She said, “The hard thing is right.”
WINTER
Prompt: Have you broken a rule because you thought you had to?
It took a lot to convince Dad. But finally it worked. He told me to drink a lot of water and get some rest. Then he left for work, and he let me stay home.
I just wanted to be with Mom, that was all.
While she slept in, I lay in my bed, listening to Reel Big Fish.
There wasn’t a lot to eat. I had a pickle, and I tried to make a mocha, but the coffeepot filled all up with grounds somehow. I thought it would be nice if I baked us something. There was a yellow cake mix, but no eggs, so I added extra water. After the cake baked, it came out flat, and when I poked a fork in the middle to check it, I could tell it was going to be all crumbly.
I thought maybe frosting could fix it all. We didn’t have powdered sugar, but we did have the regular kind, which I mixed with a package of hot chocolate. There was a corner of butter in scraggly wax paper, and I added it to the sugar and powder.
I served up two big pieces of crumbly cake, runny frosting for Mom, and we sat under her quilt and ate it, and she told me it was the best cake she’d ever had.
FALL
Prompt: Awkward.
During math, Noelani was washing her hands in the bathroom, staring at her new self in the mirror. I didn’t know what to do. What was the hard thing? Telling her I was sorry? She didn’t seem like she wanted to hear that.
Noelani grabbed a paper towel. “You didn’t have to tell her.” She left.
People are saying Noelani and her sister had super lice that wouldn’t die, that especially Malea lost a lot of blood to the bugs. Someone said they had to take suppositories. When they came back, both of them had completely new dos—bangs and a bob for Noelani and a pixie cut for Malea.
Things will blow over for Noelani and Malea. They’ll get past this. They have each other.
Yesterday I asked Brielle again what she was doing for Halloween, and she said she’s thinking about going to the Haunted Lagoon up at the Polynesian Cultural Center. I asked Dad if I could go to the Haunted Lagoon, too, but he said Kamehameha is not a good road.
I told Dad there’s a canoe ride and the Laie Lady ghost. I told him how Li Lu and I have spent ALL our Halloweens on Waikiki. Dad said we’ve only been here for two so far.
Also, I still can’t find my iPod cord. I KNOW Eli took it. I looked in the freezer again, all around the berries and cartons of ice cream and Eli’s pizzas and tater tots that are spilled out all over.
He sat at the table, watching me, laughing. He thinks it’s hilarious.
WINTER
Prompt: “Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
(Mahatma Gandhi, 1869–1948)
After school, I saw Macario with his board tied on top of his old blue Celica, and I asked him if he was going to Bowls, his favorite wave, and he told me he was going to Sunset, which was surprising.
“Can I come?” I asked him.
It was now or never, going back to where it had all happened.
Macario wasn’t a hundred percent, I could tell. I wonder if he was thinking he didn’t want anyone to see him with me, the girl whose brother killed his two friends. Or maybe he thought people would think we were together? He never seemed like the type to care what people thought. He said, “Don’t you have homework?”
It was funny. Macario never did homework. Eli, either. Or Koa. Or Tate. They would tell me, “Who gives a rat’s *** about homework?” and they’d laugh wildly.
I shook my head. “Please, Mac?” I called him the name Eli always used.
He looked at his Celica and shrugged. “‘A‘ole pilikia,” he said.
* * *
Macario drove super slow. It took us an hour to get there. We were listening to Pearl Jam, old-school, and he was probably as glad as I was not to talk about nothing.
I could have closed my eyes, or looked away, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to see it. I’d already seen it in my mind a thousand times before.
The tire marks are still on Kamehameha. Time, even rain hasn’t washed them away. They go left, then right, then they disappear in the gravely shoulder. There’s still a bare patch in the pineapple plants.
“Can we stop at Pipe?” I asked.
He knew why. He pulled onto the shoulder across from the Volcom House. A few months back, this place was packed with tents, tarps, banners, bikinis, and trucker hats who came to watch Joel Parkinson take the Triple Crown.
The path opened up to the once-giant wave that would rest till next winter. At our backs a skinny chicken scratched under a smooth wooden sign—“Not soon forgotten.”
It was written in red marker—“Koa Okoto”—scribbled in among Todd Chesser, Mark Foo, Andy Irons—the legends who left way too early.
I didn’t want Macario to see me cry. But he didn’t care if I saw him. Tears streaked his cheeks. “Ke ola … küpina‘i … ho‘i…” I could make out “life,” “echo,” “returns.”
We went up the street to Sunset. Sunset, with water so clear, so blue, its froth fizzing up on the golden shore, pulling itself back away. Sunset, where palm fronds rustle louder as the sun’s heat shrinks, where ‘elepaio birds chirp and lizards scratch along the trunks. Sunset, where the salt rides off the water and comes to you sharp and clean. Sunset, so simple, so rich, real, and whole, it is everything you need, even though you’d forgotten, and you want to cry out how sorry you are.
Hugging my knees to my chest, I pretended to see Eli and Koa and Tate paddling out to the swells, sizing up breaks, slicing through barrels. I was mind-surfing, they’d say, and almost smiled to myself.
