House of Many Gods by Kiana Davenport Page B

yards stepped out to the road and hosed it down so Ana could breathe on her long walk home.
    Some nights, halfway up the road, she sat down, so mentally and physically exhausted, her eyes ached, moonlight on her head like a concussion. She looked up the badly lit road, saw the outlines of houses impossiblydistant, and imagined her form trudging upwards like a crone. She imagined her tired face in conversation over supper, her half-conscious body laying itself down. She saw all this in a dream.
    Later she woke, still curled up in the weeds beside the road, and heard them calling her name. They bent over her, Noah and Ben, faces like dark angels leaning out of paintings. They gently scolded her, lifted and half carried her, while youngsters dragged along her books and shoes. She smelled their perspiration, their clean uncle-smell and she was all right then. She knew where she was in the world.
    “…  waiting fo’ you, worried half to death …”
    Barking dogs fell silent as they passed. So did two men fistfighting in their underwear. The silhouette of a woman in a doorway. Then, their house ablaze with lights. Rosie washing Ana’s face, her hands, her feet. A clean, fragrant sheet beneath her, and one billowing out over her. And then, the ecstasy of letting go.
    By the end of her first year at university, she had refined her life almost to a point. Her studies, sleep, and food. A life of such unrelenting focus, it was like the workings of a clock. Ana looked down at textbook illustrations, the machinations of the human anatomy. Respiration. Digestion. Reproduction. Where was the illustration for the need to laugh, to touch and be touched? How did one illustrate longing, or loneliness? She dreamed of Tommy Two-Gods and woke up missing him, wondering where life had taken him. She slept curved inward, like a child.
    P ERHAPS BECAUSE SHE WAS READY, ONE DAY IN HER SOPHOMORE year a young man wandered out of the rain and into her life. He was drenched but his hair was perfectly intact, so sleekly gelled it looked bulletproof. His wet skin glowed like chrome. His name was Pak Morelli. Mother Korean, father Italian American.
    “Is that hard for you?” she asked.
    He laughed. “You know anyone that’s pure-blood? I grew up on
kim-chee
and lasagna.”
    They spent their first nights fused together in the backseat of his car, making love with such abandon the car shimmied and bounced on its springs. Passing street dogs paused, listening to their cries. Then, a friend loaned him an apartment where they began meeting between classes twice a week.
    On late bus rides back to Nanakuli, Ana crossed one leg over the other, still smelling their yeasty coupling. She felt a different kind ofexhaustion then, her body fulfilled, aglow. Most days they didn’t talk much; what they physically gave each other seemed enough. Yet she was struck by his scrupulous lack of curiosity about her life, her aspirations. They saw each other several months before he broke it off.
    “This girl found out about you … she’s Chinese.”
    Ana shook her head confused. “And?”
    “She says it’s you or her.”
    “Why? Because I’m ‘country,’ from Nanakuli?” She sat up slowly. “Or because I’m
kanaka?
”
    His hesitation set up a keen attentiveness in her.
    “…  Both. I guess.”
    She rose from the bed and dressed, keeping her tongue still in her head, swallowing back profanities. Sighing, he half stood, pulling on his shirt and pants.
    “No. Take
off
your clothes.” Her voice was suddenly different. It wasn’t kidding.
    Puzzled, he stripped down to his underwear and sat on the bed. “Lie down. Turn your face to the wall.”
    He thought she wanted to lie behind him, and hold him. Maybe beg him.
    He lay down, facing the wall. “Ana, I’m really sorry that …”
    “Shut up. Don’t turn around until I’m gone. And don’t
ever
look at me again. Not on campus. Not anywhere.”
    She picked up his shoes and shirt and pants, flung them