WILD GIRL Chapter 2:

THEN

THEN

The half shell of the charred kukui nut was hard to hold and scrape at the same time. Koa cupped the black shell in her palm and dug the char out carefully with the tip of a salvaged butter knife, capturing the soot in a clean mayonnaise jar held between her bare thighs. A little smaller than an opihi, those tasty reef-clinging limpets, this was still easier to grasp than those were with their razor edges and snail excretions. 

She’d been burning the shells all morning around the fire, lined up inside the ring of stones. Their smell, heavy and rank, clung to her skin and hair as the dye she made from it soon would; at least until she could have her first bath.

Finished removing the soot powder, she screwed the mayonnaise jar’s lid on, frowning at the rust already breaking through the paint. Nothing metal lasted long here; the air ate it as it ate everything, eventually.

Koa stood up from the rock beside the fire ring where she’d been sitting and approached the house, holding the jar. The tumbledown hut with a tin roof built on a handmade lava stone foundation was the only home she’d ever known. Until recently, she’d scarcely seen another dwelling to compare it to and find it wanting. Mama’s illness and then death had forced her to venture into the flats of Waimalia Valley, and there, she’d seen other homes that were solid and strong. Painted colors even.

Koa went into the lean-to shelter tacked onto the back wall. Shelves built against the exterior of the main building provided a storage area for seeds, roots, and dye materials; the strong smell of the kukui nut soot was bad enough that it was best kept outside.

The bench below the shelves held all she needed to create the skin and hair dye Mama had been making and coating her with ever since she could remember. “We must always hide our skin,” Mama had said, rubbing the rough concoction in briskly enough to make Koa’s eyes water. “Especially you. Bad men will take you away if you don’t.”

Measuring a ration of the black soot into half a coconut shell using an old shot glass, Koa’s hand shook unexpectedly. 

Mama had been gone a year now. The mound of soil and rocks marking her resting place had settled; she was part of the earth, truly gone in human form. “But I wish you were still here to talk to and keep me safe,” Koa whispered. 

The sound of her own voice was startling. Koa liked the silence, filled with nothing but the sounds of nature: wind fluttering the palmate leaves of the kukui grove her home was built in. The rustle of a mongoose in the long grass; the squeak of a mouse being caught. The sharp chirp of cardinals, the coo of ring-necked doves, the harsh squawk of a mynah, the skirl of the io, Hawaiian hawk, as it hunted. 

She knew all the sounds of this forest, and that too, kept her safe.

Koa reached up and took down the jar of alae, red dirt gathered from a special place in a cave where it could be found. She had ground the dirt in a stone bowl with one of their pōhaku kuʻi ʻai pestles until it was so fine it clung to the sides of the jar as if to fly away when the lid was opened.  Taking care not to lose any of the powder, Koa measured the same shot glass full and tipped the dirt carefully into the coconut bowl. She took down one of the pestles Mama had crafted, this one small and made of jet black, glass-like a’a lava. She mixed and ground the two colors with careful, circular strokes so as not to raise any dust. 

“Do not breathe in the powders,” Mama had said. “Not good.” She’d suffered from a wheezing cough she called asthma, and the powders set her off. Because of that, she had supervised Koa in creating the dye as long as the girl could remember. 

Once the black and the red were thoroughly combined, Koa added a touch of dried yellow olena, a root Mama cultivated in their garden as a seasoning as well as a dye. For their purposes, this root had been dried for months, then shaved, then ground to fine particles. Koa added a fourth of a shot glass to her mixture. 

The dye was almost ready; it would color her pale skin and light brown hair so that she looked like the people in the Valley. “We live here, but we’re not from here,” Mama had explained. “We need to blend so the bad men can’t find us.”

Koa took down one last ingredient, an old margarine tub filled with hardened kukui nut oil she’d harvested and rendered herself. The waxy oil also smelled strongly, but she’d added lemon zest to it for just a bit more yellow and a tangy scent.

She scooped the shot glass full of the hardened oil and carried it to a can next to the fire; in a few minutes the heat melted the waxy solid to liquid, which she then poured into the coconut bowl with the other ingredients. She stirred the mixture until it was a thick, gritty paste that smelled powerfully of kukui in spite of the lemon peel.

Koa headed inside the house, toward the little washroom; the privy toilet was outside and moved periodically as necessary. 