Still, I concentrated on the waves—weary this time of year but still blue, then green, then white—rising and folding and rising again. I swear I saw Eli, Koa, and Tate rising and folding with them, throwing shakas.
I swear I saw Tate get caught in the rip, and I listened for the laughs, but the only sounds were the waves trailing each other to shore, the rustling fronds, the ‘elepaio birds.
The trade winds blew gently, sleepy from their surge in December, and I tried to let them fill me with hā.
Cupping his harmonica, Macario began with a six tab, then added another and another. And even though I’d never heard him play the song, I knew it right away.
How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?
Macario’s fingers waved over the metal. He rocked forward and back, his eyes closed as the drowsy winds carried the sad, slow notes.
Then the notes got shorter, tighter, fast. Macario held his harmonica like it was the last thing he had in this whole world. His head shook as he held the notes longer and stronger, slow and low, hollow, all alone.
This was the last place on earth where Koa and Tate were really alive. Macario missed his friends. I could hear it in his song. I pictured the empty desks in the back row of English 12.
The last notes floated up and out, over Macario and me and the stretch of white and blue.
“What’s that song again?” I asked when the last note dissolved in salt and air.
Macario brushed the sand off his pants. “Zimmy,” he said. “That’s what they called Dylan.”
The answer was blowing in the wind.
FALL
Prompt: Was your family affected by Saturday’s tsunami evacuation?
The sirens were the worst. Mom and I heard them even though we weren’t anywhere near Waikiki. We were over at the Wahiawa Botanical Garden, and it was everything, being with Mom. Away from Brielle.
“Breathe in.” Mom’s hand pressed against the Rainbow tree, its bark smooth in every color. “The healing property of eucalyptus is really powerful.” Mom closed her eyes, looked so pretty, happy, and calm.
After, we went to Costco. But we got lost, because we never go to the Waipahu one, we always go to the one on Alakawa. The GPS kept saying “Rerouting,” so we turned around in a high school parking lot.
That. School.
You couldn’t even tell it was a school. All those rectangles looked more like … an army base, a jail. It was not even really a color, and the red dirt had stained all along the bottom of it. Pool with no water, empty Coke can. The grass was dry, the palms were dying, and there were boards and bars on all the windows. If you were inside and looked through the rusty screens, you’d see a fish market that was all locked up, or the whole family—mom, dad, sisters, little brother—pushing bags of bottles in shopping carts and strollers over the jagged sidewalk.
I thought some ice head was going to kidnap us for ransom. All we had were mangoes and paper towels.
“Is this school even open?” I asked Mom.
She said it was.
Me, I’d be scared to death to show up there every day. There was no gate to keep out the ice heads.
WINTER
Prompt: “In war … all are losers.”
(Former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, 1869–1940)
“Did you throw out the birds of paradise?” I asked Dad when he came home, dropped down in the green chair, and turned on the TV.
“They were dead,” he said.
“So you THREW THEM OUT?” I erupted.
Dad looked at me.
“WHY?” I wailed. I didn’t care if Mom heard. I didn’t care anymore if the Tanakas heard. “Why would you just throw them away? Just because they were drying up? So, what, they’re not worth anything anymore?”
Dad wasn’t saying anything. He was sitting there, and I hated seeing him sitting there. I took a quick breath. “And all you care about is the Mars rover?”
Dad turned off the TV.
He had to get it. “This stuff,” I said, “Mars rover—it doesn’t even matter.”
“Why did we even move here?” I started to cry.
If we had just stayed in Oregon, our family would have stayed the same.
“Taylor…” Dad said. He wanted to hug me.
“Tell me,” I sobbed. “Why did we leave Oregon? Mom planted those peonies. She never got to see them come up! It’s because Eli was failing English, wasn’t it?”
Dad had told us about the rainbows, the trumpet fish, that I’d meet new friends. He’d told Eli that coming to Our Lady of Redemption would be a fresh start, that it was a good time to move.
I waited.
“There were … a lot of reasons.” Dad got up, tugged at his tie, then tossed it over a chair.
Me, I wasn’t letting him get away that easy. Just accepting that there were “a lot of reasons” why he took Mom from the peonies, derailed our whole life.
We stood there staring at each other for a few seconds. I wanted to tell him that this whole thing—all of it—was his fault. Eli was failing English, and Dr. John Harper, author of The Cultural Relevance of Waters, could not have his kid failing English. So we moved. To O‘ahu. Where Eli ruined our lives.
But I said instead: “THERE AREN’T JUST TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!” My voice bounced from wall to wall to wall, and I put my hands over my ears but kept going: “You’re a SOCIOLOGY PROFESSOR!!! You should know. There”—I sobbed—“are as many KINDS of people as there are ACTUAL people! People are just people!”
I stood there, heaving, snot running down over my lips.
Through blurry eyes, I watched Dad’s head hang. He looked at the floor. “You’re right,” he said.
But I didn’t WANT to be right. I wanted Dad to be right. I wanted him to be the parent and keep everything together.
My nose started bleeding a little, and I wiped it with the back of my hand.
His head still hanging down, Dad said he should have gone with him.
“What?” I asked. “Where? You should have gone with who? Where?”
