The Descendants

by Kaui Hart Hemmings

  “Back rub?”

  “Yes, when she was baby, I rub her back until she sleep. I still do this now when she wake up with nightmare.” She pokes the pot with a wooden spoon.

  “Nightmare? What is she having nightmares about?”

  This is a stupid question. Her mother is in the last state before death, the brain on the last and lowest level, but I don’t want to admit this has a profound psychological effect on Scottie.

  “I don’t know,” Esther says. “I haven’t yet told you about child nightmares. Is common thing. We go over it next week.”

  I really like Esther and don’t want her to go. It’s just that the idea of her, a Mexican nanny, doesn’t sit right with me. I never thought Scottie needed a nanny, since Joanie didn’t really work, and I don’t like spending the money on someone to care for my kid. It also makes me feel like some kind of colonist to have Esther around. Especially now that I have stepped in and she’s doing mainly housecleaning and cooking. Ever since we’ve been spending more time with each other, she has acquired quick retorts and smooth comic timing, so now she’s the sassy Mexican maid, sitcom-ish and wise. But I need to think about what’s best for my family instead of how others perceive my family, something I’ve been guilty of all my life, trying to prove I’m great and not just a descendant of somebody great.

  I have inheritance issues. I belong to one of those Hawaii families who make money off of luck and dead people. My great-grandmother happened to be a princess. A small monarchy decided what land was theirs, and she came in to a lot of it. My great-grandfather, a haole businessman, was doing pretty well himself. He was a good land speculator, good banker. All of their descendants, as well as Hawaii’s missionary descendants, sugar plantation descendants and so on, are still benefiting from these old transactions. We sit back and watch as the past unfurls millions into our laps. My grandfather, my father, and I rarely touch the money we’ve made off the trust. I’ve never liked the fact that how much I have is public knowledge. I’m an attorney, and I use only the money I earn from being an attorney, not what I have inherited. My father always said it was the right thing to do, and in the end I’ll have more to pass down. Anyway, I don’t like legacies. I think everyone should start from scratch.

  I think of Joy, her knowing smile. I should probably pick up today’s paper, but I suspect she was reading about the beneficiaries, how much we own, and guesses about the decision we have to make this week, or the decision I will make, since my vote counts the most. I get about ? of the trust, whereas the others get . I’m sure they’re just thrilled about that.

  “All right,” I say to Esther. “You can hold out on the nightmares, but keep the rest coming.” I figure I’ll work a little on my daughter now while we make lunch, and then I’ll get to the King portfolio this afternoon. I’ll pick a buyer and be done with it.

  “She like handbags and low-rider Seventween jeans.”

  She dishes the rice, beans, and chicken onto a steamed tortilla. I arrange the vegetables onto a plate next to a turkey sandwich. I surround the plate with three dipping bowls filled with three different sauces: ranch, mango salsa, and almond butter. Esther eyes the almond butter as though it’s a point against her.

  “And?” I ask.

  “And…I don’t know. So much more you need to know. She like lots of things, but you need to know what she doesn’t like, too. It will take months to explain. Even when your wife come back, she doesn’t know a lot.”

  We hear Scottie coming down the hall, and Esther lowers her voice. “She loves for me to read Mother Goose.”

  “Her baby book?”

  “Yes. It brings her so much joy. Sometimes I read the same rhyme over and over again. It makes her so happy. It makes her laugh loud with delight.”

  I wonder if Scottie’s regressing into an infant stage, if she likes the nursery rhymes because they take her back to a happier and more innocent time.

  “She should be reading young-adult novels,” I whisper.

  “She read whatever she wants,” Esther whispers back.

  “No. I think she needs books with moral messages and lessons on how to deal with womanhood, not books about single women who can’t stop having kids and who live chaotic lives in a lace-up boot.”

  We both see Scottie, and we stop talking. Esther pushes her plate toward the chairs. I push my plate forward as well, and Scottie sits down on a stool, looking at both of us and then at the food in front of her.

