“The first thing I thought when she and Jimmy showed up was that she was too skinny. She had this basketball stomach, but the rest was bones. And she had these bruises under her eyes, looked like she nevah slept. We was supah worried. All Jimmy told us was that she was pregnant and depressed. But when they came and we got to talking, Layla told me your dad was drinking too much and he had slapped her one night. The next day she was outta there. She told him she was leaving and that she may or may not be coming back. I admired her spirit. You could tell she meant it.”
It was hard for Minnow to imagine her father hitting her mother, much less while she’d been pregnant. Just the thought made her want to turn around and walk away. Catch that plane back to California. Minnow shook her head. “You’re wrong. My parents didn’t drink.”
“Not after her trip here, no. When your mom went back to Catalina, Bruce promised he would stop and he did. Layla and I kept in touch for a while. There was no funny business or anything between us, but we clicked right away. She was a finewahine, but she had her demons, same as me.”
Minnow knew of her mother’s demons, partly from living with them and partly from Uncle Jimmy. The mood swings, the dark periods, the inconsolable sadness. They had always been there. And when Bruce had died, she went down a hole she couldn’t climb out of. Even having a young daughter could not save her.
“I don’t understand why no one told me. This is a big fucking thing to swallow,” she said, setting down her mug and backing away.
Bruce had hit Layla. Layla had been here, pregnant. Which meant Minnow had been here too. Breaths became hard to take in, and she floundered, unable to speak.
Woody jumped in. “When Jimmy asked if you could stay here, he warned me they never told you. It was such a short time in their lives, and your dad changed. He went cold turkey and never touched another drop, for you and your mother. Not many people can say that.”
She looked at Cliff, hungry for more information. “What else do you know?”
“I know you look just like her,” Cliff said, picking up the photo album and taking it to the table, where he then sat.
Minnow joined him. He flipped to a few pages in, and there she was. Her beautiful waif of a mother. Sitting on the wall sideways, knees bent and arms wrapped around her legs. She had turned to smile at the photographer but without emotion. As though to lift the edges of her mouth took every last bit of strength and there was nothing left inside her.
“Your mom was desperate when she came. Desperate to stay with Bruce but also desperate to make sure you wouldn’t be in danger. You could tell Jimmy was scared for her. We all were,” Woody said, sitting across the table.
“Why here, though?”
He shrugged. “Jimmy suggested it. He knew if anywhere could pull her out of her funk, it would be here.”
Cliff turned the page and Minnow’s eyes went to another series of photos. Layla and Jimmy and Woody, all wearing the woven hats, standing on the wall, holding up big cowrie shells. In these shots, her mom’s smile was real.
“Being here was good for her. You could see the changes day to day. Color on her face, and by the weekend she was shoveling food down like one vacuum cleanah. ’Cause of my mom. She came down and cooked all day long. Eggs, bacon, banana pancakes, beef stew,mac salad,‘oheloberry pie, fish tacos. Layla couldn’t get enough,” Cliff said.
Cliff spoke so softly, Minnow had to lean in to hear him. But each word came out as though it was quite possibly the most important thing he had ever said.
He went on. “At first she refused to go in the water. She said she almost drowned as a kid and it made her nervous. She wanted to get over it—you could see it in her eyes. The way she’d sit on the wall and watch us. Mom told her that the ocean was a pregnant woman’s best friend and she liked that. After that, she came in with Jimmy and me and swam around right in front, nice and easy. After that, you couldn’t get her out. She would float there all morning and then again for an hour or two before sunset.”
Minnow tried to imagine her unborn self hovering in these waters, being lulled into peace. Weightless. Water lapping against her mother, holding her. Rocking her.
“What about the shark?”
His eyes flicked over to Woody, who dropped his chin almost imperceptibly.
“It was a dark morning, like today.Maliewater, the kind you see your reflection in. We was up here getting ready for fishing, and your mom was on the wall. I saw her sitting there, kinda peaceful-looking. Jimmy and Woody was out in the shed collecting gear, and I was wrapped up in making sure we had the right lures and all. When Jimmy came back, ten, fifteen minutes later, he asked where Layla was. She was gone.”
Far off, thunder grumbled. Cliff looked out over the water, where the gray had turned a bruised purple. A strange flicker moved across Minnow’s eyes. As though if she looked hard enough, she could see the shimmering outline of her mother on the wall.
“We all scrambled around, looking for her because, well, there was this unspoken feeling that she might do something... unsafe. There were these times when she shut down and no one could reach her andlike maybe she didn’t know what she was doing or even know where she was. All the sudden, we heard this scream.” His hand moved to his hair and he began to twist a lock around his finger. “Layla was way out in the ocean and you could see this giant fin slicing through the water—moving away from her but damn close. Then it did this slow turn and went under the surface. Jimmy was yelling at her to swim to the boat, which was the closest thing to her, but she wouldn’t have been able to get in, not in her shape.”
Woody cut in. “Right off the bat I knew it was Hina and that Layla would be okay, but your uncle was beside himself. Finally convinced him, and your mom made it in no problem. But we had to help her out of the water and her eyes were a different kind of wild.”
Understanding dawned. No wonder her mother was so afraid of her going in the water. And she remembered those periods when her mom had been almost catatonic. It had scared her to no end.
“What did she have to say about it?” she asked.
“She said suddenly the shark was just there, swimming by, looking at her. Layla said she stared back and was almost hypnotized for a few seconds and then realized it wasn’t a whale or a dolphin. That’s when she screamed.” Woody looked Minnow in the eye. “But still, you ask me, the ocean saved your mother’s life.”
And mine.
As she let this new information filter into her, everything she knew to be true shifted a few degrees to the west. The hitting. Her mother being here. The shark. The possibility of her mother drowning with Minnow inside her. But her mother had come back to shore. Back to California. Back to her father. She chose life, at least in that moment.
Minnow stood. “Excuse me. I really need to be alone right now.”