But Dad didn’t answer. He just looked at the floor.
Me, I went out and sifted through the gross garbage till I found all eight stalks of birds of paradise, then put them back in the elephant vase on the table.
The whole time, Mom never got up. She stayed in her bed under the quilt, blinds drawn tight.
I lay down with her. “Mom,” I said, “we can go back to the Rainbow tree.”
I remembered how happy, how peaceful she had been, her hand on the tree, her eyes closed.
“That would be nice.” Mom’s words echoed empty.
FALL
Prompt: When have you had to be your bravest self?
The rainbows, Dad was right about those.
But he never said anything about turtles.
* * *
We hadn’t unpacked all the boxes before Mom took Eli and me to Waikiki for the first time. A rainbow stretched from the edge of the buildings right into the sea, over Eli.
Mom kept calling to him to come back to shore, that he was too far out on his surfboard, and Eli would come in closer, then go back out again.
We were decent swimmers. Mom made us take swim lessons every summer in Oregon so we’d be safe around the rivers and lakes. She didn’t have to worry about Waikiki. It’s not even real, its sand siphoned from offshore.
“Ankle biters.” That’s what Eli and Koa and Tate and Macario call the Waikiki waves. It’s nothing like the North Shore, where swells pound the shore.
Me, I was jumping over those ankle biters. I was jumping over and over and over.
Every so often, I’d yell out to Mom, “Watch this! Watch me!” And I’d jump under a wave, come up, wave to Mom, and she would wave back to me.
But suddenly, I saw this big dark pointy round thing out there with Eli. I didn’t know what it was, but I did know it wanted to eat us. I ran back to Mom.
Shivering in my towel on the shore, I saw that pointy round thing bob up and down out in the water. Once or twice, it even came up above the waves, too.
Mom rubbed my trembling back: “That’s a turtle out there,” she told me.
I had never known turtles to be that big. We had turtles in Oregon, but they could fit right in your hand. There was no way they could eat you.
Mom and I watched as another pointy round thing joined the first, and two more after that. Their great shells rolled to the top of the water.
“LOOK, MOM! TURTLES!” Eli called out from far away, kicking over to them. He bobbed up and down beside the turtles, waving at us.
I didn’t wave back. I couldn’t move. Eli was going to get eaten, and Mom and I were going to see it. There was nothing we could do to save him.
“Don’t worry,” Mom told me, “Eli’s okay. Those turtles just want to play. They’re called honu here, and they’re vegetarian.”
That didn’t stop me from worrying. It made sense that even vegetarians, if they got hungry enough, would go after anything.
It took weeks before I went back in the ocean after the first time seeing the turtles. For a long time, whenever I saw a pointy round head poke through, I’d head straight for shore.
But not Eli. Every time, Eli headed straight toward them.
WINTER
Prompt: Grumpy Cat.
I’ll give school everything. I’ll get caught up. I’ll get it together.
Grumpy Cat
* * *
“Check it out, Grom!” Eli’s feet were up on the coffee table. He was laughing, showing me his phone—a cat with an upside-down mouth and the word No.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I told him, and Eli said, “You want to see it again, though, right?”
He held out his phone with the same cat, different word: Yuck.
“Look at this one,” Eli kept saying. There was an I hate people one, Good, I want to bury you in the grass. Every meme made him laugh more and more.
“These seriously don’t make any sense,” I said. “I don’t get it.”
But Eli just laughed.
He thought that was the funniest thing ever, too.
He’s so irresponsible.
The things he’s done, they go on and on, and he doesn’t care. He isn’t here to see it.
* * *
It was
worse than ever, the smell yesterday. Like something was rotten, or rotting. I tied up and took out the garbage, looked in the laundry room, checked the microwave. There was nothing.
Later, while I searched the fridge for something to eat, I found the terrible, awful thing.
Pushed against the back on the lowest shelf was a to-go container of some kind of pūpū oozing smelly slime—seaweed or sprouts or mushrooms or something.
I double-bagged the unidentifiable slime and threw it in the can in the garage. Then I went through the rest of the fridge and the freezer, too, tossing out salad dressing, ice packs, a bunch of tater tots that had spilled out of the bag, two taquitos, some hamburger meat that could have been a thousand years old. I threw out the Phish Food and Cherry Garcia.
But I kept the mushroom and olive pizzas. I stacked all four of them on top of each other and put them on a freshly wiped shelf. I pulled out the ice tray, and there it was—my iPod cord.
Cold in my hand, it was probably completely useless now, but I wasn’t going to toss it in with the tater tots and the Phish Food, to throw it away like Dad did with the birds of paradise. Instead, I held onto it and thought about Eli, watching me from the table, laughing.
He’d tell me, No deal, Grom, when I told him he owed me a new one. He’d say he was doing me a favor, because we’d totally laugh about this when we were older, when I could see how funny it was.
The door to the freezer blew out frozen air, waking me up.
What did Dad mean, that he should have gone with him? He should have gone with him where?
FALL
Prompt: The hurricane.
Mrs. Tanaka says it’s hotter these days on O‘ahu. She says the trade winds come less and less.
* * *
Taylor Before and After Page 11