Da Spirit Market of Kakaʻako

In a 2021 paper titled - “Ka Poʻe ʻAiā o ka Honua - The Tabooless People of the Earth” - then University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa political science student Kaʻiminaʻauao Kahikina wrote:

“As a child, I grew up behind Da Spirit Market in Kakaʻako in a rusted old BMW with my mother ʻĀhihi, our dog Ginger, and my brother, Nīʻau. We were houseless and hungry, seeking shelter and family as refugees of American progress. My mother found work at the ‘Aiā Print Company as a receptionist, where she met Auntie Lipo. Auntie Lipo’s Mother, Mama Afi, let us park our car for free in her empty lot behind Mama Paleka’s home, now called Da Spirit Market.

In 1986, Mama Afi bought the old Industrial warehouse next door to Mama Paleka’s home and turned it into a print shop. As she gathered more clientele across the island, Mama Afi set out employing her many sons and daughters of the night in the safe space she created. She could not help every soul she looked upon, but she had many sisters who could. Mama Afi always found a way.

More than just a print shop and market of spirits, the entire community was ʻaiā, a network of norm-breakers and broken-hearted misfits who always found themselves on the wrong side of wars against immorality and vulgarity. Da Spirit Market was the heart of the entire network.”

 What enfolds in Ka’imi’s paper is a story about

Professor Kathy Ferguson

POLS 610: Anarchism

Fall 2021

Kakā’s Hanging Gardens:

There within the rusted and shit-brined streets of Kakaʻako, stands a small makeshift shack from the early industrial period of Honolulu. It housed multiple families from 1905 onward, slowly losing its charm to the sun’s cruel temper. As abused as this pocket of drabness was, the structure remained steadfast to the dusty earth like a rotting tooth in a tight socket. Pukapuka sheets of pewter roofing interlocked tightly upon splintered beams of ʻōhiʻa wood, which extended a few inches off the front entrance. The porch awning was the only contemporary feature of this makeshift campsite, as it had been created by fixing a fiberglass sheet uncomfortably to the rest of the roofing. During big rains, a waterfall formed upon the entire face of the entrance, pushing through a large gap between the house’s late-Victorian and early-Bushian MacGyvering modifications.

The floor of this decaying establishment also showed signs of being overtaken by the encroaching concrete sprawl. Around 1990, someone thought it would be good to completely pave the floors with asphalt, making the street and shack floor virtually indistinguishable, except for the far-right corner of the kitchen, which maintained its original dirt flooring.

The place smelled of fish skins and limu as drying octopi hung suspended by rusted and salt-corroded hooks, which burrowed deep into the ʻōhiʻa beams above. Flies found refuge between tentacle membranes and suckers. If one stood in the damp embrace of this undesirable and decrepit atrium of Cthulhu, one might experience the warm drips of ocean excrement on a forehead or brow. This splintery abode was called “Da Spirit Market.” Its father, Uncle Richard, a retired grandfather of eighteen, maintained the area’s balance for over twenty years.

Da Spirit Market was the wai lama (rum) capital for the urban slum of the lower class and houseless laborers in the area. Its blood flowed through the bodies of plumbers, printshop workers, car mechanics, window cleaners, carpenters, opera singers, schoolteachers, kumu hula, musicians, veterans, prostitutes, tofu makers, ballet teachers, strippers, pawnshop owners, and many more fine and unique beings. It had everything one could need or desire, from pūlehu octopus to musubi, beer, cigarettes, batteries, cold drinks, ice cream, pastries, candy, and a bathroom. More than this, though, the market was the heart of Kakaʻako. It produced a consistent pulse among errant souls and kamaʻāina alike.

The market was also a gathering spot for the slum’s innovators who dwelled in the dark and damp spaces of Kakaʻako. These were the outcasts of a bygone era who maintained a steady yet unseen presence in the streets and alleyways of industrial Honolulu. They were the networks of “low culture” who surveyed and occupied this perpetually mildewed Venice of the Pacific. The market’s influence reached the pearly gates of Ala Moana Shopping Center and about three blocks west on the ʻEwa side of Ward Avenue. If you were observant enough, patches of rich vegetation could quench the eye in mundane spaces. Gardens of bok choy, tomatoes, eggplant, rosemary, spring onions, kalamungay, pumpkins, cucumbers, zucchini, nīoi, bell peppers, long squash, and citrus trees could be found in gutters, at the base of telephone poles, empty warehouse roofs, along fences, crawling along buildings walls, or planted in truck tires. If one cared to look, one would find a garden among rusted oddities.

The gardens were for everyone to eat. There was no rule on how much one could take, yet everyone practiced a diligent refrain from over-harvesting. Almost no one outside of Da Market’s web ever saw this bounty; we were all so grateful for that. The tūtū-man who maintained and planted these hanging gardens was Uncle Kakā.

Uncle Kakā was a houseless veteran of Japanese and Hawaiian descent. He was raised in Pālolo during the tail end of the Great Depression, where he learned a thing or two about farming from his mother, a Japanese immigrant. Kakā’s mother did not speak a lick of English and preferred to ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi with her Hawaiian husband and their six children. Kakā’s mother spoke his father’s native language until the day she died, having learned it through her work as a farm laborer in Moanalua in the early 1920s. She fed her family through the depression and the Second World War by meticulously saving seeds from every harvest, cross-breeding resilient crops, and working with a knowledge of moon cycles and rain patterns in Pālolo that she learned from Kakā’s tūtū, Līpoa, who lived five years beyond her hundredth birthday.

