The Feet of Pele

by L. 'Ailina Laranang

My sister was still with us that spring in Hilo. Uncle Joe said Rosie and I were finally ready to join our hula sisters on the stage of the great festival. Soon, the best hālaus from every island would gather to dance before our elders. We would dance to honor our late King Kalākaua, the Merrie Monarch, whose love for our people saved our hula from the burial of time.

For three days, Rosie and I had not been home, or to work, or to classes. We stayed with the hālau, and with Uncle Joe. The first day, we followed our aged, limping kumu into the upland forests of Ho'okena to harvest maile for our wrists and ankles. The next day, to Pu'u Maka'ala, to gather red and yellow lehua for our leis.

That night, we followed Uncle Joe down to the shore, for kapu kai. We bathed in the black tide. The salt water folded over our heads and carried our sins far out to sea. Now, Uncle Joe said, we were ready for our final rite--our visit to Pele.

The last morning, Uncle Joe led us to Halema'uma'u, to the cold, yawning bed where Pele slept. We climbed the barren path, our feet chilled and bloody on the jagged lava rock.

We stood at Pele's sharp collarbone, peering deep into her ashy throat. We huddled together for warmth while tongues of smoking sulfur lifted from the dry, cracked earth. Uncle Joe chanted and prayed. He leaned his bent body into the raking wind, calling and calling to Pele.

One by one, we came forward to offer our ho'okupu. We turned our stinging skins to Pele's face and hurled our gifts far out into her belly--leis of flowers and seeds, branches of fruiting 'ōhelo berries, bundles of other valuables tied up in ti leaves. In return, she would give her blessing. The festival would come, we would dance before our gathered generations, and we would be perfect.

Pele did give her blessing. Our hula was perfect. But our mana did not match that of the Kuakahi family of Moloka'i. Their feet carried a greater blessing of Pele's power.

Uncle Joe took his lei to the elder Kuakahi. They embraced, eyes proud and serious, and then we all went home.

*

Rosie left the hālau that summer. She fell in love with an Army chaplain, Frank. At her wedding, Uncle Joe limped down the aisle, his chant shivering out of his old throat like moths. The soldiers watched him pass, their lips twisted like wire.

Rosie wore a veil, the kind that dragged the ground behind her. Many chose veils, because lei po'o looked strange on the bride of a man in uniform.

The day they left for Fort Worth, Uncle Joe would not come out. Rosie brought a lei she made from Mother's pīkake. She left her shoes at the door and disappeared inside. My sister came out crying. Her hands covered her face, and a ti leaf was tied around her wrist. She left with Uncle Joe's blessing and protection.

At the airport, Rosie kissed me and slipped a lei over my head. Seven strands of gleaming wiliwili seeds, woven into a thick shining rope of red. It was the last lei Rosie ever made.

After Frank's discharge, the church sent them to the mission in Guatemala. The streams rotted my sister's insides. She curled up in the back of the chapel and slipped away, two years after Janet was born.

The next year, we danced in mourning. Hālau was not the same without Rosie. Uncle Joe pushed us fiercely. He did not rest in the week before the festival. He sat in his chair, leaning on the bruised crook of his cane, growling at us and shaking his finger. "'Ai ha'a! Lower!" he said. "Steady shoulders! Hana hou! Again! Again!"

We danced through breakfast, through lunch. We polished the floor with our sweat and tears we were forbidden to cry. Virgie collapsed from the heat, and Uncle Joe put her in the back. Le'a couldn't hold it anymore, and when she ran to the lua, Uncle Joe would not let her back in.

We danced until we were almost perfect. But we would not be perfect until we saw Pele.

Pele would be pleased with my ho'okupu. Rosie's lei, carefully wrapped in ti leaves, vanished over the crater's edge.

*

Uncle Joe refused to stand for the cameras. The other kumus spoke for him, praising his tradition.

We saw ourselves on the news. "Auē! There's Le'a! There's Malia!"

The newspapers said we were the finest hālau to take the stage. "Hawai'i's own." Better, even, than the Kuakahi family of Moloka'i.

