by Edie Claire
A shadow moved at the house’s front window, and Maddie stepped away. She had been staring too long and was creeping out the current residents. She knew that the polite thing to do would be to stop and introduce herself, but she didn’t care to see the inside of the house. At least not now. Later, she would drop back by. Later, she would figure out why she felt so apathetic about the place.
But for now, she should hurry. Nana might very well be waiting for her.
Maddie’s steps quickened as she moved down the street. She wondered if Mrs. Nakama had forewarned Nana of the rather drastic change in Maddie’s appearance, sparing Nana the embarrassment of not recognizing her. Maybe Nana had to be reminded who she was, period. Maybe Nana, even now, was struggling to put a face to the unfamiliar name…
Maddie walked around the curve to where she could see Nana’s house. She took a few steps more, lifted her head, and stopped short. Kai’s grandmother was sitting outside on her front steps, waiting. The second the older woman saw Maddie, she grabbed onto her stair railing and struggled up.
Maddie gulped in a breath. “Nana!” she cried, feeling no more than six again as she tore up the street and through the little gate in the toddler fence that had been left open for her.
The woman whose arms opened to her embrace was short and pear-shaped, with weathered brown skin, wavy gray hair, and a perfectly round face with apple cheeks, merry brown eyes, and a splash of dark freckles across her nose. But although Nana’s smile was as warm, wide, and welcoming as ever, Maddie’s larger-than-life savior had shrunk to elfin proportions. How could Nana possibly have gotten so small? Maddie had to bend nearly double to hug her, but she managed the awkwardness with determination, surprised but not embarrassed by the stream of tears that flowed down her cheeks. “Oh, Nana,” she said raggedly. “You didn’t forget!”
Nana chuckled as the embrace ended at last. “Well now, how old do you think I am?” she chastised mildly, setting Maddie a step away and looking her over. “I course I haven’t forgotten you, but I can’t say I would have recognized you, either. You look like some mermaid princess, risen out of the sea!”
Maddie laughed out loud. Unbeknownst to Nana, she’d actually heard that line before. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that Nana remembered her. Maddie could see it in her eyes: that same, warm glow of unconditional love that had never failed to brighten a little girl’s world. “Oh, Nana,” she gushed, hugging her again. “I’m so happy to see you again.”
Maddie pulled back, wiped her eyes, and looked around the little porch. Nana’s house was larger than Maddie’s own family’s had been, and better kept, with a fresh coat of yellow paint, crisp white trim, and a well-tended garden. A hand-painted sign near the door bore the image of a rocking horse and the words “Nana’s House,” which Maddie knew to be an inside joke. Nana’s daycare was a strictly informal affair, but if it were a registered business, it could certainly have no other title. “Nana” was a pet name for grandmother, not her given name, but she had been Nana to so many kids for so long that even her own children referred to her by the moniker.
Maddie smiled. “Do you still keep kids?”
Nana chuckled. “Not like I did, no. The arthritis is getting to me. But somehow they’re always around anyway.” She turned and opened her door. “Come in, come in! Just set down that pack of yours anywhere.”
Maddie went. The cozy front room seemed dark compared with the bright sun outside, even though no shades covered the windows. As Maddie’s eyes adjusted, another round of tears threatened. With the exception of the fact that everything, including Nana, had been miniaturized, it all looked just the same. The living room walls from five feet down were a nearly solid mass of colored crayon, a “mural” to which Maddie herself had contributed. The furniture was sparse, consisting of a few comfy chairs and various cubbies for holding toys and books. The kitchen/dining area held the same rectangular metal table with the bright red top that was chipped on the corner. Four chairs matched the table, two extras did not. Wall hangings in the house came in two varieties: children’s drawings and Catholic art. Both were plentiful.
“Sit down,” Nana insisted, gesturing toward the table. “I’m hungry. We’ll have a little snack.”
Maddie was drowning in deja vu. Nana never had asked Maddie if she was hungry back then. What a clever woman she was, and how sensitive to a child’s pride!
