by CL Walters
I direct him to my house keeping what I say to directions until we're almost there. “I’m sorry if I hurt you bringing it up,” I say. It’s the least I can do and the most. “This one, right here,” I say and he pulls the truck over to the curb. The porch juts out toward the road, heavy eyebrows over the yellow glowing eyes of the house.
“It’s hard to talk about,” he says. “I’ve only ever shared it with one other person. Please don’t think I’m angry at you,” he says.
Seth, I think. That’s who you told. Your best friend. I look at him, really look at him and see that he is also studying me. Neither of us looks away like I would usually do, embarrassed that my boldness might be misinterpreted. Instead, I smile, hoping he knows that I don’t blame him. “I understand,” I say. “We all have things that are hard to talk about, you know?” I know this is too much because good Abby scolds me, but it feels like one of the most important, most authentic things I have ever said to another person. I open the door and say as I get out, “I can’t thank you enough. You were my hero tonight."
He’s still looking at me when I turn back toward him, hand on the door. A moment passes between us and I realize I see the other side of the bridge. I’m one end and he’s the other. We are connected. I think he must feel it too because he hesitates and then says as though avoiding it, “Well, I better get back to the shop or Dale and Martha will send out a search party." He smiles but it isn't at me. He’s staring out the front of the truck and I have the distinct impression he’s thinking about something else, like he wanted something to be different.
“Right. Thank you, again, Gabe. I’ll see you at school.” I shut the door and step away from the truck onto the sidewalk as it pulls away from the curb and disappears down the street.
11
WHO ARE YOU?
Thankfully, Nate hears the truck and opens the door for me when I climb the porch steps. “I thought you were with Seth,” Nate whispers when I walk into the house.
“I was.”
“That wasn’t his truck."
I hate to disappoint Nate. “You’re right it wasn’t.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t feel like talking about it.”
“Are you hurt?" Nate’s eyebrows snap together ready to go to battle for me. Even though he is my little brother, he and Matt have finally surpassed me in size.
“Nothing like that. Thanks. He just ditched me at a stupid party.”
“What?”
“I’m okay though. Got a ride. Mom and Dad home?”
"Mom's on the computer in the office, writing a paper for her class." He looks toward the back of the house.
“And Dad?”
“Not yet.” He gives me that look and I know that Dad’s absence has put mom in a bad mood. This Cantos move hasn’t been what I think she hoped it would be. Instead, it has pushed Dad out of the house just as much. I guess old habits die hard. Either that or they’re in more trouble than I thought.
I follow Nate up the stairs as quietly as possible. Best to avoid mom. I can try to explain being home tomorrow morning after I’ve had time to come up with an excuse and she’s more likely to be less angry.
“I thought you were staying with Hannah?" Mom’s voice startles me.
Shit.
She stands in the hallway near the door to the kitchen. Her arms crossed over her chest.
“Yeah. I was going to,” I say and I feel the color drain from my face. “I changed my mind.”
“Where’s your bag?”
I hesitate. “I forgot it." How lame.
“Nate." Mom is angry and warns him out of her vicinity. Her voice low and clipped as if shears have pruned away her patience. She takes a deep cleansing breath.
“Goodnight,” he says and walks up the stairs two at a time.
“You didn’t go to Hannah’s did you. You lied?”
I don’t answer.
“Abby." She says my name as if it brings her pain and walks down the hall and stops at the bottom of the steps. “So where were you?" The edge of her voice is sharp.
Already caught, I tell her the truth. “With Seth.”
“Seth from last week? Why didn’t you just ask?”
“He wanted to take me to Portland to the movies,” I answer. I can’t meet her eyes and focus on some lint on the sleeve of my jacket. “I didn’t think you’d let me go.”
“You assumed. You wouldn’t know until you asked." She is livid, her words short and her voice loud.
“You guys barely let me do anything. And I really wanted to go. Can you honestly say you would have let me drive two hours away with Seth?”
“That doesn’t give you the right to lie, Abby! Who are you? I don’t recognize my own daughter."
