by Eden Butler
One full minute.
There was only his mouth and taste and his greedy, desperate hands touching, gripping on my thighs, pulling me close, keeping me still. I could have stayed in that moment with no thought, no reason. I could have stayed there and only felt what Ransom gave to me willingly.
But that is not what happened.
Not for me.
Not for Ransom.
Not for anyone in that house.
Once, when I was twelve, Mark, Johnny and I were in a car accident. Music Valley Drive in Nashville is a crowded place, particularly at night. Especially on the weekends. The curve along McGavock Pike came at us too soon, while Mark and Johnny bickered over something I can’t remember at all now. Their voices were high, punctuated by the sudden, almost immediate silence that came in the small seconds between insult and the loud screech of metal and glass colliding.
Those moments went by in slow motion. I will never forget it. It felt like a ride on a roller coaster I’d never willingly take. One second Mark and Johnny were yelling, the next the car tire’s screeched, the glass next to me shattered and we toppled over and over. Debris flew all around us. My ball cap fell off my head with the impact of the car rolling; my unzipped backpack flipped upside down, Sun Chips from a half-eaten bag tumbled out around me along with my cap and all that broken glass. It took only seconds for my life to change, then.
Only seconds again, now, as my mother’s violent cursing echoed down the stairs.
“You son of a bitch!”
I didn’t have to look at Aly; we moved together like a dance—me breaking away from her, her holding onto my arm as we flew up the stairs and then Aly was with Makana, holding her back, me taking Koa’s arm when we found my little brother and sister sitting next to our parent’s bedroom looking frightened and utterly confused as angry words continued to pound against that closed door.
“Kunāne, why are they yelling at each other?” I couldn’t take the fear in my little sister’s voice. I couldn’t bear to see the glassy blinks Koa made, fighting to keep himself from crying. They had no idea what this was. Thirteen years our parents were together, living each and every day as though they were a blessing. To Mom and Dad, every day had been a blessing, all of them. They’d been given another chance at the life they wanted together. The life that anger and fear and betrayal had nearly stolen from them. Mack and Koa had only ever seen the good between them. Until now.
“Kunāne,” Mack said again and it only took one nod at Aly from her to understand these kids didn’t need to hear this shit. Aly reached out to pull Mack and Koa toward her. She ushered the children back down to the stairs where the shouting would be less acute.
“I was protecting you! All of us!” Kona shouted back, sounding weak and defeated despite the rise of his tone. “Can’t you see that? Baby, you know I would never…”
“I don’t know shit, you bastard! How could you do this?”
Fear kept me powerless. I closed my eyes, praying that this would come to a quick resolution, debating if I should keep my nose out of this or barge my way through that closed door. Despite the debate, all I could recall in those brief seconds was the memory of my mother being alone. All the times Mark and Johnny tried to get her to go out and the brief times they succeeded only to have Mom return before midnight, sliding in the bed next to me as though she wanted me to know she hadn’t left me, not really. And all the times I lay in my bed, listening to her pray on the other side of those paper thin walls, begging God that she could be happy again. That he would somehow find his way back to us. I’d never asked who that he had been. I only knew the man she prayed for had to be remarkable. He’d have to be to earn her love and loyalty.
But the screams and curses coming from the other side of that door I leaned against sullied those memories. They diminished those prayers. I had my hand on the handle, ready to turn it until their exchange froze me where I stood.
“Is it true?”
“How did you find out?”
“Was I not supposed to?”
“How, dammit!”
“Cass told me. He has a friend who works in PR for ESPN.”
“Of course he does. That son of a bitch.”
“Is it true? The child is yours?”
“Baby…”
“Is it fucking true?”
I felt sick. Bile rose quick, clogged my throat as I waited to hear Kona’s answer. When it didn’t come, when my mother’s tears did instead, I turned the knob, not surprised when neither of my parents looked at me. Even in this heartache, they were the center of each other’s world. Mom covered her face with her hands, shaking and sobbing as Kona seemed to debate reaching for her. Around them on the floor were papers, print outs of emails from the look of them, but I didn't stop to read them.
“It is,” Mom whispered, huddling against herself, arms moving to wrap themselves around her waist as she continued to cry. I knew that expression. She wasn’t sad. She was in a rage so blinding that tears were the only thing she could use as a release. I took a step, ready to pull her back if she went at him. “Tell me.” The demand came out low, but menacing. She angrily wiped the tears off her face with the back of her hand, lifting her chin as she looked at my father. “You tell me right now.”
Kona ground his teeth, eyes narrowed as he watched her, like cornered animal. “When we broke up, Simone was on her period. I remember because…well, it doesn’t matter why I remember. It’s been fourteen years, baby. Why the hell would she come back now after all this time trying to claim I got her pregnant?
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kona took a step towards her but my mother retreated. That seemed to hurt him more than anything else, her not wanting his comfort. “I…baby, I didn’t want to worry you. I wanted to handle this on my own. You’ve been working so hard on your label. I knew if this came out… If this came out, it would bring a firestorm of bad publicity on this family, and paparazzi and tabloid shills lurking in the bushes, not to mention all the social media uproar...” He exhaled, head shaking when she continued to glare at him. “All the shit that came back on Ransom because of me, I didn’t want this to be a repeat. Not for him, not for the little ones, especially not for you. Not for us.”
