By Hannah E. Joyner.
Julianne looked at the pineapple plantation’s kiosk menu and considered the tater-tot nachos. Maybe the pineapple chilly dog. Nothing on the menu came without a shiny lump of pineapple. She decided to get the whip (a pineapple soft serve) and while walking around the plantation’s botanical ‘garden’ (courtyard) she ate the whip and stopped to take a closer look at a red bromeliad with green spots. The spots were almost neon. Julianne figured this was an association she had made with the kiosk menu. In another place that wasn’t a tourist spot in Hawaii, the bromeliad might look natural to her.
On the bus to the plantation, a man and woman with large suitcases had got on outside a car wash. The couple had sat in silence until, unprompted, the woman said, “You were selfish and got off the bus, and it hindered me,” to which the man had replied: “Safety first.” Julianne fixated on using the word hindered to express frustration, and what would getting off the bus have made the man feel safer about? She had snuck a peek at him: sweatpants and a black baseball cap. Being newly in America, her mind went to the obvious answer: terrorism. The couple were from somewhere conservative, and the man was maybe one of those jumpy Midwestern types she’d seen on international news reports. Julianne considered why she wasn’t also jumpy though, why she was moving to America at all.
Onboard a guided tour train that circled the plantation, Julianne watched cut-outs of happy farm workers pass by and listened to the guide announce some fun facts. Meat could be marinated in pineapple. The song playing during the tour was available on CD in the gift shop. Julianne looked out onto the plantation to hide her laugh.
In the gift shop, the couple from the bus were looking into a container of bracelets. “Just put it on your wrist and walk out,” the man told the woman. Julianne hovered nearby to hear the response, but the woman only walked away.
Later, back in Waikiki, Julianne called her boyfriend before realizing with the time difference he would be asleep. She took photos on her phone of the palm trees surrounding the zoo for her social media and she walked close up to flowers to take pictures with her disposable camera. At a diner for lunch she noticed and liked the variety of condiments on every table and thought they looked so sweet in their little baskets. When she reached for her knife and fork, though, she looked across from her expectantly only to remember she was there by herself. Julianne was struck by the feeling that overcame her then, a muscle memory that made dining alone unfathomable. She liked how strong the feeling was, and waited for it to come again later at the aquarium and when she sat on Waikiki beach eating poke. She got her hair trimmed in the lobby of a fancy hotel and thought it was maybe a one-time feeling, a shock to her system because she was right at the beginning of her move.
Eventually, the time of day arrived where it was after dinner and she didn’t want to travel alone to a movie theater or walk along the beach at night, and she realized her only option was to go back to her hostel and try to sleep. In a small grocery store, she took a photo of flower leis in a fridge and bought a single ice cream mochi to eat while she walked. Some teenage boys entertained her with questions for a while. Afterward she walked to a different grocery store and bought a different flavor of ice cream mochi. Then came the feeling again, of something missing.
At Honolulu airport the next day, a Hawaiian woman slowly danced in a terminal as two musicians played ukuleles. This cover of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ wasn’t the worst song to hear constantly over the last forty-eight hours, but Julianne felt her body slump in her seat as she realized again she wouldn’t notice how saccharine the moment was if she were not alone. She supposed she wouldn’t have noticed the couple on the bus the day before either. She opened her phone to read what she had noted about them. Hindered: he had hindered her. A vending machine of flower leis hummed nearby. Hindered sounded like a word used when you didn’t want to sound emotional. Hindered, like hemmed in.
Julianne went outside and stopped along a walkway that overlooked what the airport called a garden. It was also really a courtyard, but she couldn’t have said what she expected.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hannah E. Joyner is a writer currently based in Los Angeles. She was a freelance music writer for many years in Australia, and most recently had a short story published in Litro.
