Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
F or a long time, Aunty Kapono and I just stare at each other across the dining room table. I’m smiling nervously. She is not. There is no hint of anything warm or welcoming on her face. The grandfather clock in the corner of the room ticks loudly, punctuating the uneasy silence between us. I can faintly hear the children shrieking with laughter in the kitchen, and Kimo doing a loud, silly voice to egg them on. I would give my right arm to be in that room right now.
“So how did you and my son meet?” Aunty Kapono breaks the silence.
She strikes me as the kind of person who wants complete and total honesty. But I don’t know if I can be that honest. “At the gym,” I say finally, diplomatically.
“What do you do for a living?”
I sit up a bit straighter. This is actually something in my favor, I think. “I’m a paralegal. I’m working on the custody case for Kimo. It’s kind of a funny coincidence.”
Aunty Kapono doesn’t seem to find it all that funny. Her mouth remains a flat line. “Not smart enough to be a lawyer, huh?”
Her boldness knocks the wind out of me. I’m used to being the most direct person in the room. To have it turned back on me makes me feel like I’m trying to Rollerblade with my arms tied behind my back. “Well, I, uh, I don’t know about that. But I didn’t want to go into more debt.”
“More debt?” Aunty Kapono’s eyebrows inch up again.
I reach for the glass of water in front of me, wrapping my hands around it to steady myself. I wish it were a glass of wine. Or better yet, vodka. “I supported myself through school, and my two sisters. I had to take out some loans,” I explain.
Aunty Kapono’s flat expression reveals nothing. “Where were your parents?”
Oh, so we’re jumping straight into that, huh? I gulp. “My father died, back in Russia, where I’m originally from.” Honesty . She’ll want direct honesty, I know. I brace myself. “My mother brought us here to America because she had a new boyfriend who sponsored her fiancée visa. But after we got here, he decided he didn’t want children. So one day they left us.”
I’m not trying to play the sympathy card, really. I’ve made peace with what happened a long time ago—well, no, that’s not quite right. I would never describe myself as being at peace. But the wound has healed over, and I have enough self-control not to pick at it.
Still, I can see something shift in Aunty Kapono’s face. She isn’t smiling, or open, but she isn’t quite glaring anymore, either. She’s frowning, but that frown no longer seems directed at me. “How old were you?”
“Ten.” I wave my hand. “But it was fine. We were put into the foster care system. And we’re all university graduates now, so.” I shift again. There’s a lot left unspoken in that so . Like how I took on Alina’s debt to make sure she could get a well-paying job. Sasha’s adoptive parents helped her with university, but I still loaned her money for textbooks and other fun things she might not have gotten to do otherwise, like her study abroad trip to France. Fun things I didn’t get to do during my own university experience, since I was busy juggling two part-time jobs, and regularly donating plasma, so they could have an easier time in school than I ever did. But we all made it, we all have university degrees and jobs now, and we didn’t fall prey to what happens to so many kids put into the system like we were.
So.
“Congratulations.” Aunty Kapono says it almost begrudgingly, still valiantly holding on to her suspicion of me, though for the first time I see a crack in her armor. A woman doesn’t get so many laugh and smile lines from always being this tough. If I were any other person sitting across from her at the table, telling her this story, she’d be all warmth and kindness. It’s only because I was brought here by her son that she’s being so tough.
I know it because I recognize it. I respect it. I’m the same way with Alina and Sasha, Helen and Nina. Anyone who means something to me. Someone has to prove they want what’s best for them first, before they get the benefit of the doubt from me. Some things are too precious to just hope the best for. For people like Aunty Kapono and me, it’s not our own hearts we’re protecting; it’s everyone else’s.
I relax a little now with this new understanding of her standoffishness. I’m not sure what I’m feeling for Kimo yet, but there’s no doubt in my mind what I feel for Aunty Kapono. She’s tough and fierce, a mother with the heart of a warrior. It’s complete love at first sight.
She settles back in her chair, not willing to give up her protective stance quite yet. “How many boyfriends have you had?”
“None,” I say honestly. I’m almost enjoying this, now that I understand where she’s coming from.
“None?” Aunty Kapono does not like that answer. “What’s wrong with you?”