Maddie watched as Nana moved around her small kitchen, first filling two plastic cups with water from the tap, then pulling a package from her cabinet. Though Maddie guessed that Nana was probably no more than seventy, she shuffled as if her hips ached, and the creases in her face seemed to have deepened. Nana sat down, removed a chip clip from the package top, and held the bag out toward Maddie. The joints of her fingers looked uncomfortably swollen. “Yum,” she offered proudly.
Maddie was careful to present a smile as she reached out for a handful of the tiny dried shrimp. A lot of kids on the island ate them like popcorn, but she had always loathed the things. She didn’t mind eating them if it would make Nana happy, though. She would do anything to make Nana happy.
“Just look at you, child,” Nana remarked, studying her. “What’s happened to my little fireball, eh? Still making trouble for the boys?”
Maddie gulped down her shrimp. Nana was nothing if not perceptive. “Always,” she answered. “Just trouble of a different kind, now.”
“Mmm hmmm,” Nana responded, nodding. “Don’t you take no crap from those boys now either, Maddie girl.”
Maddie smiled. “Have I ever?”
Nana smiled back knowingly. “Well, don’t keep me waiting, now. You have to tell me what you’ve been up to all this time! Where have you been? What have you been doing? And don’t say behaving yourself and being all ladylike, because no matter what you look like, I won’t be believing that.”
“You do remember me,” Maddie chuckled. With sudden inspiration, she rose from her chair and walked to the low bookcase under the front window. Slid behind it, as always, was an oversized children’s atlas. She brought the book back to the table and opened it up to a very simplified map of the mainland, which did not outline the states but showed cartoon illustrations of various icons and landmarks.
Nana straightened her back and fiddled with her glasses in anticipation. For a woman who, to Maddie’s knowledge, had never ventured further from home than Kauai, she had always showed a keen interest in other places and other people — an interest she had managed to instill in many of her young charges. “At first, I went to live with my grandparents, here,” Maddie said, pointing to the approximate area of Dayton, Ohio, which appeared just above a racehorse in Kentucky. “Then my dad got a job at a resort area called Land Between the Lakes, and we moved here, to Paducah, Kentucky.” She moved the tip of her finger to a point midway between the St. Louis arch and a sparkly guitar, which she presumed to represent Nashville. “That’s where my dad met Lisa, my stepmother. They got married when I was twelve, and I have twin stepbrothers, and I adore them all. When it came time for college I wanted desperately to come back to Hawaii, but my father was worried about the money, and I wound up getting a full scholarship to Murray State, so that’s where I went. The only problem was, it’s right here.” Maddie moved her fingernail a fraction of a millimeter closer to the guitar.
“Oh, Maddie, girl,” Nana clucked sympathetically, studying the map. “So far from the ocean!”
Maddie’s feet started to itch again. She just had to dip her toes in the Pacific soon! “I know,” she lamented. “I was wilting on the vine, Nana, I swear. Everyone else thought I was crazy, but I knew you would understand.”
Nana’s brown eyes smiled at hers, and Maddie swallowed another lump in her throat. Fifteen years. What had she been thinking? How could she go so long without calling? Without writing? She loved this woman! What the hell had been wrong with her?
Nana’s gaze broke away suddenly. She stared at the map again. “Was it cold in the winter in Ke
ntucky?”
Maddie got the feeling that Nana was avoiding too much gush. She pulled herself together. “Freezing. We had ice storms. And the summers were awful too, crazy hot and sticky humid — you’d have hated it! I had a good time in college, despite the weather, but I was restless. I wanted to move on. I got my bachelor’s in three years and started looking for someplace to start my PhD, because by then I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I found the perfect program in ecology, just a couple hours away from the Gulf Coast, in Alabama.” She pointed to an empty spot halfway between a shrimp and an orange. “And I had a plan for how I could eventually land a real job back here.”
Nana’s eyes lit up. “Did you do it?”
“Not yet,” Maddie admitted. “But I’m close. I arranged for a post-doctoral fellowship through the University of Hawaii, doing research on Maui. I’ll be staying at the Haleakala Field Station for at least a year. After that, who knows? My plan is to make myself so indispensable, someone somewhere on the islands will have to hire me.”