  Scottie cuts into the enchilada. With her other hand, she types, or texts, a message to one of her friends.

  Esther looks at me and smiles. “She like lard.”

  4

  JUST WHEN I’M about to go to my room and get to work, Esther tells me that Mrs. Higgins has called and wants me to return her call immediately. She wipes the stove and uses her fingernail to remove something stubborn, grunting. I swear she does this purposefully to make me feel sorry for her.

  “Who’s Mrs. Higgins?”

  “Lani’s mother.”

  “Who’s Lani?” I ask.

  “Scottie’s friend, maybe. Call her.” She takes a long sip of her water and exhales loudly.

  “Could you call her? You know I have that work to do.”

  “I already talked to her. She wanted to talk to Mrs. King.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I say Mrs. King’s sick. And then she asked to talk to you.”

  “Great,” I say. She’ll want me to help with a bake sale or a carpool, or I’ll have to volunteer at a dance. That’s the thing with a crisis. My wife is in a coma, but this doesn’t prevent life from happening. There’s still Scottie’s school that I have to deal with, hours I need to bill, this trust that needs to be tended to.

  Esther leaves the kitchen with a bucketful of cleaning products, and I use the kitchen phone to call Mrs. Higgins. All the dishes from lunch are out of sight. The big black pot is upside down on the drying rack. The floor is shiny and slippery. I can see my face in the countertops.

  A woman answers the phone, practically singing hello. I like when people answer a phone this way. Or when women answer a phone this way. “Hello there, is this Mrs. Higgins?”

  “Yes?” she says.

  Telemarketers must love her. “Hi, this is Matt King returning your call. Scottie’s father. Actually, I don’t even know if your daughter is a classmate of my daughter’s, I just assumed—”

  “Yes, Lani is a classmate of Scottie’s,” she says. The sweet cadence of her voice is gone.

  “Sorry, my wife’s not feeling well and can’t return your call, but how can I help you?”

  “Well,” she says, “let’s see. Where should I start?”

  I assume this is a rhetorical question, but she seems to be waiting for me to tell her where to start. “I guess you should start at the beginning,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says. “Here’s the beginning. Your daughter seems to be text-messaging my daughter some pretty darn awful things, and I’d like her to stop.”

  “Oh,” I say. “What things?”

  “She calls her Lani Piggins and Lani Moo.”

  Lani Moo is the cartoon cow for a local dairy company. “Huh,” I say. “I’m sorry about that. Kids call each other names sometimes, I guess. It’s a form of affection.” I look at my watch. I think of Joanie buying it for me.

  “She writes Nice shirt to my daughter. Or Nice pants.”

  “That’s nice,” I say.

  “It’s cyber sarcasm!” she yells, and I pull the phone away from my ear not because the yell is high-pitched but because it’s low and gravelly and mother-wolf-like.

  “But maybe it’s not, uh, cyber sarcasm, and it’s sincere flattery.”

  “She writes CS after. That stands for ‘cyber sarcasm.’ She also calls my daughter Lanikai, inferring that she’s the size of an entire neighborhood.”

  I don’t say anything. I even sort of smile, because it’s clever.

  “Also,” she continues, “your daughter said t
hat she’s afraid to be her partner at the rock wall because Scottie doesn’t want to fall into my daughter’s butt crack. That doesn’t even make sense.”

  I’m about to say that Scottie may be implying that Lani’s butt crack is bigger than most, like a crevasse, because of the blown-up scale of the rest of her body. It’s a logical continuation of the fat joke, but I refrain. “This is terrible,” I say.

  “Here,” Mrs. Higgins says. “Why don’t I relay to you her latest work: We all know you grew pubes over the summer. That’s it. She just sends little messages like that. For no reason at all. My daughter doesn’t bother her in any way.”

  I think of Scottie eating lunch and wonder if she was text-messaging Lani right there at the kitchen counter.

