Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Apain ratcheted up Jasmine’s back, toppling her into the counter at the front of the little beachside café and convenience store.
A family of four gaped at her from the other side of the sales computer, gripping their sunhats and looking at her like she was a pitiful old thing.
At seventy-eight, she was accustomed to these kinds of looks.
Nobody could figure out why she was still working at her age, as though the economy was a mystery to most of them. As though they didn’t watch the news.
Finally, in an act of chivalry, the husband barreled around the counter, scooped his arm around her waist, and led her to the nearest empty chair. “I thought she was having a stroke!” he called to his wife, as though Jasmine couldn’t hear. As though she were too old and therefore too stupid.
Jasmine steadied herself in the chair, her hands spread out on the table. The wife sat across from her and spoke gently. “Is there someone we should call?”
Jasmine shook her head and grimaced into a smile. “It’s just my back,” she said. “I’ve been standing up all day. Sometimes it has a mind of its own.”
“I don’t understand why you’re still working at your age,” the husband said.
The wife cast him a look that meant hush.
The husband seemed vaguely clueless, red-faced, and from somewhere far away. He saw Jasmine’s collapse as a thing that had happened to him, a thing that had gotten in the way of his beautiful family vacation.
“I have some aspirin,” the wife said, searching through her purse and procuring a bottle. “Take some. Please.” She tapped some of the pills into a little plastic baggie and handed it over. “You live here?” Her eyes searched Jasmine’s. They echoed pity.
Jasmine nodded and accepted the bag. “Thank you.”
“It’s a beautiful place,” the wife said, standing. “It was always our dream to come to Hawaii. We thought we would for our honeymoon, but I got pregnant too soon.”
The eldest of her children mumbled, “Mom…” and made a face.
The husband gestured vaguely toward the items that Jasmine hadn’t yet scanned for them during their purchase. He was impatient. Jasmine wondered what their vacation plans were. “We need to get this show on the road,” he said.
Because Jasmine couldn’t yet stand, she instructed the little family on how to use the scanner and their card to pay. It was relatively simple. She guessed that if her boss caught her letting the customers use the computer, she’d get fired immediately.
When the family left, Jasmine clenched her fists and limped back to the counter, where she found her water bottle.
She took the pills, closing her eyes, willing the medicine to work.
She had only a few hours left before her shift ended.
She had to make it through. She had to pay her rent this month and feed herself.
Everything felt precarious. It had always felt precarious, especially since Hawaii had gotten so darn expensive. It hadn’t been that way when she’d first moved out here.
Ten minutes after Jasmine was supposed to be finished with her shift for the day, Sherry wandered in, looking lost as ever.
She still wore a bikini from her long day on the beach, and her hair was wild and teased.
“You wouldn’t believe the day I had,” Sherry told Jasmine, pulling a T-shirt over her frame.
It looked like she’d forgotten bottoms to go with it.
Sherry talked about what had happened to her at the beach.
Some married guy had asked her out on a date, her ex-husband had told her something horrible over the phone, and her kid had said something bratty during breakfast that morning.
Jasmine listened, murmured, and clocked out.
Her back spasmed again. She wasn’t sure if she could make it all the way home just yet.
But there was no way she was going to tell Sherry about it.
Outside the café and convenience store, Jasmine collapsed at a table in the sun.
There, she ate a small ice cream and watched the beach-goers spread out on the sands, most of whom had traveled from the greater forty-eight states to visit Hawaii.
Because she’d left the greater forty-eight almost fifty years ago, she often felt as though everything across that stretch of ocean was a dream.
It was hard for her to fathom her birth state.
It was hard for her to imagine miles and miles of highway, going from one end of the continent to the other.
When Jasmine realized it was unlikely that she’d manage the mile-long walk back to her apartment, she called her daughter, Jenny.
Jenny was forty-nine years old and a dental hygienist at a nice office in downtown Honolulu.
Usually, she got out of work around four or four thirty, unless she had to stay and help the dentist with something like surgery.
Today, Jenny answered with fatigue in her voice.
“Hi, Mom,” she said. Jasmine wondered when she’d last heard her daughter’s joy.
“Honey, I’m sorry to bother you like this,” Jasmine said, “but I did something to my back at work today, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t think I can walk home.”
“What happened?” Jenny’s voice was pinched.
Jasmine explained what she knew: pressure and pain in her back. “But it’s a mystery.”
Jenny sighed. “Hold on a second,” she said.
She then either muted the phone or held her hand over the receiver to talk to whoever she was with.
Jasmine prayed it wasn’t her son-in-law, Walton, whom she’d never found a way to love, not even so many years after Jenny and Walton’s wedding or three kids later.
“The kids are going to come get you,” Jenny said then, drawing Jasmine out of her reverie. “They’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Jasmine was caught off guard. It boggled her mind to think of her tiny grandchildren as old enough not only to drive cars but also to pick up their grandmother during her time of need.
But Chase, Alyssa, and Jade were nineteen, seventeen, and sixteen, respectively.
