“Hush” by Kenneth Quilantang, Jr.

Author Questions:

• I envision “Hush” as a piece of its own. Would expanding on it make the moment of the “revealed secret” less important?
• Going back to the prompt of “traditions” outlined in this issue of Vice-Versa, do my characters exhibit notions of passing down traditions? Should I include a more detailed scene of traditions?
• Kay Pidgin. Me, I sometimes write Pidgin mix up anykine wit English so my readers catch on. For dis piece I was going write da whole ting in Pidgin but I never know if was going be one barrier to one more big audience. If I write my story in Pidgin da ting going be hard for one broader audience fo undastand? Can o no can?

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Breathe in.

Shh. Don’t tell.

I have the one-million-dollar name in school. Most teachers give up past the second syllable and slur everything after that.

“Kenneth Quin, no wait Quill, this is tough, Quilan,” they say at the beginning of each semester. I usually stop them after three tries. Just like baseball.

“Say Key-lung-tong,” I tell them. Kids in the back of class giggle. Some make ape sounds.

“Das wat one orangutan sound like,” I hear behind me.

“Fuckin Flip,” someone else says.  “How come he cannot have one normal name.”

“Shaddap,” I say under my breath.

“Wat,” says the first voice. “Faka, watch your ass.”  The crumpling of paper. Something hitting the back of my neck. Laughing. I look at cracks in my desk. The paper wad rolls past me.

“Faka, go back your Flip village.”

“Robby, Makoto, Ken, quit it,” says the teacher. She stands in front of me. She smells like hairspray.

“Wasn’t me,” I say. “Was . . .”

“Mouth off one more time you’re going to detention,” she says. She takes off her glasses and puts them on her table. “You people always yapping your jaws, yeah?”

I can’t wait until recess.

*

I always hang out with Earl by the portables for lunch. We trade our stuff most of the time. Me, I like the carrots; Earl, he likes the dessert, usually a hard almond cookie. I take a bite of a dry carrot stick and throw the stumps at doves waiting for crumbs.

“Like go beach,” he says.

“Wen?”

“We go Saturday,” he says. He breaks the cookie in half. Crumbs fall on the red dirt. Doves move toward us. “Get waves, Tumbleland.”

“Yeah, I seen um,” I say. “Swells in da canal was high.”

“I going tell my cousin Mike come too, he rip.” He holds the empty tray like a boogie board. “Plus I like use my new fins.”

“Shoots,” I say.

“Eh, you said you had cousins too, yeah?”

“Yeah, stay Waipahu.”

“Tell dem for come too,” he says.

“Nah, no need.”

“Haccome,” he asks. “More better if get planny people. Plus too I remember you said you had one girl cousin. Bring um. She cute?”

“Nah, dey no like come.”

“Hah? Haccome?”

“My auntie said Wai‘anae stink. More worse cause us guys live by da dairy, she said.” I whip a big piece of carrot at a dove. It hits the grey bird on the side. Earl and I laugh.

“No need den,” he says.

“Yup.”

A bell rings. Recess pau.

*

I envy the kids who have relatives in school.

“Oh, das my cousin you know,” Earl says. I want to ask him if his Hawaiian middle name is Wai‘anae because everybody seems to be his cousin.

Or uncle.

Or auntie.

I’ve got an assignment to see if I’m related to anyone famous. I pile through books in the library, and fold doggy ears in sections of them about the Philippines I think apply to me or my family. But nothing.

“Eh, Dad, we related to anybody famous or met anybody like dat,” I ask.

“Um, not really,” he says. He stops turning the wrench on his Harley. “Why you wanna know for?” He peeks at me through the holes between the frame and engine.

“Oh, for school,” I say. “For one assignment.”

“Go ask your mom,” he says. He always does that when he doesn’t want to talk.

Dad groans and rises up. Metal pins click into place, stiffening his leg brace straight. His black t-shirt soaked under his chest where he was sweating.

Wings on the eagle drenched with sweat.

A Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out on Dad’s t-shirt smeared with motorcycle grease.

