Synopsis

         I was born in the plantation manager's house, and it claimed me as its own. During my first eight years, the dwelling revealed itself to me gently, bit by bit, with its smooth plank floors and cubby holes that released the scent of mildew and sawdust. Its broad-reaching roofs stretched over the surrounding lanais and sheltered me from the curious sun. The house consented to ocean trade winds that awakened me in the mornings and cool mountain air that settled me at night. It was the largest house for miles around, a place for gatherings and important visitors. Stately royal palms lined the drive like soldiers, where cars paused under the porte cochere to discharge their passengers. The house permeated me with the sense that the world was mine.
            Each day through the ten years that followed, I studied its comings and goings from afar, across its vast lawns that tumbled downward toward the sugarcane fields of Hawai'i's Hamakua Coast in a tiny plantation camp house. From my green-eyed post, I watched for countless hours as if stalking it unnoticed. If I placed my elbow on the chalky railing of the back porch and leaned over just far enough, I could feel myself in it and comprehend it, the house I belonged to. I could touch the grain of the white clapboards and deeply shadowed porches through the lacey shower trees and over the top of the yellow ginger patch. I could taste its sour resentment and the hollowness it endured in my absence.
           My father died of tuberculosis in August of 1930 when the air was thick and hot. Swarms of people poured in and out of the house in a succession of commotion and low voices. Smoke from the imu wafted in through the louvered windows and wound its way between my mother’s stiffness and the gentle touch of visitors, their words rhythmic like chants. A constant procession of plantation workers moved through the house carrying great bowls of rice, lomi salmon, poi, and bundles of laulau wrapped in glossy taro leaves like gifts. Thick slabs of wood, heaped with fish and pork, were ushered in like coffins born by pallbearers.
           That's when I first saw Frances Rebecca Stevens, Fanny, they called her. Just as I opened my mouth to bite into a slice of chewy coconut pie with its toasted confetti crust, I felt her eyes burn into me. Fanny was at the far end of a long table, studying me. For that moment, I was her, and she was me. The din of conversation in the room fell away, transporting me. I left the shell of my body and hovered near the ceiling while Fanny stepped inside me and I in her. I could feel her skin itching, the tickle of her broad white collar, and I wanted to push the pile of her dark curls away from my face. She was the new plantation manager's daughter, and I hated her.