Eli is in big trouble.
OLR called Dad at work, and Dad told them he thought Eli was in school.
What did Eli do, take off his shoes and hit the swells? Um, yes. He totally did.
Mom told Dad, “Just wait first, see what he says…”
But Dad had already come home for the day—he had canceled his classes. He cut her off: “I’m not doing this with him, Julia. He can’t just do whatever he wants here. We all have responsibilities. You let him slide with that D in English.”
“Come on, John,” Mom said, “we have to be reasonable. We don’t know the details…”
“He’s slipping here,” Dad said. “He should have played basketball. Would have kept him out of trouble…”
Enter Eli. “You’re home early,” he said to Dad.
“How was ‘school’?” Dad asked him.
There was one second of terrifying silence, then, out of nowhere, Dad started in: “Have you been drinking? You smell like a brewery. Who was it, Stacy? Did she buy for you again?”
“What?” Eli said. “She wasn’t even with us!”
“‘Us’? You and that Koa kid? The one who looks like he’s high all the time?” Dad went on.
That really annoyed Eli. “God! Okay, I skipped school—I didn’t think it would be the ******* end of the world! NOBODY was drinking! Keep Koa out of it! We just went to Bowls—”
“‘Bowls,’ yeah, right,” Dad interrupted. “‘Nobody was drinking,’ nobody, huh—” Dad was so mad, Eli’s swearing didn’t even sink in. “Then why do you smell like it?”
“Calm down, okay? No one was drinking.”
Probably, I thought, there was some drinking.
There was a thunk, like a chair against the floor.
I prayed the Tanakas wouldn’t call the Five-0, who would come and take someone away:
Jesus, please. Keep my family all together. I’ll never ask for anything again.
“‘Nobody was drinking’?” Dad said again. “You just run into chairs completely sober?”
“I didn’t see it! All right? Okay? I can’t even think when you’re yelling at me. You’re way off base. You’re out of touch!”
“He thinks I’m off base. He thinks I’m out of touch!” Dad was yelling at Mom. “He skips school and gets hammered…”
The front door opened, and Eli’s truck started up, then peeled away. And someone dragged the chair back to the table.
WINTER
Prompt: How can eighth graders help conserve natural resources?
Where’s Mom???
She’s gone.
What did Dad do?
Why won’t he tell me?
When is she coming back?
After I came home from school yesterday, she wasn’t in bed—she wasn’t home. I thought maybe she went to Foodland, or Safeway, or to the nursery, or back to work, but in my bones I knew she didn’t, and I called Dad at his office.
“How was school?” He tried to be normal, but I wouldn’t let him trick me. “Where’s Mom?” I said. It was hard to breathe.
“She’s okay, Taylor. She’s going to get better.”
“What did you do? Where is she?” My loudness scared me. “You threw her out, right, like you did with the flowers?”
Was this the big change? Was this what Dad was talking about doing? What did he do?
“She’s with people who will take care of her,” Dad said. “She’s getting help. I have a late meeting. We can talk about it later.”
“Who? Who’s helping her?” I was begging him to tell me something, anything. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why doesn’t anyone tell me anything? Where is she? Dad? When is she coming back?” Snot ran down over my lip.
Was Mom sad, too, wherever she was?
“Did she want to go?” I was shaking. “Did she want to leave us?”
“Taylor,” Dad said, “you have to be strong here. Mom wasn’t taking care of herself, she wasn’t eating…”
“She WAS eating!” I burst. “She had hot chocolate cake! And toast! And tea—”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Dad said again. “Right now, I have a meeting, and you have to pull yourself together.”
“You just go right on with your work—”
Dad cut me off. “Pull yourself together. We’ll talk about it later.” He hung up.
I tried to pull myself together. If I didn’t, Dad might send me away, too. I lay on my bed and tried reading Mockingbird, but I couldn’t remember what I read after I turned the page. I switched to math, but the numbers didn’t make any sense.
