Kane: male, husband, man
One of Minnow’s earliest memories was of sitting on a rock at the edge of a deep drop-off, watching a perfect triangle of a fin slice through the water while her father skinned a fish. The shark was close enough that the large, blue-ringed eye met her own and something knowing and alive passed between them.
Then a few years later, when she was old enough to go in the water alone, she would swim in the tiny urchin-filled cove below their house on Catalina Island, waiting for her father to return from one of his dives. Little by little she would venture farther out toward the mouth of the bay, where her mother told her never to go. But limits were not something Minnow understood well. In her mind, a limit was a line you crossed once the adults had stopped paying attention.
One particular day, soon after she’d turned six, had been burned into her memory like an old film, and she watched it play through her mind as she lay in bed unable to sleep. The water that day had been unseasonably warm and she had made it out to the edge of the cove, where the bottom fell away sharply, the point of no return, and she thought of her mom’s warning. But after diving down and seeing a school of neonorange garibaldi, she followed them into a kelp forest in the open water. Their scales caught the sunlight and gave them a magical iridescent look. In fact, everything in the water that day took on a magical hue. Even the big shadow that swam above her, blotting out the sun.
She looked up in anticipation, believing it to be her father’s yellow kayak, and she was excited to tell him about the fish she had seen. But what she saw was much bigger than the kayak, and glowing white, as though containing its own light source. Momentarily forgetting she needed air, she watched the animal slowly circle around her. She held on to a stalk of slimy kelp to keep herself down.
There was a largeness to the creature that caught her off guard. And an oldness too. Minnow floated wide-eyed as the shark assessed her, then slid back into the beyond, the final swish of its tail a wave goodbye.
Over the course of the next year, Minnow’s forays took her farther out of the cove and up and down the island coast. Some days she would see the shark, some days she wouldn’t. Every so often she would see a different shark but none as big as the first and none she felt so friendly with. And so her obsession began.
When no one was looking, she would poach a fish or two from her father’s bait box and slip down to the rocks at the point, tossing them out. Something she realized now was not the smartest idea.Hershark was a female and she called her Luna. On her dorsal fin, Luna had four slits. The cuts were deep but had long healed over and now gave her fin a feathery look. They made her easy to spot from above or below. Now, with years of research under her belt, Minnow believed Luna was possibly a Sister.
Thud.
Minnow woke to the weight of something landing on her shoulder. Quick as a darting eel, she brushed off whatever it was and flung it as far away as possible, then switched on her flashlight to see alarge brown spider scurrying away.Oh fuck.Give her a shark over a spider any day. Across the room, she saw a broom and dashed over to it, miraculously managing to steer the spider out the door.
It took her heart about fifteen minutes to slow, and she lay awake awhile longer, listening to the Hawaiian night sounds. While earlier the house had been warm enough for just a sheet, now a chill had crept in and she swaddled herself in a bug-proof cocoon of blanket. Every so often a fish jumped in the pond, making a light splash in the stillness. If she didn’t count the spider and the task that loomed in the morning, Hawai‘i was really quite lovely.
Eventually she drifted off again and fell into a dreamless slumber that ended when she heard the sound of a rumbling engine before it cut off. Moments later, a wide beam of light shone in her eyes, disorienting her. She looked at her watch. Six twenty-two. The light moved up to the ceiling and pinballed around, then went dark. It was coming from the ocean.
Minnow shook out her clothes from yesterday, slid them on and ran outside with the Coleman lantern. “Hello?” she called.
“Yo, it’s me, Nalu,” said a voice in the dark.
Relief and confusion flooded in.
“What are you doing?”
“I said I’d pick you up.”
She wanted to protest but could find no real argument. He’d said he would be here and he was.
“It was faster this way. No backtracking required,” he added.
In the dim light of dawn, she could see the boat was tied off to a mooring float maybe fifty feet out.
“How will I get out there?”
He turned the light on again, blinding her. “Swim?”
Bad idea.
“I have a lot of gear.”
“I’m sure there are surfboards there, just borrow one. And no rush. I’ll drink my coffee and watch the sky.”
Just hearing the wordcoffeemade her mouth water. And he was right. There were surfboards here, and even a small kayak. Minnow brushed her teeth and gathered her gear before pulling the red kayak onto the rocky beach. The ocean had calmed in the night and she managed to get everything aboard and paddle out with no trouble. This water was nothing like launching at East Landing on the Farallones, where any misstep could turn you into chum.
Nalu helped hoist her stuff up and she tied the kayak to the old Clorox bottle buoy. His hair was wild and loose and had taken on a life of its own in the night. He smelled like weed again too. By now the eastern sky behind Mauna Kea was splashed a coral red. But until she had her coffee, Minnow could barely process anything that was happening around her.
She nodded to the small paper cup he was holding. “You don’t have any more of that, do you?”
He gulped back whatever was left in his cup, holding his mouth open to catch the last drop. “Nope, sorry, not enough hands this morning.”
“Okay, well, I need coffee.”
