House of Many Gods Read Online Free PDF

stolen all the land from her father’s side of the family.
    “We never speak of him in public. Hawaiians believe the tongue is the steering paddle of the mouth. Better to hold the paddle still than speak offending thoughts.”
    She told of farmers of the valleys whose torches zigzagged through the nights, folks so poor they still went forth to borrow fire.
    “Some nights our fire god
Lono-makua
, sends them fire from the hearts of bursting rocks, which we call
pōhaku
. With these, folks light their torches, until each rock says it has had enough.”
    Max had leaned forward smiling, only half believing her tales. But by patiently listening, he saw how very slowly, like an image in a developing tray, her truer self began to emerge. And later, recalling the stories she had told, Ana realized that some of them were true.
    She remembered Nanakuli nights rippling with running flames as folks without electricity ran through the fields with borrowed fire. There
was
an uncle famous for his trumpet-playing, though he had never played for heads of state. And in fact, her father
was
a well-known lawyer, though he had started out a beachboy. What she did not tell was that for the first sixteen years of her life, she did not know he was her father. And the woman she believed was her older sister turned out to be her mother.
    … She birthed me in a tub, in wartime during blackout. My mother, Malia. Stifling her screams by biting down hard on a bar of soap. Then wiping her birth blood on her mother’s thighs, and calling me that woman’s child. In that way, I was born to lying. I was born a lie
 …
    When they had finally confronted her—telling her who she was, and who they were—she understood there was such a thing as truth with taste, and truth without taste. She had been unplanned, a mistake. And even after they told her, her parents virtually ignored her, so impassioned they looked right through her trying to get at each other. And so she had made her own mistake, and finally got their attention.
    All in all, she had not entirely lied to Max. Her background, if not happy, was interesting. She was interesting. Only, she never told him of the child. Perhaps when the girl was older, perhaps when they were in touch again. She fell asleep thinking of the metaphysical quality of the word
perhaps
.
    I N TIME SHE AND M AX HAD BECOME LOVERS, NOT BECAUSE SHE loved him but she felt he had earned her, more than earned her. And because she was weary of being alone, weary of self-loving, and self-loathing. She wanted someone to do it for her. They lived in his house in Pacific Heights, a rather formal house—all was foreground and exact. But one room held only a grand piano and a terrace overlooking a gardenof blooming orange trees. Ana thought she could live in that one room. She could grow old and die there watching the gardener rake the gravel driveway slowly and thoughtfully, like a croupier.
    A stately Siamese prowled the house and some nights it padded across her stomach. Something breathed softly in her face. Paws like little clutching hands. She dreamed of old midwives, their voices shouting “
Pahū. Ho‘opūhūhū
!” Push. Push hard. She remembered how in those moments she wanted to reach up and strike them. Let them lie down and push. She thought how her mother must have pushed, wanting her out, unborn.
    And some nights she dreamed of the father of her child, handsome, reckless, eyes of shave-ice green. Handcuffs jangling at his hips. Then she and his child had been banished to a dehydrated coast.
Four years I tried. A bastard raising her little bastard
. In the end she had loved the child. She had thought of marrying the father. But then a gunshot, a sound so innocent. Like someone opening a flip-top can. And there was nothing but to run, find a better life. Men did it all the time.
    As she and Max grew closer she began to perceive how the act of conversation was a gift, how that exchange between two humans made one feel