“You should have told me...”
“I…I know, but…” This time when he moved toward her, my mother didn’t flinch or shy away from him. “There’s something else.”
“What the hell else can there…” The transformation of her features was immediate, like the flick of a light brightening a dark room. I had no idea what went through her mind then. Scenarios that were likely ridiculous. Assumptions that came from the most paranoid, self-conscious part of her psyche. Whatever it was she was thinking, it certainly was nothing good, and my father seemed to realize it, too. Before either of them spoke, he lifted his hands, a small gesture of supplication that did nothing to soothe the storm that raged behind my mother’s eyes.
“Baby, please…”
“More than one.” Her voice was like ice. My father’s silence, and the way he dropped his eyes confirmed her suspicion.
“Who?”
“I…I don’t know her.”
“Oh my God…my…God.” Her protestation was not just about the new revelation, but also Kona’s seeming unwillingness to admit to it—a double betrayal.
“Baby,” he tried, voice soft, low but the paranoia had already taken root in my mother’s mind. She wouldn’t have his touch. She didn’t seem to want him anywhere near her. Without hearing his explanation, she backed away, swatting at his hand when he seemed to reach for her, as he followed her step for step. “It’s not what you think and I’m telling you now before anything gets out. Baby, please…please…”
“No. No I can’t…” Head shaking as though the movement would block out the sound of his voice, my mother tightened her closed eyes and clasped her hands over her ears, but it seemed like she was trying harder to keep herself from falling apart than to close herself o
ff. She had already been cut to the core.
“I would never…I have never been unfaithful to you. Not once.” Mom jerked her gaze at Kona, lips curling, hands trembling and he noticed, reached for her but didn’t seem to have the nerve to touch her. “I don’t know her, this other woman. It’s a lie. I haven’t even met her, I swear. She’s lying. I promise you.”
“You liar.” She’d become quiet in an instant, her hands dropping to her sides. That anger burned beneath her skin, made her limbs go steely calm. I’d only seen her this way once before in my life. When I was a punk kid with anger issues who’d thrown some asshole through a plate glass window for attacking my friend. Mom had marched into the office demanding for the admins to let her see me. When she’d walked into that room she’d managed to keep her anger under control. But the threat she’d leveled at the principle to back off and let me go was something that could shake even the toughest adversary. My father was a warrior and still the steel in my mother’s voice rattled him hard. She defied him with the cool anger brimming in her eyes, challenging him with an insult meant to punch below the belt. “You fucking liar.”
“I am not!” Kona’s voice was deep just then, his own anger slipping from his control with the break in his voice. Still Mom did not waver from the vengeance she seemed to wrap around her like a coat.
“You kept all this from me. For months… Months!” The air in the room seemed to clot with my mother staring down at her hands, as if looking anywhere else would cause her to ignite. Kona watched her closely, his hands at his side, his attention on every twitch she made as though looking for a break in her composure, something he could jump on to get her to release her rage. But that did not come, not when she shook her hands, as though flinging the tremor from her fingers. Not when the look she gave him was vicious and unapologetic. “How can I trust you? How can I ever trust you again? I begged you to tell me. I begged you over and over.”
“I know, but I didn’t want you to find out…”
The second that admission came, I knew Kona regretted it. It was right there in his features—the wince of his eyebrows, the way he tried to touch her, how he still looked stunned when she jerked away from him. “You didn’t want me to find out? What the hell does that mean?”
“Keira, no, that didn’t come out right. I didn’t…”
“Who the fuck are you?” Now she was astonished at the man standing in front of her. A man she thought she loved but didn’t seem able to recognize in the stranger that stood looking down at her.
“I’m your husband.”
“No. You damn well aren’t.”
Mark had told me stories about my parents in college. They were stories that Leann had clarified and given further detail on. The same words seemed to always repeat whenever those college war stories came up: Manic. Obsessive. Dangerous. I’d never believed much of the dirtiest details my cousin and godfather had recalled. The worst ones I generally dismissed as exaggerations.
Now, I believed that every one of the stupid things Leann and Mark had recounted weren't exaggerated at all.
My mother’s denial of their marriage broke something loose inside Kona. Something primal in him was set free, matching my mom’s steely anger, and that clash was a fearsome thing to witness.
They moved at the same time—Mom charging, lashing out just as Kona bent, catching her at the waist. My mother’s fist went right over his head and then Kona pushed her back, against the wall. He’d never hurt her, I knew enough about my father and my parents’ past to know that with certainty. But I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t inflict a little pain. I held my breath as Kona pinned her against the wall, grunting like an animal.
Time crystalized as they did not move, did not twitch, merely stared hard as if trying to bore right into each other's heads. There was a thick pulse of energy just then—and Mom screamed, a deep, throaty, angry cry of anguish, eyes open and neck muscles flexing. The heat, the threat of explosion filled the air in the room and I flinched watching them, stepping closer when Kona punched the wall next to Mom’s head once, crumbling sheetrock dust into her hair. The expressions they wore was a dichotomy, all heat, anger, rage, desire and I wasn’t sure if I should push them apart or leave the room so they could turn that rage into passion.
