The Goddesses

by Swan Huntley

  I looked at my feet. “I’m happy to make you French toast, Ana.”

  She touched her heart. “I would love that,” she said.

  I smiled for her. She said nothing. I smiled harder. She squinted at me. “Okay, Nan,” she said finally, “I see what you’re doing.” She blew me a kiss. “We can play nice.”

  “I’ll be back with your French toast,” I said, and closed the door.

  “Door open, please!”

  I pushed the door back open. “No problem!” I sang.

  I went to the kitchen. I cracked the eggs and stirred them fast. Compassion. Kindness. She would know if I made this French toast without love. I watched the butter melt and bubble. I watched my hands pull the bread through the egg. I felt nothing.

  The sound of the chainsaw stopping. The sound of the truck driving away. After they had gone, another sound. The police. I ran to the window. No police. I was going crazy.

  I arranged the French toast lovingly on a tray and brought it to her with a glass of apple juice and two Red Vines in a jar. This kindness would release me from having to spend the day with her. “Here you go,” I said, setting it on the nightstand.

  She was reading a book. Chuck’s Hawaii book. Big Island Revealed. She’d taken it out of his drawer.

  “Oh, Nan,” she said sweetly. “You do love me.”

  I put my hands in my pockets, but I was wearing spandex that had no pockets.

  And then a noise and I flinched. I went to the window. Not the police. Nothing.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “If they come, I will take the fall. I told you that already.”

  “Ana,” I said, “I have to ask you something.”

  She raised her eyebrows. She was amused.

  “Did you hit him on purpose?”

  “No,” she said, looking straight at me. Her eyes were steady, focused. “Who do you think I am?”

  I looked at her. She looked at me. Steam rose from the French toast.

  “Well,” I said, “I’m off to run some errands.”

  “Where?”

  “The store.”

  “Can I come with?”

  It took courage to say, “I’d like to be alone right now, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Nan,” she laughed. “Come on. You hate being alone.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Please,” she said, “you know you hate it.”

  “Okay, I’m going to get going,” I chirped. “Do you need anything from the store?”

  She held my eyes. And then—hand on her stomach. She winced.

  The requisite “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head.

  I went to her. Her face, still strained. “Nan,” she whispered. She was breathing normally again. Good. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I’m just going to the store. I’ll be right back.”

  She blinked several times.

  I stood. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

  “Wait. If I die while you’re gone, what will you have wished you had said to me? What do you want to say to me before I die?”

  I knew what she wanted. “That I love you, Ana.”

  “I love you, too, Nan.”

  I blew her a kiss. “Bye.”

  “Don’t be alone for too long.” She winked. “You’ll get depressed.”

  I smiled harder. “See you soon.”

  She winced again. I pretended not to notice, and left the room.

  But I felt like a bad person so I went back to check. Through the crack in the door, I expected to find her holding her belly and breathing it out. But no, she was picking at her fingernail, looking bored. Then she picked up a slice of French toast. Syrup dripped onto the sheets. She didn’t notice or she didn’t care. She lowered the toast into her mouth and took two big bites, one right after the other.

  33

  I feel lonely, I thought, as I walked deeper into the forest. I feel scared, I thought, when I heard something living brush through the leaves and quickened my pace. My shoes, I thought, when the path turned to mud. When I stopped to tie my muddy shoe and heard no cars and no dogs and no people and no sound in the world beyond the ringing of crickets, there was only the thud of my heart beating, and it was beating fast.

  I screamed. I screamed as loud as I could until there was nothing left.

  Afterwards, silence.

  No one came to save me.

  The crickets didn’t stop to make room for my noise.

  The world was the same as it always was.

  Nature didn’t care.

  34

  Safeway was crowded. All these people and I couldn’t look into their eyes. Hands on the cart, eyes on the food. I walked like I was underwater. I examined every product. I didn’t want to go home.

  I’d heard the “Hey you!” but I didn’t think “you” was me until someone touched my arm.

