by CL Walters
“I’m sorry about last night,” he says crossing his arms over his chest.
“Me too.”
“You don’t really have anything to be sorry for,” he says.
“I wish I hadn’t gotten mad. I wish I’d been more understanding.”
He shakes his head. “Naw. I ruined your birthday.”
I think about it, and maybe that could be true, but it isn’t the bad things I think about. I think about banana pancakes and hugs in the middle of a hardware store. I think about Dad’s love, watching him work on Brutus, and playing touch football. I think about laughing at dinner. I think about Gabe’s smile and an unwrapped gift on the table in the hallway at home waiting to be opened. I even think about a tiny black velvet box holding a surfboard charm with an etched heart. I think about my dad’s arms around me.
“No.” I shake my head and focus on the hollow of his throat under the gentle slope of his Adam’s apple. It moves as he swallows and I look up at his eyes. “There are too many good things to think it was ruined.”
“Abby!” Matt yells across the yard at me. “Let’s go!”
“Can we talk later?” Gabe asks.
I nod. “Tomorrow? After school?”
He smiles. “Yeah.”
I turn and walk backward away from him. “Or you can text me.”
He smiles.
I turn and walk across the yard toward the parking lot away from him, but it doesn’t strike me that it really is away and is strangely toward something new. I think about my pikos again, the past, the present and the future. I look over my shoulder before getting into the car and watch as Gabe and his parents walk across the lot. Gabe glances at me and I see a future. My belly clenches. My na’au, but it isn’t a warning. It’s definitely something different.
I get into the car and smile.
“Why are you smiling like that Baggy?” Matt asks.
“Like what?” I ask and start Brutus.
“I don’t know. Weird. You look stupid.”
“Whatever, Matt. I’ll remember to tell you the same thing next time you’re talking to Megan on the phone.”
He makes a whooshing sound through his mouth and shakes his head. “I don’t look weird like you.”
I glance at Nate in the rearview mirror as I reverse the car. He’s laughing.
Later, I drop them both off at the gym and my phone buzzes with a text. I keep Brutus parked and check it.
It’s Gabe: you said to text you.
I smile. I did. What’s up?
Gabe: Was just wondering if you wanted to come over? Maybe for Sunday dinner?
Me: I’ll have to check with my fam.
Gabe: Come over anyway. You don’t have to stay.
Me: When?
Gabe: Now.
Me: Why?
The three dots pop up on my screen and stay that way for a long time. I wonder if maybe he walked away from a partially written text, but then it comes through. I don’t like texting. It makes me smile and I wonder what he’d typed first.
Me: Ok.
When I get there, the store is closed and I walk around to the side entrance I’ve never used before. Gabe is already opening the door. “I heard Brutus,” he says. “Can you stay for dinner?”
I nod. “I can.”
He smiles. “That will make Martha happy.”
“So. Until then? Homework?”
“No way,” he says. “No. I want to show you something.” He steps out the door and closes it. “This way.”
I follow him down the side street to the back of the building that opens up into a parking lot. At the far edge of the lot is another building. “What’s that?” I ask. It runs parallel to the sidewalk where we’ve walked but perpendicular to the building where Gabe lives, a giant letter “L”.
“That’s where we keep the building supplies.”
The big overhead shop doors are drawn closed, but Gabe takes me to an entrance off to the side. We step into what feels like an alternate world. The warehouse smells of sawdust and plaster, a musty warmth that isn’t unpleasant. There are sheets of plywood, drywall, doors, windows, various types and sizes of lumber in giant holders. The concrete floor is swept clean. “This way,” Gabe says as we pass a forklift, and leads me to a ladder.
I follow him up. When I get to the top, he’s waiting and grabs my arm to help me over the ledge. “What’s this?” I ask wiping my hands on the front of my jeans. Around us are stacks of boxes with labels like “Christmas” “Easter” or “Baby,” forgotten furniture like a rocking chair, an old desk and cabinet with glass doors that no longer have the glass, canvas sheets, coils of ropes and riggings. There’re even parts of an old horse drawn buggy. It’s a treasure trove of history that makes me feel as though I’ve gone back in time.
