The 'Ohana Tree

by Rebecca Addison

  If you're reading this, I hope that one day you will be able to forgive me. I only want the best, brightest, most wonderful life for you, kid. That's all any father wants for his girl.

  Garrett

  Chapter Forty Two

  "Tess, don't freak out," I said as I dropped the notebook into my lap. The problem was, I was having trouble getting any air into my own lungs. My brain wasn't registering what I had just read. I stared dumbly as she picked up the book and flipped to the back, her lips moving as she re-read the words.

  "What does this mean?" She passed it back to me, sitting up straighter as her hands gripped the edge of the sofa. "What the hell is he talking about?

  I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her in, kissing the top of her head just as a sob escaped from her mouth.

  "He should have told me."

  "I'm so sorry, Tess."

  "I could have had a father?"

  I held her, rubbing her back as she sobbed into my chest, her hands clutching my shirt and her shoulders shaking. It was the first time since the accident that she'd really cried and as much as it broke my heart to hear it, I was relieved that she was finally letting go. When she was quiet, I pushed the hair from her face and passed her a tissue from my pocket.

  "Tess. Whether you knew it or not, Garrett was always your father."

  She shook her head. "But why didn't he tell me?"

  "I think he was scared you'd be angry with him."

  She stared at the trees for a long time and when she stood up, her face was determined. "I’m ready to visit him."

  We packed and locked up the studio within the hour and soon we were back on the coastal road, making our way toward town. Whenever I glanced over at Tess, she had her face turned away. We didn't speak, the sound of the car on the road through the open windows made it difficult, and I knew that she needed time to think anyway. I looked through the windshield at the bruise-colored sky. It was unusually hot that day with the kind of moisture in the air that you knew would end in a late afternoon storm. I hoped we would get back to Onakea before the road washed out.

  It had been years since I'd visited the family cemetery. The last time was soon after my grandfather died when I was still just a boy. Despite the years that had passed, it was exactly the same. The low wooden fence sectioning it off from the rest of the land had been painted recently and the grass was freshly mowed. The older gravestones dating back to when the missionaries were on the island were in a straight line up the back but in more recent times plots had been chosen for their view or their proximity to a particular family member. They were scattered around in small groups or on their own, all of the plots neat and many of them decorated with plastic leis and flowers. We saw Garrett's plot at once, the bare rectangle of dirt conspicuous in a sea of frog green grass. I was happy that he was here with my ‘ohana. Dad had insisted that he be buried with the family on account of his relationship with Akamu, and after a family discussion, no one had seen any reason to object.

  Tess dropped my hand and walked over to Garrett's grave, dropping to her knees in the sticky, warm earth. She pressed her palms to the dirt, making imprints of her hands.

  "You should have told me," she said. "You should have said something, Garrett."

  I stood back with my hands in my pockets, watching her carefully, waiting to pull her away if she broke apart. But she didn't need me. She had grown even stronger than I had realized in the time since we took her from the motel. After a few minutes, I turned and left her, walking slowly back to the truck.

  The rain had just started to fall when she opened the door and slid into the seat next to me. It hit the windshield in fat, loud splats that soon became a roar as the storm rolled in.

  "How's things?" I said, touching her hand. I didn't bother starting the engine. With rain like that, weren't going anywhere for a while.

  "I'm doing okay."

  "Do you think Joan knew?"

  She met my eyes. "I don't know. Maybe."

  "You know that this means you have four sisters now."

  Her eyes widened as she picked at a hole in the knee of her jeans. "I hadn't thought of that."

  "You know, if he hadn't died and we hadn't read the notebook, you might never have found out. You have some family now. That's the one good thing that has come out of all of this."

  She lifted her eyes to mine. "I have a family right here."

  When the rain stopped, I drove us home, trying to avoid the worst roads. It still took three attempts to get up the steep, muddy driveway to Onakea. After our last run up, the back wheel slipped and got stuck and I'd had to climb out and push while Tess revved the engine. By the time we got to the front door we were wet, muddy, and very late for dinner.

  "Sorry! Sorry!" Tess said, smiling sympathetically at Akamu as she pulled off her wet jacket and shoes. "Is it ruined?"

  Akamu lifted a cloth from the table that covered our two plates and met our eyes with a frown. "Ruined. I made nachos because I always like nachos with lots of cheese, Dipper, and Pa said we have to be careful, very careful when we brown the meat in the pan."

  Tess walked over and put her hand on his arm before peeking under the cloth. "I'm sorry we were late." She gave his arm a squeeze. "But hey, that's what, five meals you can make now?"

  He beamed. "Pa said it was too spicy and spicy means you might have to go to the toilet, but I already go to the bathroom after dinner, and -"

  "Yep, okay, Aka," I said, looking down at the plates. One of them had a pile of cold meat and congealed cheese on one side and no chips, the other was licked clean.

  Tess glanced down at her wet jeans and lifted her hair off her back. "I'm just going to get changed quickly, and then I'll make us something."

  She disappeared down the hall and a minute later Akamu followed. Both of their doors clicked shut and then another opened.