The spell broke with my mother’s head shake and the tightening of her mouth, setting up for the killing blow. Kona moved his head in what could have been an invitation, what he likely thought would be an enticement, his mouth coming within inches of my mother’s, his breath heating against her skin, the liquid heat of anger and desire and surrender all pulsing through the air they shared. But Mom was having none of it. She wouldn’t let the weakness he brought out in her show.
“Get out of my house, you fucking coward.”
He wasn’t going to move. He was going to take, even grabbed her face in one hand to do it, and I tensed, ready to knock him away if I had to, even if he was bigger and stronger than me, but she pulled away, jerking her face away from his touch and closing her eyes like she couldn’t stand the sight of him. It was as though her closed eyes and turned face flipped a switch in my father. He let go of her as if a man emerging from a bad dream, and took a defeated step back. She kept her face averted and her eyes closed, her arms crossed defensively across her chest.
“Baby…” His voice broke, cracking with the fear, the heartache he clearly felt.
“Go.” She trembled, as though all her rage had deflated her completely and I finally felt like I could move between them, blocking her from his touch. “Just go,” she whispered.
“Dad…” I said, glancing toward the door as my mother fell against my chest.
“Keiki kane…I didn’t do this.” His voice sounded wounded but full of conviction as he glanced at the back of my mother’s head, his shoulders falling as he accepted that staying there would be doing her no favors. Finally, after a long exhale, my father swallowed, holding his hands on the back of his head before he let them drop, even though they remained balled at his sides. It was a struggle, I could see that, to fight the urge to take hold of my mother. But finally he took one step back, then another, until he was at the doorway, leaving one last directive with me in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “You take care of my…take care of her, keiki kane. Please.”
I didn’t see if he looked back when he left. I was too intent at holding my mother, to protect her as her anger finally ebbed, and her sobs took over, while her wash of tears wetted my shirt.
“Mom…” I tried but there didn’t seem to be anything left to say. Then her knees started to give out, and I held on to her, giving her what strength I could as she slumped in my arms. My mother’s desperate, defeated words ripped through my body like lashes from a whip.
“I can’t breathe,” she said, sobbing, breath clear despite her protests. She clutched my shirt between her fingers. “I…I can’t breathe.”
And for what seemed like forever, neither could I.
We stood there for what seemed an eternity, my mother clinging to me as I held her, my strength keeping her from fainting away, never letting on that I felt weak and breathless, too. My mother needed me, needed me to be the strong one for once, and we stood there as her tears flowed, as she gasped for breath, and me desperately trying to be a rock holding her safe at the eye of the storm.
The heart breaks with a word.
Syntax that maims.
Syllables that feed you a meal
You do not want.
And there it is
The raw flesh
Untended,
Uncooked,
And you gorge on it,
Stomach every bite,
Because you believe it will fill you.
Fourteen
My mother’s studio was set apart from the rest of the lake house. A small hallway led beneath the stairs, toward the downstairs laundry room, between two guest rooms, to the place she had converted into a studio a few years back. It was fit for an up-and-coming label, e
specially one founded by a woman that had taught herself everything she knew about making music. A woman who had clawed through mountains of bullshit just to have her music heard. Now she’d cloistered herself away from life and the personal issues she refused to discuss. She’d rather write music, so she’d said. She’d rather work.
It’s where I found her the day after Mom discovered the paternity suits that Kona had kept from her. Dad hadn’t returned to the lake house but from the frequent vibrations her phone made rattling against the sound board in her studio, I got that he hadn’t quite given her the space she claimed to want.
“Stubborn ass,” she mumbled, keeping any other insults to herself as I walked through the door. “Hey.” She managed to grab her phone before the vibration fired off again and then chucked it onto the billowy sofa at the back of the room.
“You not gonna answer?” She shrugged, moving her legs from the chair next to her so I could sit. “Really, Mom?”
“How’s Aly?” That perfectly tweezed eyebrow came up and I got the hint: don’t pester her about her relationship and she won’t nag me about the non-existent one I had with Aly.
“How are you feeling?” I countered, leaning back in the chair as she tapped her nails over the plastic arm rest.
“I can at least breathe again.” The nail strumming stopped and Mom ran the tips of her fingers against the table surface, eyes unblinking as she stared out of the window behind me. “I didn’t think it would be possible, him…”
My mother tried damn hard to never cry in front of me. For the most part, she didn’t. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of times I remember her letting go completely with the waterworks. Once, it had happened when I nearly killed Mikee Sibley for attacking my friend. Mom hadn’t been able to keep from crying when she saw how scared, how ashamed I’d been. Another time had come when Bobby, the old woman who gave Mom a job in Nashville when no one else would, who sort of adopted us back then, had died after a long fight with stomach cancer. That had only been five years before and I’d never seen Mom cry that long or that hard since. Until yesterday.