Hurt, bad Abby rears up. “Well, this is who you’ve got.”
Her eyes go sharp and I can see the fight behind them, but then she sighs instead as if exhausted. “Go to bed. I’m too angry and disappointed to talk to you right now.”
I retreat. Once there, I flop into the inviting cocoon of my bed, but I can’t sleep. My restless heart pounds and my mother’s words echo in its beat: Who are you? Tears bunch in the corner of my eyes but I don’t hold them back. They fall in rivulets, like raindrops running down a window pane. The truth is I don’t really know. Am I the Abby who’s working so hard to keep to the straight and narrow? The one who says all the right things and has all the right friends? Or am I the Abby who’s the outcast? The one that lies to her parents and does lap dances for boys that make it to Twitter? What if they are all one in the same?
The next afternoon, I cling to my memory of Poppa when I sit down at the table with my parents for the talking to I’ve been expecting. I’m not sure why, but I think of his wisdom, his grace, neither of which I have but wanted so much to emulate when he was alive. I’ve failed in so many ways and now that connection to that part of me is lost, gone with him. My parents are just as lost. There is comfort in thinking about him because I feel like a lost buoy in a confusing Oregon sea.
I glance at my dad and see the features of Poppa. The deep, sun-tanned hue of his skin. His large, soft brown eyes flecked with black. His dark hair now teased with silver strands glinting in the light while Poppa’s had been completely silver with flecks of black. I wonder when that happened. His mouth is set, his usually full lips thinned out with the set of his wide jaw. Poppa would have been looking at me, a slight smile of amusement on his face despite his irritation with me, instead of the stony look of my father who’s looking at his cell phone instead.
On the other hand, my mom stares at me. She’s next to my father at the table and her gentle mouth frowns as she smooths her dark brown hair into a pony tail. She secures it with a hair tie. When she looks at me, her eyes, sharper than my dad’s in shape but large and turned down at the outside edge, are rimmed with sadness. In that moment, I imagine her when she was young, that youth always her shadow, and wonder if she always so serious and emotionally tempered. My mom’s gaze darts to him, as though she’s waiting for him, but he doesn’t seem to notice her cue. He doesn’t seem to notice her.
They met in college - in Oregon. I wonder how two people, so different, can come together. My mom said one time that she didn’t see what made them different. When they look at me, now, despite their differences, their disappointment makes them the same.
I think about my mom’s question: Who are you? I wonder if I am a combination of them. Half of my white mother and half of my Hawaiian father, but there where does my poppa fit? My Nan Bev? My brothers? Or the experiences I’ve had? Seth, my childhood playmate? Am I only the sum of my parts or is it more than that? Is Good Abby me? Or Bad? What about this Abby version 2.0? Poppa told me that I carry the ancient wisdom of my moʻokuauhau in me, but I don’t feel it. I just feel like a tiny, rolling life raft drifting at sea. Alone. And I don’t understand the stars to navigate my way. I just feel like stupid, worthless Abby who’s messed up again. I wish I could talk to Poppa. I know h
e’d be the North star to guide me back again.
“Your father and I want to discuss last night,” mom says opening the proceedings.
I remain silent. These affairs usually move more quickly if I keep my mouth shut.
She continues, glancing at my dad again. “Do you understand why we’re disappointed?”
I nod. Of course, I do. I’ve ruminated on it for the last twelve hours continuously and considered everything: why I lied, what happened, Seth, Gabe, getting caught. I’m disappointed too, but maybe not as much in the lie to them as in the overall circumstances - getting caught not included. I’m stuck in a rip current pulling me out sea but instead of doing what I’ve been taught and focusing on the correct course, I’ve been fighting the current. Now, I’m tired and drowning.
“I thought this was behind us?” She asks. “I mean, I thought we’d come to an understanding about the lying and sneaking around in Hawaii, Abby.”
“I wasn’t lying and sneaking around,” I say though I know to what she’s referring; I’d spent a lot of time last year trying to hide my misery, my mistake from them. “You make it sound like it’s habitual.”