A few years after Kakā graduated from McKinley High School in 1947, he was drafted into the Korean War. While in Korea, Kakā’s mother passed away from complex tuberculosis, leaving four out of his six siblings in the care of his alcoholic father and his wife, Luhi. Kakā never talked about the Korean War except when he showed off his faded and leathery Tweety Bird tattoo on his right bicep. He claimed, rather proudly, that a fellow soldier in Korea tattooed him with pen ink and a sewing needle.

Kakā returned home after the war to discover his mother had passed and that his father had taken Kakā’s wife, Luhi, as a lover. His younger siblings, Kakā found, were neglected and abused, two of them running away to the Mokauea fishing village for work. The accumulating pressure of the war, death, betrayal, jealousy, and profound sadness broke through Kakā’s spirit or, as he described it, “ua nahā aku ke pani wai o ka naʻau.” “The dam of the guts broke forth,” and the water flowed red. Kakā murdered his father with a hunting knife and cut off Luhi’s ears with the serrated lid of a B&M can of baked bread.

Following the murder of his father and the mutilation of his wife, Kakā was imprisoned for fifteen years. After his release, he bounced from job to job as an automobile mechanic along the Windward Coast of Oʻahu. Finally, Kakā settled in Kakaʻako in the early 1980s, working for a small auto shop. As he described it, he felt safe in the places where all the ragged people go. He made a home in his 1968 Volkswagen Bus among his comrades, dwelling within it for the remainder of his life.

Kakā was the first patron of Da Spirit Market. When the doors opened in the mid-1990s, Kakā was Uncle Richard’s first customer. The two eventually became lifelong friends through shared experiences in the Korean War. Uncle Richard was the grump of the area, and Uncle Kakā was the sunshine. The tūtū-men were the guardian uncles of the riffraff and ragged creatures.

The Hanging Gardens of Kaka’ako had its beginning with Da Spirit Market’s gutter system, which slowly spread to the opera-studio roof, mechanic shop yards, alleys, unused lots of land, abandoned busses, and business fence lines. Too old to climb onto the roof, I helped Uncle Kakā by tending to the highest reaches of the garden sprawl every Tuesday and Friday after school.

I constructed narrow pathways out of fiberglass panels, two-by-four playground slides, and other treasures I found in the dumpsters behind the market. I got onto the roof above the opera studio by climbing up a metal fence to a cinderblock ledge. There, I scurried flat against the ledge to a small screen door Kakā made connecting the outside to the interior of the opera studio’s storage room. Behind a stack of posters that read “The Honolulu Symphony Orchestra Presents Carmina Burana” was a fire-escape ladder leading to the Honolulu Opera Company’s studio warehouse roof.

I created this section of Uncle Kakā’s garden with the help of Auntie Lipo and her daughter Līhau, who worked with my mother at the ʻAiā Print Group a few roofs over. They helped me smuggle soil from the adjacent development and procure small rubber tires and washtubs for raised beds. Uncle Phil (the plumber), a block ma kai, donated PVC pipes and buckets and helped build a water catchment and irrigation system for Kakā’s hanging garden.

I spent my afternoons and evenings tending to the medicinal and food crops for Da Spirit Market circuitry. The food I produced was shared by families connected to the three buildings the gardens rested upon and anyone who felt the pains of hunger. On Friday evenings, when Uncle Richard busied himself charring octopus over an open fire of trash, I helped Uncle Kakā with wrapping produce in wet newspaper, jarring kimchi, pickling cucumber with ogo, and making “Anykine Stew,” a mixture of surplus harvest, for our hungry friends both human and non-human.

We never skipped a Friday pāʻina, and at the end of the evening, after everyone had been fed, the guitars and washtub bases came out to serenade the shadows of an unseen people in a language familiar only to those displaced by greed, war, and poverty in the underbelly of American progress.

Lipo’s Poultice:

Let me tell you a little moʻolelo about Lipo, “The Witch of Kakaʻako.” Lipo was born in 1960 to Harriette Kealiʻipuleʻole of North Kohala and Jose Manuel Vasquez of Honokaʻa. Reared in the tiny town of Hāwi on Hawaiʻi island, Lipo, her mother, father, and six siblings made do in a single-bedroom home nestled between two adjoining creeks. Her mother was a medicine woman who employed a mixture of Hawaiian, Chinese, and Portuguese healing practices. However, her prolific knowledge of endemic and native medicinal plants of Hawaiʻi, along with their many uses, afforded her the title of kahuna lāʻau lapaʻau.

Jose was a first-generation Puerto Rico immigrant to Hawaiʻi, a skilled farmer, and a gifted slack-key guitarist. He was known by friends and the townspeople of Hāwi as Borinki-Kāne (the Puerto Rican man), or Bo for short. Bo was a gentle, warm man with a smooth, textured Pidgin accent and thick curls complementing a steady, deep, brown-eyed stare. According to Auntie Lipo, “he was māhū, he was muffy, and he was gay! But mom neva care! She wen love him just da same cause he went give her all her bebes.” Though Harriet didn’t mind her husband’s forbidden sexuality, the townspeople caught on eventually when it was discovered that Bo and a paniolo named Tani, the Sheriff’s son, were engaged in a nefarious sexual relationship.

By Lipo’s tenth birthday, her father, Bo, had mysteriously vanished and was never heard from again. Auntie Lipo insists that the Sheriff and his deputies murdered her father. She never did find closure with her dad’s disappearance. “You know, bebe,” Auntie Lipo said, “my faddah was so lokomaikaʻi he would never even hurt one 'opihi! I never going forget his soft voice and all da Puerto Rican meles he wen play and sing.”

