Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Author: Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
- Language: English
- Genre: Mythology
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
A Catalogue of Kānaka Superstitions, as
Told by Your Mother
Don’t sleep with your feet by the door! Those dangling, dreaming toes are
sweet as sucrose to the Night Marchers, and they will drag you from your
slumber by your feet.
Don’t sleep with your head under the open window! When the demon
visits, he will wedge his knife through the slit and slice you open by the
neck.
Don’t drive over the Pali with pork in your car! The spirits of Kamapua‘a
and Pele will kindle a war in that tinderbox you call a head, leave you with
the ashes of lifelong bad luck scattered over your mushy brain bits.
Don’t saddle your boat with bananas! You’ll flounder along the seas with
more bad luck, and, of course, no more fish for you.
Don’t smash the mo‘o with your rubba slippa! That’s our ‘aumakua. Every
dead relative who hasn’t passed over, confined to the wet elastic limbs of
the house gecko. Could be cousin Jerry, he died last year. Or Moloka‘i
grandma. Or your father.
Don’t kill the moth! Could also be your father.
Don’t give your sister a closed flower lei! She’s hāpai, you know, due in
just a few weeks, and if you close her womb like that, the baby will slip
from her legs before it’s ready, choking on its cord.
Don’t bury those chopsticks in your rice! That’s how we left the chopsticks
at your dad’s funeral, all straight up like that. Bad luck!
Don’t whistle at night! You know what happens if the Night Marchers hear
you? You know how fast they’ll climb over the Ko‘olaus just to whittle
down your spirit? You’ll have to put everything you’ve got into evading
them should you hope to whistle and live. My baby honey girl, don’t you
want to live?
Don’t stack those dishes like that! Four is a rotten number. You know the
kanji for shi is the same kanji for death? How much money we’ve spent on
your Japanese lessons, and still you make mistakes. You should study
longer, work harder, learn our language, practice your penmanship, do
good. Make your father proud. After everything that has happened to us,
don’t you want to make your father so proud?
Don’t stand between your sister and her husband like that! You’re not their
kid, and anyway, you standing in the middle like that means you’ll be the
first to die. You like make dead die? What would I do without my baby? I
can’t live without you, my baby.
Don’t pinch your nose like that! That smell is only fresh flowers, a flute of
music in our house. No matter that we don’t keep flowers here, the smell
stay from the other side. The rush of plucked ‘ilima, sweet pucker of
puakenikeni, don’t you know these are the fragrances of your father? His
spirit is paying us a visit … finally.
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