I bark out a laugh. “What’s wrong with men?” I counter. “I can provide for myself, take care of my needs, and if I get lonely, I’ll get a cat. What does a man bring to my life?”
Again, I can see Aunty Kapono fighting against her begrudging respect for me. “Still...none? What are you, a virgin?”
“No. Are you?”
The words slip out of my mouth without my thinking. Seeing Aunty Kapono’s eyes narrow in warning, I realize immediately I’ve taken it a step too far. “Sorry,” I say quickly, and hurry to add, “In high school, I was too scary, I think. At university, I was too busy. Then I became a nun for a couple years.”
Aunty Kapono stares at me. “A nun? What do you mean?”
“Like, a nun.” I mimic clasping my hands in prayer. “You know, wimple. Lived in a monastery. The works.” I puff up a little, prepared to wow her. “I was a Poor Clare.”
“A poor what?”
Her question deflates me a little. I forget not everyone is keyed into the world of nuns. “They’re the most austere nuns,” I explain. “They have very small communities, with only a few members. It’s a pretty big deal to get in.”
Aunty Kapono does not look wowed. “And yet, here you are, not dating my son.” She folds her arms again, sizing me up. “Was being a nun too tough for you?”
Two can play this game. I fold my arms back at her. “Nothing’s too tough for me. I thrive under pressure.”
Let her take that as she will. If Aunty Kapono thinks she’s going to scare me away from Kimo by not smiling and asking for brutal honesty, she has another think coming.
“Hmm,” is all she says, pursing her lips.
“I joined the community because I liked the order and structure of religious life. And I used to have a close relationship with God, though not anymore. I left because one of my sisters at the monastery ended up getting deported. The church could have intervened, but they didn’t, and I didn’t think that was fair.” I level Aunty Kapono with my gaze, so she’ll see how sincere I’m being. “I care a lot about things being fair. I didn’t think it was fair of the church, and I didn’t think it was fair of God, so I left.”
“Hmm,” Aunty Kapono says again. This hmm , however, is harder to read than the one before. It isn’t exactly friendly, but she’s no longer frowning.
Deciding to go all in with my brutal-honesty strategy, I shrug. “Besides, who wants to go their whole life without sex?”
Kimo and the kids whirlwind into the dining room, a flurry of plates and silverware and pancakes. “Who’s ready to eat?” Kimo asks.
As Makoa and Nalani both try to outshout each other with their “Me!”s, Kimo makes eye contact with me, then his mother, then again with me. “How are we doing in here?”
“Just great,” I reply. It’s an honest answer, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it wasn’t in part for Aunty Kapono’s benefit. You don’t scare me, Aunty, I silently tell her across the table. Then I smile at the huge stack of pancakes. “Yum.”
“Māmā?” Kimo asks as the older woman continues to stare me down.
At last, Aunty Kapono shifts. “Well, she’s honest. I’ll give her that much...”
* * *
Dinner is pure chaos. Syrup gets spilled. Makoa ends up with chocolate all over his mouth and hands. Nalani interrupts the grown-ups any time we start to have a conversation. Aunty Kapono threatens to get out her wooden spoon if the kids don’t behave, but I can tell by the way they respond to her that it’s never actually been used. They adore their gruff dragon protector, but not as much as they adore Kimo. He’s almost as much of a kid as they are, blowing bubbles in his milk and spearing his strawberries on his fingertips just to make them laugh.
I’m used to eating dinner by myself, in complete silence, unless I’m watching an episode of Full House . Sometimes I’ll just eat over the kitchen sink so I don’t have to wash any dishes. My life has been a total lack of chaos for as long as I can remember. I guess some aspects of being a Poor Clare lingered with me—I like order, and I like silence.
I should be miserable at this wild circus of a table, but I’m not. My heart feels too big for my chest as I quietly observe the Kapono family just being a family. I watch Kimo teasing Nalani about the boy she likes at camp and threatening to hose Makoa off in the backyard if he doesn’t use his napkin and coaxing Aunty Kapono into begrudging smiles with his antics, and I think to myself, This is the kind of man who would never make a mother leave her children behind . This is the kind of man who would fight tigers to keep his family together.
Oh no , I think, as I meet Kimo’s gaze across the table in a rare quiet moment before the next round of tumult starts.
Oh no.