The washroom was only place where a scrap of mirror was kept. along with their few medicines and a basin, pitcher, washcloth, and soap they made themselves. 

The mirror was kept covered with a towel. Mama only allowed Koa to look at herself once a month so that she could rub the dye all over and not miss a spot.

But this time, Koa didn’t want to put it on at all. 

She never wanted to, actually, but her appearance was so odd, so alien compared to the other Valley people that it was clear something was wrong with her, something that would bring trouble. “And also the sun will burn you. Your skin will sizzle like the pig skin you so love to eat,” Mama had said. “Or like the vampires you like to read about.” She’d made her hands into claws and bared her teeth in imitation, making Koa squeal and laugh in mock fright as Mama chased her around the yard.

“You like the vampire books, too,” she’d protested. 

Mama rolled her eyes. “That’s all they had at the free pile.”

The free pile was a little shelter made of scrap wood roofed in palm leaves down off the dirt road that ran through the valley. Residents dropped off items they no longer needed or wanted, and others picked them up. 

Mama could be funny, playful. Those were the good memories, those early years.

Koa glanced down at her arm. The dye was wearing off in mottled streaks, and the pale areas did get red in the sun, but it had never crisped like a pig’s ear in the fire nor burnt to vapor like a vampire did. 

Mama had used every excuse she could to keep Koa covered and hidden; now that she was gone, Koa could see that.

“I don’t want to put this stuff on today. It stinks,” she told the kitchen gecko, a mottled brown lizard the length of her finger that lived on the screen window and helped keep away mosquitoes. “What’s the harm if I skip it this time? I never see anyone, anyway. And I can stay out of the sun.”

But immediately, fear squeezed Koa’s guts. Guilt bowed her head. Mama was dead—but Mama had told her she’d always be watching, even after she was gone. Koa felt her ghostly gaze often, a presence from the corners of the cabin,  the shadows under the trees, the depths of the cave where she went to harvest the red soil and bathe in an underground waterfall. 

Koa set the coconut bowl down on the counter made of half a wooden log. Mama and Koa had found the log in the forest, chopped it in half, smoothed it until it was sleek and shone when oiled. This was where they made their poi and prepared their food. 

“I named you for this wood,” Mama had said, stroking the smooth reddish grain with its dark whorls and streaks of paler colors. When sunshine hit it, the wood had a shimmer, a depth like gazing into a rippling creek. “Koa also means strong, and you have to be strong to stay alive here in the Valley.”

That was something Koa didn’t need to be told.

And Mama might be watching, but she wasn’t here to make Koa put on the dye this time. Once she did, Koa had to wait a day and a night to wash. During that time she smelled awful, and even sleeping was difficult.

No. She wasn’t putting the dye on today. She was tired of her little world hidden away at the back of the valley.  She’d go down and visit her friend Ella, and check if there was anything useful on the free pile.

Koa’s spirits lifted. She raised her head. “Mama, I hope you understand,” she whispered. She so seldom spoke that, once again, the rasp of her voice was unsettling. 

Koa covered the bowl of dye with a piece of towel and then set the wooden cutting board on top of it. She pulled up the lauhala matting on the floor to uncover the hatch that led to the cold room, a rough square carved out of the hard clay soil under the house. 

She descended the short ladder into the cavelike room lined with shelves. There, squinting in the dim, she gathered up several good sized sweet potatoes she’d grown in their large, sunny garden. She would leave them at the free pile in trade for anything she found. She slipped the tubers into an old backpack someone had left years ago. 

Glancing around at the food she’d foraged, grown, pilfered and traded that lined the shelves, a good feeling filled her chest—which was negated as her gaze fell on the covered bucket and rough blanket in the corner.

“Never again,” she murmured aloud. “I might hide down here someday, but you’ll never lock me here again, Mama.”

She felt Mama’s oppressive gaze directed at her from the corner where she’d spent so much time, but she turned her back deliberately, and ascended the ladder. She dropped the hatch, pulled the mat into place. The latch Mama had used to lock her in was gone the day she buried her mother; she’d never be trapped down there again. 

P.S. WILD GIRL chapters drop on Wednesdays, PASSAGES on Tuesdays and Fridays. Hit the ❤️ if you enjoyed meeting Koa!