  It was Marigold. Or Petunia. I didn’t know which was which. “Sandwich Sistah,” she said. Her hollowed cheeks and barely any blue in her eyes because her pupils were so dilated. And then Petunia or Marigold—the other one—walked up with a loaf of Love’s bread. “Fuckin’ A, this store is backward,” she said, dropping it into their cart, which was full with the big backpack they slept on.

  “Look who it is,” the first one said, and the second one looked at me, barely any blue in her eyes either. “Sandwich Lady!” She hugged me. She was so thin. “Girl, we been missing you. Look, we even making our sandwiches like yours now.” She motioned to the jar of Skippy in the cart.

  “When you coming back?” the first one asked.

  And then they were both looking at me, their gaunt electric faces and their sweatshirts hanging off their scarecrow bodies, and I don’t know why I said, “Soon. I’ll be back soon.”

  •

  A police car on the road, so I turned right to get away from it, which was the wrong way. Another police car, so I turned to avoid that one, too. I ended up on the highway driving north. I kept checking the rearview mirror to make sure the SUV behind me didn’t have a blue light on top of it. Because that’s what police cars looked like in Kona—just regular cars with blue lights on top. This made them harder to spot.

  The sun, the sky, the ocean. Snow-capped Mauna Kea and the unfair beauty of it. I drove all the way to Waikoloa before turning back. It was late afternoon. I’d been gone for hours. I still didn’t want to go home. But the milk was getting hot. But she was dying.

  •

  But when I got home, she wasn’t there. Her car was gone. She hadn’t left a note.

  I unpacked the groceries. My phone beeped. A text from Cam: Ana is taking us to volcano!

  I wrote back: Great.

  All I felt was relief, and maybe this was the wrong thing to feel. An afternoon relieved from her. But what about tomorrow? And the days after tomorrow? How many days did she have left?

  I put her tarot cards away. I swept the floors. I swept my necklace into the dust bin. I was about to throw it away, but I picked it out of the dirt and set it on the windowsill instead.

  The teal shirt, the blood, the flashlight rolling, rolling.

  I hadn’t eaten all day. I didn’t feel like eating. I made myself eat anyway. I ate a banana. And then a Red Vine, maybe to see how it would feel. I chewed it partway and spit it out.

  How he had landed, like he was sleeping.

  I didn’t turn on the TV. I cleaned it instead. I took her tray to the kitchen. She’d eaten all the French toast and both of the Red Vines.

  How she had said, “Drive.” How I had obeyed her. How I had wanted to leave, too.

  •

  By six the house was immaculate. I had replaced Ana’s dead tree branch with our family photo. If a stranger saw this photo, they would think, Those people look wholesome. I tossed the branch outside. The sun, low in the sky behind the trees. My barren garden, just a wet rectangle of soil.

  The sound of a car coming closer. I turned. It was Chuck. I didn’t move. He got out of the
car, walked toward the ohana. He was carrying a bag of takeout food. I couldn’t tell from where. He looked tired. And old. Lines on his forehead I hadn’t seen before, and this meant I looked older, too. “Hey,” he said carefully, like I was a bomb he might set off.

  I nodded at his bag. “Dinner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You going out tonight?” I was speaking evenly, which impressed me. “Are you going to play pool?”

  Chuck touched his neck. “I don’t think so.”

  “Chuck.” I wanted to make sure he was looking at me when I asked.

  “Yeah?” Those bright blue eyes. I hadn’t seen them in the light like this for what felt like so long.

  “Who is Brenda?”

  His face twisted. He was trying to figure out how I knew.

  “The boys told me you were looking for her the other night.”

  “Oh,” Chuck said. I could tell he was trying to remember. And then he did remember—I saw it on his face—and he said, “Oh,” again.

  “Are you having another affair, Chuck, because if you are, I can’t—”

  “I am not having an affair.” He seemed exhausted.

  “Are you sure?”

