It was early in the school year when he approached me one recess period. I was sitting, as I always did, at the base of the giant monkeypod tree, reading a comic book. The tree was at the top of the field, which sloped gently toward the southern end of campus, and as I read, I could watch my classmates—the boys playing soccer, the girls jumping rope. Then I looked up and saw Edward loping toward me, but something in his air made me think he was just walking in my direction, not that I was his destination.
Yet it was in front of me that he stopped. “You’re Kawika Bingham,” he said.
“Wika,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
“Wika,” I said. “People call me Wika.”
“Okay,” he said. “Wika.” And then he walked off. For a moment, I felt uncertain—was I Kawika Bingham?—and then I realized I was, because he had confirmed it.
The next day, he returned. “My mother wants you to come over after school tomorrow,” he said. He had a way of speaking in which he looked not at you but at a point beyond you, which meant that when he finally did turn his gaze directly to you—as he did now, waiting for my answer—it felt particularly intense, almost interrogatory.
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
The following morning, I told Matthew and Jane that I was going to a classmate’s house after school. I told them quickly, quietly, as I ate my breakfast, for I knew, somehow, that my mother would not approve of Edward. This may have been unfair—my mother was not dismissive of people with less money than she had, at least not in a way I would have recognized at the time—but I knew I couldn’t tell her.
Matthew and Jane looked at each other. All of my other play dates had been arranged by the boys’ mothers with my mother; I had never arranged one on my own. I could tell they were happy for me, and trying not to make me self-conscious.
“You need me to come get you afterward, Wika?” asked Matthew, but I shook my head—I already knew that Edward lived near the school, which meant I’d be able to walk home, as usual.
Jane got up. “You’ll want to bring something to give his mother,” she said, and went to the pantry for one of her jars of mango jam. “Tell her she can send back the jar with you when she’s done and I’ll refill it next season, all right, Wika?” That seemed very optimistic—mango season had just ended, so, in order to get a refilled jar, Mrs. Bishop would have to count on her son and me remaining friends for another year. But I only said thank you, and put the jar in my backpack.
Edward and I were in adjoining classrooms, and he waited for me at the building’s exit. We walked in silence through the middle-school campus, and then hopped over the low wall that encircled the school. He lived just a block south of this wall, in the middle of a poky street I’d often driven down with Matthew.
My first thought was that the house was charmed. The street was lined with small, single-story shops and businesses—a dry-goods shop, a hardware store, a grocer—and then, suddenly, as if conjured, was a tiny wooden house. The rest of the block was denuded of greenery, but looming over the structure was a large mango tree, so domineering and leafy that it seemed to be protecting the little building from sight. Nothing else grew in the lawn, not even grass, and the concrete path leading to the front porch had buckled from the tree’s roots, one of which had split a paving stone in two. The house itself was a miniature version of the kind you saw in my neighborhood—a plantation house, as I learned to call them, with a wide lanai and large windows shaded by metal awnings.
The next surprise was the door itself, which was actually closed. Everyone I knew kept their doors open until they went to bed; there was only the screen door, which you banged through as you entered and exited. I watched as Edward reached down the front of his shirt and drew out a key, which dangled from a cotton string that hung around his neck, and unlocked the door. He slipped off his zoris and walked in, and I waited, stupidly, for an invitation before I realized I was to follow him.
Inside, it was close, and dark, and after relocking the door, Edward went around the living room, cranking open the jalousies to let in the breeze, though the mango tree blocked all the light. But its shade also kept the house cool and heightened its sense of bewitchment.
“Do you want a snack?” Edward asked, already walking to the kitchen.
“Yes, please,” I said.
He returned to the living room a few moments later with two plates, one of which he gave to me. On it were arranged four soda crackers, each with a daub of mayonnaise. He sat down on one of the rattan couches, and I sat on the other, and we ate our snack in silence. I had never had mayonnaise on crackers before and wasn’t sure I liked it, or even if I was supposed to like it.
Edward ate his crackers quickly, as if it were a chore to be dispensed with, and then stood again. “Do you want to see my room?” he asked, and again, he asked almost sideways, as if he were addressing someone else in the room, although there was only me.
“Yes,” I said.
There were three closed doors to the left of the living room. He opened the one on the right, and we entered a bedroom. This room too was small, but it was also cozy, like the lair of a harmless animal. There was a narrow bed with a striped blanket on it, and strung across the ceiling from one corner to the opposite were chains of bright-colored construction paper. “My mother and I made those,” Edward explained, and although later I would remember how remarkable his tone was—so matter-of-fact, almost proud, when we were coming to an age in which announcing you made crafts, much less with your mother, was inadvisable—what I thought then was how foreign the idea was of making anything with your mother, especially something that you would hang from your ceiling, deliberately transforming your room into someplace messier and stranger than it had to be.
Now Edward turned and retrieved an object from the drawer beneath the table next to his bed. “Look at this,” he said, solemnly, and held out a black velvet box about the size of a deck of playing cards. He opened the hinged lid, and inside was a medal made of coppery metal: It was the seal of our school and, on a scroll beneath, the words “Scholarship: 1953–1954.” He flipped it over to show me his name engraved on the back: Edward Paiea Bishop.
“What’s it for?” I asked, and he made a small, impatient sound.
“It’s not for anything,” he said. “They gave it to me when I got my scholarship.”
“Oh,” I said. I realized I was supposed to say something, but couldn’t decide what it might be. I didn’t know anyone else who was on a scholarship. In fact, until I had met Edward, I didn’t even know what a scholarship was, and had had to ask Jane for an explanation. “It’s nice,” I said, and he made the sound again.
“It’s stupid,” he said, but when he replaced the box in its drawer, he did so tenderly, smoothing his hand across its furred surface.
Then he reached into another drawer, this one tucked beneath his bed—over time, I would realize that, although the room was minute, it was as well-organized and efficient as a sailor’s berth, and that whoever had arranged it had accounted for all of Edward’s interests, all of his needs—and retrieved a cardboard box. “Checkers,” he said. “Want to play?”