Chapter 11 #3
“Look, Big Boss,” he said, flipping open the books, the plastic-laminated pages clinging together. “Look, that’s you and me,” he said, pointing at faded photos of baby Sunbern bouncing on Big Boss Sun’s lap. “That’s me, Isaac!”
The old man had looked up, and for a moment, his milky-brown eyes seemed to sharpen. But then he shook his head. Oh, so you’re back from the war?
Infuriated, Sunbern grabbed some of the portrait books and flung them across the office, where they clattered to the ground.
“Goddammit, I’m not a fucking soldier!” he yelled, pulling at his own hair in anguish. “I’m your fucking grandson Isaac! What
the fuck is wrong with you, Big Boss!?”
The resident nurse had rushed in at this point, trying to pull Sunbern out. But then Big Boss Sun stood up. “Get out,” he
said to the nurse.
He pointed at Sunbern, speaking in his stern, unaccented English. “You, sit the fuck down.”
In a daze, Sunbern sat down in the seat across from his grandfather.
Without looking at the photos in the remaining portrait books in front of him, Big Boss Sun shut them firmly, folding his
hands over them. “I don’t know who you are,” he said, his eyes penetrating into his grandson’s, “but I know who Isaac is.”
“Yes,” Sunbern replied, his heart leaping and overjoyed. “That’s me!”
But his grandfather did not smile back. Instead, he reached down to his desk and pulled open a drawer. Out of it he produced
a thick black tome, which he then threw at Sunbern without warning.
Sunbern had been so caught off guard that he almost dropped it. He looked at it. It was a weathered Bible. He stared back
at Big Boss Sun, confused.
“The Isaac I know,” the old man growled, “is in there.”
“I don’t get it, Big Boss.”
His grandfather leaned over to him with a certain scary intensity. “He was going to kill you, you know.”
“Who?”
“Your father, Isaac. He was going to kill you.”
Sunbern had chuckled, but he was beginning to sweat in angst. “Hey, Big Boss, you’re kinda freaking me out.”
The old man stood up, and as he spoke, his voice ratcheted louder and louder. “He was going to bind you like a sacrificial
lamb, drag you up a mountain, and gut you on an altar.” He let out a terrifying roar of laughter. “Oh, Isaac! Isaac! So THAT’S
who you are!”
With that, Big Boss Sun lunged across the desk, his shaking fingers aimed at Sunbern’s face. Sunbern did not wait to find
out what might happen next; he scrambled out of the seat and fled the office, down the stairs, and slammed himself into his
car, locking the doors.
As he drove away, Sunbern wept.
Finally he knew that his grandfather was gone.
At the few family functions after that episode, Sunbern was never able to look at Big Boss Sun again. He heard that their
patriarch did have a few moments of lucidness before he ultimately passed, but Sunbern was never there to witness them. At
Big Boss Sun’s funeral, Sunbern did not go inside the chapel. He stood outside leaning against a tree, emotionless.
To Sunbern, the old man had died long ago. And soon afterward, he himself forgot completely about that nameless soldier.
Taking long drags from his vape, Sunbern stood at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, its permanently cold waves lapping at his
toes. He knew this deserted beachfront well, though the last time he had been here, it had been an entirely different vibe,
with paparazzi helicopters buzzing overhead and disapproving family members at face level as he had proposed to Shannon Shoo.
He turned around to look at his mother’s Manhattan Beach retreat, a glass-and-metal edifice that looked more like a giant
transparent origami than it did a house. She was not home yet, but that did not surprise him. Hyacinth was always running
late or forgetting something, a flighty woman who was constantly overwhelmed.
Plenty of Angelenos can spend an entire lifetime in the city without venturing a few miles down to South Bay, a cluster of
sleepy, often misty beach cities tucked right under LAX Airport. When Hyacinth announced that she was finally moving out of
San Marino to Manhattan Beach, most of the family were confused, thinking she meant New York.
But Hyacinth loved the California coast as much as Roses did, so while the eldest Sun sister had already claimed the sandy
glamour of Malibu, the youngest sister discovered the low-key boardwalks and colorful cottages of Manhattan Beach. After Big
Boss Sun’s passing, Hyacinth bought a former holistic center and converted it into a wellness retreat for one: herself. There,
she spent her days praying and improving herself, with the ever-blue ocean as her sole witness.
The sun was hitting the water just right, and Sunbern pulled out his Sunfang phone to take a selfie, running a hand through
his cowlick dirty blonde hair and making sure to clench his jaw so that his chiseled cheekbones jutted out magnificently.