  He rubbed his tired face. “I’m sure.”

  “Okay.” I wanted to believe him. “Okay.” I crossed my arms. “Who’s Brenda?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “She’s a coach.”

  “What kind of coach?”

  His shoulders slumped. “A sobriety coach,” he said quietly.

  “Why wouldn’t you tell me that?” I was hurt.

  He moved his bag to the other hand. “I had to do this on my own.”

  I was still hurt. “I’m proud of you,” I said. “Do you want to come in? I can make you some real dinner, if you want.” I felt the muscles in my neck tighten, expectant.

  Chuck looked down. “I got dinner, but thank you.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that he might say no.

  He glanced at our cars. “Ana’s not here,” he said.

  “She took the boys to the volcano.”

  “She’s alone with the boys?”

  “Is that a problem?” I was mad he’d said no to my food.

  Chuck said nothing.

  I said nothing.

  He checked his watch.

  I excused him so he wouldn’t have to do it himself. “Go eat,” I said. “You don’t want it to get cold.”

  •

  An hour later he left. I didn’t know where he went.

  •

  The sky darkened. The moon rose. I took another shower. As if I were covered in his blood. I scrubbed harder. This time I bled.

  I put a pillow in the center of the bed. But a little off-center so my barrier would look like an accidentally tossed pillow. It would be unwise to upset her. I didn’t trust her angry.

  •

  In the middle of the night, they came home. Outside the bedroom door, they whispered, good night, good night, good night. I listened to Ana take off her clothes. My weight shifted toward her when her body hit the bed. The first thing she did was move the pillow. The second thing she did was string my necklace back around my neck. And then she put her arm around me and five minutes later she was asleep. Locked under her arm, I couldn’t twist and turn anymore, and the rise and fall of her body against mine was soothing even when I didn’t want it to be. It was comfort, the most basic comfort of two bodies together, and there was nothing to do but sleep.

  35

  “It hasn’t hit Pahoa yet, but it’s about to. It’s so close.” Her glimmering eyes. How chaos excited her. She painted another sloppy stroke.

  I was letting her paint my toes one final time. So that if she died today, I would have this purple sparkly polish to remember her by. I’d agreed because it was easier than disagreeing. It was also a strategic move. I thought if I did what she wanted, she might stop punishing me.

  That morning Jed had walked into the kitchen bald. “Ana did it. Don’t be mad,” he’d said, making his arms into an X like I was going to throw stones at him.

  I choked on my coffee. Don’t be mad? You look like a skinhead!

  “I did it for people with cancer,” he said, proud.

  I couldn’t stop coughing. “Where’s Cam?”

  “Don’t worry,” Jed said. “He didn’t do it. He chickened out.”

  Ana stopped to inspect her work. I had to get up. Just for a minute. I needed a break from her. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, “let me just do this last”—another sloppy stroke—“okay, you can go.”

  I went to the boys’ bathroom. Jed’s beautiful hair was all over the floor I’d just cleaned. On the sink was the razor. A Japanese brand. Jed must have bought that recently, because I’d never seen it before.

  When I got back to the living room, the documentary was playing again. The woman on the screen was sobbing. “And on top of dying, you have to be ugly.” She touched one of the patches of hair on her head like it disgusted her.

  Ana’s toes twinkled happily on the coffee table. “Do you mind if we watch this again? It inspires me.”

  “Sure.”

  I put my foot back in her lap. Only a few more toes to go. A new woman appeared on the screen. She had barely any hair, but still, there was some.

  “Ana?”

  “Nan?”

  “Can I try on your wig?”

  “Of course, daw-ling.” She globbed on more nail polish. “I’ll grab it for you in a sec. You wanna be Wynonna or Marilyn?”

  I pretended to consider the options. “I want the one you’re wearing.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I don’t want to take it off. It’s keeping my head warm.”

  A car in the driveway and it was the cops. But I was crazy. It wasn’t the cops. Chuck or the boys had forgotten something at home and they’d come back to get it.

