Ākepa’s Mele

Warning: You are about to be dropped into the middle of the sea.

When I was a keiki, Papa taught me to hear the dead. He led me to the lanai, where olapa leaves whispered, bamboo knocked like drums in the wind, and birds sang as if the forest made mele just for us.

My bare feet stuck to hot boards, splinters biting my toes. Flies buzzed over bruised mangos down in the yard, where earth was a kapakahi of color—gold goop mashed into red dirt, the air thick with sweet rot.

Papa, midnight hair woven down to his calves, tilted his chin to the treeline. “Hear dat? Always squawkin’, chee-chee, chee-chee.”

“Mynah bird!” I said.

“Good.” He cocked his head. “Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo—lazy kine, hang round da wires.”

“Pigeon!”

Papa smiled. He always taught me the birds. Said when he was a keiki the forests sang even louder.

A rooster crowed from the neighbor’s yard.

“Ku-ku-ri-koo!” Papa tickled my shoulders with his rough hands. I giggled till my ʻopu hurt.

The rooster crowed again. But Papa didn't keep on. His face went serious and breath stopped, eyes on the trees like he saw a lapu behind them. Made me go cold.

“Shhhh,” Papa said. “Lissen.”

Sea whooshed on sand across the street. A moped growled down the road.

“Listen for what?” I asked.

“A ghost.”

I stilled, and the hair on my neck raised. Papa gripped the railing so tight his knuckles got white.

It was soft at first: tsi-tsi-tsi … then higher, tsi-tsi-tsi … Like when Papa blew glass or whistled low.

An orange blur zipped through the yard into the trees.

Papa gasped. “Nobody going believe,” he said low. “They’ll say you lolo, only heard a dead thing. But dat’s ʻākepa.”

“ʻĀkepa?”

“Honeycreepers. He calls, she answers.” Tears filled his eyes. “Supposed to be long gone. Dis ʻākepa might be da last on earth. Remember dis mele, yeah?”

He closed his eyes, and I closed my mouth. We listened together, hands gripping wood.

Many evenings after, we sat on the lanai, munching kakimochi with poi sticky on our fingers, hoping for ʻākepa. But the moon rose and we went inside. Never heard it again.

That was the first of Papa’s “lasts.” I’d only see him cry three more times.

Years later, we stood at the building site. Papa’s voice cracked through the bullhorn: “Aʻole development! Going kill da honu! You going cover our kupuna’s bones!”

Uncles stomped their feet, aunties cried out waving signs reading Keep the Country, Country! Sea salt and cream sweet plumeria mixed in the air, but diesel choked it. My breath caught with each shout and stomp of feet, pounding my chest like a gourd drum.

Car horns blared as they passed, support from air-conditioned cars. They could honk someplace else. If they cared, they’d be out here too, burning up with us. But they'll just complain later, when it’s too late. When the land is lost.

Papa began to chant instead of shout. “Ku kiaʻi mauna!” he cried, voice cracking. And from the crowd the answer thundered back, “Eo!” His outstretched hand trembled as he chanted, tears in his eyes. Voices rose, then fell. Like ʻākepa’s song, call, response.

After that day, I swore Papa saw the future. Spotlights rose when the hotel did, confusing the baby honu. Instead of crawling toward the moon, their guiding light, the turtles crawled to concrete. Died there. And when tourists stomped the reef, our shore emptied even more.

The marches ended, but the building never did. The next time Papa cried was years later, during my senior year. His neighborhood, Kamu Street, had changed: new houses, bulldozers chewing koa and olapa like rubbish.

I found Papa on the lanai, rubbing his wrinkled forehead, eyes wet.

“Papa, what’s wrong?”

“Too quiet,” he said.

Inside, Tutu pounded kalo with stone, crack crack crack against the counter. A chainsaw growled at the lot.

“What quiet?” I asked.

But Papa nodded toward the forest, and I knew: nahele’s mele had changed. Every chainsaw bite, every house rising, washed the song away.

I covered my ears as it revved up again. But Papa sat still, like the silence of the trees was louder than the saw. As if he could see years down the road, his home, his land, the birds long gone.

Papa last cried at the cliff bunker. The tracks rose so steep up the mountain they looked like they led to heaven, a ladder Akua forgot to pull back up. Splinters bit my palms as I climbed; Papa’s breath huffed close behind. “Keep going, Emi. You got dis.” But he was the one coughing, like splinters got his lungs.

We reached the old WWII bunker, our legs dangling where rifles once pointed at the sea. The ocean, all bruised up blues below our feet, stretched out like sky.

Papa smiled, chest heaving. A tear fell down his cheek.

“When I was keiki, only hotels Waikiki side. Honu in the kai, fish plenty, nahele full of song. Da birds, Emi…oh, how they sang.”

“I know, Papa—”

“Dis land been here long time. Long before man. Why I gotta see it die? Why Akua put me here, at the end?”

The words made my eyes wet too. Our hands touched, and we sat in the quiet till the sun dropped.

Papa died a year later of lung cancer.

On his first heavenly birthday, I climbed those tracks again. They led up past the clouds, and I prayed I might see Papa at the top. But when I reached the cracked bunker, was just me.

No sound but trade winds carrying gardenia and ʻiliahi. I missed Papa so bad. Grief was sea punching up my nose, smashing my skull on reef, shoving me back each time I almost reached shore.

If only Papa knew that months after he died, some celebrity would buy his land. Bought the whole neighborhood. I tried to fight, but birthright meant nothing against a legal deed.

Now, below the cliff, hotels choked the shore, kai empty of turtles, roads paved over bones. The Hawaiʻi Papa and I once knew left me, like he did.

Why am I here, at the end?

...

tsi-tsi-tsi

A mele broke my thoughts. Breathy, high.

I almost ate dirt as I scrambled down the bunker, gripping cracked concrete to steady myself. No way...

Burnt-orange wings shot through the trees. No pigeon. No mynah. ʻĀkepa.

He sang again, rising, falling, rising, falling. But not right—not how I remembered.

No back and forth, no call and response: just one.

“Come on,” I said. “Answer...”

But only leaves whispered back.

My hands trembled like olapa in the wind, an icy breeze raising the hair on my neck. I felt Papa with me now. Felt his mana.

“Papa, is it you?” I whispered.

Silence sat heavy as koa wood on my chest.

“Don’t you remember me?”

...

“We’re alone, aren’t we, ʻākepa? Here, at the end.”

I shut my eyes tight. Let the wind blow the leaves, let silence breathe. Papa’s voice, ʻākepa’s song, might be gone. But hā still filled my lungs.

I parted my lips.

“Tsi-tsi-tsi,” I sang. “Tsi-tsi—”

From the nahele, a breathy tsi-tsi-tsi whistled back.

His mana, ours—not gone, refusing to die.

E ola.