Uncle Joe grunted at our photo and said he was finished. He gave the hālau to his niece and went home.

*

A young woman called from the mainland. Her voice was like Rosie's, but Rosie never said "ya'll."

"Our hālau's comin' to Hilo, Aunty," Janet said. I didn't know there were hālaus in Texas.

"You going dance, Ku'ulei?" I asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You going see Pele?"

"Well, no, Aunty, I can't do that." She called to her father.

Frank cleared his throat into the phone. He talked about Rosie being a good Christian. He talked about God's jealousy. I thought we were all good Christians, and I didn't know there could be anyone more jealous than Pele.

Janet's kumu was not like Uncle Joe. Shiny boots poked out from under his slacks, and there was no gray on his head. A kumu's kīhei wouldn't suit him. But on the festival stage, with maile draped down his body, he was not a hapa haole teacher from the mainland, but a strong, proud young kumu hula. His chant was old, like his lineage. I knew his mother; she came from the same line as Uncle Joe.

The drums began, and Janet danced. She moved like Rosie; her hula was almost perfect.

But on the last verse, the line was broken. Janet's foot slipped, her knee collapsed under her thick kapa skirts.

In the audience, something snapped, as if a giant hand reached in and broke our spines. The people turned toward the thrones; the court sat looking down at their hands.

My niece rose from the floor, shivering and stone-faced. The pahu drums thundered louder, ordering her feet--"re-turn, re-turn…." Janet lifted her chin and returned.

But the chant was lost. Soon, the drums stopped. The mana of their hula bled away into the wood floor. Janet and her hula sisters left a silent stage.

*

I did not go to see her in the dressing room. At the hotel, Janet came to the door, flushed and sick. She buried her face in my lei. "I'm so sorry, Aunty!"

"Shh, Ku'ulei.... Mai uē, dry your tears, now."

"Kumu asked me why, Aunty, I don't know what happened."

"Shh...nevamine you, ke keiki." I thought of Halema'uma'u. I thought of Rosie's lei resting across Pele's breasts. I should have gone to Pele myself.

"Come, Ku'ulei. Your aunties are waiting at the 'aha'aina. Come eat, kay?"

*

The hanging lamps burned blue against the tarp the cousins raised in the yard. Uncle Richard and his brothers sat near the cooler, thumbing their ukuleles and sending harmonies out into the fragrant wet night. Flies circled the laulau and poi. The aunties fanned them away with their hats.

"Your niece going dance, yah?" Cousin Lorraine sat next to me and put a plastic cup of beer in my hands. "She going dance now, Aunty."

Uncle Richard coughed and stood. He raised his hand until it was quiet. "Aunty," he said. "Janet going dance for you. An' for your sister, Rosie, God-rest-her-soul."

He turned to his brothers. "E Ku'u Lei...."

Janet stepped into the grass. A lei made from Mother's pīkake hung from her neck. She wore the dress I made for Rosie when we were still in high school, white with printed garlands of maile and ginger threading down the fabric. Uncle Richard began to sing, and Janet raised her hands to tell a story of longing, of a lover's return.

My sister's daughter was perfect. Her small feet met the earth and melded into the soil like rainwater. The trade winds blew in from the bay and filtered through her hands, catching at her hair and the fringed palm high above. The waters of Waipi'o flowed downstream from her fingers and emptied at the corners of my eyes.

Rosie sighed inside me, returning home from her travels, like tiny seeds drifting on the currents of the sea.

What kind of hula was this? Old and familiar, but born of something else.

Pele was far away, sleeping deep beneath the ashes at Halema'uma'u. She did not care that Janet danced for me and my dead sister, or that we gave no ho'okupu, for my niece was perfect. Better than Rosie and I, better even than the Kuakahi's of Moloka'i. I did not know where this hula came from, this blessing that was not Pele's.

L. 'Ailina Laranang was born in Hawai'i and raised in Louisiana where she lives with her husband and five home schooled children. Her fiction, art, and parenting articles have appeared in several Acadian publications. When she's not writing, 'Ailina enjoys education-through-travel, charcoal portraiture, martial arts, and studying both Hawaiian and Acadian culture and language.