Freckled

by T W Neal

  Red veins stand out in his neck, and he seems to have grown huge, like the Hulk. His face is almost purple. “SUE. Peel the fucking carrots,” he snarls.

  Lauren pales with terror at what she’s unleashed and lets go of his hand.

  Mom, stirring something at the stove with three-year-old Bettina on her hip, doesn’t look up. “I don’t feed food without nutrition to children.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I can tell Grandpa wants to swear more. A lot more. His voice is like a cannon firing fierce, loud words. “You never have.”

  Lauren runs to the room she’s sharing with her sisters. I slide down from my chair, giving Judy’s hand a tug, pulling her with me. We make for the back door. Four-year-old Bonny’s still sitting at the table, looking bewildered at the raised voices, a thunderstorm breaking around her. She sees us leaving and follows at a trot.

  “I’m preparing meals that are healthy for the kids.” Mom raises her voice behind us. “If you don’t like it, you can do it yourself.”

  “Goddamn it,” bellows Grandpa Garth. “There’s no science in that statement about the carrots. You’ve never had any sense.”

  By then, Judy, Bonny, and I are under the house in the fort we’ve been making down there. Scrap carpet on the ground, dusty old sail material, and discarded household castoffs have all found new life in our grubby playhouse.

  Judy covers her face with her hands as tears slide down, her long hair hanging around her like a blanket. Bonny and I snuggle against her, one on each side. I think of Lauren in the girls’ room, alone, and hope she’s okay.

  “He can’t find us down here,” I say, and hope it’s true.

  “I don’t like it when he yells.” Fear and sadness are in Judy’s words. Grandpa hit Maga a lot, and that’s why they divorced. Probably he hit my aunts’ mom, too. Is Mom going crazy again, standing up to Grandpa like that?

  More yelling goes on above us. I’m glad we never showed him our natural history museum. He’s mean and scary and doesn’t deserve it!

  I hear the giant crash of something being thrown. Bettina shrieks in fright like a teapot left on too long. Waiting for the sound of glass breaking or people getting hit, I chew my nails and taste the quicksilver of blood. Mom’s going to get hurt and have to go back to The Best Facility . . .

  Finally, Grandpa’s footsteps echo heavily overhead as he thumps back to his private domain and slams the door. Silence falls.

  “Let’s go see if they’re okay.” We hurry up into the house.

  There’s a big iron pan on the floor, leaning against the wall. Mom’s putting sliced, steamed, unpeeled carrots in a bowl, setting them beside a casserole on the table like nothing happened. Bettina is still on her hip, red-faced and crying.

  “Wash your hands, girls,” she says. “Where’s Lauren?”

  “I’ll get her.” Judy disappears down the hall as Bonny climbs back up into her seat.

  Mom soothes Bettina and puts her in a booster seat, and I go hug her, then Mom. When I put my arms around Mom, I smell the sharp sweat of her battle with the Hulk soaking her muumuu. Delicate trembling zaps through her body like she’s plugged into an electric socket.

  “I love you,” I tell her, but what I mean is, “you’re brave.”

  I wonder if she has the same secret power I have—to Get into His Head and come out unbroken.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Back to Kauai

  Me with a kitten

  Age: 8, Wainiha Store House, Kauai, September 1973

  We circle in to land on Kauai ten months after we left it to take Mom to the Best Facility. Deep cobalt sea, crinkled like metallic wrapping paper, wraps around green velvet mountains and makes me realize I was more homesick than I let myself be. Getting off the plane at Lihue Airport, my fine hair lifts off my shoulders in celebration because the air is so moist and soft. I gaze up at the clean blue sky filled with cotton candy clouds, and the nearby mountains almost melt my eyes with their intense color.

  The long, low airport building, open and windy, resembles a big metal shed more than anything. We hurry down the moveable stairs off the Aloha Airlines plane with its familiar orange hibiscus and run to hug Pop, waiting for us in the shade under the wide tin roof. He’s wearing a big grin on his face and a tee shirt and corduroy shorts with rubber slippers. We’re wearing the slippers we bought in Kaneohe, and as we run across the blacktop, I love that none of us are in regular shoes.