My dad looks up from his phone and levels a stare at me. Even though I know he’s a teddy bear, mostly, I don’t like to be on his bad side and I can see that I’m towing the line.
“Yes.” I lower my eyes and look at the table. My hands are in my lap.
“What da fuck wen’ happen, den?” My dad asks. His Hawaiian creole, pidgin, creeps out in his dialect when he’s angry. It’s then I realize that he isn’t indifferent but is using his phone to keep his cool.
“I was stupid.” In retrospect, I knew that I had lied because I didn’t think I could afford their “no”.
“Yeah. You right.”
“John,” my mom whispers. “What your dad means, is that what you did was stupid.”
“No. Dat’s exactly wot I wen’ mean,” he says. “No tell me wot for tink, Grace.” He looks at me and takes a deep breath. Several deep breaths. Several beats later his straight English returns, “Abby, you’re smart.” The switch is a sign he’s cooling off. “But this was stupid.”
I nod. “I should have asked.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t,” my mom says.
“I was afraid you’d say, ‘no.’” And, I need Seth to like me.
“Fo’ good reason!” Dad snaps.
“I promise. I’ve been trying,” I say. “It’s hard, you know, trying to find friends after the school year has already started.”
“Bullshit. I don’t want to hear any excuses,” my dad says. “You made friends with Hannah. You decided to lie about a boy.”
I look at the wood grain in the table. I hear him. I do. Even with good Abby rules in play, while the rules kept me from doing something irreversibly dumb, they weren’t able to protect me from stupidity - mine or anyone else’s.
“So, what happened? You went to Portland with him?” Dad asks.
“No.”
“Then where were you?”
I could lie. I could say we went anywhere else. I could say that we did anything else but
go to that party. Truth is, though, I’m already in trouble, and I don’t need to lie anymore. I’ve already been caught. “A party.”
“Was there alcohol?”
I nod, “but I didn’t drink any. I promise.”
“And was this Seth drinking?” Dad asks.
“He was.”
“And you drove home with him?” My mom’s voice hitches up a notch. It’s laced with worry.
“No. I found a ride home with someone who wasn’t,” I say. They don’t ask who, so I don’t offer the information. I don’t want to answer any question about walking home down a dark highway and getting picked up. It sounds shady. And maybe I’m trying to save Seth, too. “I really thought we were going to Portland,” I add. I’m not sure why I say it. It doesn’t make a difference. Any way around it, I was wrong, and I know that. For some reason, though, it seems like I have to put it out there. I may have lied about Portland, but I don’t want them to think I was lying about the party. It’s a small thing, but in that moment, gigantic.
“A lie is a lie, Abby,” my mom says.
“I know. I do. I’m sorry.”
My parents accept my apology, and with a graciousness I don’t expect, are much more lenient than I anticipate. “Strike one,” my father says. “Don’t get another one.”
My mom looks at him and I think maybe she’s just as surprised. She presses her lips together and looks away but doesn’t say anything. If anything, they are a united front, but I bet Dad will hear about this later when I’m out of earshot.
“Yes, sir,” I say and escape into the yard where my brothers have been sent before he can change his mind. I sink to the cold, moist earth and attack a flower bed full of weeds as directed by my mother. I pluck scratchy green sprouts filled with a white milky substance and drop them into a pile. Nate passes me with the lawn mower while Matt rakes, his face hung up in a glower of annoyance. When I’ve nearly finished the flower bed, I sit back and look at the progress I’ve made. There are piles of weeds in a row along the bed’s edge, but the earth where the plants were removed is black, soft and pliable. The plants still in the bed seem more vibrant and happier, if a plant can be happy.