A year after her father disappeared, Harriet gathered her kids and their belongings and moved them to Oʻahu, using her savings to buy their airfare. The family boarded an airplane from the newly built Kona International Airport in May of 1970 and left Hawaiʻi Island, never looking back. Upon arriving in Honolulu, Harriet and the kids were met by her brother, Papa Waiau, a lower-campus janitor for Punahou School and a medicine man well known in the Papakōlea, Pūowaina, and Pauoa Valley areas. Harriet enrolled her youngest children in school, excluding Lipo, whom she and Papa Waiau trained in Hawaiian medicine.

Lipo’s skill was extraordinary for as young as she was because her gifts lay in the dream world. Soon, Harriet and Papa Waiau would send young Lipo on home visits by herself. As Auntie Lipo expressed, “Da kūpuna come to me in dreams, yeah? Dey tell me what kine plant I need for pick, how many, where I going pick ʻem and how I going put ʻem togedda.” Each step of Lipo’s gathering and procuring medicine was strict and always entailed prayers to her ancestors and gods.

If ever pressed about the use of the Christian God in her practice, Auntie Lipo often scoffed at the notion. “For those God-fearing people who say dey filled with His holy spirit, I only see their swollen tongues” was her classic response. For Auntie Lipo, God was an empty thought, a stolen future, and a vacuum of virtues. “No need bring God into da mix, bebe. He is what da haoles call one all-seeing eye. Kinda funny, yea? I just tink about one big ass eye in da sky blinking at me like one pervert at Ala Moana Beach Park! Dey say he wen shit da world out in seven days. Hah! Even one Hawaiian knows how Podagee dat sounds, and we supposed to be da stupid ones. Seven days, my left chichi. Da gods and their creatures wen birth this world. A planet dis nani was crafted by many. And you know what, bebe? Every single one of those ancestors, gods, and creatures I stay attached to at da piko are always there wit me, wit us. Would you trust one house built in seven days or one ancient world still being birthed?”

This rejection of the Christian God has its roots in Auntie Lipo’s family name, Kealiʻipuleʻole. The name means “the chief that doesn’t pray,” which, according to Auntie Lipo, has its history with the first arrival of Christian missionaries. “My ‘ohana came from a line of kāhuna dat lived outside da kapus of da old days. Dey had their own beliefs and rules, and people never crossed dem. Dey was called da “ʻAiā.”

When da haole came ova hea and did da Jesus ting, my ʻohana wen continue to be 'aiā. All the missionaries was all huhū, so dey wen try convince all da people for push us out. But, da people neva like cuz das were dey wen get their medicine, you know? So aftah, nobody wen listen to da missionaries because dey no mo da good medicine, yea? So dey [the missionaries] was all butt hurt or whatevah and named my ancestors the chief who no like pray! Da funny ting is, we did pray, and we still do! We just no pray to Iesu!”

When Lipo was fifteen, her mother and Papa Waiau were in a fatal automobile accident on Roundtop Drive. They were returning from an appointment with an elderly woman suffering from gout when they were reared off the road by a tour bus making its way to the Tantalus Lookout. They spiraled off a steep slope, crashing headfirst into a rock wall that separated two properties. Harriet and Papa Waiau died instantly upon impact.

Lipo and her six siblings were immediately taken into the State’s custody and split up into multiple foster homes. “Dey neva even told us what wen happen. Dey just took us from da house, and before I knew Mama and Papa Waiau wen make, we was in da office of Mr. Jake Fujii, our case manager. He neva care where we wen go as long as we were out of his office, da sooner da bettah. I was placed in da home of one haole military family in Moanalua, and my other siblings was scattered through tree oddah houses. We lost contact years ago.”

Lipo hated the Blossoms. They were a zealous Mormon military family of three named John, Renee, and Shawnee Blossom of Salt Lake City, Utah. They had recently moved to Hawaiʻi as John was stationed at Puʻuloa. At first, the family seemed kind enough, even buying Lipo new clothes and shoes for school. But, this warmth didnʻt last long. After Mr. Fujii stopped making his regular visits, Lipo was taken out of school to be “home-schooled” by the Blossoms. Shawnee, on the other hand, was still enrolled at Moanalua.

Lipo became the family help, an indentured worker to the Blossoms. She was renamed Bessy by Mr. Blossom because, as she shared, “he said dat he neva like da sound of my Mongrel name.” Mrs. Blossom, a high society haole, put Lipo to work making house and cooking from the crack of dawn until the sun was well below the underworld. Lipo worked hard to keep out of the Blossoms’ way. She made it her daily goal to remain invisible. If she got through the day without hearing her fake name, Bessy, she would imprint a tiny notch in the quarter-round of her sleeping corner in the laundry room with her thumbnail. There was no real reward for her invisibility, and Lipo knew that. However, on some occasions, she found it soothing to run her pointer finger along the tiny indents she made because they reminded her of her mother’s washboard on laundry day.

After two years of servitude, Lipo was given a “special bed” in the nursery next to Mr. and Mrs. Blossom’s room. The Blossoms were going to have another baby, and the pregnancy had been complicated for the lady of the house. It was discovered early on in Mrs. Blossom’s pregnancy that Lipo possessed an impressive knowledge of birthing practices and herbal remedies for pain, bleeding, sleeplessness, and other more severe pregnancy complications.

As a child, Lipo was trained in making and administering poultices, teas, baths, and massaging techniques for pregnancies ranging from no risk to high risk. This ancient and complex knowledge of medicine came naturally to her through ancestral dreams and lessons from her mother and uncle.