  “We’re home.” Mom leans into Pop like she’ll never let go, her face pressed into his shoulder. Kauai does feel like home, and I realize how much I didn’t let myself remember. Now Gigi’s house, with its white carpets and “lady lessons,” seems like the imaginary place.

  A man drives a golf cart trailer into the shed, and we get our bags directly off it. Pop leads us out to an old car in the parking lot, a dark green, wide-assed, square-cornered Rambler American sedan, only a little rusty.

  “The car came with the place we rented.” Pop’s voice is happy and excited; this is a good thing, because we left our faithful white van on the Mainland. “Wait till you see the house I found for us.” He opens the trunk to put our suitcases in, and it’s as big as a swimming pool.

  “There’s enough room back here to put you girls in with the suitcases if you start bickering,” Mom laughs.

  I bounce in the bench seat in back, and the springs squeak. “I love this car!” Bon and I bounce and squeak, bounce and squeak, all the way through Lihue on the two-lane highway that leads through the island’s capital. Pop is so happy to see us that he never makes us stop.

  We bounce through Kapa`a, then Kilauea, then Hanalei, and even further. Pop tells us about where we’re going to live. “We’re going to be in Wainiha Valley. The river running through it goes all the way to the heart of Kauai, Mount Waialeale—the wettest spot on earth in measured rainfall.”

  I didn’t know these facts, but I know Wainiha.

  I’ve driven through the steep, rugged, heavily jungled valley hundreds of times on the bus, or on our way to Tunnels Beach and the End of the Road, crossing the twin metal bridges of the thick river that runs like a vein down the middle of the valley, splits, and rejoins itself again near the ocean. A wind-battered beach marks the river’s sandbar, and black rock cliffs line its edges. Like Hanalei, the Wainiha River floods most years in winter. The only things that really thrive in the valley are taro, mosquitoes, and toads—but it’s summer now, and beautiful.

  Our new rental is the tiny defunct general store, right on the only road leading through the valley, a building that has been closed for years. Rusty old red gas pumps lean toward each other beside a boarded-up door leading into the termite-ridden, empty storefront. Behind that unused area is an attached cottage where we’re going to live.

  Bonny and I haul our suitcases up rickety wooden stairs into a bright, wooden-floored bedroom with a window that looks at the back yard. A pair of beds Pop made from scrap lumber fills the L of one corner of the room. We push our suitcases under our beds to hold our clothes, and we’re home.

  Mom meets with Mr. Beck at Hanalei School. She shows him a high-quality homeschool program “used internationally by diplomats, celebrities, and missionaries overseas” called Calvert School that she proposes to teach Bonny and me with. He signs off, approving it, and I don’t have to go back to Hanalei School—at least for the remainder of the year.

  Mom buys the Calvert School with Pop’s trust fund money. Everything needed, including creamy paper marked with wide blue lines in light-blue tablets and all-wood, silky pencils, arrives in a box. The lessons cover biology to Latin and are challenging and interesting. Each day Mom reads her Teacher Manual and explains the assignment, and I do my work at the kitchen table with the sun falling through the window. Bonny sits beside me, working on her preschool version.

  Instead of getting a job this time, Pop starts his own business as a fix-it man. A steady stream of broken toasters, radios, waffle irons, vacuums, and lawn mo
wers appear on the stoop of the old Wainiha Store, and he opens a little shop in Hanalei town. He’s as happy as I’ve ever seen him with work, challenged by new puzzles to figure out how to fix—but he still needs quiet in the mornings because he starts drinking in the afternoon and wakes up hungover.

  One day, not long after we get back to Kauai, we go to a party, which doesn’t happen often because Pop still doesn’t like crowds and other people. It’s at a private home in Anini Beach, with a lawn that rolls down to the beach. The adults get started drinking and smoking pakalolo right away as Jimi Hendrix whales on his guitar on the record player. Bonny and I put on our bathing suits and head down to the beach with the other kids.

  I know several kids my age there, including Kenny Bryan, whose father, Vinnie, is a surfer friend of Pop’s. We splash through a waist-deep sand channel to an outside reef. Unusual long rippling strands of seaweed grow there, and we pretend to be merpeople, draping the seaweed all over ourselves and giggling as we swim around with pretend wigs on.