“You’re on Maui? That’s wonderful!” Nana exclaimed. She paused a beat. “Kai is on Maui now, too. Did you know?”
Maddie’s breath caught. “Kai’s on Maui?” she squeaked.
“Since last summer, yes,” Nana nodded. She started to say something else, then seemed troubled. Her gaze drifted elsewhere and she extended the bag of shrimp again. “More?”
Maddie pulled out two more of the dried crustaceans. “Gloria said he was a lawyer?” she prompted.
“That’s right. Have you seen Aki yet?”
Maddie nearly choked on her second shrimp. Nana herself had brought up the subject of Kai, only to abandon it almost immediately. Why? Both she and Gloria were acting strangely where Kai was concerned. And who was Aki, anyway? Maddie quickly realized that Nana must be speaking of Mr. Nakama. Of course: Malaya and Aki Nakama. “No, I haven’t seen him yet,” Maddie answered. “I’m afraid my memory for first names isn’t the best, seeing as how I didn’t use them when I was a child. I can’t even remember yours. I’m sorry.”
Nana laughed. “Oh, my. I’m not sure anyone else can, either. It’s Caliso. Caliso Jangcan.”
“Caliso’s a pretty name.”
“Yes, it is. Call me Nana.”
Now Maddie laughed. She looked into the twinkling brown eyes again, which hadn’t seemed to age at all in fifteen years, and another wave of emotion overcame her. “I’m so sorry, Nana,” she whispered. “I don’t know why I didn’t try to keep in touch. I missed you so much. But I was so self-absorbed… I never even thought that you might wonder what happened to me, that you might not even know my address. I just felt sorry for myself.”
Nana shook her head and reached for Maddie’s hand across the table. “No, lamb. You were just a child. And we… we wanted to respect your father’s wishes.” She looked uncomfortable. “You made a clean break, Maddie, moving someplace new, starting a whole new life. Maybe that was best for you.”
Nana patted Maddie’s hand, then tried to attach the clip back to the top of the bag of shrimp. Her swollen fingers struggled with the task.
“Here,” Maddie offered, taking the bag. “Let me. I want one more anyway.” She pulled out another of the despicable snacks and crunched away, careful not to wince. Then she replaced the clip and returned the bag to its place in the cabinet.
“I know that my father did what he thought was best,” she said quietly, looking away. “And I don’t mean to complain. I had a perfectly wonderful life on the mainland. Things were a bit grim for a while, but all that changed when my father met Lisa. She’s a wonderful person, Nana. You’d like her. I couldn’t have asked for a better stepmother, and I love being a big sister. I wouldn’t trade any of that. But…”
Maddie turned. Nana was watching her expectantly.
“But no matter how well things were going, a part of me always felt like I was living in exile,” Maddie finished. She sat down again. “I need my ocean. I need the mountains and the red dirt and the open air and the mists and the breezes and all the shades of green. No matter what anyone else thinks, I feel like this island is my home. And I can’t tell you how happy I am to be back again.”
Maddie studied Nana’s patiently smiling face, and guilt pummeled her. She felt like the prodigal daughter, taking off without a care, then returning one day and expecting a party. Nana owed her nothing, after all. Neither did any of the Nakamas. It was she who owed them, for being kind enough to treat her like a member of their family all those years.
She looked around the little house, which was clean but shabby. Nana had always had what she needed, but rarely anything more. Unfortunately, as much as Maddie would like to buy her something nice, extra cash was something she herself was also lacking — and would continue to lack for the foreseeable future. Still, there had to be something she could do for Nana, and for Mr. and Mrs. Nakama. She would not just show up after fifteen years, partake of their hospitality, and disappear again.
“Tell me more about your family,” Nana asked politely, taking a sip of water.
Maddie grinned at her. Politeness be darned. She knew what Nana really liked to talk about. “I will. But first, you have to tell me about everybody here. I’m dying to know everything I’ve missed! Marriages, births, any juicy little bits of gossip. Bad news first, please, and then the good. I’ve been… well, afraid to ask about the old men.”