“One of da most important tings for do when someone stay hāpai (pregnant) is keeping bad thoughts, words, or actions away from da maddah. Da faddah gotta do his part too, you know? If dey stay fighting, den dat pilikia going follow da baby. More den da medicine, da pono of da’ ʻohana dat is one important kahua (foundation) for da maddah to give birth.” Lipo understood the process of pregnancy as a process of world-making. If the pregnancy started off in hewa, meaning in wrongdoing, then wrong would surely follow the child in life. The hewa would present itself in many ways, from sickness to skin rashes, ear infections to blindness, and sometimes, even death.

For Auntie Lipo, a child is a tendril, the newest filament in an ancient world. “I maikaʻi ke kalo i ka ʻōhā,” the quality of the kalo is judged by the offspring it produces. “We are world-makers, bebe,” she often said. “We no can just wing ’em, you know? Das what da ancestors tell us. It no matter if it’s giving birth or taking care of da community. We gotta be prepared for see da future as being shaped by our lima (hands).”

After Mrs. Blossom gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Lipo was charged with being the baby’s wet nurse. Mrs. Blossom was unable to produce breast milk and resisted the thought of feeding baby formula to her newborn. Though Lipo was uncomfortable breastfeeding Mrs. Blossom’s baby, she did as she was told for fear of reprimand.

Lipo’s bond with the baby evolved quickly, and she secretly named her Leinani. “She was such a good baby! She never cried or fussed when she was with me, and she would coo all gentle kine. I loved dat baby girl. She was my lei nani; my pretty lei always clasped to me.” After six or so months of breastfeeding Leinani, Mrs. Blossom grew jealous of their connection and brought Lipo back to her old sleeping arrangement in the downstairs laundry room. There she lay in isolation and wept for what seemed like months, feeling the old marks she had carved into the quarter-round to make it through her separation anxiety.

At seventeen and almost a year after Leinani was born, Lipo was quietly expelled from the Blossom’s home. The State stopped checking on her a year prior. Perhaps they felt that a Hawaiian orphan would not be missed, or maybe they felt that it was unnecessary to check up on a girl cared for by a high-ranking military family. “I tink dey just forgot about me ova there. Good ting, I neva like wen da social workers came to check anyways. I always had to lie and make nice kine for da Blossoms. Even if I told dem about what dey made me do, dey not going care anyways. I was just one dark Hawaiian girl with borinki hair, one service animal.”

One Saturday and without warning, Mr. Blossom offloaded Lipo at Thomas Square Park with a McDonald’s cheeseburger and ten bucks. The last thing he said to her was, “Good luck Bessy! Don’t think about coming back. If you get caught out here, and they bring you back to us, you’ll be sorry!”

There, against the backdrop of a smokey dark park interior, stood a seventeen-year-old Lipo in a tattered dress and slippers, terrified out of her mind. She let her sadness flow through hushed weeping and shaky sighs that only the hanging banyan trees could hear. Perhaps they were both tears of joy and sorrow, virtually indistinguishable at that moment. “I was so happy to get out of dat house! I thought I was going die in there with those crazy haoles. But I was sad because I would never see my little angel [Leinani] again. I would have stayed longer for her if they never kick me out.”

After a few days of sleeping on the damp and centipede-infested earth of Thomas Square Park, Lipo became acquainted with the sirens of Kakaʻako’s underworld. They were the girls and boys of Afi’s house. Some of them pooched, and others thieved to survive. All of them labored in unregulated spheres of urban modernity. This was accepted by Mama Afi as long as they used part of their earnings to feed their brothers, sisters, and the shadowy figures of the bustling metropolis, both human and other-than-human. Afi was the matron figure of the underworld, the Kanaka mother of dark spaces and shady dealings. Well, that was her facade, of course. Afi was less of a ringleader and more of a protector and teacher of unwanted souls. The only network she was guilty of running was “da night circus,” which was a large, organized security club of eyes, ears, and muscle that watched over Honolulu’s vulnerable and young night workers.

When Afi laid her eyes on young Lipo chewing laukahi and spreading the poultice upon the bleeding blister of one of her sons named Manō, she instantly claimed the orphan as her own. “Mama Afi,” Lipo recollected, “saw me chew up laukahi (plantain) from da park for make one poultice for Manō’s blister. He had a bad sore from walking da streets and pooching in Wakīkī the night before, and I saw dat faka limping and knew I gotta help him.” When Mama Afi saw Lipo at work in the shade of a domineering banyan tree, as the story goes, she unfurled her pointer finger and said, “Naʻu ʻoe, you are mine.”

Afi’s Fire:

Mama Afi was born Jarred Kīelelihilihikūpuna Luahi of Lualualei Homestead Road, Nānākuli in 1946. She was the son of a Reverend, Iokepa Luahi, and a school teacher, Mrs. Abigail Luahi. Jarred’s parents were staples of the Nānākuli community, and they spent their lives buoyant along the tides of eschatological wars on immorality and vulgarity. They considered themselves, rather narcissistically, disciples of their God, His word, His body, and His charity. They were a couple that never questioned the power of atonement, even when they felt they must atone for the customary gestures, movements, and thoughts of their ancestors whose blood flowed within the cracks and crevices of the land. They were blind to the paradoxical landscape they moved through.

 “Makapō lāua ala” was Afi’s response when pried about her parents. “Dey was so makapō (blind) to their contradictions! Dad was one real buggah! He spent his one life out there trying to push out muffies like me, calling us “Satan’s kulu kissahs. The Nānākuli folks at the church listened to him, you know? When Cruz boys started their monthly ‘beat-up one māhū day,’ he turned the oddah cheek. Well, until Shantelle Brown, the Sherriff’s bebe, was murdered on one of these evil hunts. Dad was all bussup aftah he heard about Shantelle’s death because dey grew up togeddah. Well, at least dat’s what dad wen say…I knew da real reason!