  Bonny comes out to the reef to join me. The water, more than waist-deep on me, is at her shoulders. Her eyes are bright green with excitement to be out here with the big kids.

  “Go back!” I yell at her, pointing to the shore. She can’t swim very well at her age, and the water’s too deep for her. “You’re too little to be out here.” Mom never said anything to me, but I know I’m supposed to watch her in situations like this.

  Bonny’s face crumples with disappointment, and I turn my back on her. She’s usually my best buddy, but I have other eight-year-olds to play with today.

  Diving in and out of the water dressed in seaweed, I eventually check to see if Bonny’s on the beach where she’s supposed to be, playing with the other little kids with their buckets and pails.

  She’s not there.

  I feel like I’ve been socked in the stomach. My heart seems to stop beating.

  I look up the long slope of lawn leading to the house. But she wouldn’t have had time to get all the way up there.

  I turn all around, looking for her.

  Way out in the ocean, looking just like one of those white bleach-bottle crab trap markers, is Bonny’s bobbing blonde head. She must have been swept out to sea through the sandy channel on her way back.

  “Bonny! Bonny!” The water drops into deep right off the reef’s edge, and I fall into it heading toward her. I can’t get her myself—I’m too slow and weak, and she’s too far out. Frantic, my whole body vibrating with terror, I splash in to shore, screaming. “Help! Help my sister! She’s swept out to sea!”

  I can’t find our parents. I accost the first able-bodied adult I see, Kenny’s dad Vinnie, who’s sitting on a towel drinking beer with some other people.

  “Vinnie! You have to help! Bonny’s swept out to sea!” I pull on his arm. “You have to save her!”

  His face is kind but disbelieving. “Calm down. Tell me what’s happening.”

  I point, hopping up and down in my panic. “There she is! That’s her head, floating way out there! She came to play with the older kids, and I sent her back to shore and she . . . she didn’t make it. The rip must have taken her out.” Tears start and my throat closes. “Please help her, please!”

  “All I see is a bleach bottle. It’s a crab trap marker.”

  “No! No, it’s her. She’s got really blonde hair!” I’m still looking around for our parents, but they must be inside the house.

  Vinnie makes a joke and sets his beer down—he’s not taking me seriously. I spot a big old surfboard under the house. “It’s my fault. I’ll get her myself.”

  I run and grab the board by the nose and start dragging it across the lawn. Snot and tears obscure my vision as I plow toward the beach, but I’m running, stumbling, and I feel like I have superhuman strength as I drag the big board toward the water.

  Suddenly the board’s plucked out of my hands.

  Vinnie looks down at me. “Because you’re so sure, I’ll paddle out and check on that crab trap.”

  And then he moves fast, running with the board down to the water, launching with a splash, and paddling like an arrow toward Bonny, who’s drifted so far out she’s barely visible. I run up to a rise on the lawn, and turn to watch. He reaches her and grabs her by the back of the swimsuit, hauling her up onto the board. I’m laughing and crying and clapping my hands.

  I run up to the house and finally find my mom with a bunch of other moms. Pakalolo smoke is thick in the air. “Mom, I’ve been looking everywhere for you! Bonny drowned!”

  Dead silence.

  Then Mom surges to her feet and runs past me toward the beach. The other moms grab me, exclaiming and asking what happened. I realize that I should have said, “almost drowned.”

  I run after Mom, yelling. “She almost drowned!” I scream. “Almost! Vinnie’s getting her!”

  Vinnie’s already on his way back, paddling the board with Bonny draped over the front. Her head is down so we can’t even see if she’s alive. Mom runs right into the water in her pretty muumuu, and scoops her up.

  Bonny’s hunched over, barfing, throwing up salt water as they reach the beach. Mom’s crying, and I’m crying, and even Vinnie’s crying. Vinnie gets his beach towel and wraps it around Bonny when she’s done throwing up.

  I’m sick with guilt that I didn’t make sure she got to shore safely, that I was mean and yelled at her. I hug myself with my arms, shivering in my wet swimsuit and biting my bleeding nails.

  Mom’s eyes light on me, and seem to catch fire like hot coals. “You! You were supposed to watch her!” she screams. “And you told me she drowned!” She reaches down, grabs a big piece of driftwood, and whacks me. I yelp and scramble away as she chases me, huge with rage like Grandpa Garth on a bender.

