Part of the family, Part of the office, Part in the middle
After my father and brother died I was on my own pretty much until my father’s sister, aunty flower took me in. It was an okay life because aunty flower seemed to be oblivious to me going off and performing exorcisms on my own without her being the wiser. Turns out that I was the one being strung along, the therapist that she was having me see was actually a sex offender, and aunty flower wasn’t really my aunt.
She was Buddy Hualalai's sister who took an oblong way of getting revenge on uncle boy for killing her brother. It turns out that she was responsible for the death of my father and brother because she was sending Buddy’s ghost to kill the three of us, but he was only able to kill two. I was the one that survived.
One day while I was having a dinner with uncle Boy, Tiny, Ivan and aunt Rita, Buddy’s ghost possessed Rita and she tried to kill me but uncle Boy recognized Buddy right away and he got rid of him. However, uncle Boy devised a plan that made everyone think that I was really dead and his friend at the medical examiner's office let us use the morgue to present my body as if I were a cadaver. Uncle Boy said that the person who controlled Buddy’s ghost would appear at the morgue, and indeed that person did. It was Aunty Flower, or as she is really known; Mele Hualalai.
Uncle Boy walked into the room with Ivan, Tiny, and Rita and surprised Mele, I was handed a swordfish bill in order to exact my revenge and it was swift and cold. Mele was dead before she even hit the floor. Since then uncle Boy has been like my father and with everything he says and does; there is always a lesson in it. Always.
….………
Uncle Boy takes good care of me and I’ve become one of the family, although I can see that he wants me to have a normal life, things and situations keep popping up that make it otherwise. So, as of late, even though he’s scolded uncle Ivan, uncle Tiny, and aunty Rita about it; he has allowed me to sit in the office. I am only to observe, I can’t talk and I have to keep my thoughts and emotions to myself. Some of it I don’t understand, some I do and it’s really scary, but today was different and it actually made me cry.
….……..
An older Japanese man in his early to mid-sixties came to Uncle Boy’s office to talk about his young wife Amy. He wore one of those terry cloth shirts from back in the 70’s and he wore a pair of coke bottle glasses that made his wide eyes appear even wider. He was sad though, you could tell. Aunty and uncle, them sat in their chairs and listened and the man began to speak to uncle Boy.
“Mr. Napualawa, my name is Philco Watanabe and I just want to say thank you for agreeing to see me today,” the man looked down mostly and hardly made eye contact with anyone.
“Not to worry Philco, how can we help you?” Uncle Boy was always so kind in the way he treated people. He always said that it was important that people be treated with dignity whether they are family or friend. He said that people remember how you treat them more than what you said to them.
“I wanna put a curse on my wife,” Philco's statement was filled with so much regret and pain like he really didn’t want to consider what he just asked.
“Why would you want to do that?” Uncle Boy was always genuinely concerned when it came to conflict within a household.
“She’s fooling around, I have proof so it’s not like I’m making it up.” Philco still glanced everywhere except at Boy.
“Philco, when it comes to marriage problems, human frailty is common place. We don’t concern ourselves with those kinds of issues. If every time someone came to me and asked me to put a curse on their cheating spouse or otherwise, the better half of the population of Hawai’i would drop dead on the spot. We’d still be a state but we’d be a ghost town.” Uncle Boy smiled. “It’s like asking me to put a curse on someone for sneezing; it’s a natural function of who we are as human beings and it’s unavoidable. I can’t help you with what you’re asking for, I’m sorry.”
The man put his head down and began to cry, it was unpleasant to watch much less to hear. “The house I own? I built it for her, her bedroom is the biggest room in the house. I buy her a new car every time she gets bored of the old one, same thing with her dogs. She gets tired of one and I buy her another one too! What was I doing wrong in this marriage?”
“Philco, how old are you?” Uncle Boy only offered a sympathetic voice not a pat on the shoulder or a reaffirming hug.
“Fifty-five,” Philco smiled at Uncle Boy like he’d just figured out a puzzle that no one cared about.
“And how old is your wife?” A lot of times it appeared that uncle Boy was asking a question just to make conversation, but he was more sophisticated than that.
“Twenty-six,” Philco said as he continued crying.
“Philco, go home, take a shower and get yourself together okay? After today, your wife won’t be able to make love to anyone else but you.” Uncle Boy stood up walked around the desk to shake Philco’s hand. Philco was so glad to hear the news that he reached into his pocket and removed a large manila envelope. “Aunty Rita will take you outside to handle that,” uncle Boy said as he pointed to the envelope. A few weeks later, Uncle Boy would hear from Philco who told him that his wife Amy began making love to him and that she was faithful to him once more. What Philco didn’t know was that every time Amy tried to sleep with another man, she would begin to bleed profusely from.…down there. The bleeding would never stop until Amy finally gave up the idea of sex on the side and went home, the only time she wouldn’t bleed from.……..there...was whenever she made love to her husband. Philco himself was none the wiser because Amy certainly was not going to tell him about her problem.
............
There was also a woman who came to see uncle Boy one day, she was very beautiful. She wanted a curse placed on her boyfriend’s seven-year-old daughter because the little girl took up too much of her boyfriend’s time whenever he would have her on the weekends. It was time she felt that should belong to her and no one else.
“What’s your name?” Uncle Boy had that smile on his face which meant that he had already figured out an interesting solution to the problem. The client, however, was clueless.
“Sharona,” the woman’s expression and tone of voice said that she expected everyone in the office to gush over how cute her name was supposed to be. No one reacted.
“Sharona, being jealous of the time that your boyfriend spends with his daughter does not merit putting a curse on her. It’s a god given right that father and daughter should spend as much time together as possible.” It was a logical explanation that didn’t need anymore garnish, that’s what uncle Boy would always say.
“Well,” Sharona crinkled her nose, “what If I told you that she was a little witch?”
“That’s your personal opinion; I don’ really think she’s an actual witch.” Uncle Boy had a way of scolding people without really scolding them.
The woman named Sharona stood up and started to tell uncle Boy about how disappointed she was and that as soon as she left the office she was going to post all over social media and yelp about his services and how full of shit he was. “Can’t we just forget about this?” uncle Boy asked Sharona. Instead she flipped him the finger and walked out. However, the second she left the building she completely forgot about why she came to uncle Boy in the first place, the details of the meeting were wiped from her mind. After the woman left the office, uncle turned and looked at me and said, “Self-centered people don’t get a pass."
This is just one of the many things I am learning while being a part of the office because uncle Boy is very old fashioned and very old school. He says that you can learn a lot of things by just sitting silently and observing the seen, the unseen, the spoken, the unsaid, and the subtle. That’s what I’m learning in the office, the cursing part will happen when it’s time. For now, I watch, I listen and I absorb.
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