Dad and Shantelle was oinking since back in da day. Well, actually, dad loved her and had loved her before she wen start calling herself Shantelle. He did well to hide it from da community. Da only person he neva could hide it from was Tūtū Luahi, Dad’s maddah. She caught dem back when Dad was working for Oʻahu Railway. He was probably sixteen at da time.

Tūtū Luahi neva care if Dad loved Shantelle. Her only concern was for Dad. If Dad’s dad, who was also da reverend, found out, Dad would be kicked out of da community. So, Tūtū Luahi spoke to my faddah. She told him dat she loved him and dat who he loved was for him to decide. Tūtū told Dad about da ancient practice of hoʻāikāne. Dat in da ancient days, if get two people with da same kine maʻi (genitals) and da two like come togeddah, dey when hoʻāikāne. It wasn’t always about sex, you know? People when hoʻāikāne because dey had pilina. What dey did in da hale was for dem to know only.”

Afi’s father denied and rejected Tūtū Luahi’s inferring that he was, well, in a relationship with someone māhū. So, he forbade his mother from ever mentioning it again. As Afi’s dad continued to rise in ranks within the church, he continued to see and love Shantelle, sneaking out with her once a month far up into the nāhelehele (forest) at night. According to Afi, these nights always fell on a full moon, and I reckon that the moon served to guide their nervous feet into the uliuli of palapalai and whispering spirits.

Afi’s Mother, Abigail, knew about the relationship early on in her marriage. She made the mistake of following her husband on foot in the middle of the night along the dirt road a few miles into the deep recesses of the valley. There, Abigail laid her eyes upon her husband with what she described as a moʻo wahine, a deity of the wooded and watery places. She frantically ran back to the family home, cutting her feet up along the way. When she arrived at the Luahi house, she made such a commotion that Tūtū Luahi awoke. Trembling, Afi’s mother told Tūtū the entire story without pause. Confused and mystified, she mistook Shantelle for a moʻo wahine, half reptile and half human, a shapeshifter of water and earth.

Tūtū Luahi, unphased by the horrific retelling, assured Abigail that what she saw was indeed a moʻo wahine, as Shantelle’s family were descendants of a moʻo wahine from Mākua Valley. Tūtū Luahi explained that moʻo were shapeshifting water spirits. They can present themselves either as human or moʻo. Sometimes, both through a form called kaʻapahu, split in two. Their human body is described as exceedingly beautiful, cloaked in long and lustrous locks of hair. Their moʻo form is much more ambiguous and harder to describe. In almost all moʻolelo they are kupaianaha, awesome.

The yellowing of foliage foretells their presence, or, if ever seen in person, they may be adorned in a finely prepared yellow kapa. In the epics, moʻo are sometimes men and sometimes women. This particular moʻo was neither as Shantelle was māhū. But, to Abigail, the entity she saw her husband entangled with was indeed kupaianaha.

Tūtū Luahi, according to Afi’s retelling of the story, made Abigail promise she would never speak of what she saw, lest Iokepa and that family lose their standing in the community and risk falling into destitution. The tired and betrayed Abigail agreed to silence, as she was pregnant and in no condition to be begging for food. So, from that night on, Abigail carried a deep and burning hatred for Iokepa along with his secret, hiding her betrayal behind an ʻōkolehao-tainted smile.

When Jarred was born, Abigail and Iokepa offered her to Tūtū Luahi as it was customary to offer your firstborn to their grandparents to be raised. Jarred was raised by her Tūtū in a quaint Nānākuli home on the Luahi family plot. Tūtū-Man Luahi had passed a year prior from lung disease, leaving Tūtū to prepare for the coming child alone. She set out reinvigorating a small mahi behind her home so that all would be lako.

Abigail delivered baby Jarred at home and among the aunties of the church, most of whom were family. Tūtū Luahi gave Jarred her inoa Hawaiʻi, Kīelelihilihikūpuna: the ancestors are the petals of the gardenia. The thought behind the name, as Afi shared, was that the gardenia’s inner bud was the child wrapped in a pūʻolo of petals. The petals themselves were the ancestors who held the bud throughout her life. As the flower matured, the lihilihi or petals unfurled to reveal a beautiful and fragrant bud whose perfume grows increasingly intoxicating as the flower ages. When the life of the gardenia bush no longer pushes water to the extremities of its bloom, the flower detaches and falls to the ground. The bud held in place by the petals of the gardenia returns to the earth in the embrace of her ancestors.

Jarred loved her grandmother with everything she had, for hers was a warm and embracing love steeped in Kanaka Maoli rythms. Though she understood it very well, Tūtū Luahi refused the English language with every ounce of her being. She raised Jarred in their mother tongue, pretending to not understand Jarred when she spoke anything other than ‘ōlelo Kanaka.

 Afi’s face lit up when she talked about her Tūtū’s ancient demeanor. “When I wen try fo talk English to her, she would say ʻʻOe, mai namu mai i kēlā ʻōlelo āu e hele ai i ke kula e ʻimi, no ka mea, ʻaʻole hiki i nā kūpuna i ka pō ke hoʻomaopopo i kāu mea e walaʻau ana. Inā ʻaʻole hiki iā lākou ke hoʻomaopopo, ʻaʻole au makemake e lohe i kou waha palalē,’ which means...stop talking dat shit if da ancestors can’t understand. If dey no can understand, I no like hear your farting mouth.”

