Father of the Four Passages: A Novel - Softcover

Yamanaka, Lois-Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 031242048X ISBN 13: 9780312420482

Publisher: Picador, 2002

Synopsis

From "one of the most original voices on the American literary scene" (The Atlantic Monthly) comes the powerful tale of Sonia Kurisu, a young woman who grew up troubled in working-class Hawaii and struggles to raise her young son alone. Alternating between the present and the past, Yamanaka depicts Sonia's difficult childhood, her addictions to drugs and alcohol, and her string of bad lovers. As she tries to gain control of her life, she is haunted by the ghosts of three children she never had. A work of raw energy and searing honesty, Father of the Four Passages is an extraordinary testament to the redemptive power of love.

About this title

About the Author

Lois-Ann Yamanaka is the author of the poetry collection Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre; the fiction trilogy Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers, Blu's Hanging, and Heads by Harry; as well as a young adult novel, Name Me Nobody. She has won a Lannan Literary Award, an Asian American Literary Award, and an American Book Award. She lives in Honolulu.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1 

THE KEEPER

Sonny Boy, son of Sonia, the only one I did not kill. Three, I killed. Number One in cartilaged pieces on a surgical tray. #2, like a dead feeder fish, flushed out and down. A third, buried in jar behind my mother's house, fetal marsupial, naked pink.  

Sonny Boy, son of Sonia, stop your crying on this bed, your purple wail without breath. Feel the squinting of my eyes, the gritting of my teeth, the closing of my fists. Here is my hand to cover your mouth. Here are my fists to crush your skull. Do you want to die?  

They're smoking and drinking to your birth downstairs. And I'm the single artist mother, breast-feeding lounge singer mother, earth righteous minority mother. But I can't make you stop. Shh, they can hear you, godfuckingdammit. 

Your body stiffens. Fists clench. You cry without sound. A blue boy. Let me bounce you, let me slap you, let me sing to you, let me choke you, let me throw you out the window. 

I blow on your face. And in one long draw, you breathe me in. 

I am the keeper of words. This is your word to keep: God/the/son.

Dear Number One, 

You are my first dead baby, a baby boy.  

I am on the green bed in Granny Alma's Kalihi house. Alone, so Alone. My face is puffy and flushed. Scared, I'm scared. My belly is a round ellipsis. I don't know who to tell. About you. 

Your aunt Celeste comes into the room and stares at me. My mouth opens, but no words come out. And then she knows.

  You are in me. 

And you need to come out. 

She turns without a word from the doorway of the green room. You are four months old, she tells Granny Alma. Call Dr. Wee, who sits two pews in front of Granny at church every Sunday.  

He will suck you out of me.  

But you want to stay.  

Salamander fingers, you cling to my wet walls until your body rips apart. You are the color of tendon in my sweet stew, little pod, with eyes, black beads, like a rat's. Your aunt Celeste's lovely eyes.  

Love, 

Your mother, Sonia Kurisu, age 17  

I hate my sister Celeste. Celeste who always reminds me that she raised me the best she could. Poor thing. Poor her. The kind of girl who's forced into substitute mommydum too early. Lots of sad stories about girls like her. 

She found our mother wedged between her bed and the wall, an empty vial of Seconal, bent spoon, lighter, and small syringe on the floor. Celeste was ten. I was nine.  

Grace was fading out, eyes rolling slowly, a groan, a mutter. We walked her dragging feet to the living room couch. Celeste put herself between Grace's legs and held her body up against the picture window. Head floating on a neck made of rubber. "Call 911, you moron. Don't just stand there." 

Grace took several short gasps for air. 

Purple mommy.

So I blew in her face. A long breath that she held, her head falling. 

"She's leaving," Celeste screamed. I dropped the phone, the cord spinning the receiver. And she was still. 

I saw the couch indent beside Grace. I smelled the rotting carcass of goat, a maggot-filled belly, the explosion of flies wet with intestinal fluid and excrement. Her head slid in the direction of the Specter. Celeste covered her nose and mouth.  

"Get up, Mommy, the Devil's come to get you. Stand up, Mommy. Grace!" I screamed at her. 

I witnessed the summoning of the Seraphim as my mother willed her body to rise. She stumbled to the front door and leaned her body over the porch railing, her arms and head hanging. Breathing, breathing, until the ambulance rushed up our driveway and drove us all away. 

Who the fuck knows why the police called our aunty Effie, who wasn't even a real aunt, to take us to her house. Our stay would be indefinite. I heard her calling the church's prayer tree late into the night.  

"Grace. That's what I said. Grace Kurisu. The waitress at the 19th Hole. Painkillers and alcohol. She has that good-for-nothing husband. Oh, the big girl, Celeste's, all right. She's a strong Christian. Sonia, the little one, keeps talking about the Devil. The poor thing's screwed up, I tell you. I'll call Frannie and all the deacons." 

She told the story of my mother over and over again to anyone and everyone who wanted to know every goddamn detail of our lives and the Appearance of the Angel of Death, in Hilo of all places. 

At eleven o'clock, the phone went still. I heard Aunty Effie brushing her dentures and a short time later, a muffled snore from behind her bedroom door. Celeste nudged me, motioning me to follow her. We left through the front door into the cool Hilo night and walked home. 

It was Celeste who walked me to school every day, fed me canned goods and rice for breakfast, and told me what to say when the CPS social worker came looking for us. She got me on the sampan bus after school, down the icy corridors of the hospital, and into the room where Grace spent the next six nights. Every night, we were deposited at Aunty Effie's. And every night by twelve, Celeste made sure we slept in our own beds.  

Sister/Mother, it all sounds so loving. 

But she of the iron-fisted mommydom became the Sadist. 

And I of the get-the-shit/mind/soul-beaten-out-of-me-or-else became the Masochist. 

So your word, Celeste Kurisu-Infantino, twenty years later, I still fucking hate you, wife of Sicilian not Portagee, Michael Infantino; mother of Tiffany, fat and full of acne, and Heather who draws cat's claws in God's eyes, keep it for me, my: Sister/sadist.

Copyright © 2001 Lois-Ann Yamanaka

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 031242048X
• ISBN 13: 9780312420482
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240