the sea turtle dress

The woman in a uniform like a man’s except with a skirt parked her car as close to the steps of a small wooden house as she could. There was no driveway or yard or sidewalk to indicate how to come and go. She got Laurie’s suitcase out of the trunk of her car and held the little girl’s hand as they walked up to the front door. The woman in the uniform had to knock twice, and when a tall woman opened the door, she said, “Estelle Bow Kerchee?”

Estelle opened the door, took Laurie’s suitcase from the woman, and motioned for the little girl to enter. Laurie crossed the threshold. When the woman in uniform stepped forward, too, Estelle said, “Not you.”

“Ma’m, until I leave this little girl, I am responsible for her.” She smelled whiskey on Estelle’s breath. “Have you been drinking?”

“Soldiers from the federal government of the United States of America take Indian children away. You return one. You leavin’ her or not?” Estelle stood firm and blocked the woman’s entry.

Laurie let go of the soldier woman’s hand. She didn’t know her, but the old one was her grandmother. The woman who drove her to Estelle was doing her job.
 
Laurie’s mother, whose name was Catrina, had explained jobs to Laurie so she would understand why her mother spent so much time at the old man’s house and why she could swim in his pool but Laurie couldn’t. Grandmother wasn’t a job. She knew because she sometimes went with Ani to her grandmother’s house. A grandmother was like a mother but old.

Uniforms were for work. Catrina wore a white nurse’s uniform. When she wasn’t working, she wore dresses that she sewed from bright fabrics printed with shells or purple flowers or green sea turtles. Sometimes she made Laurie dresses that matched.

Ani’s mother wore a uniform when she worked and so did Kaipo’s father. They cooked food and cleaned the house and drove cars and did other things on the pineapple plantation owned by the man Catrina took care of.

Catrina’s boyfriend whose name was Carlo wore a uniform and worked on a ship called Oklahoma.
 
Before the bombs fell, Laurie and Catrina and the families of Ani and Kaipo lived together on the pineapple plantation not far from Ewa where Laurie and Ani and Kaipo went to school. Their small bungalow looked like all the other bungalows on the plantation except for the different pots of flowers and plants that grew on porches and in front yards.

On days they weren’t in school and most days after school, Laurie and Ani and Kaipo carried food and teacups and dolls and trucks to the house they made for themselves in the hala thicket. Sometimes Ani’s mother brought them ginger lemonade. Ani and Kaipo were Hawaiians. Natives, explained Ani’s mother.

Laurie thought she might be native, too, because her hair was dark and straight and her skin was browner than Ani’s but lighter than Kaipo’s. Catrina explained that she was native but to a different place. She said they were probably the only Comanche on Oahu. Laurie couldn’t remember living anywhere else, but Catrina said she was born in a place called Oklahoma.
 
The only Oklahoma Laurie knew about was in the ocean.
She believed this was where she was born.
She also knew that wasn’t true.
What was true: Catrina died driving back from the hospital where she worked nights to make extra money because she wanted to cross more ocean and live in Australia. She was killed by bombs.
 
When Laurie rode in the car with the woman in uniform this is what she was thinking about: her mother and Carlo dying from the bombs dropped in the ocean that filled the sky with burning things. Laurie had heard airplanes in the sky before but not so many all at once. Seeds from the monkey pod trees and petals from the yellow hibiscus pelted the old man’s swimming pool. Sometimes Kaipo helped his father skim the pool with the little net at the end of a long pole. The plantation pool was only for the old man and Catrina who helped him exercise with her hands underneath his back and beneath his head. Usually, the pool was flat and shiny like a blue window.
From the car window everything looked flat and brown. Slender white crescents of snow sat like clouds in the purple shadows along the highway. Bare trees clawed at a sky that was blue like the one in Hawai’i.

On the nights Catrina worked, Laurie stayed with Ani or Kaipo. And some nights they stayed at her house. During the day they went in and out of each other’s houses eating and playing and sometimes sleeping like they all lived together. On the day the sky was quiet again and no one could find Catrina, Laurie stayed with Kaipo’s family and Ani’s family came to visit. She heard them say that the Navy could help because sometimes Catrina worked at their hospital. People in uniforms came and looked through the house for papers while Ani’s mother tried not to cry but cried anyway. She put things in Laurie’s suitcase. She told Laurie to choose one of Catrina’s dresses. Laurie chose the one covered in green turtles from the laundry basket because it had not been washed and she could breathe in the way her mother smelled after a night out dancing: perfume, lipstick, cigarettes and sweat. Then Kaipo’s father took her to a place where a lot of people, mostly women and children, had suitcases and were crying. Her suitcase was dark brown with a wide maroon stripe down the middle and a plastic handle that turned everything golden like honey when she looked through it.
Later she went on an airplane with a woman who was crying and saying her husband had died on the Oklahoma. Laurie said that was where she was born. The woman ignored her. She had a hard bump on her belly. When Kaipo’s mama had a bump like that it turned into a baby. She started singing the song Kaipo’s mama sang He nane lua ‘ole Ka’u wehi, but it upset the woman, and she screamed at Laurie. Another woman who sat across the aisle said for Laurie to sit by her and take a nap. On the flight across the ocean, Laurie learned how to stay inside herself. 

