Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart_ A Novel - Alice Walker [43]
Like most tourists Yolo had a vague memory of a Hawaiian queen but couldn’t recall a thing about her. Certainly not her name.
Lili’uokalani, said Alma. If his ignorance distressed her she did not let on.
She was not just a stateswoman, and a wonderful queen, said Alma—and “queen” in her case meant mother of the Hawaiian people—she was also a great songwriter and poet.
Really? said Yolo. He flashed on his sterile cabana-like room back at the beige hotel. It was decorated in kelly green and white. Air-conditioned, comfortable. It held no hint of queenly purple or of Hawaii’s past. He could have stayed in the same hotel in Vermont.
Alma excused herself and soon came back carrying a large framed poster of Lili’uokalani. Yolo saw a large, benign colored woman’s face that reminded him of his grandmother. Alma explained how the Americans had placed the queen under house arrest and threatened war if she did not resign. She gave up her throne because she knew the Hawaiian people would fight for her if she requested it and she did not want them to be killed. The people surrounded her palace, weeping, the whole night. Many Hawaiians feel the soul of the people was lost then, said Alma, with a sigh. And of course Hawaiians in the millions were dying already from the diseases the Americans had brought.
We were “annexed,” she said, with bitterness. Like a small room to a large house. Yes, she added, we were, we became, the fantasy room. The place Americans went when everybody else on earth was fed up with them. The playpen. I am personally very thankful Lili’u didn’t live to see the results of her noble sacrifice.
As they gazed at the picture, Alma opened another bottle of beer. Leaving the queen in his hands, she bent over the table to light another cigarette.
We Mahus Believe
We Mahus believe we were given by our ancestors a very special charge. That though we are born as males, we are to live out our lives as women. And why is this? The matronly person that everyone called “Aunty” asked.
They were sitting in a circle under a round roof made of thatch and reeds. Below them a slight decline led toward the narrow highway, pale as a snake, and beyond that there was dark jade green ocean. A lusty full moon, the color of mangoes, lit up the waves and shone into the depths. Aunty’s yard was filled with bright yellow school buses. The painter in Yolo immediately conjured a canvas and filled it completely. At the same time, he hung on every word.
We are lucky that we are of the Polynesian world, Aunty continued. For it is well-known that in other parts of the world, Mahus like ourselves no longer know who they are, who they were, or what they are supposed to be doing here on the planet at this time. Aunty paused.
Yolo had the impression this speech was given each time the men sat in circle. He looked around. Alma had told him about the Mahus, but he’d found it difficult to believe they could exist.
Exist, she’d scoffed. Who do you think teaches us the hula? And indeed it was this very same Aunty, Aunty Pearlua, who taught hula to all the young women who wanted to learn hula the right way, the way it was traditionally meant to be, and not the hula of Hollywood movies or the kind Alma had once forced herself to perform at parties.
There was a time, long time ago, Aunty Pearlua was saying, when women ruled. Well, this is not such a stretch for us because until recent times Hawaiians had a queen. Queen Lili’uokalani. But this was a time thousands of years ago when Mother rule was the dominant way of life, not only here where the original, original Hawaiians lived, but everywhere else too. The first Hawaiians were small dark people, and they