As a young’n, Jarred avoided her parents as much as she could by staying under the malu of her tūtū’s firm protection. She was aware of her father’s affair and her mother’s drinking and despised the fallacy of their purity, which seeped through the plush exterior of their hollow personalities like wall primer over a water stain. It was not that she disdained the people they were behind closed doors. No, she hated the whiteness they had embraced.

Church services were switched from ‘ōlelo Kanaka to English, and English was encouraged to be taught and spoken in the home and in public. Shoes and clean clothing were one’s ticket into the churchyard, no matter if one had access to running water or a stable income for the luxury of footwear. If a congregation member failed to comply with their strict moral codes and rules on hygiene, they were penalized and had to pay a day’s wage for every infraction. If they couldn’t make the payments, they were not welcome in God’s house, and their extended family was shamed.

For Iokepa and Abigail, the money acquired from shamed parishioners and pushed donations went to their impressive wai ʻawaʻawa o ʻAmelika (booze) collection, new clothes, and minty Cadillacs. The two abused their authority and flaunted their wealth. No one dared speak out against Iokepa as he believed himself a warrior of the holiest God, and he acted as such. If one were kicked out of the church, the wrath of God would surely follow. If not the wrath of God, it would be the cold shoulders of their family and community.

Abigail was particularly cruel to parishioners. She used her authority to impose brutal and conniving punishments on the needy and poor. “Mama was nuts, babes,” Afi confessed. “She would wake up early in da morning on Sundays for go gather kiawe branches…you already know where dis is going.”

Before services started, Abigail would quietly lay the thorny twigs under a thin layer of dusty soil in front of the church entrance. Without proper footwear, the kiawe thorns would impale anyone walking onto the church grounds. Even if parishioners wore the appropriate footwear, the kiawe thorns were long enough to penetrate any unsuspecting person’s shoe and foot. “Mama would smile from her hiding place in da house when someone wen get poke. Then, she would put on one fake concerned face and go run to mālama her victims.”

Afi seemed unsettled when recounting this story but continued to tell me that her mother “was one fabulous actress! She always wen dream of being one of dose TV preachahs! But she was stuck wit us in da heat of Nānākuli, with one husband who neva love her and one hairdresser dat always wen punish and fry her hair! Poor ting, yea?”

Jarred continued to live her happy and quiet existence with her tūtū until she turned fifteen. Tūtū Luahi had developed dementia in her old age seemingly overnight. Afi was surprised to find her tūtū had wandered far down the road to the Victorino’s house. The Victorinos were kind enough to call Jarred’s dad, who came and got his mother. She became increasingly disheveled and distressed the weeks following this event, and Iokepa decided to place her in the Lunalilo Nursing Home in Town.

Jarred had to move in next door with her parents, where the two often lambasted the young teen for her femininity, poor English, and insisting on speaking ʻōlelo Kanaka to her younger siblings. “I neva like listen to my parents, bebe.” Afi confessed, “Tūtū would have wanted dem to know how for speak our language.”

All of these changes confused and frightened Jarred shitless. She felt her body and spirit moving and unfurling like an ‘ōhiʻa ʻai in bloom. Only, the liko and hua of this ‘ōhiʻa ʻai never fell upon the dark earth to be recycled into a new season. Instead, they grew more crimson, more abundant with every new face of the moon. As Jarred’s spirit shifted, so too did her strength. In these moment of intensity, Jarred would recollect the story her Tūtū Luahi shared with her about Shantelle’s moʻo form, the beauty of this form, and the mana it exuded. Perhaps Jarred, too, was moʻo māhū.

Hiding these changes from her parents’ suspicious eyes, Jarred patiently waited for them to leave the house before she allowed herself to shapeshift. If they opened the church for Bible study or community meetings, Jarred knew she had at least two hours to be kaʻapahu in communion with her two forms, both kāne and wahine.

In the heat of her parent’s bedroom, Jared met herself weekly in ritual transformation. She would place her mother’s “The Best of Linda Dela Cruz” album upon the record player and gently lay the needle down with care and adoration. Her favorite of Dela Cruz’s songs is “Wahine Uʻi (Beautiful Woman).” Jarred would take her time dressing in her mother’s Sunday finest while lip-syncing to Dela Cruz’s heart-stabbing mele. “You should have been there, bebe,” Afi told me one Sunday afternoon. “I wen make all nani and dramas in mom’s Fifties dresses, her hats, and her shoes! I tell you; I was so gorgeous!”

It wouldn’t be until a year after her tūtū died that Jarred was discovered by her mother, dressed head to toe in her fine silk muʻumuʻu. “She wen almost pass out, babes. Her face came all purple, and she went let out one scream. I guess dey wen just come home from da churchyard and my maddah came in ahead for scold me cause da music was too loud. When my faddah heard my maddah scream, I dollah-bet you he thought someone wen make. He came running in with one kitchen knife all frantic. When he saw me with my face all beat fo da gods, he dropped da knife and dat sucka wen straight into mama’s foot. It all happened so fast, and before I could say anything, my maddah wen pass out, for real kine. It was like a climax to one of God’s sick games before my eyes. God wen punish me for being māhū and den punish my mom for being one sadist.”

That night, Jarred was thrown onto the nicotine-stained black leather seats of her father’s Cadillac. Iokepa took off driving madly, inhaling his cigarette’s fumes with angst and purpose. Frightened by her father’s rage, Jarred sat there in the backseat, holding back tears from her blackened eyes.

