Anyway—I did not fall to the garden floor; I did not weep and wail. I instead sat with my back against one of the trees （I could feel it was a skinny little banyan） and thought about you. I understood then that my job was to keep practicing. Tonight I had navigated my way through the garden; tomorrow, or perhaps next week, I would try to leave this property. Every night I would go farther. Every night I would get stronger. And one day, someday soon, I would see you again, and say all this to you in person.
* * *
You remember the day we left. It was the day after you graduated from fourth grade. You were ten. In June, you would turn eleven.
I had packed a bag for you, which I had stored in the trunk of Edward’s car. Over the previous two months, little things had been disappearing from your room—underwear and T-shirts and shorts and your favorite deck of cards, one of your skateboards, your favorite stuffed animal: the plush shark you were too embarrassed to admit you still occasionally slept with, which you kept hidden beneath your bed. You didn’t notice the clothes, but you did notice the skateboard: “Da, have you seen my skateboard? No, the purple one. No, I looked—it’s not there. I’ll go ask Jane again.”
I had packed food as well, tins of Spam and cans of corn and kidney beans. A saucepan and a kettle. Matches and lighter fluid. Packages of crackers and instant noodles. Glass jugs of water. Every weekend, we took a little more. In April, we’d set up the tarp and hidden the tents beneath a pile of coral rocks we lugged from the sea. “Later, we’ll build a real palace,” Edward said, and as always when he said such things, such improbable things, I remained silent. If he meant them, I was embarrassed for him. If he did not, I was embarrassed for me.
Here my story joins your own, and yet there’s so much I don’t know about how you felt and what you saw. What did you think that afternoon we arrived at Lipo-wao-nahele and saw the tents—one for me and you; one for Edward—arranged under the acacia, the tarp stretched taut between four metal poles we’d scavenged from the abandoned cement plant on the western side of the island, the cardboard boxes of our food and clothes and supplies beneath it? I remembered you smiling, a little uncertainly, looking from me to the tarp to Edward, who was unloading the hibachi grill from his car. “Da?” you had asked me, looking up into my face. But you hadn’t known what to say next. “What is this?” you finally asked, and I pretended I hadn’t heard you, though of course I had—it was only that I didn’t know what to say.
That weekend, you played along. When Edward woke us early Friday morning to recite a chant, you did so, and when he said that, beginning that day, the three of us were going to take Hawaiian lessons together, that this would be a place where only Hawaiian was spoken, you looked at me, and when I nodded, you shrugged, acquiescent. “Okay,” you said.
“？‘Ae,” he corrected you, sternly, and you shrugged again.
“？‘Ae,” you repeated.
Most of the time, you were inscrutable, but I watched bemusement scud across your face, and amusement, too. Did Edward really expect you to fish for your food? Were you really to learn to cook it over the fire? Would we really go to bed at eight, so we could wake with the dawn? Yes, it seemed; yes, and yes. You were smart even then, you didn’t challenge him—you knew as well that he didn’t play, that he didn’t have a sense of humor. “Edward,” you once said, and he didn’t look up, he pretended he hadn’t heard you, and I watched as a kind of understanding came over you. “Paiea,” you said, and he turned: “？‘Ae?”
I think it was because you were never able to trust my abilities as a father that you learned early that people would not behave as they should, and things were not what they appeared. Here we were, your father and his friend, whom you had known since you were a baby, and we were having a fun beachside camping trip. And yet was this really what it seemed? No one had said anything about fun, and, indeed, there was something toilsome about your time at Lipo-wao-nahele, even though here you were getting to do everything you liked to do—fish and swim and climb up the edge of the nearby mountain, foraging for greens. But something was amiss—something was wrong. You couldn’t articulate how, but you sensed it.
“Da,” you whispered to me the second night, as I blew out the candle in the hurricane lamp between us. “What’re we doing here?”
I took so long to answer that you poked me, gently, in my arm. “Da?” you asked. “Did you hear me?”
“We’re camping, Kawika,” I said, and then, when you were silent, “Aren’t you having a good time?”
“I guess,” you said, reluctantly, finally. You weren’t, but you couldn’t explain why you weren’t. You were a child, and the problem isn’t that children don’t possess the full range of emotions that adults do—it is only that they don’t possess the vocabulary to express them. I was an adult, I did have the vocabulary, and yet I too couldn’t explain what was wrong about the situation, I too couldn’t express what I was feeling.
That Monday was the same: the Hawaiian lessons, the long hours of boredom, the fishing, the fire. I saw you staring at the car at odd moments, as if you might be able to call it like a dog, have it come revving to your side.
On Thursday, you were to begin attending a camp where you’d learn to build robots. You were so excited about this camp: You had been speaking of it for months, rereading the brochure, telling me about the kind of robot you were going to build—it’d be called the Spider, and it’d be able to climb up to the tops of shelves and retrieve things that Jane couldn’t reach. Three of your friends would be attending as well.
The day before, you said to me, “What time are we leaving?” And, when I didn’t answer you, “Da. Camp starts at eight tomorrow morning.”
“Talk to Paiea,” I finally said, in a voice I didn’t recognize.
You stared at me, disbelief on your face, and then got up and hurried over to Paiea. “Paiea,” I heard you say, “when are we leaving? I have camp tomorrow!”
“You’re not going to camp,” Edward said, calmly.
“What do you mean?” you asked, and, before he could answer, “Edward—I mean, Paiea—what do you mean?”
Oh, how we both wished Edward were teasing, were capable of teasing. But although I knew he was not, I never believed, truly believed, until it was too late, that he would always do exactly what he said he was going to do—yet he was the least secretive person I knew, the least conniving. What he said he was going to do was what he did.
“You’re not going,” he repeated. “You’re staying here.”
“Here?” you asked. “Where?”
“Here,” he said. “At Lipo-wao-nahele.”
“But that’s make-believe!” you cried, and then, turning to me, “Da! Da!” But I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t, and you didn’t try harder with me—you knew I would be of no use, of no help—before swiveling back to Edward. “I want to go home,” you said, and then, when he too didn’t respond, your voice took on a hysterical edge. “I want to go home. I want to go home!”