Chapter 20 Anne
Anne
Zoe avoided the main house for a while.
The next time that Anne saw her, the energy was tense.
It was early morning. The sky above the ocean was blue, but the sun was still below the horizon. Anne went downstairs to start breakfast, and Zoe was at the table eating a bowl of cereal. She didn’t say a word, but Anne could feel the anger and resentment coming off of her in waves.
Anne paused for a moment. The air was so thick that she didn’t even want to walk into the kitchen. She didn’t want to go through breakfast prep pretending that everything was fine.
She didn’t want to ignore her daughter’s pain.
“Can’t we fix this?” She sat down at the kitchen table across from her.
“Fix what?” Zoe snapped.
“Us. This… resentment. Your anger. The constant jabs.”
“Right. Because I’m the problematic one. It’s all my fault.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You move in and turn this place into a hotel, and you want me to pretend like nothing’s wrong.”
“I don’t want to pretend. I just want to move forward.”
“One big happy family,” she said acidly.
“Zoe, please.”
“You weren’t here.”
“I know.”
“You weren’t here when I needed you. Ever.”
“I know that. But I can’t change the past.”
“Grandma was a teenager when she had you, and she stayed.”
“She had a lot of help from Tutu Kalama.”
“You would’ve had plenty of help! You could have gone to college here.”
“I could have,” Anne acknowledged quietly. There was no way for her to explain to her daughter how impossible that had felt at the time, how suffocating.
“You’re the opposite of Grandma and Tutu! You’re the opposite of a foster parent. You’re a mother who just threw her daughter away.”
“I didn’t throw you away,” Anne growled. Despite her best intentions, a defensive anger was simmering in her chest. “I left you with your grandparents for a while so that I could go to school.”
“For a while?” Zoe exclaimed. “Forever!”
“I tried to come back for you!”
“You didn’t try very hard.”
Anne opened her mouth and closed it again. Finally she said, “Maybe I should have tried harder. I didn’t think that forcing you to leave the only home you’d ever known was the right move.”
“It wasn’t. But you could have come here. You could have made a life here, just like you’re doing right now. But you couldn’t be bothered. You didn’t care.”
“I did care, Zoe. I did. I still do.”
“Yeah, well. You’re pretty lousy at showing it.”
“I know that!” Anne passed a hand over her eyes and lowered her voice. “I know. But you don’t make it easy.”
“It’s not my job to make your life easy.”
“That’s it,” Dawn snapped from the stairs.
Anne jumped, and they both turned to look at the Kalama family matriarch.
“Ho’oponopono,” she commanded.
“Grandma–” Zoe started, but Dawn held up a hand.
“This has gone on long enough. It’s time to make things right.”
“I’m trying,” Anne said.
“Try harder, because I’m sick of this drama. Your father never would have let it go on this long. He would have intervened by now, and he would have done it with a lot more grace and compassion than I’m capable of. But he’s gone, and the rest of us just have to muddle on without him. So.”
“Ho’oponopono,” Anne murmured.
“That’s right.”
Ho’oponopono was a traditional Hawaiian practice used to restore peace within a family or community, a way of healing relationships through apology and forgiveness.
Throughout Anne’s childhood, when conflicts arose – as they often and inevitably did in a family as big as theirs – her dad would sit them down and demand that they make amends.
You’re teammates for life, he would tell them. Now make it right.
Anne looked across the table at her daughter. Zoe was staring down at her empty cereal bowl. Her hands were curled into fists on the tabletop.
Dawn sat down beside her and gently uncurled one of her fists.
“You can’t keep holding onto this,” she said. “It’s making you sick.”
She was right. Zoe looked unwell. There were dark circles under her eyes and a sallow tint to her copper skin. Was that Anne’s fault? Was she really causing her daughter that much stress, just by being there?
“I’m sorry,” she said in a voice thick with remorse. “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t here for you.”
Zoe screwed her eyes shut.
“Please forgive me,” Anne said, her voice breaking.
“I don’t know how.” Tears spilled from Zoe’s eyes, and Anne’s heart broke a little bit more. “But I’ll try.”
“Thank you.” Anne hesitated, then asked, “Can I give you a hug?”
She was shocked when Zoe nodded.
Anne walked around the table, and Zoe stood. She wrapped her arms around her daughter, her baby who was bigger than she was. For a moment Zoe stood stiff as a statue. Then, slowly, she melted into her.
“I love you,” Anne told her daughter.
Zoe didn’t say anything back – but she didn’t pull away, either.
And that was enough.