  The woman on the screen: “It ravages you. It takes everything you have. I hate chemo.”

  Footsteps up the stairs. Onto the lanai. Two pairs of feet. The boys.

  Ana, who was facing the door, looked up. The way she smiled. The way she said, “Welcome.”

  I turned.

  I froze.

  “Hello,” I said, because it seemed like my turn to speak. Rapid-fire heartbeat in my ears. I took my foot off her lap and went to the door.

  One was young, one was old. They stood in the same way, with their hands on their hips. Their navy-blue uniforms seemed out of place in this tropical palette. They wore reflective sunglasses, so I couldn’t see their eyes. It was just me, in four oval lenses, reflected back in miniature.

  “Please.” I swallowed. “Come in.”

  “With shoes, it’s okay?” the young one asked.

  “Oh sure, yes. Yes, it’s fine, yes.” Don’t be awkward. Stay calm. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  “I’m Bailey,” the young one said. He was Hawaiian. Buzz cut. Friendly voice.

  “Crowley,” the old one said. Angular body. Wild eyebrows. He scared me more.

  I put my hands in the pockets I didn’t have, rubbed my legs instead. “Nice to meet you both.” I shook their hands like a sweet little housewife. My palms were clammy. Theirs were dry.

  “We’re here because we’re looking for someone,” the young one said.

  “Ana Gersh,” the scary one said.

  “That’s me!” Ana said from the couch. She waved. “Hello! Hi!”

  Gersh? I thought her name was Ana Stevenson.

  “Hello!” The young one sounded too excited.

  “What can I do for you, officers?” she purred.

  “We found one of your tarot cards,” the scary one said.

  The young one held up a plastic bag. Inside was the card, partially covered in dirt.

  I saw her eyes spin and then settle. “I looked better with my real hair.” She pulled the blanket higher over her shoulders hesitantly, like she was i
n pain, like every time she moved it hurt. Then she looked at each of them separately. I watched her gain their sympathy, or try. “I’m dying of cancer,” she whispered.

  “What was that?” the scary one asked, emotionless, which terrified me.

  Ana looked at me. Then the cops looked at me. “She’s dying of cancer,” I repeated for them.

  “Sorry to hear that, ma’am,” the scary one said.

  “How did you find me?” Ana asked. Her puppy dog eyes.

  “Guy who made this card for you told us where you were,” the young one said.

  “Hard lady to track down,” the scary one said.

  “Me?” Ana’s hand on her heart. She was overdoing it.

  “Your old landlady told us you were up here on Kaloko,” the young one said.

  “Saw your car from the road,” the scary one said. “Hard to miss.”

  I watched this exchange with wired eyes. Sweat was collecting on my hairline. I would have to wipe it soon and that would look bad. It would look like guilt.

  “What’s the relation here?” the scary one asked. “You sisters?”

  “No,” I said too loud.

  The scary one looked at me. He looked at Ana. “You wear the same necklace.”

  “We’re soul mates,” Ana said. Her hand on her stomach but she wasn’t wincing yet. Like she was getting ready for the pain.

  “Either of you ladies know Peter Tackman?” The scary one looked at Ana, and then he looked at me.

  I didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  “Oh,” Ana said, as if she’d just remembered, “the guy who died, yeah? I think I saw him on the news.”

  The way she said yeah at the end of that sentence. She was speaking their lingo, the lingo of Hawaii. She was trying to appeal to them.

  “Any idea why he would have this card in his wallet?” the scary one asked.

  Ana shrugged. “He must have come to the tarot stand,” she said. “Peter. I don’t know if I remember a Peter. Nan, do you remember a Peter?”

  Abruptly, like a hiccup, I said, “No.”

  “Wait,” Ana said, “I think I do remember. Did he chew toothpicks?”

  “Yes, he did, ma’am,” the young one said, too excited again.

  “Did you give this card to him?” the scary one asked.