Strong Like the Sea, стр. 66
All around me, coconuts rest where loving hands wedged them into cracks and furrows in the lava, and at the top of each, a tender young tree grows from a split in the shell.
At the crest of a mound, I duck to peer into a wide fissure where red-tinted roots dangle from a coconut shell across open air until they reach lava rock and cling tight, a solid anchor for a new tree.
Uncle, Auntie, and Dad wait near the car while I clamber up one little hill of ’a’a lava and down another—careful to avoid the steaming places—until I find the perfect spot and wave to them. “This is it.”
Dad climbs across, passes me a coconut, and waits while I tuck it into a groove in the rock.
I brush my hands on my shorts and snap a couple pictures of my new almost-tree from different angles. Maybe it will grow, maybe not. But I like to think it will rise just like Mom’s did.
“You ready to go home?” Dad asks.
I scan the barren new land one more time, trying to fix this spot in my mind for when I see it again someday—with Mom. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
Well, I’m happy to report that Uncle rules at Scrabble, Auntie’s the queen of charades, and Dad . . . well, let’s just say he’s really bad at Pictionary. Like, really, really bad. (Auntie thought Dad’s clown fish was a reindeer.)
Dad invited the Tanakas to wait with us for Mom’s call because it’s all any of us could think of the whole trip home anyway, so we might as well distract each other. I thought maybe I was the only one with my guts all twisted up like I ate a pile of sea slugs, but when the phone finally rings, Dad pounces on it so fast, he knocks the mahjong board right off the table.
Mom’s voice is quiet, tired, but hers. And that makes everything else okay. I start to tell her all about the Big Island, but Dad writes “She’s tired” next to his clownfish-reindeer and I shorten it down to “I miss you.”
“Miss you too. I can’t wait to see you and hear all about your adventures, reports, and anything else I’ve missed.”
We take turns asking questions, and Mom says she’s getting stronger every day—but she still sounds pretty weak to me. If I close my eyes, I can imagine her like she is when she first wakes up. Curly brown hair in a messy tumble down her shoulders, a soft robe wrapped around her waist, her tablet tucked under one arm, but not turned on yet.
“The doctors say I’m doing better and will be home soon.” She sighs. “Or I would be if I could just get this blood pressure under control. I waited too long to get help and got really sick, so it went low at first—and they fixed me. I’m sore, and most of the infection is gone now, but they think I might be reacting to something or have an underlying condition because now it keeps spiking up.”
Too soon, her nurses come to help her walk some more to get her digestive system working right again, and Mom promises to call again soon.
When the line disconnects, the grown-ups talk while I stare at the phone. Mom said they’d let her go home sooner if her blood pressure got under control. Fix that, and she can come home, right?
I interrupt. “Uncle? Didn’t you say your tea helps with your blood pressure?”
“Maybe. I think so.”
All these weeks, I’ve been trying to solve Mom’s clues and work out her challenge because that was all I had to feel close to her. But what if I could make something to help her? “If I gather enough fruit, can you show me how to make it? Maybe it could help Mom too.”
“She’s already under doctor’s care—” Dad begins.
“But there’s still a chance it might help her. And the faster she feels better, the faster she comes home, right?” My voice grows stronger with every word. “If our island helped her grow and put down roots, it only makes sense that it can help her get better, too. Will you help me?”
Uncle glances at Dad and Auntie, then nods. “I’ll teach you.”
It’s tricky to have basements on a volcanic island where the ground is mostly solid rock, and digging down is really hard—especially with seawater sneaking in through old lava tubes and sandy soil. With Uncle’s house on the makai side of Kamehameha Highway and the ocean in his backyard, he can’t have a basement like my mainland grandparents do. But I’m learning that Uncle doesn’t let a little ol’ thing like solid rock get in the way of what he wants.
No basement? No problem; he built the next best thing. There’s a crevasse in the lava beside his house where ’a’a lava pushed up in a chunky wall and smooth pahoehoe lava swirled down low beside it. So Uncle built some walls around it and mounded earth for a windowless shed.
This is where Uncle lets stinky cheese fruit sit in special small tanks forever until it’s ready to harvest the bitter golden liquid that’s left at the end.
“Wait, it takes how long?” I blink, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark of his step-down shed—more above-ground hobbit hole than a basement.
He taps a bottle. “Two months to make this. But longer to make it a dark brown color. It goes darker when it ages.”
“But we can’t wait months.”
Sarge barks, and we peek out of the shed in time to see Sarge lay across both of Malia’s feet.
“Oof!” Her arms whirl to keep her balance, but her eyes are bright and clear. “Hey Uncle Tanaka, next time you need a smaller dog. Like a