Where was Mom? I wondered. Did she miss us?
It was dark when Dad came home and sat down at the edge of my bed. “Mom is working on getting better,” he said. “She’s in a nice place.”
“What kind of ‘nice place’?” I asked. “The same kind as Eli?”
Dad’s brow dipped. “The doctors have already helped her a lot.”
“When is she coming back?” I asked him. “If the doctors have already helped her, if she’s getting better, then she can come home.”
“Soon,” Dad said.
“WHEN?”
Why isn’t he telling me???
“She needs to rest, Taylor. She wasn’t well. She couldn’t take care of herself. You and I have to get through this. There’s pizza, Big Kahuna’s.”
“Can we see her?”
Dad shook his head. “No visitors for a while.”
We sat there, Dad and me.
Then he took in a long breath of air and blew back out. “The best thing for us here is to keep doing what we’re doing. Right now that means having dinner.”
Having pizza wasn’t right. You didn’t just eat pizza when your mom got sent away.
I took a sad slice, its cheese all cooled to a solid slab, just to show Dad I had myself together. One by one, he was getting rid of all of us.
I took it to my room, shut the door.
“It’s your fault,” I whispered.
Almost-Eli smiled down from the wall, his waterproof watch shining in the sun.
WINTER
Prompt: On my mind is …
Last night, Dad told me Eli’s coming back home for a while. He finished his program.
If Brielle finds out, she’ll crucify me. She’ll say he has no right to get out, that he deserves to be locked up forever.
“And Mom? Is Mom coming home, too?” I asked.
“Not Mom, yet,” Dad told me. “Just Eli, and just for a while, just till he’s arraigned.” He was standing in my doorway.
“When is MOM coming back?” I asked. “She’ll want to see him. And what’s ‘arraigned’?”
“We don’t know about Mom yet,” Dad said. “‘Arraigned’ is court. He’ll come back, then he’ll probably go away again.”
“How long then?”
Dad pinched his eyebrows together. “A long time.”
Since that blowup over the birds of paradise, it had been on my mind, what he’d said about Eli. That he’d been too hard on him, that he should have gone.
“You said you should’ve gone with him,” I said. “About Eli, the other night. Where did you mean? Where should you have gone?”
“Waikiki.” Dad nodded slowly. Small shoulders, wrinkled eyes, he looked so much older than before.
“The winters were hard on her,” Dad murmured. “Months and months and months of rain…”
“I got an A on my Mockingbird essay,” I said.
It used to be exactly the kind of thing he loved hearing. But not this time. This time he nodded, got up, and closed the door behind him.
FALL
Prompt: What are the benefits of gender-segregated schools?
Last night, I was setting the table for dinner when Eli came back from Canoe’s. He came straight into the kitchen and took a big drink right out of the faucet.
“Glass,” Dad said. “Get a glass. I’ve told you a thousand times.”
Eli wiped his mouth on his arm. “Not thirsty anymor
e.” He was in a bad mood. Maybe he still wasn’t over that fight he’d had with Dad. Maybe he wiped out. Maybe the swells were ankle biters. Maybe they were big, and he had to wait. Maybe he missed the Big One.
Eli took the lid off a pot on the stove. “What’s there to eat?” he asked the same exact second Dad told him to put the lid back on.
Because Eli lifted the lid before the rice was ready, it was going to be all gummy and gross. But cause and effect was something Eli never got. Especially when it came to the rest of us.
“Why are your eyes so red?” Dad asked, pointing at Eli with a carving knife.
When I looked, I saw it, too. Eli’s skin was all splotchy at the temples. Was it about Stacy?
“Was that Koa kid with you, the one with the teeth?” Dad asked.
“Sh … no,” Eli snapped. He was still wearing his slippers, getting sand all over the floor.
That may or may not have been true, that Eli wasn’t with Koa. But Eli’s eyes were definitely red and puffy, and his temples glowed like roses. I set down a fork at Dad’s place.