“When I moved into the attic, all of those things were brought out here with all of the other stuff attributed to the Daniels Family Tree. That’s when I discovered it. This is where I like to come when I need… space,” he says.
“I like it,” I turn in a circle. The light is perfect, windows along the top of each side of the building allowing a filtered light to wash the space. It’s muted now, the rainy sky gray and dark. “It’s perfect on a rainy day.”
“Yeah. Listen.”
We go silent and the rain beats against the corrugated metal of the roof. It’s a beautiful sound that matches the rhythm of my heart and lulls me. “Wow.” I breath.
“This way,” he says.
We walk the length of the building in the loft until we reach the far end opposite the entrance. Gabe disappears around a stack of boxes. I follow him and the light fades until it’s more difficult to see, the boxes blocking out the sunlight. My eyes adjust. “Gabe?” I call.
“Here,” he says.
I follow his voice, and enter a made space, one that I image he’s carved out by moving things around until he’d made it just like he wanted. The walls are stacked boxes. He’s made a desk with a sheet of wood and CMU blocks. He’s found an old wooden swivel chair and strung up a mechanic’s light that I’ve seen my dad use when working on the car to give him better light. “This is really cool,” I say.
He’s nervous, standing in the center of the space his arms crossed over his chest. “You like it?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a sweet set up. What do you use it for?”
“Oh, whatever. When I want to get away from the house. It’s nice here, especially when there’s work being done in the warehouse. I like the sound of the band saw. Or on days like this when it’s quiet and there’s rain.”
“This where you bring all the girls,” I tease. When I look at him, I realize I’ve said something wrong. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-” and it dawns on me that I’d forgotten what life was like for him with The Freak Challenge. Things have felt so normal, so right that I forgot. What girls would there have been over the last three years?
He waves a hand at me and turns away, sitting on the swivel chair.
“No really, Gabe.” I step toward him. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay. No big deal.”
“It kinda is,” I say and move to lean against the table so I can see his face. “It’s like I’m an archeologist getting to glimpse the world of Gabe Daniels.” I smile and lean over to put a hand on his shoulder.
His eyes glance at my hand and then move to meet mine. He isn’t smiling, but he isn’t mad or hurt either. I don’t know how to read his look and retract my hand though the heat from him lingers on my skin. “I’ve never brought anyone here,” he says.
I look around again though more reverent eyes and understand the import of what he’s showing me. It’s a world where he’s escaped, one that has offered him comfort. I could feel sorry for him, but I don’t. Instead, I see him as a survivor. The one who builds something new to carve out his place and it brings tears to my eyes. “I love it,” I say and I love you is
on the tip of my tongue unsaid. The realization jumps into my soul shocking me, and I move away from him suddenly unsure of myself. I doubt myself.
I sink onto a clump of canvas sheeting against one of the walls, pull up my knees and wrap my arms around my legs. With my chin on my knees I look at him, hopeful that I’ve got my wayward thoughts under control, that he won’t be able to read how I feel in my eyes.
He glances around and says, “I like to write here.”
“And what do you write?” I ask.
“I journal mostly,” he says. “But I like to write poetry, too.”
“I would love to hear it sometime,” I tell him.
He’s less sure of himself today, insecure in a way like the first time I saw his room. Wary like maybe he’s shared too much. I recognize the way he might feel cornered and waiting for the hurt. “Did you open your birthday gift,” he asks filling the silence.
“Not yet. I-” I pause but then rush forward anyway not stopping to think about possible repercussions, “I’d wanted to open it with you.” He looks at his shoes, watching the movement of his feet as he rolls them outward and then back again.
“Why’d you bring me here?” I ask. I’m sincerely curious, this quiet secluded space that scream fortress. Why would be share it with me?