As I work my way across the front of the house, I think about the night before, about Seth and his betrayal. It makes me mad, but more than anything, it makes me sad. I trusted him and it’s just another instance of my naʻau not working properly. I continue to pull weeds from the flower bed and consider that despite my best efforts to follow Good Abby’s rules, I’d still gotten into a fix. I yank another weed and another. It dawns on me that I’d been working so hard to be the perfect representation of Good Abby neutrality, I’d become exactly what had turned on me last year. But who was it that came to my rescue when I needed someone? It hadn’t been Seth. It had been Gabe, the very person I’d withdrawn from, who I’d treated as shoddy as I’d been treated once upon a time. I’m filled with shame and remorse and wonder if there’s any way to weed myself.
12
DREAM BY-PRODUCT
I'm in bed covered by a gossamer shroud, asleep. Gabe is there trying to wake me. He shakes me. I can see him, but I’m stuck in sleep. He shouts my name. Even though his voice is muted and distant, I see him. He’s worried. "Wake up, Abby,” he repeats over and over. He pulls the sheer curtain away and then he leans down to kiss me, the prince in my sleeping beauty tale. When I open my eyes, it isn't Gabe leaning over me but Seth. My eyes fly open, and I'm in the darkness of my own room, my heart beating furiously in my chest.
A glance at the clock reveals it is nearly two in the morning. I can hear my mom and dad's muffled voices pressing against the walls of the house before I register what they are saying. I sit up.
“She should have been held accountable,” my mother snaps.
My father’s voice booms, “What do you want me to do?”
“Shh,” she responds and then the soft mumble of her voice, words I can’t distinguish, and then, “be a team.”
“Is that what this move was?” His voice is loud, no question what he’s said. “Teamwork?”
And she responds in kind, her passion evident. “You know why I did this, why I insisted. I didn’t want to share space - share you with another woman, John.” I can hear the tears in her voice, heavy and thick.
Confirmation of what I suspected isn’t any easier to hear. I think it happened before my Poppa died and maybe continued after too. I remember the fight between my parents, loud, hurtful, broken. Nate and Matt had cried in my room, huddled with me on my bed, my arms around them. Our parents don’t usually fight in front of us. I remember Dad leaving and living with Uncle and Auntie for a while. And then I went down my own rabbit hole and the rest of the world slipped away from me.
“That was over a long time ago,” Dad snaps.
“But you’ve never came back to me. To
us.”
“I’m here now aren’t I?” Now he’s yelling.
Mom’s voice matches his. “Are you? You’re at work or on your phone. You’re mentally still in Hawaii!”
“What did you expect? Hawaii is my home.”
“I left Oregon for you.”
“It’s not the same thing and you know it.”
“Why not? I grew up here, you there.”
“You aren’t Oregon.”
“And you’re Hawaii? How’s that John. When it’s convenient?”
“You wouldn’t understand, because-”
“Because why? I’m only haole?” The statement hangs in the house like a tattered coat in a closet, alone and broken. The weight of it makes my stomach hurt like it’s a rock sitting in a pool of acid. And I wonder if that is what everything in their life, my life, my brothers’ lives will amount to: the sum of our parts. Then my mom says in a voice that is more controlled, “Try me, John. You’ve never even given me a chance. You don’t try to include me and the kids anymore. It’s like we are by-products of a life you used to have. A choice you once made.”
“Grace,” his voice holds a warning. “Don’t use them against me.”
“I’m not…” then her voice is difficult to hear and the walls filter her words.
I catch words from my father’s voice: “Stress… Work . . .Fit in... ”
Then mom says, “I want us to go to a counselor.”
I don’t know what my father says, because a strange calm charges the night. I continue to hear their hushed voices but can’t make out what they are saying to one another. And then it is silent. I get up from my bed and move quietly to the door. I press an ear against it, hoping to hear the conversation, to make sense of what is happening and understand how my world might shift. Instead, I hear the soft steps of someone moving down the hall, and then the atmosphere is quiet.
I step away from the door and move back to my bed when there is a quiet knock, almost imperceptible, on the door. My heart is racing, a loud clang of guilt in my ears. When I open the door, my brothers are outside with blankets and pillows. I let them in and without words, they set up to sleep on my floor. I climb back into bed willing my heart to stop pounding and lay in the dark turning over what I’ve heard in my mind.