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Chapter Eight
Nala
My mother moved from the big island of Hawaii when she was eighteen and pregnant with me.
To hear her tell it, her parents were strict and she didn’t want them to raise me the way they had raised her, and the boy she gave her heart to forgot to give his to her in turn, and she was more enthralled with the idea of loving me right, than trying to love him. This didn’t make sense to me when I was younger, but as I’ve gotten older, it made nothing but sense.
I remember meeting my grandparents once, and being so shocked that they were the people who created my free-spirited, Earth-loving mother when they were buttoned-up, formal, military spouses. They came to our house, sat stiffly at our quirky kitchen table with its mismatched chairs and scarred top, and refused the tea Mom made them. They left after an hour, and only months after that, they stopped calling.
All of this was okay with me because all I could see was that my mother was happier when she wasn’t trying to please them. And my mother, for all of her quirky ways, is a very happy woman. She doesn’t reject emotions, good or bad, and she doesn’t pretend to feel anything she’s not. She embraces it all, and then she moves on with life.
Which is probably why I go home when my life feels a little off balance. I park my Jeep at the side curb—the same one I always have, because she lives on a narrow street that weaves its way straight to Pacific Beach. There are maybe ten other small beach shacks sharing the same street, that’s really more like a generous alley.
I walk up to the front door, noting that her faded-orange VW van is in the miniscule drive, and that she’s obviously been in her garden because the overflowing blooms are bright and happy while they spill out over the small trail leading to the front of the salt-weathered structure.
I don’t knock, because the house is so small I can see her sitting at her worktable, a repainted desk that is covered in wire, different sized and type pliers, beads, stones, and ribbon, all scattered in a kind of organized chaos that only makes sense to her. In the spot where an old, silver radio dial used to sit is the new iPod docking station I got her last year for Christmas. I can hear an NPR podcast playing in the background.
The scene is so familiar, so reminiscent of my childhood, I stand and stare for a minute. Reece Jansen, though, she knows everything. It might be a mom sense, or just the freaky ESP sense that she was always muttering about when I was growing up, but she says my name without looking up from her work.
“Good morning, Nalani.”
I smile, and step through the door, careful not to let it smack behind me. It’s an old screen door, the kind that doesn’t actually latch unless I put the bent nail through the metal loop. Walking over, I kiss the top of her head, her curls still a beautiful shade of blonde, lighter in places from the sun, just like mine.
“Good morning, Mama.”
I sit down at the extra table, automatically picking up a pair of nylon jaw pliers and a piece of wire, straightening it out perfectly before I trade those pliers for flush cutters and measure and snip the wire in the center. For a moment, I work in silence next to my mom, while the man on the podcast switches from stars and constellations to the ozone, and our carbon footprint. Thirty minutes later, I have earrings made that match the necklace my mother is setting to the side.
“Thank you.”
I shrug, picking up a Jasper impression bead in dark purple and rolling it between my fingers. “How are you, Mom?”
Her smile is bright and real. She sits back and curls her legs up under her, and I notice her bare feet are tipped a coral pink. “I’m amazing, baby girl. I have over fifty orders from Etsy that I’m filling today, and a few Renaissance fairs in the next couple of months where I’ve gotten requests to sell at.”
I smile, loving the image of my mother in period dress while she sells jewelry and talks to strangers as if they’re family.
“That’s nice.”
She doesn’t ask me why I’m here, doesn’t ask me how I am, she just sits and waits.
“Mama, Malcolm Brady is home for a while. He, uh, he got hurt, and he can’t compete. I’m taking care of him…sort of.”
She raises an eyebrow at me, not because I’m taking care of Malcolm, but because I qualified with the phrasesort of. “Anyway,” I say, licking my lips. “I have a busy week coming up, teaching at the Y and stuff. I was hoping you could stop by there tomorrow. He has a doctor’s appointment in a few days and I don’t know if he has a ride.”
Mom looks at me for a long while saying nothing, and makes me want to squirm more than any amount of questions would. And then she just nods. “Of course.”
I breathe a sigh of relief, because once upon a time, Malcolm was a regular at our house, even if it was just for a few minutes a day after walking me home from the beach, and Mama, she doesn’t forget a boy who didn’t let her daughter to go to the beach alone in the dark.
“Thank you, Mama.”
We both pick up pliers and wire again, continuing our work. I’m lighter now, freer, knowing someone else can check on Malcolm since Isa specifically sent me a text that she couldn’t. Since she’s already done more than I have, I wasn’t about to ask her to put out one of her family members. Mama was my last option, or it would have been me. It’s silly, but I just can’t see him.
The thought of going back to his house and having him look at me like that again—like I am some kind of interloper he can’t wait to be rid of—is too much.
“Nala?”
I pause and look up. “Yeah?”
“Whatever happened between you and him—Malcolm—you should start to mend the break.” Before I can figure out a way to tell her I tried, I really did, she smiles and covers my hand with her free one. “He was too important to your heart for you to cut him out like this. You can’t just ignore pieces of your heart that hurt, baby girl. You have to work to put them back together.”
I tried, Mama. But he doesn’t want me, and I can’t handle being broken again.
Only, I nod, because I can’t tell my mom the story without telling her everything.