He captioned it with “Find the ocean within y’all xo #bananaboat #ad” and uploaded it to his social media. Instantly, his phone was chiming with thousands and thousands of likes and gushing comments.
He grinned. It felt good to be back.
Sunbern heard a car pulling in and turned to watch his mother’s black Escalade pull into her driveway. He ambled over to greet
her as her driver opened the door for her.
“Hey, Mama.”
He offered a hand and Hyacinth grasped it. “Isaac,” she cooed. “So sorry I’m late.” Now that Big Boss Sun was gone, she was the only person left in the world who called him by his birth name.
Sunbern shrugged good-naturedly. “There are worse places to wait around.” They proceeded to walk into her retreat.
Standing next to each other and separated only by sixteen years, the gorgeous mother and handsome son looked more like sister
and brother, or perhaps even a well-matched couple—nowadays Hyacinth in fact looked objectively younger than the harder-lived
Sunbern.
Sunbern waited upstairs on a balcony facing the sea as Hyacinth brought up a tray of iced sage-leaf tea.
“So you wanted to talk,” Hyacinth began, sitting on a hammock slung under the shade as Sunbern leaned against the railing.
She was still nervous, expecting a confrontation about the great plot that she and Roses had hatched against him, but she
felt fortified by her session with SANTI the day before. Her Love had already consummated her Fear.
Sunbern took a sip of the bitter murky tea, made a face, and set it down. Then he just blurted it out.
“Mama, how would you like to be a grandmother?”
Hyacinth nearly fell out of the hammock. This was the last thing she expected. “WHAT!” she exclaimed. “Is that Shannon girl
pregnant? Is that why the two of you are together again?” She stood up and began pacing the balcony, wondering how this odd
left turn had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
Sunbern reached out to steady her. “No, Mama, she’s not pregnant. Yet. But she agreed we could try.”
Hyacinth let out an exasperated gasp. “You know how I feel about her, Isaac.”
“C’mon, Mama,” Sunbern groaned. “Do you know the shit I put that girl through? When that audio leaked, she was humiliated
because of me. Don’t you think she deserves some credit for taking me back? Can’t you love her for loving me again?”
“And what about me?” his mother demanded. “What about MY humiliation? You always think about that girl when you should think about ME once in a while too!”
Her son groaned again. “You seriously can’t compare the two of you. You were raised in extreme wealth, Mama. Shannon’s from
a trailer park in the 626. Why can’t you have some sympathy for her?”
Hyacinth let out a huff of frustration. “Actually, Isaac, I have nothing but sympathy for Shannon. What did I tell you when
you first started dating her?”
“That her boob job looked like a rolled-up yoga mat.”
“Don’t be crass! No, what I said was that you are the firstborn grandson of Big Boss Sun, and that whoever you date will be
subjected to a level of scrutiny that would be challenging even for the most well-bred of women. If you actually cared about
Shannon, you would have spared her from . . .”
“From what?” Sunbern lashed back. “Your crazy fucking family? The entire reason why I left home at sixteen was so I could
call my own shots!”
“You can’t have it both ways,” Hyacinth seethed. “You can’t claim independence from the Suns while also capitalizing on my
father’s name and legacy, which is what you have always done, ‘Sunbern.’” She spit out this moniker of his, which she had
always hated.
“That’s fucking unfair,” Sunbern snapped, but there was that telltale quaver in his voice. “You know best that of all of his
grandkids, I was Big Boss’s favorite! If he didn’t have to die, who knows where I’d be today. I definitely wouldn’t be living
in a roach-infested shithole in K-town!” He pounded a fist on the railing. “You don’t know how bad it’s been for me, Mama.
You have no idea what I’ve been doing to get by . . .”
He wanted to continue, but he choked on a wave of emotions. Instead he turned from his mother to look out at the Pacific,
taking a shuddering drag of his vape.
Hyacinth sighed and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Isaac . . .” she said more gently, “I know how you feel, believe me. People always said that your grandfather was heartless, but the fact that he always loved you and me the most proves that he did have a heart, at least for us. You and I are not as hard and sharp as the rest of the Sun Clan, but instead of holding it against us, he always held us closest.”
Sunbern sniffed. “Big Boss was pretty much the closest thing to a father that I had.”
Hyacinth placed a hand over her cheek, which was reddening with shame. As far as Sunbern knew, his unspoken father had abandoned
him as a child. Big Boss Sun had insisted on this white lie.
“I’m so sorry, Isaac,” was all she could say.
“Don’t be sorry, Mama,” he said as he turned around to face her. “Just be on my side. Don’t I deserve a chance to be a father?