A Hui Hou, Hawaii

by Phoebe Greywood (Canada)

A leap into the unknown USA

He walked up to our table, a whiskey sour in each hand, and a few months later, I was standing at the top of the Stairway to Heaven. Ben said he came to Winnipeg because it was somewhere no one else would go, somewhere everyone told him to avoid. He said he liked the cold, and the live music at The Good Will, and the hotel downtown where we spent the night together. He said he liked me, and gave me his t-shirt to remember him by, a venn diagram on it: Music I like. Music you like. Music I don’t listen to anymore. A few weeks after he went back to Australia, he messaged me: If you could go anywhere… where would you go? It was the middle of winter in Winnipeg, and I’d never flown to another continent. I’d never flown anywhere, alone. The income of a third-year daycare inclusion support worker is hardly enough to cover rent, let alone flights, food, and accommodation. “Hawaii?” Ben paid for everything. He emailed my flight itinerary, booked the hotel where we’d meet before moving to the Seaside Hostel, found us a taxi. The tourist part of Honolulu is clean. Like it’s been wiped down, swept repeatedly, made to glisten just right in the sunset off Waikiki Beach. There are a million tiny shops, where you can buy hats, sunscreen, and little wooden sea turtle key chains. People wear flip flops, and they slap slap on the cobblestones, where, here and there, Hawaiian words are engraved, with English translations: Pau. Finished, Ended. Ben took me on a Booze Cruise, endless alcohol while the waves pushed the boat up, and then let it fall, like a transit bus on a Winnipeg street. We tried surfing, with boards from the hostel, and bought Starbucks at the corner every morning when we woke up. After three days, I was horribly sunburned. The skin peeled off my nose, and my entire body, except the places my bikini covered, were bright red. I curled up in my bed in the hostel and moaned; Ben bought me sunscreen, and a giant straw hat. We spent a day or two wandering, eating food from a small food truck village, visiting the war museum, taking a rented convertible around the island to Manoa Falls. I walked through the poorer end of Honolulu to find a secondhand store for a new bikini and some loose clothes to cover my sunburn. A skyscraper had a painting of a giant blue whale on its side; someone’s homework blew around on the sidewalk. A man walked past with a parrot on his shoulder, pants hanging loosely below his waist. A bartender, staying at the hostel, offered me magic mushrooms if I’d (illegally) climb the Stairway to Heaven, 3,922 metal steps up the side of a mountain, to an old bunker built during World War II. I’d never heard of it. The van picked us up at two in the morning, the driver telling us about a secret trail to the guard’s cabin at the base of the stairs. He drew us a makeshift map. We promptly got lost. Gloria and Simon followed the road, and found a rotted rope leading up the side of a cliff. Lea and I spent what felt like several hours climbing up and down the side of the mountain, until she finally gave up, crying. We agreed to head toward the stairs, and turn back if the light was on in the guard’s cabin. By six in the morning, we’d reached the first of three levels, a rickety platform where I realized I hadn’t brought any water. At the second, Lea helped a photographer set up a time lapse of the rising sun; by the third, and last platform, my legs weren’t my legs anymore and the light was a delirious orange. We climbed on top of the slippery old bunker to photograph what felt like the entire world; Simon’s hair glowed, a golden halo. As I sat in the airport in my wet bikini, about to fly home, an old Hawaiian song whined from the tinny speakers; Aloha, Aloha. I’d survived my leap into the unknown. Pau.