The Canoe Hale

I sound like a mina bird with no tongue, off-key and sick. My brain flip-flops the letters: B or D? Can’t tell. The note squeaks out, all pilikia. I'm a mess.

A few snickers buzz around. The principal viola, the boss, turns and rolls her eyes like she's all high-maka maka, better than me.

“Stop!” Mr. Akana shouts.

I'm supposed to be quiet, a ghost sitting in the back, playing to blend. But I got too loud. Woke the sleeping god.

His desk sits in front of a whiteboard, scrawled with chord progressions and circled mistakes from yesterday’s run-through (most of them mine). “JUST BREATHE” is written in all caps. Funny, ‘cause the room feels all mahke, like there's no pulse.

Mr. Akana swings his feet off the desk and marches toward me, like Kīlauea about to blast me with fire. He smacks the conductor’s stick on my stand.

“You start good, Emi, but turn lā‘au mahke,” he says. Dead wood—useless.

The word stings more than the notes I missed. But I’ve been called worse.

“Sorry.” I swallow a lump in my throat.

“Come talk story,” he says, as the room buzzes with zippers and squeaky sneakers and cases slamming. Everyone bails out of the fluorescent hell as I stop at Mr. Akana’s desk.

Tribal tattoos coil his arms, his long hair braided down his back. He looks like he wandered in off the street, not our professor who once played slack-key guitar on the radio and still fills in for trumpet in the Royal Hawaiian Band.

This is Leeward Community College, aka Last Chance College: the place students and professors who can't make it into the university go. Especially professors who drink too much, and students who can barely read, who can't tell a B note from a D.

“Know why you're here?” he says, like a cop at a traffic stop.

I force a smile. “‘Cause I'm the best viola you ever heard?”

He doesn't smile back. “Got jokes, ah? You play good but can't read fo’ shit. Those haole parents of yours couldn't buy a tutor?”

He says it flat, like it’s not an insult, just facts. Like shame has no place here. Only truth and whatever you want to do with it.

The words slice me up like sashimi. I never told him I'm adopted, but didn’t need to. I talk haole. Probably starting to look it, too.

He doesn't know my white parents aren't rich, and even if they were, cash can't fix whatever's wrong with me. Mom says I’m dyslexic. But Mr. Akana looks at me like my head is a coconut, filled with milky goo instead of a brain.

He sighs, scratching his beard. “You really can't read or what?”

“I can,” I say, a little too high-pitched. Like my solos.

“Keh. Spell orange,” he says.

“Is this a spelling bee now?”

“Go on.”

My heart slams. “Um…the fruit or the color?”

“What da hell.” He rolls his eyes. “Das it.”

Mr. Akana yanks a paper out of a drawer and slides a flyer across the desk. “Led by a good braddah. Not a class, just a group. He reads music different. Can help.”

I pick it up with a shaky hand. The paper’s soft at the edges, the title messy and scrawled.

At the top, it says:

“Tired of notes that don't speak your language?”

A few spaces down:

“Learn to play Hawaiian-style. Meet at the old canoe hale 3pm.”

“What is this?” I ask.

“Your last chance,” Mr. Akana says. “Learn to play, or you flunk.”

I want to crumple the paper. Burn it. No group’s gonna fix me. But I shove it in my pocket and head for the door, 'cause I’d climb Maunakea in a snowstorm to pass this class if I have to.

Music’s all I’ve got—the only thing I’ve ever been kinda good at. But not good enough.

Mom says failure becomes a win. Like stone pounding taro root, over and over until it turns soft and sweet. Too bad I'm not getting sweet. Just sour and cracked.

Ten minutes later I head through the crowded campus, to the native Hawaiian studies area. Concrete gives way to gravel, crunching under my slippers. My viola case feels heavier with each step. I see the hale ahead, and hear it: a low voice, a strange song.

It sounds like water flowing down Mauna Wili falls, trickling over stone. Like a melody from the East, old, rule-breaking, untouched by the ‘western harmonic theory’ Mr. Akana teaches.

The voice guides me to the hale, which opens up like a ribcage. Wooden beams curve above. The thatched roof rustles in the wind as I step past canoe paddles lining the back wall.

Sweet plumeria and wet ti leaf from an earlier rain mingle in the breeze. A half-finished outrigger rests on a raised platform, its hull shiny with fresh oil—a replica of what our people once used to cross the seas, guided by skies and guts.

The voice echoes through the hale like a cathedral, like praise. It changes to chant, backed by the rhythm of a gourd drum slamming into the tile. Ancient Hawaiian song is nothing like the east or west—it breaks the rules of both.

I step to the wooden benches where only two people sit, both with bare feet and smiles. I plop down beside a blonde haole girl holding a flute.

The song stops, and the man sets the gourd on the ground. He’s short and wiry, with dark glasses and a walking stick beside him. And a big smile. The man who’s supposed to teach me to read is blind?