He leans forward in his seat and puts his elbows on his knees, bent at the waist. His hands clasped he rests his forehead on his hands. “When you went through what you did? Did you feel lonely?”
“Last year?”
He nods.
“Yeah.”
“I feel all mixed up,” Gabe eventually says. “Right now. Like I don’t know up from down, left from right. And sometimes it feels like I’m drowning.”
I don’t reply, just listen.
“At first, when the challenge started,” he says, “I thought Seth would call me out, that we’d fight, and it would be done. As time went on though, each time someone called me out, and he had a chance to change it, but didn’t, I took each punch and got angrier, more alone.” He stops and is quiet. He lifts his head but doesn’t really focus on anything in particular. “After a while, I just kind of shut myself off. Stopped feeling anything because there was too much anger to deal with. Three years has been a long time. For me. For Dale and Martha. It’s been really difficult and… lonely.”
I shiver suddenly thinking about what Seth did to Gabe, what Seth’s dad has done to him his whole life and wonder if maybe he’s shared some of that lonely pain in a different way.
“Now, it’s different. And that’s because of you.” He looks at me, really focuses this time, his eyes drawing me in and pinning me with the truth of his words. “And you said that night I drove you home from that stupid party, ‘you were my hero, tonight’, and I began to think that maybe I could be - a hero - instead of what I am.”
I draw my head up and away from my knees, “Oh, but Gabe, you are way more than you think,” I say hoping with every intonation that he hears the truth in my words.
He watches me and then says, “Remember when I asked you, ‘why Seth?’ what you said?”
It seems so long ago but I do recall, “Something about imperfections,” I say.
“He makes me feel like my imperfections aren’t imperfections,” He says verbatim. “I wrote it in my journal that night.” He stops looks down and then back up. “Do you still feel that way? About him?”
My breath catches in my throat and I can’t seem to push anything I want past it. Though how could I tell him that I love him and he believe it? I barely believe it myself, it’s such a stark realization in the muddy water of our lives. I shake my head, but then add. “Different,” when I’m able to take control of my voice again. “I care about him. I will always care about him. Like you, we share our childhood.”
My past.
Gabe nods studying his hands. He doesn’t say anything for a while and then stands up. “We should go. Martha will probably be calling us to dinner soon.” He stops in front of my feet and holds out a hand.
I take it, and he draws me up.
When I reach my full height, I realize how close we are standing. One inch forward by either of us and we’d touch, but Seth’s broken-hearted face flashes in my mind and the associated guilt to match it. I know I haven’t done anything to feel guilty for - but Gabe’s question swirls around in my mind: Do you still feel the same way? The answer is no. I don’t. I’ve fallen for Gabe and it is same scenario they faced all those years ago. I am that girl, coming between them once again. It is a heavy burden and even if I wanted to step closer to Gabe, to close the distance between us, I can’t do it. There’s too much at stake. I look down at our feet and he steps away.
“Thank you for showing me,” I tell him as we walk back to the house.
Gabe looks at me over his shoulder and smiles. I’m glad we’ve found a place of peace, but I’m afraid too. What if it doesn’t last?
When I get home, I take Gabe’s birthday present up to my room and sit on the bed to open it. Treating the newspaper as if it were precious silk, I unwrap it. Nestled inside is a frame. Within the frame is an arranged mosaic of paint samples in hues of blue and green over which assorted washers, bolts and supplies from the store have been arranged to spell my name. It makes me radiate with warmth.
I move from my bed to find a place to hang it and flip it over to see what kind of assembly I’ll need to hang it. Taped to the back is an envelope. Setting the frame on my desk I open the envelope and draw a folded paper from inside. I unfold the note. Bold handwriting, all capital lettered print, in blue ink moves across the page and I realize I’m looking at a poem. Signed at the bottom: love, Gabe.
My heart racing, I read and reread the beautiful words he’s written:
Head hanging garden
Watered with poison and
Crowned with shame.
