“The opposite of life,” she told her friends. She dealt the cards until the deck was evenly divided among them. But when Nori began to explain how the game was played, she realized it was more complicated than she thought.

It took several Saturday afternoons before they all understood how to play Hearts without pausing midway for instructions or to replay a hand. The first time they played a game straight through, Nori rewarded all of them with a cherry cola. With the fish market’s success, Jelly sold fish and worked the lunch counter on Saturdays. Still, it wasn’t long before her other customers simply came in, took what they needed, and left the money in the King Edward cigar box Nori left on the counter rather than interrupt their card game. As time went by, the children who came in to buy candy began calling them the Hilo Aunties as they lingered and decided whether to buy black licorice whips, or chewing gum, or salty dried plums, and dropped their pennies and nickels into the cigar box.

The name stuck.

The Hilo Registry had taken the photo on the second anniversary of the Hilo Aunties playing hearts together. “Shooting the Moon” the photo was titled, the big thrill of the game capturing all thirteen Hearts and the Queen of Spades in one hand, sending all the game-losing points to the other players. The four Hilo Aunties had been seated at their table staring seriously down at their cards, a differing degree of intensity fixed on each of their faces. But as soon as the photo was taken they had all relaxed into laughter and Noelani had tossed her cards across the table. Nori remembered hearing a second click and seeing the flash of the camera, which was the photo used in the paper.

* * *

The following week Nori was sitting in Mariko’s kitchen, giddy over seeing themselves when the photo appeared in the paper. “Slow day for news if we’re the pin-up girls!” Mariko had said. Daniel and Mano were playing outside. Franklin away again working at another construction job, on O‵ahu.

A year later, he was gone for good.

Nori glanced over at Mariko’s empty chair, her absence still a dull ache. She never thought Mariko would be the first Hilo Auntie to leave the table.

Ghost Voices

Ghost Voices

MARIKO, 1913