“What happened to that kid’s teeth?” Dad asked.
Why was he so obsessed?
“What are we having?” Eli asked back.
“Huli huli,” Dad snapped.
“CHICKEN?” Eli raged. “Again? GOD! Does ANYONE around here give a **** about life?!?”
“Watch your mouth,” Dad said on his way out to the grill.
Muttering, Eli tore through the freezer, yanked out a mushroom and olive pizza. He put it in the oven, scooped up some gummy rice with a spoon, shoveled it into his mouth. “This definitely needs more time.”
Then, his mouth all full of chewy rice, he said, “Hey, Grom, your friend came into the shop again.”
“Li Lu?”
“Nah, What’s-Her-Nuts, Brittany, Brooklyn…”
“You mean Brielle?” I asked.
“Yeah, Brielle, the one with money, she came in before.”
Okay, it had been twice now. It was definitely a thing.
“Who was she with? Was she with anybody?”
But Eli just wanted to eat, he said.
“Well, did she SAY anything?” I asked him.
“Dunno,” Eli said, drinking out of the faucet AGAIN. “I went on break. What’s-Her-Nuts Brianna was gone when I came back.”
Okay, maybe Eli had a bad day. But I’d just found out my best friend was into my brother. Vomit.
Gender-segregated schools don’t matter.
No one’s safe from anyone. Not girls. Not boys. Anything can happen. Any single one of us can go down at any time. We’re wired to do what we have to, to make it. We have to do what it takes to make our lives happen. Brielle showed me that.
Last night, the Tribal Council voted Russell off Survivor.
No one saw that coming. So. Even the bully doesn’t have complete immunity forever.
WINTER
Prompt: What defines “good” art?
The rain didn’t stay in Oregon.
It followed us here. It’s here right now. We’ll never be able to get away from it. No matter where we move, even into the middle of the desert, the rain will be there with us.
Glam. Fashion. What is good art?
Good art means something to people. It makes them feel a certain way. It means something. It matters.
The Mānoa Public Library is bigger now than it was before, with a metal roof and long, rectangular windows. But the shelves are still hungry and thin. Before, I always went to the magazine section. Yesterday, though, I wasn’t looking for Vogue or Glamour or Elle.
Auntie Alamea looked at my enormous stack of magazines. “No Glamour today? No People?”
Auntie Alamea has been working at the Mānoa Public library as long as I’ve been going there, probably even way longer. She wears long muumuus and red lipstick.
I asked Auntie Alamea which magazine would have a bunny in it. I had thought a bunny would be the hardest one to find. But when Auntie Alamea came back with Rabbits USA, it had what I was looking for.
On my way back home, I plucked two ripe avocados from the tree on the path. The bowl by the sink had been empty for so long, and Dad loved avocado. Maybe these would make him feel better.
I flipped through the pages of Mom’s American Journal of Nursing till I found her: maroon paisley-print crossover scrubs, hair pulled back into a loose ponytail.
It was the most perfect art I had ever seen.
I started the scissors at her white clog.
WINTER
Prompt: If you had a ticket to anywhere, where would you go?
Before, this would have been easy for me. Paris. London. New York City.
Home, Mom would say.
Superbay for Eli. Or J-Bay, Bank Vaults, Cloud 9, Santa Cruz. Wherever he thought the Big One might be.
Write words.
Words are tears.
Slippers. Towel. Shorts. Sand.
Shirt, Chili Peppers.
Towel. Hat.
Quintara. Wax.
Paycheck. Poster. Rash guard.
Bowl.
Spoon and milk stain.
Oakleys. Keys.
Towel. Towel. Towel. Leash.
* * *
It was hot in there. Stuffy.
His room didn’t look like it belonged to someone who’d been gone a long, long time. It seemed like any second, someone would come back and smooth out the balled-up sheet from the foot of the bed, and pick up the Surfing magazine off the floor, and bring the bowl into the kitchen.