  “Terrible,” I say again. “And not at all like her. She’s very sweet. I’m afraid her mother isn’t well, and maybe that’s it. Maybe this is how she’s dealing with it.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the backstory, Mr. King.”

  “Whoa,” I say.

  “I just know that my daughter comes home from school in tears. And yes, she’s developing a bit early and is highly sensitive to her growth, and maybe she doesn’t shop at Neiman’s Kids or wherever you get Scottie’s clothes.”

  “Sure, sure,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.” I haven’t read any blogs about name-calling, and Esther hasn’t prepared me for this at all. I’ve been fooled by Scottie. Who are you, really? I want to ask.

  “Scottie should be the one who’s sorry. I want her to come over and apologize, and I want her to be reprimanded.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” I say. “I’ll get to the bottom of this. I’m afraid we’re really busy this week with her, uh, backstory, but I truly am sorry and will talk to Scottie immediately.”

  “That’s a good start,” she says. “But then I want an apology to Lani. And I don’t ever want Scottie to write to her again.”

  “She can in a good way!” I hear a voice say in the background.

  “In fact, I’d like her to come by today, or else I’ll have to take this up with the dean. You can’t buy your way out of this.”

  “Excuse me? What are you talking about?”

  “It’s your choice, Mr. King. Should I tell Lani you’re coming by right now, or should you and your daughter handle this matter with the school?”

  I get her address. I make promises. Life keeps happening.

  5

  ON THE WAY to see the Higginses, who live nearby, in Kailua, I coach Scottie. We need to get in and out quickly.

  “You need to say you’re sorry, and you need to mean it. I need to get to work, so no dicking around.”

  She’s quiet. I have taken away her message gadget, and her hands are open in her lap, fingers cupping the air.

  “Why would you call her those things? Why would you be so mean to someone? How do you type all those words?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, her voice full of irritation.

  “You made her cry. Why would you want to make someone unhappy?”

  “I didn’t know she was so sensitive. She writes back lol sometimes, so I thought she wasn’t going to be a dork about it.”

  “What’s ‘lol’?”

  “‘Laugh out loud,’” she mumbles.

  “Do you just do this texting by yourself?”

  She doesn’t answer. We pass the antiques shops and the dealership full of gigantic trucks. As we veer toward the strip of newer shops, we both look at the kids who skateboard under the banyan tree. We always look at them; probably everyone does as they turn on Kailua Road.

  “You just sit there and write nasty things, then go about your day?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “I write them with Reina. It makes her laugh, and then she shows what I wrote to Rachel and Brooke and them.”

  “I knew she had something to do with it. I knew it.”

  Reina Burke. Twelve years old. I see her at the club wearing string bikinis and lipstick; she has this collected air about her that no twelve-year-old should have. She reminds me of Alexandra—beautiful and fast, ready to dump her childhood like a bad habit.

  “From now on you’re not to hang out with her,” I say.

  “But Dad, I already have plans with her and her mom on Thursday!”

  “You have plans with your own mother.”

  “Mom can’t even open her eyes!” she says. “She’s never going to.”

  “Of course she’s going to. Are you crazy?” She stares straight ahead. “You need to be with your mother, not some other mother.”

  “Can Reina come to the hospital? I don’t get to see anyone since I’m not in school.”

  I’m surprised she would want a friend at the hospital, but I’m thinking that if Reina’s there, then maybe Scottie will interact with Joanie. She won’t just sit and stare if her friend is present.

  “Fine,” I say. “You apologize to this girl. You be nice to her today and every day after, and Reina can come on Thursday.”

  “Well, I need my BlackBerry to tell her and to say nice things to Lani Moo.”

  “You can pick up the phone, for Christ’s sake, and don’t call Lani that.”

  We drive through Kailua town, which has been recently remodeled to look like a strip mall in any nice suburb in America. Tourists are everywhere, and they’ve never come to our town much before. I know that when I sell the land the buyer will develop it into something exactly like this, even though I like the way the strip mall looks, and Joanie does, too. She loves gentrification.