Nana grinned. “Ack! Those ornery things! Most of them are still kicking, don’t you worry.”
“Old Mr. Kalaw?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And Mr. Li?”
Nana nodded. “Let’s see, fifteen years, eh?” She thought a moment, then told Maddie about all the Lana'ians who had passed away in that time. As Nana ran through a mental catalogue of the years, Maddie could see that Gloria had not been exaggerating. Nana did remember everything. Her mind was as sharp as it had ever been, which was far sharper than Maddie the child had given her credit for.
To Maddie’s relief, although she remembered several of the people who had passed away, none of her nearest and dearest “old men” were on the list. “Oh, we have to go over to the park and see them!” she said excitedly. “Maybe we can run up there on the way to the Nakamas’ later?”
To her surprise, Nana exploded with laughter. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
Maddie’s smile disappeared. “Why not?”
Nana continued to chuckle. After a moment she removed her glasses and wiped her eyes. “Maddie girl, you know Nana always tells it like it is, right?”
Maddie nodded warily.
“At least two of those old geezers died because their hearts gave out,” Nana explained, fixing Maddie with a maternal look as she gently squeezed her hand. “You go running up to that bench with a body like that and start giving out hugs?” She shook her head sadly. “Sweet Jesus, child. We’d lose every one of them.”
Chapter 5
“Ta-da!” Malaya Nakama sat the steaming dish down on the table in front of Maddie. Kai’s mother, father, and grandmother all grinned at her expectantly. Gloria fidgeted, looking bored.
“Oh, my,” Maddie murmured, her eyes threatening tears again. “I can’t believe you remembered. Spam-ghetti!”
Aki Nakama served a heaping spoonful of the casserole onto Maddie’s plate, and she beamed at him with thanks. Kai’s father was a master gardener and landscaper who had worked his way up through the ranks at the resorts, but the substantial cred he had built up in Lana'i City was based entirely on his character. Besides being level-headed, wise, and the soul of integrity, Aki was just plain likable.
“How could we forget our tomato-chan and her skill with chopsticks?” he said affectionately, using his own pet name for her, which meant something like “little tomato.” He shook his head with a sigh. “No child on the planet was more hopeless!”
Everyone except Gloria broke into laughter. Maddie had no idea how she had wangled her first invitation to the Nakamas’ dinner table, but
she did remember that she had refused all offers of a fork. If Kai was eating with chopsticks, she had been determined to do the same. Unfortunately, well… the fine motor skills thing. At some point Kai’s mother must have gotten tired of picking noodles up off the floor, because one night she concocted a special dish just for Maddie: cooked spaghetti chopped up and tossed with chunks of Spam and shredded cheese, then baked in the oven. The result was a sticky, gooey mixture that even Maddie could get to her mouth with two sticks. And she had loved the taste of it besides.
“Oh, Malaya,” she said gratefully, calling Kai’s mother by her first name as requested, which seemed more natural to say. “This is wonderful. Thank you!” Maddie rose and delivered a quick hug, which Malaya returned before sitting down to eat herself.
The Nakamas’ house was a two-bedroom cottage similar in size to Nana’s, and the eating area felt full with just the five of them. Throughout Kai’s childhood he had shared the second bedroom with his sister Chika, while Baby Gloria had slept in their parents’ room. Maddie wondered if Gloria had later been squeezed into the kids’ room on Chika’s side of the curtain, or if Kai had been banished to the couch. The house would have been cramped with all three kids at home, but thankfully, with weather as beautiful as Lana'i’s, they needn’t spend much time inside.
She smiled her thanks at Aki once more before digging in, but she knew better than to try and hug him. Though he had greeted her warmly upon her arrival, whatever his wife had told him about Maddie had seemed insufficient to prepare him for the shock of her appearance. When he had opened the door to her, his jaw had literally dropped. Maddie could have handled that; she understood that it must be tough for a man to see someone he knew as an unkempt brat magically transform into a grown woman. What made the meeting excruciatingly awkward, however, was the fact that Aki was considerably shorter than Maddie. And as a polite man who meant no disrespect, he found it difficult to interact with her without getting a kink in his neck.