Offer the tempting fruit,
A fertilizing word like “hero,”
And change the vantage to a mountain top.
The garden below is rotten.
Your smile: the antidote.
Remove the crown and
Prune the head from the poisonous vine.
31
FREEDOM
It’s still dark when a knock at my door draws me from sleep. It creaks open.
“Abby?” My dad whispers.
I look up and see his head poked through the doorway. “Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Yes. Get up and get your wetsuit on. I want to take your surfing.”
I hear the light drizzle against the window pane. “It’s raining,” I say.
“The ocean is wet,” he says.
I smile. “I’ll be right down.”
Once in the cocoon of his car, the twilight darkness is a comforting blanket around us. There isn’t a need to talk, just the comfort of being together. I’m excited, anxious about getting in the water. It has been so long, and it has been ages since I’ve surfed with my dad, since before Poppa died. I look at him, the glow of the dash illuminating his features. I wonder if it will feel as important now? Regardless, a sweet contentment fills me like a cup and I feel happy.
My present.
I watch the road. The yellow lights from the car lead the way through and out of town to a spot locals have told my dad is the best place to find the waves. It’s the same beach where I went that morning with Seth.
“You nervous?” my dad asks laying out the board on the sand.
The dark is draining away and making way for the sun beginning to hedge its yellow light over the mountain horizon. Tall trees reach toward it as though uplifting songs of praise with their branches. The drizzle is light but consistent.
I nod. “Yeah. It has been a long time. And it isn’t Hawaii.”
He rubs his board with wax. “Yeah.”
“You think it will feel the same?”
“In 55-degree water?” He laughs.
“That’s not what I mean.” I take the wax he offers and score my board.
>
“It’s the Pacific Ocean, yeah?” He lifts his board and stops to study the sea, the loud surf crashing against the distant shoreline. “Same ocean.”
After waxing the boards, we venture into the water. We stop and watch looking for the currents, the animals, the dangers; we watch to revere the ocean. We won’t take without giving, because it is that which feeds us not only physically but emotionally too. It is the Hawaiian way to revere and honor our connection to nature around us.
Dad reaches in and touches the water as it reaches up and wraps around his feet. He then touches his head and his heart with his wet fingertips, a sort of baptism. I hear his quiet prayer of gratitude and follow suit remembering the lesson with Poppa too. The respect, born of my aloha is rooted in my connection to Papahanaumoku, Mother Earth. “Love the earth and the sea,” Poppa had told me, “because it is your ʻohana.” I step into the water following my dad and hiss when the water hits my body. While the wetsuit insulates, it takes a while to acclimate to the very different cold. I continue to offer thanksgiving the deeper I venture into the water.
Thank you for my homeland.
Thank you for yesterday.
Thank you for today.
Thank you for tomorrow.
Thank you for my people.
Dad and I paddle out to the break. Maybe the same ocean, but I find the characteristics of the water different than in Hawaii where surfing originated. There, where ancient Hawaiians aliʻi used wooden planks and demonstrated their prowess, their power, their sensuality, the waves are steady like the weather. Here, though the waves are heavy and aggressive like the Hawaii ocean in a storm, a white wash mush. This tube is weighted and I watch for the characteristic curl, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, the swell seems to surge forward like a never-ending flow of current rather than the ebb and flow of the tide.
My father catches a ride and his laughter bubbles up around us like music. I smile and try it. It takes me some time, a re-forging of my soul with surfing, a reconnection with my body in a new body of water, and a reacclimating to who I am here at this moment in this place. The moment, I catch a wave, however, it is as though time stops. For that moment, I’m captured in a wormhole that transports me from what was toward a future of beautiful possibility. It fills me with an awesome understanding of who I am. I am me. I am Abby Kaiāulu. I am the daughter of John and Grace. A granddaughter of Poppa. Of Nana. I am from Papa and Wakea. My brother is Hāloa. I am Hawaiian. I am Haole. I am Good Abby and I am Bad. I am just one. Whole.