  “Can we get smoothies?” Scottie asks.

  “No.”

  “Can we get burgers?”

  That does sound good. “No.”

  “Oh my God, tell me you don’t want a Monster Double right now.”

  “You just ate, Scottie.”

  “Fine. Then a peanut-butter shake.”

  My mouth waters. “Stop it, Scottie. No to everything.”

  The traffic slows, and we crawl to the light. A family walks alongside us on the grass, the father carrying a yellow plastic kayak over his head. Everyone in the family, the two kids and the parents and two other adults, wears purple T-shirts that say FISCHER FAMILY REUNION.

  “Dorks,” Scottie says.

  We pass them and stop, and then they pass us. The light ahead turns green, and the traffic begins to move once again. As we pass, Scottie leans out the window and yells, “Dorks!” The father thrusts out his hand to block his wife and kids as though keeping them from flying forward.

  “Scottie!” I say. “What was that?”

  “I thought it would make you laugh.”

  I look at the Fischer family in the rearview mirror. The father is gesturing wildly at the older son, who is taking off his T-shirt and throwing it to the ground. My head pulses. “Roll your window up,” I say.

  “It doesn’t roll. This isn’t the twenties.”

  “Then press it up, whatever, Christ. And there are still cars that have roll-up windows. They’re basic models. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Turn right here,” Scottie says.

  “You know where she lives?”

  “She invites me to her birthday, like, every year.”

  “Stop saying everything to me as if I’m supposed to know.”

  “It’s that one,” she says.

  “Which one?”

  “Right here.”

  I slam on the brakes and pull over to the rounded curb. I look up at a house that resembles every other house in Enchanted Lakes: a front door that no one uses, the screen door next to the garage, open and with rubber slippers and shoes on a rubber mat. We get out of the car, and as we walk up the driveway, I ask her about Lani: “So you were friends?”

  “Yeah, until last year’s party, when she locked me out of the house and I had to sit here all day while everyone laughed inside.” She points to a table in the garage. That’s another thing about Enchanted Lakes: No one uses their garages f
or cars. Instead, a garage is used for outdoor dining and extra refrigerators. “She thought she was so great, but then I got popular and she got all busted-looking and the world turned.”

  “The tables,” I say. “The tables turned.”

  Mrs. Higgins stands behind the screen door. She opens it, and we walk in. I shake her hand and say hello, and because she’s still holding the door open, I stand very close to her so that it feels like we’re about to kiss or fight.

  “Thank you for coming by,” she says pointedly, as though she’s giving me a lot by saying this.

  “Of course.” I’m so unbelievably tempted to tell her that my wife’s in a coma, but I promised from the beginning not to ever use that as an exemption or a victory.

  She looks at our shoes, and I look at her feet and realize I’m supposed to take off my shoes, something I hate to do. I remove my shoes and stand there in my black socks. One is a darker shade of black than the other. Scottie runs a few steps, then slides along the floor and snaps her gum. I want to tell her to stop chewing the gum. It looks insolent. Mrs. Higgins leads us to the living room, and I see a girl who must be Lani sitting cross-legged on the couch. She has a white-girl brown ’fro, bushy and soft, and an upturned nose that alludes to her nickname, Lani Piggins. You can tell she loves Scottie because her face brightens and she uncrosses her legs and scoots forward.

  I look at her mother, a thin version of what’s on the couch, which brings hope, and I see that Lani’s eyes are a beautiful blue, her skin white and smooth. In a few years she could be gorgeous, or not.

  “Scottie,” I say. “Do you have something you want to say to Lani?”

  “Sorry,” Scottie says.

  “It’s okay,” Lani says.

  “Great,” I say. “Well, it was nice meeting you both.”

  “Scottie,” Mrs. Higgins says. “The things you said were simply evil.”

  I look at my daughter, trying to convey a look that says Just go with it.