“Aloha,” he says. “I’m Kumu Gensen.”

“Emi,” I say.

“Kara.” The girl next to me smiles like she's already passed whatever test this is.

“Here to learn to read music too?” I ask her.

She laughs. “Nope. Professor Akana said I’ll fail if I play haole. I told him I am Haole, but he doesn't care.” She sighs and looks me over. “You’re Hawaiian, right? I'd think this would be, like, easy for you.”

My cheeks sting. “Yeah, well. It's not.”

I take a deep breath as Kumu Gensen jumps to it.

“Let's begin the Queen’s prayer.”

“Do you have the sheets?” Kara asks, scrambling through a notebook. “I don't know that one.”

“Me neither,” I say.

Well, I know the words, not the music.

The last Queen wrote it after U.S. businessmen put a gun to her head and locked her away. A prayer for the kingdom stolen. Not a song I like to sing.

“We're not reading,” Kumu says. “Just playing.”

I squint at him. So does Kara.

Even worse, Mr. Akana’s already here, half-hidden behind an ohai beam, arms crossed like he’s been waiting. Like this was the real test all along. My pass or fail isn't tomorrow or next week. It's now.

“ʻO kou aloha nō, Aia i ka lani, A ʻo kou ʻoia ʻiʻo, He hemolele hoʻi,” Kumu begins, voice thick and sweet like guava juice.

(Your love is in heaven and Your truth, so perfect)

I panic for a moment, heart like a trapped bird in my ribs. But I look away from Mr. Akana’s stony face, take a breath, and slide my bow against the neck.

Open fifth — G & D strings, bowed legato.

A shaky tone, while Kumu Gensen sings clear and firm. His voice takes me back to eighth grade, when my classmates called me “high-maka maka,” and said I “stay one oddball,” because my Hawaiian parents didn't want me so the haoles had to take me.

After school I asked Mom why my blood left me to the state. She didn't say my birth mom couldn't stay off the pipe, or my bio dad was locked up for crimes I’m too young to know about. She smiled and said, “God chose you to be ours.”

I believed her. Back then.

“Koʻu noho mihi ʻana, A paʻahao ʻia, ʻO ʻoe kuʻu lama, Kou nani koʻu koʻo,”

(I live in sorrow. Imprisoned. You are my light. Your glory, my support)

This time I don't panic. I know what I’m gonna do. Can feel it.

sul tasto — the sound turns slow and ghost-like. High D, held long.

In high school music class, I tried viola. It didn’t ditch or laugh or tease me about reading like a babooze or having haole parents. Theirs scraped, while mine made a good sound. Mom said I have a gift. But that's what Moms say.

“Mai nānā ʻinoʻino, Nā hewa o kānaka, Akā, e huikala, A maʻemaʻe nō,”

(Do not look upon our sins but forgive us and cleanse us)

Crescendo

Double stop: C & F♯, the devil’s interval, two notes held at once, uneasy. Angry—broken.

Back to when my birth mom messaged that she’s clean. Said she wanted to meet. I waited all afternoon by the harbor, fishermen coming and going, sun baking my skin til it turned red and sore. She never showed. Never called. Never messaged me again. Nothing.

“Play louder,” Kumu Gensen whispers, snapping me out of it. Tears sting my eyes. The flute falls silent but I keep going.

“No laila e ka Haku, Ma lalo o kou ʻēheu, Ko mākou maluhia, A mau loa aku nō.”

(And so, O Lord protect us beneath Your wings, and let peace be our portion, now and forever more)

I go for it:

The sound comes like a deep wail from my stomach, every muscle shaking with the strings. My body turns to mele, a constellation of notes. I play, eyes wet but heart forgiving. I play for the Queen. I play, even though they betrayed me—not the haoles. My own blood.

mf (mezzo forte)

A pulse, a heartbeat.

rubato

Time stretched slow, then yanked back.

forte

Strong stroke, strings shaking. Release.

I stop.

Kumu doesn’t speak.

Mr. Akana stares.

Kara watches with wide eyes as the wind rustles the palms, a breath exhaled.

After a few moments of quiet, Mr. Akana smiles. He walks off behind the raised canoe and out of the hale.

Maybe Mr. Akana doesn't need me to learn to read, just play. Play like there's no audience or Kumu, no pass or fail.

I watch the canoe. Its weathered wood, scraped and old, sings to me. What does it mean to play like a Hawaiian? Maybe forget structure. Forget rules.

“One more time,” Kumu Gensen says.

Kara groans, but I pick up the bow and scrape against the neck.

I’m not afraid to mess up, to choke on notes, to make them laugh at me. My stringed-thing whispers I’ll find my way. Just gotta play Hawaiian-style—by stars and guts, the same thing that got us across the seas.