Without thinking twice, Iokepa beat the living daylights out of Jarred before tossing her into the back of his Cadillac. He was beside himself. Perhaps, still reeling from the pain of losing Shantelle, Iokepa either feared his son facing the same fate as his moʻo or was deeply ashamed about what Jarred’s queerness would do to his status should the parishioners find out. Either way, Jarred was disowned and dumped far away from Nānākuli and in the seedy and dank underworld of Thomas Square Park.

There, Jarred slept beneath the park’s centipede-infested banyan trees for a few nights until one early morning, a gentle stranger passing by noticed the rouge clinging to Jarred’s swollen cheeks. This stranger, as Afi described the encounter, “wore dis black holokū that was cinched for the gods at da waist, wit one long train dat was pulled up and clipped to her hip. She had on shiny black silk gloves and three Hawaiian gold bracelets, all with da black enamel lettering. She wen pull up her tick pāhoehoe hair in one black pāpale like one gracious lady on Sunday. Around her hat had one beautiful pīkake lei hulu dat rested below da word ‘kuokoa.’ Kūʻokoʻa means independence, freedom, and liberty, you know bebe? So, when I seen dis Princess Ka’iulani incarnate, I had to stop and stare back!”

This lady in question was Mama Paleka Kawahineʻaiāokaluaahi. Bearing a name that connected her to the matron of the fiery pit, Paleka was known for her black-on-black couture, a sign of her perpetual mourning for her Hawaiian people and country. Some claimed she wore black because she was in allegiance with Pele. Others believed her to be Satan’s whore. Perhaps she was all of the above.

One thing’s for sure: she ran the streets with a velvet hammer. Her magic lay in the ability to help washed-up spirits find their kuleana. “She neva carried anyone for too long. Eventually, Mama would put you down and make you walk your path on two legs,” reflected Afi. “She was da weaver of paths; all of her children, friends, and enemies was all important knots in a network she wen weave togeddah so we all had chance for survive.”

Paleka was the mother of Waikīkī, Kakaʻako and Kalihi. She was an entertainer, designer, Hawaiian musician, and street philanthropist. Her talents were unmatched in all of Oʻahu, yet she never rose up to the fame she deserved. She had a feathery voice that could tickle the heart of any Army Commander and clothing designs that brought dishonor to the shores of Monaco. Mama was māhū and, for that reason, was a target for the vilest hate one could endure in “civilized society.” She felt safer in the underground, in the smokey dives, pop-up sissy bars, and kanikapila rooms around town.

One morning, as Mama Paleka was returning from a gig at some queer Territorial Normal School professor’s home, she saw sixteen-year-old Afi beaten and abandoned. Afi remembers this moment fondly, as if it had happened only a few moments before. “Mama Paleka wen extend her whole hand at me as if she like point without exhausting her fingah and said, ‘naʻu ʻoe, you are mine.’ Pau, dat was it! I was now her new daughter. She wen name me Keahiʻenaʻenaakawahineʻaiā, which means da fiery embers of the woman of the pit who refuses the taboos. I know, I know, the name sounds awkward in English—dramatic even. I was Mama’s embers, and she was da woman of the fiery pit. Together we burned white in the eternal nights of Honolulu, refusing to be put out on da streets, out of love, out of life. Mama neva need me fo live, but I needed her to learn dat there was oddah ways of living dat moved beyond what people thought was kapu (taboo).”

For two decades, Afi and Mama Paleka lived in a dilapidated home in Kakaʻako constructed with ‘ōhi’a wood from another era. It was a tiny house with dirt floors and rusted nails, but it was all they needed. “You know bebe,” Mama Afi once shared, “‘ōhiʻa is a perfect wood to use for building shit because it’s fire-resistant. With us two queens of da sacred flame, our little hale wen keep plenty fires from overflowing into da streets.”

Afi and Mama Paleka moved like a sly and cunning smoke that blanketed the world of the living in fine ash. As for the realm of the modern ‘aiā, the deadbeats of society, the nightwalkers, the shady entertainers, and queer performers, they were embraced by the anonymity and protection that came with the smoke. A smoke recognizable to only those who burned hot.

Before long, Paleka and Afi established a network throughout Waikīkī, Kakaʻako, and Kalihi that connected sex workers to doctors and contraceptives, queer artists to safe spaces, hungry stomachs to urban gardens, houseless workers to permanent housing or community camps, māhū to safe job opportunities and disowned queer youth to temporary and permanent homes. Mama Paleka could not take in every rejected soul she rested her eyes upon, but she had many sisters who could. She always found a way.

On January 3rd of 1983, Mama Paleka succumbed to aggressive lung cancer. She passed away at Straub Medical Center at around seven in the morning with Mama Afi by her side. Before her passing, Mama Paleka made Afi swear she would keep the flame of the ‘Aiā burning for as long as she lived. Afi promised, and with that, Mama Paleka returned i ka pō. That day, Kīlauea erupted once more. Ua hoʻi hou ka wahine ʻaiā i ka luaahi, the woman who rejected the taboos returned to the firey pit.

On that morning of mourning the death of Mama Paleka, Afi found an abandoned Lipo spreading a mashed-up poultice of laukahi onto the wounds of one of Afi’s many sons, Manō. “At that moment,” Mama Afi recollected, “I knew dat mama wen send me dis bebe for mālama. Aftah all, us witches gotta stick togeddah. For real kine though, I could see dat Lipo was one of us, a Hawaiian who, against all odds, wen fucking survive.

Set Them on Fire:

As a child, I grew up behind Da Spirit Market in a rusted old BMW with my mother ʻĀhihi, our dog Ginger, and my brother, Nīʻau. We were houseless and hungry, seeking shelter and family as refugees of American progress. My mother found work at the ‘Aiā Print Company as a receptionist, where she met Auntie Lipo. Auntie Lipo’s Mother, Mama Afi, let us park our car for free in her empty lot behind Mama Paleka’s home, now called Da Spirit Market.

