Down a Hawaiian Rabbit Hole (Published in the Globe and Mail)

 

This is a house?  From its centre, where I stand, to the farthest corner would take three steps, tops.  Turquoise, yellow, orange and purple;  every wall, even the fridge, is painted its own mad hue.  Healthy green vines leap across empty spaces and clamp coiled tendrils onto ceilings and wires.  And, strangest of all, in here it’s cool, blessedly cool.

 

Have I stepped into another world?  Or have I slipped somehow, I wonder, down a rabbit hole into a whole new dimension?

 

I’ve left the glamour of Maui to find a different Hawaii, one where life moves to the sway of the palms, where your wealth is measured by how many call you brah.  This morning the ferry, the Molokai Princess, dropped me on the wharf in Kaunakakai for a day of wandering Molokai’s main town. 

 

It took ten minutes at “Slow down - this is Molokai,” speed to walk the downtown, a sunburnt handful of faded false-front stores.  I’ve had breakfast at Kanemitsu’s Restaurant and Bakery - island eggs, Portuguese sausage, rice.  “Busy today,” I heard the waitress say.  Three tables were filled.  I’ve watched a Molokai traffic jam - a dirt-encrusted pickup at a dead halt in the middle of the street, while a beefy Hawaiian propped on a bench on the shady side of town talked story with its pony-tailed driver.

 

What next?  The ferry sails late afternoon.

 

I decide to wander the back streets.  Streets?  Laneways, actually, where clouds of red dust hitch along with bike-riding kids and moa, wild Polynesian chickens, scratch in the dirt.  A few lazy flies buzz a fallen papaya.  Sweat dampens my brow and smothers my back.

 

A pair of hedges collide at the corner of two laneways with greenery so thick and so knitted together that there’s no clue what lies behind. 

 

Then it appears.  Tucked into an archway carved out of the branches, a door - half a door, to be exact.  I peer through the top half to decipher what lies beyond, when a woman emerges.

 

“Oh...,” I fumble, “this doorway surprised me.”

 

“Would you like to come in?”

 

She walks down the lane and slips through a hole in the hedge.   She looks normal enough, elegant even - 50ish, well-coiffed, clad in a stylish print dress.  I follow.

 

Once through, I see that the hedge completely surrounds a rough cabin.  On three sides, no sunbeam could find passage between it and the walls.  On the fourth side, long arms outstretched could span the yard.

 

“The fern grotto,” she points.  Chunks of lava rock encircle three fronds in a patch of earth no bigger than a dinner plate, a serving platter perhaps.  “The shade garden  ... the flower garden  ... the vegetables,” she continues.  “Here he’ll plant roses.”

           

Does “He” have no name?

           

“And there...,” she nods toward a few boards, bright red, holding each other upright in the yard’s back corner, “...is our shower.”

           

How South Seas, I think.

           

“Come inside.  I’ll show you around.”

           

Inside, the heat falls away - vanishes.  A soft breeze whispers by, a stroke of cool velvet, and exits a window to let the next one in. 

           

I squint.  I focus again.  Could one more belonging squeeze itself in?  To every inch of wall cling books, boxes and cans, vinegar and hot sauce, salt shakers and mugs, each crammed into its own nook.                 

           

“He’s added to this old shack one room at a time.”

           

That explains why my first spongy footstep lands high and the next one lands low.  

           

“My son says we should cut down the hedge.”
           

But . . .  her world would be gone.

           

She shows off the renovations.  To hang the broom, He moved the stove, shifted three shelves and hung a new nail for the frypan.  In the bedroom, He sawed a hole in the wall, slid the mattress half through and built around it a screened box.  Here’s where they sleep, heads perched over the garden. 

           

In the bathroom, she points to the sink; the toilet, the ordinary kind; and the tub, filled to the brim with black earth and a thriving green jungle.  “The vines through the house,” she pointed, “here’s where they start.”

           

She pops me through the half door and deposits me back on the lane.  “And that’s how we live in Hawaii on $180 a month.”

           

The wall of heat buckles my knees.  I bobble my head.  Just where have I been?

           

Not Wonderland where Alice had her most curious adventure.  But what tales would she tell had she slipped through this hedge?

 

©Copyright 2006:  Sharon Blomfield