Chase was taking online college classes and working at a surf shop, Alyssa was in her senior year of high school, and Jade was a junior.
Sometimes Jasmine prayed that they would never leave Hawaii, that they’d never leave Jasmine and Jenny behind.
Other times, she prayed that they would fight for whatever life they wanted to build, no matter how hard the struggle was.
Jasmine was glad to see it was Chase in the driver’s seat and Alyssa and Jade in the back of Chase’s clunky secondhand car. Jasmine waved and limped over to the passenger side and was surprised when Chase leaped out to open the door for her.
“Mom said you hurt yourself.” He furrowed his brow. “What happened?”
Jasmine tried to make a joke out of it. “I’m old!” she said, sliding into the passenger seat.
Alyssa and Jade leaned forward to smile at her.
“Hi, Grandma!” Jade said. “You look pretty today.”
Jasmine laughed and swatted her youngest granddaughter. “How are you girls doing back there? I hope your mom didn’t pull you away from your homework.”
The girls said they were done with homework for the day. It was still early in the school year, and their teachers were being lenient on them.
“By October, it’ll be crazy,” Chase said, squeezing the steering wheel authoritatively.
As they drove toward Jasmine’s place, her back eased the slightest bit, and her mood improved tenfold. This was always what it was like when she was with her grandchildren.
“Have you eaten?” she asked them.
They said they hadn’t, which might have been a lie.
Still, Jasmine decided to take them at their word and suggested they go to a little fish taco place down the road from her apartment.
She made so little money that she usually liked to spend what she had left over, if only so she could squeeze a little enjoyment out of her life.
She shared most of that enjoyment with her grandchildren and her daughter.
At the fish taco place, they ate guacamole and chips and waited for their order.
Chase talked about the drama of doing online classes and teaching surfing to “tourists who don’t know anything.
” Alyssa and Jade made fun of him, giggling a lot.
When their tacos arrived, they happily ate and watched the sunset unfold across the water.
Jasmine told herself that her back pain was a distant memory and wouldn’t return.
That was when she saw Jenny and Walton, moving across the sand. Their faces were marred with anger. Walton opened his mouth, and out came a barrage of what seemed like insults. They were fighting publicly, in a way that made everyone on the beach and in the surrounding restaurants turn to stare.
“Oh no,” Alyssa murmured, looking down at her unfinished tacos.
“What’s going on here?” Jasmine asked.
Alyssa and Jade exchanged meaningful looks.
“They’ve been at it all week,” Chase said, answering boldly for his sisters.
“It’s been scary,” Jade said.
Jasmine squeezed her eyes shut. She’d never known her daughter and son-in-law to get along well all the time, but the argument there on the sand seemed like something else, something more sinister.
She could tell that Walton was insulting her daughter and whittling her down.
She knew, because she’d seen it before, again and again, with old friends and family. It had happened to her once, too.
Jasmine stood and walked to the edge of the beach, hoping to catch Jenny’s attention.
But Jenny and Walton barreled past, still bickering.
Walton’s left hand formed a fist that paralyzed Jasmine.
She wanted to scream “Watch out!” But then, he loosened his hand and put it in his pocket, still fighting in a way that made Jenny look like she was getting smaller and smaller.
Jasmine had to talk herself down. She wanted to call the police, but she knew that sometimes, calling the police on something like that only made things worse.
It only made people like Walton angrier.
After the grandkids finished their meals, Chase drove them back to Jasmine’s.
Alyssa and Jade popped out first to open the doors for their grandmother and make sure she got situated.
Jasmine guessed that to them, she was looking older and older.
She sat in the chair in front of the television and told them to leave.
But Alyssa said they wouldn’t until they’d set Jasmine up for the night.
“You want us to get your snacks ready for you?” Alyssa asked, heading for the cabinet.
Jasmine sighed into a smile. The grandkids knew that she liked to watch an hour of television or read at night with a few dried fruits and a couple of crackers or peanuts. Alyssa put together a small snack plate with all her favorite treats and kissed her goodbye. Jade kissed her second.
“Girls?” Jasmine called right before they disappeared through the door. They froze, waiting. “Will you tell me if your father goes after your mother again?”
Jade and Alyssa were stunned into silence. It seemed that they didn’t like talking about their mother and father’s disputes. Perhaps their mother had asked them not to speak about it. Maybe specifically, they’d been told not to talk to Jasmine about it.
Jenny never liked Jasmine to get involved in her business. She knew that Jasmine didn’t like Walton.
“Promise me, girls,” Jasmine said.
“We promise,” Alyssa said, her voice flat. It was clear she was lying, that their ultimate allegiance was to their mother. “Love you, Grandma. See you tomorrow?”
Jasmine said she loved them back and watched them go. Her heart thudded with a mix of exhaustion and sorrow. Very soon, she knew, she’d fall asleep in front of the television, get herself to bed, and start a new day—a day that probably would feel entirely like this one had.