In 1986, Mama Afi bought the old Industrial warehouse next door to Mama Paleka’s home and turned it into a print shop. As she gathered more clientele across the island, Mama Afi set out employing her many sons and daughters of the night in the safe space she created. She could not help every soul she looked upon, but she had many sisters who could. Mama Afi always found a way.

More than just a print shop and market of spirits, the entire community was ʻaiā, a network of norm-breakers and broken-hearted misfits who always found themselves on the wrong side of wars against immorality and vulgarity. Da Spirit Market was the heart of the entire network. Though Mama Afi sold the home to Uncle Richard in the 1990s, Richard—a close friend of Mama Paleka’s from high school—kept her portrait framed and displayed in the kitchen. The picture of Mama Paleka was placed above the hearth next to the pickled onion, hanging octopus, and a sign that read “Our Holy Mother of Waikīkī, Kakaʻako, and Kalihi.”

Uncle Kakā passed away in 2010 in his Volkswagen bus bundled up with his Hawaiian chili pepper sprouts. Mama Afi and Kakā had fallen in love in the Spring of 2001 while he was helping her establish a community garden in the Print Company’s parking lot. Mama Afi tried to convince Uncle Kakā to move into the print shop as she had illegally set up a home on the building’s third level. However, Uncle Kakā refused, preferring to live as he had for many years among the ragged people. After he passed, Mama Afi took to only wearing black muʻumuʻu in mourning for her dear love. Though it seemed the elders were passing, Mama Afi was still around and life continued with the steady pulse of the Market and its lonely creatures, both human and non-human.

In 2018, Da Spirit Market closed its doors for good under pressure from the city for building code violations. Not too long after, the Print Company went under. Paper printing for advertisements was becoming less necessary and more of an expensive commodity as social media networks expanded the influence of former clientele into new markets and faster communication.

Mama Afi and Auntie Lipo moved into a studio apartment on Kāheka Street right off of Kalākaua Avenue. Every Sunday afternoon, I met them to talk about the good old days. Auntie Lipo still maintained one remaining patch of Uncle Kakā’s hanging gardens, and she accessed it through the Opera Company’s street-level entrance. “You know babes, dey wen close off your screen door in da storage room of da opera building,” Auntie Lipo confessed nostalgically one Sunday evening. “I still get some of my medicine plants growing up there for Mama Afi’s rheumatism, da rest I gotta get in da mountains.”

Auntie Lipo was still making her poultices and healing remedies for many new and old faces of Kakaʻako’s inner firmament. She dreamed treatments into existence like she had as a young girl and went to work administering medicine to those who could not afford a haole doctor or those who proffered Auntie Lipo’s skill over anyone else.

Mama Afi passed shortly after my interviews stopped. I had six months to be with her and record what I could of her life in hopes of preserving a unique oral history of Kakaʻako. Though this was the project’s direction, I ended up leaving my final interview with Mama Afi bearing a new kuleana. “Bebe, tell me again why you recording my memories? Who going to have kuleana to dis moʻolelo?” Mama Afi asked me quite suspiciously on my final day of interviews.

“Well, Mama Afi,” I responded; “I wanted to record your story because it is a unique oral history of Kakaʻako. This research is for the Hawaiʻi Oral History Institute, remember? They want to preserve the voices of native Hawaiian elders for future generations.”

Mama Afi sat there perplexed by my answer for a while. Puffing her cigarette into a cloud of smoke, she extended her pointer finger at me and said, “I know you already told me dat non-sense on da first day, and I just wanted to see if dat stupid ass response of yours wen change yet. What good is my voice or any other voice when it sits in one dusty library waiting for some babooze to come listen? More worse, what if dat person who comes to listen no more pilina or kuleana to da ting dey listening about? We no more time for just sit and wait for someone to come pick us off da shelf or observe us in one gallery, das what da Bishop Museum is for. You gotta set da world on fire and let da smoke roll through da streets. Get bebes out there who need who adopting!”

I’ll admit that I was embarrassed to be railed by an elder who, in one fell swoop, carved a gaping hole in my ethics. As a graduate student, I took myself and work too seriously. Surely my project wouldn’t just sit on a dusty shelf or computer file, would it? It was pono, right? Well, in my moving through the motions of gathering “unique” oral histories, I had completely missed the point that had revealed itself through my work. If I were simply documenting the modern ‘aiā movement by merely going through the motions, then its memory lived as far as time constraints, my typing hands, and handheld recorders could take me. The kuleana ends with me, should I finish this project. It ends when I put this story on file and move on to another one.

This wasn’t just a story about Da Spirit Market, Uncle Kakā, Auntie Lipo, Mama Afi, and Mama Paleka; it was about a fire that refused containment. It was about a way of living as and among society’s drudgery and discarded creatures. It was a way of rebirthing an ancient world through reliving the modern ʻaiā movement, tracing their resistance through a genealogy of overflow and overgrowth both cunning and wise.

De Certeau theorized about bodies that resist the plastic and prefigured architecture of everyday life. Mama Afi, Mama Paleka, Auntie Lipo, Uncle Richard, and Uncle Kakā made art out of this resistance in the diaphragm of Honolulu’s industrial core. What would I do now?

“Bebe, take some time for tink hard about what Mama wen tell you tonight, yeah? I won’t be repeating myself. Eh, before you go, grab Mama my Coke Zero and ashtray. Oh and bebe, naʻu ʻoe, you are mine.”

[ʻAʻole i pau…]