  "I was hoping to catch you alone tonight," Dad said as he sat down at the table. "So. She knows, then."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Mia was up here this afternoon cutting Akamu's hair. She saw you both at the cemetery. I figured you'd gotten to the end of that notebook of his at last."

  "Jesus, Pa," I said, checking down the hallway for any signs of Tess. "How do you know what he wrote in the notebook?"

  He dropped his eyes. "The notebook was my idea."

  "What?"

  He glared at me and leaned in. "Keep your voice down. Garrett told me about Tessa when he first arrived on the island. He came up here a lot back then. I guess he figured I'd never meet her so it made no difference either way if he told me. One day he was talking about all of the things he wished he could say to her, so I told him to write them down."

  I heard the shower turn on and relaxed a bit, knowing that Tessa would be a while. "You let Garrett in the house?"

  "Sometimes. Mostly we sat out on the lanai."

  We fell into a strained silence. Across from me, Dad stood and began stacking the plates and picking up the cutlery Akamu had laid out for us.

  "Pa. You can't tell her that you knew."

  He looked up. "Why not?"

  "Because she's finally happy here. If you tell her you knew all along she's going to freak out. She'll think I knew, too, and she won't trust me anymore."

  He put the plates back down and stared at me unhappily. "Son, you know that she can't stay."

  "What?"

  "Kai."

  I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. The rain had stopped, but water from the eaves above the window dripped onto a metal shelf outside. An irregular beat that matched the frantic pace of my heart. "Why are you saying this?” I said in Hawaiian. “Are you trying to hurt me? Make me pay for what happened with Mom?"

  He rested his hand on my shoulder, the warmth of his skin seeping through my shirt.

  "No, son."

  "Then why?"

  "She's young and she has places to go, things that are unfinished and other things that she hasn't even begun yet."

 
I pushed away from the table, shrugging his hand away. Through the open door, a large flock of green parrots noisily made their way to the orchard in search of dinner. After a moment, he came to stand beside me.

  "But she's better here,” I said. “We helped her."

  “’Ae,” he nodded slowly, putting his hands into his pockets.

  We didn’t speak after that.

  Chapter Forty Three

  I walked to the cliff edge as the sun came up, stopping at his side so that we stood shoulder to shoulder. Together we watched the breakers below crash against the rocks. A strong, warm wind blew our shirts against our chests and made our eyes stream with tears.

  "Aloha."

  "Aloha, Pa."

  He put his hands in his pockets and set off toward the track. "Let's go down."

  I followed his gaze to the narrow strip of dirt and rock that would lead us to the beach. He hadn't made it down there yet. In a way, it was his final frontier. "Are you sure?"

  He nodded.

  So we walked, my dad in front and me slowing my steps so that he wasn't rushed, and we took the long, snaking track down to the sand. When he got to the bottom, he kicked off his flip flops and strode forward in big, decisive strides until his ankles were swirling with white, foamy water.

  "I forgot," he said when I reached him. "How it smells. Ah, ka moana. Up this close, it smells different to how I remember it."

  "It's been a long time," I said. "Do you want to swim?"

  He shook his head. "No, son. We're here to talk."

  He walked through the water, the movement of his legs kicking up the spray. I fell into step beside him and waited for him to start.

  "There was once a woman who lived on an island," he said, keeping his eyes in front of him. "She had no man, no ‘ohana, so she learned to do everything to survive on her own. Every morning she went deep into the forest and harvested fruit to eat. She made her own fire and sang to herself every night for company. After a time, she forgot that there were other islands, other people, and her heart grew used to being alone.

  But then one day, a canoe, a wa'a, arrived from another island. It was a man searching for fruits for his people because his island had been struck by a terrible disaster. All of the trees had been flattened by great winds and the water still churned, scaring away the fish. The people on his island were starving. The woman was afraid of the man so she hid in a tree and watched him as he walked across her island, searching for food. But without her, the fruits were hidden from his sight. Every week he would return, and every week he would leave with his wa'a empty. One day, when he returned home from her island, he saw the state of his people and he became desperate. He turned his wa'a around and paddled back to the island to look again, determined not to leave until he had found some food for his people. The woman was not expecting him to come back and so she had made her way to the shore.

  When the man arrived, he saw her wading in the water, singing to herself. He thought she was lost, stranded from her people, so he captured her and took her back to his island. The woman was scared. She didn't speak the language of the people in her new home and she had never lived with ‘ohana before. Slowly, the man taught her the ways of his people. And after a time, the woman trusted the man. She grew to love his ‘ohana and because she didn't want to see them in pain any longer, she told the man where to find the fruit on her island. He made many trips, bringing the fruit back to the people. And the woman taught them how to plant the seeds and nurture the seedlings, so the plants would grow and they'd never be hungry again. But no matter how many times the people of the island tried to grow the fruit, the saplings would always fail. Without the woman's touch, the plants refused to thrive and so she spent long hours under the hot sun, doing the work of many all on her own.

  As she worked, she had thoughts of her island, the cool, clean water, and the forest where fruits grew freely without any of her labor. The man loved the woman, and he knew she wanted to return home, but when he saw the plantations and the many people who relied on her plants for food, he knew that he couldn't allow her to leave. If she returned to her island he feared his people would starve."