  Vinnie grabs her arm and takes the stick away forcefully, throwing it on the ground.

  “She saved Bonny’s life!” He yells at her. “I almost didn’t go out, but Toby was getting this huge old board by herself to go save her!”

  Mom stops, gulping air, anger seeping out of her like air out of a balloon. “Oh,” she says, suddenly aware of the whole party emptying out from the house and everyone coming down to watch our drama on the beach.

  “You shouldn’t have said she drowned,” Mom hisses at me. She wraps Bonny tightly in the towel. She carries her up to the house, calling for Pop.

  Vinnie squats down to me; he’s a tall man with kind brown eyes. “You were very brave. I almost didn’t go out. You saved her.”

  “I should have been watching her properly!” I burst into tears. Vinnie hugs me, and my friend Kenny pats my back.

  I don’t know what would happen to us if Bonny had died. My imagination shies away from that horrible thought as guilt eats at my stomach. Vinnie can say I saved her all he wants, but I know how things are in our family—I was responsible, and I didn’t take care of her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Courage Lessons

  Me river fishing

  Age: 9, Wainiha, Kauai, 1974

  When homeschool lessons are over, Bonny and I play outside, roaming around the river, and up to our neighbors’ houses off the dirt road behind our house. I make friends with horses staked out along the riverbank feeding on the thick buffalo grass. A gentle brown mare, tied up beside the lazy green river, is my favorite. Feeding her bits of her favorite kinds of grass, breathing in her smell, and leaning my forehead on her neck, I can imagine she’s my own.

  Now that we live further away from Taylor Camp, we’re better accepted, and we play with the Kaipakas across the street, and the Richardson boys down the dirt road.

  Darren Richardson is a famous surfer from the North Shore of Oahu who’s moved to Wainiha with his family for the same reasons Mom and Pop have—the great, uncrowded surf on Kauai. He’s a tall handsome man with a big crest of blond hair and lots of tan muscles. All of the surfers respect him because he’s won contests at Pipeline and has pictures in Surfer Magazine. Darren and his wife, Betsy, have been frien
ds with our parents since the Oahu days. Now that we live in Wainiha, our parents like to hang out with beer and joints in the evenings on the Richardsons’ porch a few houses down, talking about the surf, while we kids run around outside.

  Knight, Betsy’s son from her first marriage, is a year older and big for his age, with blond hair and a ton of energy. His little brother, Royal is Bon’s age, and they play in the house and on the porch while Knight and I go further afield. Knight loves risks, and I’m always a little scared of what he comes up with for us to do. I try not to let it show, but he seems to know and dares me constantly.

  One day he takes me into the jungle behind their house. “Let’s play tiger hunt.”

  Turns out, “tiger hunt” involves digging a big dent in the ground, lining it with sticks we sharpen with Knight’s pocketknife, and covering the trap with branches and leaves. When it’s finally done, we stand back to observe our treacherous handiwork. Anyone coming along here wouldn’t see it, and could break a leg or pierce a foot. I frown with worry. “I’m not sure this is a good idea. Someone could get hurt.”

  “Yeah, the tiger. And you’re the tiger.” Knight adjusts the leaves to his satisfaction.

  “No way.”

  “Someone has to be the tiger. I’ll go behind this tree and when you get trapped in the hole, I’ll kill you quickly.” He brandishes the pocketknife.

  I look at him, then down at the trap. “That doesn’t sound like fun.”

  “I’m not really going to kill you. Are you chicken, or just a girl?” he sneers.

  I hate being called chicken, or “a girl,” and he knows this.

  Pretty soon I’m in the tiger trap, having positioned myself to fall in between the sticks as best I can, but it’s muddy and hazardous, and that’s even before Knight leaps down from where he was hiding in a nearby tree, yelling. I play my part, growling and swiping at him with a paw. He leaps on me, squashing me into the mud at the bottom of the hole. He puts his pocketknife to my throat, pretending to slit it with a dramatic gesture. I don’t flinch when he puts the blade against my throat, but it’s scary enough for me to instantly play dead, making him drag my lifeless tiger corpse out of the pit.