The door had been closed for so long.
I had just forgotten what it looked like inside. I stood in the doorway, looking at Eli’s life.
And there was his computer. I looked behind me, then typed in sunset and opened up “Damselfly.”
“Perched upon an alien strawberry guava leaf, one of O‘ahu’s most striking species is among the last one thousand on the island. This year, the endemic blackline Hawaiian damselfly—pinapinao in Hawaiian—fluttered to the top of the endangered list. At one to two inches long, the insect is found only in O‘ahu’s high rain forest, along its cleanest streams, its rainbow eyes reflecting the hypocrisy of hope and promise.”
It went on for two pages—about life cycle, then habitat, then how that habitat has been ruined by climate change, wild pigs, mosquitofish. “There are only one thousand left of this magnificent, endemic species. The base of the food chain, when these one thousand vanish, other species will be affected: birds that feed on them, frogs, and fish. And the effects on those species will affect other species, too: larger birds, turtles, even whales, the largest creatures in the sea. All due to the disappearance of one species of damselfly. One incident leads to another and another, a ripple effect that can’t be stopped. Every species affects another in powerful, irreversible ways.”
I felt like laughing. Eli didn’t know anything about cause and effect.
I read on. If he were admitted to UC Santa Cruz’s Ecology and Evolution program, Eli wrote, he would work toward protecting the delicate damselfly, fulfilling the hope and promise in its eyes.
He thanked the admissions selection committee for reading.
When Eli comes back, he should clean up his room.
WINTER
Prompt: Today is the anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear plant failure.
Miss Wilson wants us to remember.
She wants our memories to be words, or maybe our words to be memories.
Sometimes those memories are hard to harvest. Sometimes they’re hard to erase.
When the Fukushima plant … exploded. Exploded. Is that the right word?… All our moms were terrified the radiation was coming to Hawaii. The news was scary. At best, the poison would wipe us all out. At worst, it would boil our skin and make our eyes pop and our heads bald, and we’d grow third arms and turn into cannibals. Mom made Eli and me swallow iodine pills. We stopped buying fish for a while and ate tofu instead. Eli was happy about that. Dad, not so much.
&
nbsp; * * *
Now that I’m older, I think about those Japanese kids, how they lost their parents and brothers and homes and schools. Half the people here on O‘ahu are at least part Japanese. We learned that in Hawaiian Studies. Hawaii and Japan have a connection.
Eli and me, we used to have a connection with the Tanakas.
They must know Mom’s gone. They must wonder where she is. They don’t see her watering the lettuce.
All the other New Years, the Tanakas always gave Eli and me otoshidama—red pochibukuro with a twenty-dollar bill inside each. This year, I know the Tanakas celebrated New Year’s. Beethoven played from their house, like it had every other January 1, and I could smell the fish cakes frying. And like on every other New Year’s, the kadomatsu was outside their door, decorated with flowers and straw. But this year, the Tanakas didn’t give us otoshidama.
That’s something else Eli wrecked.
* * *
“Are you okay?” Isabelle asked me today.
I wanted to think of something to say back. But I couldn’t. I just stared at her.
And Isabelle softly nodded.
FALL
Prompt: Should Hawaii raise the minimum wage?
They’re all over Instagram, both of them—Brielle and Soo—their selfies on the helicopter pad. They’re strapped into seats with their helmets on, matching aviators, throwing shaka over the Haiku Stairs. There’s a shot of the cockpit controls. Aerials of Sacred Falls. A bird’s-eye pic of Punchbowl.
It’s everywhere, the helicopter ride Brielle and Soo took together. On Halloween.
i didnt know you guys were doing that, I texted Brielle that night.
How did they do that without me? It would have made all the difference to my whole entire life.
Me, I ended up just staying home. No one in my group had texted me back. And I could never ask Li Lu, not after that big text fight. She’d tell me I already chose Brielle over her. That it was permanent.
Taylor Before and After Page 12