  "So what did he do?" I said, my voice raw and strange to my own ears.

  "He held the woman on the island as his captive. The people were healthy again, but because they had experienced great hunger in the past, they were too afraid to let the woman go. Soon after the man told the woman she could not leave, the leaves on the fruit trees drooped and turned brown. And with every day that passed, they grew sicker and sicker, until eventually they died, the fruit rotting and stinking in the sun. The man and his people burned what was left of the trees to the ground, and returned to their old crops. But the woman slowly starved to death."

  "Pa -"

  "Kailano," he said. "The fruit is her love and her heart, and it has rescued us from a long, hard famine. But you can't hold her here because you're scared that we'll starve if she leaves. We have our own food, son. We remember how to sustain one another now."

  "But I love her," I said, and he stopped walking in the water and looked at me.

  "I know you do. You think if you can love her enough you can make her stay forever."

  "No. I think if I love her enough she'll want to stay forever."

  "If you love her, thank her and then let her go."

  I grasped the back of my head in my hands and stared at the sea, my stomach sick and my heart stumbling painfully in my chest. "Pa, you don't know what you're asking."

  He put a hand on my shoulder. "I know better than anyone. Don't make the mistakes of your father. Son, listen to your heart. You already know this."

  The water churned around my ankles as I grappled with what he had said. The truth was, I did know. I had already set some things in motion without understanding why I was doing it. I had been preparing for this moment for at least a month without ever acknowledging that it was going to happen.

  "So I let her go?"

  "No, son. You make her go."

  "But she's happy here."

  "Like the woman, she wants to thank you for bringing her to your island and your ‘ohana. So she stays."

  "And if she doesn't go she'll starve to death?"

  "Or like your mother, she'll run away to save herself."

  "She won't want to go, Pa. I know she loves me, too."

  He tugged my arm and together we walked out of the water to where the sand was soft and dry. I sat down and he joined me. We watched the waves stretching up the sand for a long time.

  "You're saying I should let her go, and if she's mine she'll come back?"

  He nodded slowly and sighed, his eyes full of regret. "It's what I should have done. Kailano?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I want to ask your forgiveness.."

  "There's no need, Pa. Please, don't."

  He put his hand on my arm and squeezed it. "You've been the father of this family since you were a boy. It's time, now, for you to go and explore other islands in your wa'a. The famine is over, your people can feed themselves once again. Do you see? I want you to go and make your music. I know about the things you've turned down for me."

  I put my hand over his. "I want to stay here and look after you and Aka."

  "I don't want to hold you captive any longer, son. I've kept you here as your own fruit has become overripe and if you don't leave soon, it will rot. Go, go go. We will be okay."

  He fell silent and took his hand off my arm, turning his body back to the waves. It was the longest conversation we'd had in almost twenty years. And as much as his words pained me, I loved to hear them, just so I could listen to the soft, warm timbre of his voice and the rise and fall of it as he told his story. I felt softening between us. For the first time in a long time, we sat together without one of us wanting to escape.

  “Pa, that night, the night she left,” I said. “I knew it was going to happen.”

  He kept his eyes on the sea. “Did you?”

  “It was my fa
ult. If I’d told you, we could have stopped her. We could have talked her out of it.” He grunted next to me and waited for what I think he’d always known. The words were impatient, nudging against my lips. I let them out at last. “I wanted her to go so that she would take me with her.”

  “I wasn’t a good father to you,” he said quietly. “You were so different to the rest of us. I didn’t know what to do with you.” He bowed his head. “I’m ashamed.”

  We watched the gray-blue sea swell and fall, wind and the water the only sounds.

  "Go and talk to Tessa now," he said at last, standing up. "I'm going to walk to the headland and back."

  And then he was off, walking slower, this time, his hands in his pockets and his face turned to the sea. I watched him until he was no bigger than the size of my thumb in the distance, and then I walked toward the track, asking myself with every step that I took if I was doing the right thing.

  Chapter Forty Four

  She was just waking up as I climbed into bed next to her. I ran my thumb along her cheekbone and gently kissed her lips as she smiled under my touch.

  "Morning, Sunshine."

  She propped herself up on her elbow and yawned, looking down over my clothes then back up to my face. "You've been up already? Hey, what's the matter?" I closed my eyes. "Oh, Kai."

  I stroked her arm and opened my eyes again, making myself look at her. "Can we go for a walk? I need to talk to you."

  Her eyes searched my face. "Okay."

  I didn't realize I was walking toward it until it suddenly came into view. I almost laughed, despite the tears that were threatening to come and the way my stomach flipped with nerves. Of course, we would be back at my mango tree. Where else would we go?

  She stopped walking when we reached it, her eyes wary and her fingers pulling at the hem of her t-shirt. Her face was flushed from the walk and her eyes were still puffy from sleep. She was more beautiful on that morning than she had ever been.

  "I want you to know that I love you."

  She nodded slightly, her chin trembling. "I love you, too."