Somewhere, maybe in another dimension, we are all there—we are all still there. — D. Chaon

But how do I get there if there is no map? — old self to young self 

To find your way home, follow the road away from the sea. Follow it past the black pebble beach, the salt-gathering pools, the fish-watching cliffs. Past the Quietly Calling Breadfruit Tree, where the homeless ghosts sleep, and the hut of Peter Ka’hu, who sits on his stoop,  mending his nets. Feels like rain by nightfall, he’ll say, reading the air with his blind eyes, and just when you are doubting him, just as the last bit of light disappears from the sky, the clouds will open and it will start to pour.  

At the mouth of the valley, where the road divides, avoid the thickets of haole koa. Take the  Nightmarchers’ Lane through the coconut trees, through the banana forest, through Moonlight Annie’s groves of papaya, lichee, and bitter oranges, till you come to a place where the road widens into the sun and the sky is rimmed with sugar cane. Here are the Ah Chick Egg Farm, the Ohara Rice Patch, Moo moo Cabang’s One Cow Dairy. Here is Tutu Kepani’s kitchen garden where she grows every kind of thing.  

After you pass the kite-flying field, you will come to the painted church. Go down the twisty lane lined with tiny, look-alike cottages, each with a mango tree in its tiny front yard. The cottages are hidden behind tall panax hedges, the musty scent infusing the air. 

You think you are almost there now, but you have come too far. It is getting dark, and the road has ended. There, at the edge of the wild, at the edge of the world, is the Catgirl’s  house. Can you see the bird bones under the ginger bushes? The stacks of sardine tins lining  the walk? There are no lights in her windows because cats can see in the dark. She waits till  everyone has gone to bed, then she slips out of her dark house, and slinks her way among the  shadows, up the dirt lane, to where you live. And while you sleep, she will pick the locks on the pigeon coop, fish the carp from the pond, steal in through an open window and suck the breath from your lungs.  

So, don’t sleep with your mouth open. Don’t sleep by an open window. Don’t sleep with your feet pointed toward the door. That is how they lay out the dead, and if you sleep like that, you will not wake in the morning. Don’t wear sandals with white straps or call to a white dog in the night. If you play hiding games after dark, you will never be found. Remember Jumbo Fujita? Remember Pee Wee Gonsalves? Don’t forget that the first bowl of rice is for the ones who have passed. And if you leave any food on your plate, you will go hungry when you are old, and your children will forget to feed you when you are dead. You will be like all the other homeless ghosts up there in the breadfruit tree—always hungry, always calling. You can hear them now—calling you up into the branches. The ghosts of the Quietly Calling Breadfruit Tree, quietly quietly calling.