I watch the chrome socket wrench roll on the oil-stained concrete floor.

*

Three days until my assignment’s due and I have nothing to show for it.

Until I find the book. The carpet in the library is soiled near the glass doors. I crinkle my nose. A mildew smell.

The librarian has a computer with Ronald McDonald stuck on top. I ask her to type in my last name. Clicking of plastic keys on a dirty keyboard.

Her chair creaks, and she goes into the back. Ronald McDonald is missing a hand.

She holds the book close to her chest.

“Here, this came up,” she says.

The book is old. Frayed orange corners pull apart when I slide my fingers along the spine.

It’s dated 1973, the same year I was born, and the pages look termite eaten. I can barely make out the title that once had been printed in some sort of metallic silver-flaked wording.

Infamous Crimes of the 20th Century. The librarian has already slid a bookmark to the page I need.

*

Dad picks it up and it seems glued to the sticky vinyl tablecloth printed with sunflowers. Stuck fibers left behind make weird patterns on the print. He flips through it and lets out a soft moan.

“I gotta tell him,” Dad says.

“About what,” Mom asks. She stops washing the rice. I see blue veins bulge through her wet skin.

“You know.”

Dad doesn’t answer her; the water flows from the faucet.

“Oh, shi—” Mom says. She lifts the rice pot from sink. Rinses, then slides the grains through her fingers.

Rinse. Repeat.

“We gotta go outside, Boy,” he tells me.

We stop at Dad’s white Dodge Ram. I pry a rock loose from between the threads and throw it at the chain-link fence.

“Here,” Dad says, unlatching the tailgate. “Sit.”

“Your mom and I were married about a year when it happened,” he says. “It was kinda big news on the mainland. You were only two months old when we heard.”

“What news?” I ask. Termites buzz streetlights. If you’re not careful they get inside your t-shirt and tickle you all over in a way that make you want to puke. “Oh, I read dat insie da book. Who’s Yvonne?”

“She was my first cousin,” he says. “You kind of act like her. You two woulda liked each other.”

He smiles. Termites crawl through the curls in his hair.

“She was—” I says.

“Fifteen. A coupla years older than you are now,” Dad says. He coughs and looks toward the top of the street where dust devils are being thrown up by passing semi trucks.

“Dat guy, da Zodiac guy,” I say. “He wen kill her, yeah?” I feel my dad’s hand squeeze my shoulder.

“Uh huh. That’s what it says in that book, right?” Dad scrapes the rust in the truck bed with his fingernail.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Remember Uncle Fred?”

“Yup. He died too, right,” I say. “He was sick o’something lidat, right?”

“Yeah, he died, but not because he was sick.” Dad’s head sinks between his shoulders. “He died in jail.”

I hardly knew about Uncle Fred. In my mind, no doubt influenced by stories Dad would tell me about his older brother, Uncle Fred became Arnold Schwarzenegger-like. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, with muscle on top of muscles.  A Filipino man who couldn’t speak a lick of English until high school.

“Before he died, he told me something,” Dad says. I slap my slipper against my foot. “You don’t have to believe it or not but he caught the guy.”

“What guy?” I ask. I drop my slipper on the driveway. “Da Zodiac guy?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Why you gotta make all secret kine,” I ask. “No matta to me anyway. Shet, I dunno her.” I jump off the tailgate. The truck creaks.

Across the street, a cat plays with something in its paws then lets it go. Catches it again and nibbles. Then lets it go.

“It’s not because I’m ashamed or any shit like that,” he says. “It’s about you. I’m saying it’s not about her or me or Uncle Fred. It’s about you. I didn’t want you to feel like our family always gets shit on.” His long hair covers his eyes.

I don’t know what to say.

Drops appear then vanish on the still hot asphalt.

This is not for you.

Breathe out.

This is for my aunt Yvonne Quilantang, a nursing student murdered by the Zodiac Killer on June 9, 1973, avenged unknown by Uncle Fred.

© 2010 Ken Quilantang