and I now work downtown as a chef in an upscale French bistro. In my spare time, I write. At college I found an affection for the rigorous academic English the Indian had once imposed on me. Now pidgin is a translation of sorts, the speech of my past.
    In my last semester at college I took a course in poetry and read the writers who once influenced him: Bashō, Issa, Buson. They write about the beauty and majesty of nature, and I understand why he loved them. But the Indian failed to understand their work in its fullness, how their poems at times celebrate the violence, loss, sadness, and cruelty inherent in the natural world.
    When I left the Indian, I ran to the only person I knew who wouldn’t ask why I was without my birds. My grandmother paid for a one-way plane ticket to Oʻahu, and she helped me start my life here. In the months after I fledMaui, rumors spread that I had come to Oʻahu seeking Mr. Oh’s bosses, the men who had arranged for my father’s death. Some claimed I murdered my hens because my win had meant so little to Mr. Oh. Others said I left the Indian because he had refused to help me kill Mr. Oh. I ignored everything. It belonged to another era, another life.
    In the intervening years, my grandmother and I have found our way into the sort of relationship I suspect she had hoped for after my father’s death. In our phone conversations, I describe the restaurant’s patrons, the meals I create, the friends I’ve made. She gives me the news from Maui. Zoo died of a heart attack last spring, but Uncle Lee and Al are still around, fighting birds and taking bets as they’ve always done. They ask after me, but my grandmother tells them little.
    The Indian still lives in Makawao, alone. He keeps the rooster coops just as they were when I was still living there. He is not the same man he was, Uncle Lee tells my grandmother. My uncle thinks my leaving broke him, but I know this isn’t true. The moment the Indian killed that first bird, he returned to his childhood home, his father’s child.
    For a long time I missed him. I ached for him. I wanted to send him the essays I wrote in school or the menus I created for the restaurant or a picture of those boulders in Makawao bathed in the last light of the day. I wanted him to know I’d become the woman he wanted.
    I dreamt of him as I once dreamt of my father. In every storefront shadow I saw the outline of his broad shoulders. In every dark bed I wondered if he was waiting for me. At times I was tempted to write to the Indian, but my grandmother always talked sense into me. In other moments I wished I could just write about the Indian, about my father,