When the plane descended, Laurie started to scream. She did not want to fall out of the sky. The woman held her and shushed her and spent one night with her in a hotel in Los Angeles. But then someone came to get her. Laurie went in cars and on more airplanes with other people who said they had found her grandmother, Estelle Bow Kerchee, the mother of Catrina Bow Kerchee, on a little chicken farm in New Mexico. They flew with Laurie to Albuquerque and then to a military base not far from where grandmother lived.

When the woman driving the car said to her, “I bet you’ll be glad to see your grandmother,” Laurie said nothing. She didn’t know anything about her grandmother. She didn’t know if she would be glad to see her or not. Her mother always told her to be polite, and she thought her silence might be impolite, but what she wanted to say was shush because she was trying to remember all the things she was going away from. She didn’t want to forget.
 
“Soldiers.” Estelle kicked her door closed behind the woman.
Laurie had never seen shoes like her grandmother wore. They were black and went halfway up her calves. They had pointed toes and designs like red tongues of fire and blue curlicues. In the room was a dark brown sofa and a wooden table with a lamp and a rocking chair. The kitchen had a square table and two chairs. It did not look happy. In Hawai’i Catrina filled their bungalow with plants and wind chimes and big pillows.

“Carlo was a sailor. He did his job on a ship.”
“Carlo?” What this little girl knew about Catrina was all Estelle would ever know about who her daughter became.

“Mommy’s boyfriend.” Catrina had explained about boyfriends. Some children had mothers and fathers. Some had mothers who had boyfriends. Boyfriends weren’t like fathers. They were for mothers, not children. Carlo gave her dolls she never played with and frilly dresses she never wore. When he kissed her, he bent his head quick like a chicken pecking at something in the road. Kaipo’s father scooped him up off the ground and swung him around and held him close in a big tight hug. “Carlo died in Oklahoma. The one in the ocean.”

Estelle looked into Laurie’s green eyes that were Catrina’s and remembered her daughter. So angry. She would do her best not to make this child so angry that she would run away across oceans. She didn’t know if she could make her happy. “Your room is here.” She led Laurie to what used to be her workroom. The cot and small dresser and bedside table with a lamp on it took up almost all the space. “We’ll get you a nice bed. I didn’t have time.” She started to explain that she had gotten the news of Laurie’s impending arrival only a few days ago, along with the news of her daughter’s death. She froze between the story of a daughter leaving and the story of a daughter arriving. She didn’t know how to talk about that. The talking she had already done was more talking than she often did in a whole day. Estelle released Laurie’s hand and put her suitcase on the cot. She bent stiffly and gave her granddaughter a little hug. “You call me Estelle. I will call you Laurie.”
The grimy window in the room let in only a little light from all the big sky. The branches of a bare pecan tree screeched against the glass in a gust of wind, startling Laurie. She clutched Estelle’s arm and found her grandmother’s beadwork. Unfamiliar with a Great Plains color palette, she didn’t see the pattern until she traced it over and over with her finger. Brown like sand. Orange like sunset. Green like seaweed.
“It’s a turtle.”

Estelle removed the bracelet. “Would you like to wear it?” It wasn’t her best work, but it was one of the first good bracelets she’d made. It displayed her signature use of different size beads, making an irregular surface. This had not been an artistic choice. She used what she had on hand. But she liked the effect and began to create it with intention.

Too large, the cuff slipped off Laurie’s hand. “I’ll be careful.”
“We’ll make you one that fits.”

Laurie looked at grandmother, eyes wide. “You can teach me?”
“Yes.” Estelle knew there were a lot of things she could not teach her granddaughter, but beading was something she could. “We’ll get some bigger beads.” Her beads and needles and crochet hooks were too fine and small for a child. She’d stored her bead supplies in the shed to make room for Laurie. They would need a place to work.
“We feed chickens in the morning,” said Estelle as a way of excusing herself from the room. She left the door open when she went into the kitchen, sat at the table, and poured whiskey into a glass.

Laurie closed the door and opened her suitcase. The clothes Ani’s mother packed were only for Hawai’i. Before she left Los Angeles a woman in a uniform gave her the long-sleeved shirt she wore under a heavy brown jumper and the thick gray tights and a coat and socks and shoes, too. Laurie had never worn so many clothes in her life. Getting dressed was like putting on someone she didn’t know. She piled her Hawai’i clothes on the bed. Then she put the suitcase on the floor. It was empty except for the sea turtle dress, which she spread out so that it flowed over the sides. Then she crawled into the suitcase and wrapped her mother’s skirt and sleeves around her and went to sleep.

Estelle heard Laurie close the door. She listened to her granddaughter rustle around in the room. She didn’t know if she should leave her alone in there. Maybe she should help her unpack and put her clothes away. She’d had Catrina, her own little girl, for such a short time and so long ago, she couldn’t remember what children were like. Estelle went into the front room and turned on the radio. She turned it down low so that Laurie didn’t hear the news. She didn’t know how much Laurie understood about what had happened in Hawai’i. Bothered by the quiet, she went to Laurie’s room and knocked softly before she opened the door. When she saw Laurie wrapped up in the dress covered with turtles, she squatted beside the suitcase, covered her face with her hands and wept. Then she lifted the granddaughter out of the suitcase, gently gathering the dress around her, and carried her into her room. She put the child wearing the breezy shape of her mother down on her bed then lay down beside them to sleep in the perfume haze of sea turtles, little girls, and death.

published in Yellow Medicine Review, Fall 2023

photo: Jane Hammons