Unburying Hope (34 page)

When her hair was fluffy and dry, they walked
into the little girl’s room, in the bare light of a lamp that would need a
shade.
 
Rosalinda stood at her
white wicker dresser.

Rosalinda held up a faded green t-shirt with a
puppy on it, then rejected it as ‘too babyish’.
 
She pulled out a black sweater with a cat on it, but pushed
it back into the drawer.
 
She
looked sad.

Celeste asked absentmindedly, “What’s wrong?”

“Grandma bought my clothes.”

“That was kind of her.”

“But my stuff is old lady style.”

Celeste grew more attentive.
 
“Ah, I see.”
 
She looked through the open dresser drawer and saw cutesy
things that didn’t seem comfortable, a sweatshirt with a lace collar on it, a
pair of plaid baggy shorts.
 
She
closed the drawer and looked at Rosalinda.
 
“How about we go shopping?”

“Isn’t it too late?
 
We just had dinner.”

Celeste had noticed that, oddly, even in
Hawaii, small clothing stores had gone out of business, done in by the same superstores
that dotted the map every ten miles or so in Michigan.
  
At least the big stores were open
until late in the evening, she thought.

She drove them down the mountain and into the
flat part of the island near the airport to the huge shopping center with the
open superstore.
 
They walked into
the children’s area and she saw Rosalinda let a small smile escape from her
lips, usually held so tightly closed.

“Why don’t we find an outfit for you?”

“My dad’s not here.
 
We forgot to get money from him,” Rosalinda said quietly in
a worried voice.
 
“I’m not sure we
can afford this.”
 

“That’s okay, I’ve got money,” Celeste patted
her purse.

“Okay,” she said tentatively.
 
She touched every shirt in the racks,
looking thoughtfully at each one.
 
“How much should we spend?”

“Let’s not worry about that.
 
This is a discount store.
 
We can get whatever works for you.”
 
She reached into a rack for a sweater
and pulled it out to show Rosalinda.
 
“For warmth?”

Rosalinda smiled sheepishly.
  
“I don’t like sweaters, they make
me too hot.
 
But we can get it if
you want.”

Celeste put the sweater back on the rack,
“Let’s just get what you’ll wear, okay?
 
A shirt and a skirt, or a shirt and pants?”

Rosalinda brightened and pulled out a red
t-shirt and brown pair of lightweight pants at the same moment that Celeste
pulled out a blue shirt and jean leggings.
 
They smiled awkwardly at each other.

She tried on both outfits in the dressing room
and she looked happy in each, patting herself on her stomach and her behind,
pulling the shirts down on her little hips.
 
“I like either one, so we can get what’s cheapest.”

Celeste wondered at the nervousness and
frugality of the little girl and the life challenges that had brought her to
this store at night on a Hawaiian island.

She texted to Eddie that she’d taken Rosalinda
shopping and looked to see that he’d replied, ‘THNX!’

As Rosalinda changed back into her own
clothes, which now looked too small compared with the new clothes, Celeste took
the tried-on clothes to the register, buying both outfits.
 
She quickly shoved them into the store
bag as she saw Rosalinda approaching from the dressing room.
 
“You’re dad’s out for a while setting
up the store,” she said, reaching for the stack of candy boxes next to the
register.
 
“Let’s get a treat
before teeth brushing tonight.”

Rosalinda looked shyly at row upon row of
chocolate bars, candies and gum.
 
She reached right for a chocolate-covered toffee bar.
 
“These are my Grandma’s favorites.”

“Do you like them too?”

“Yep.
 
She always split it with me.”

“That was very nice of her.
 
Well, tonight you get your own.”

Rosalinda took the store bag from the cart and
opened it, the candy bar in her hand.
 
She gasped when she saw both outfits, tightly closed the bag and lunged
impulsively towards Celeste, arms open for a hug.

Celeste’s first instinct was to throw her arms
up as obstacles but Rosalinda got in close too quickly and Celeste found
herself instead patting Rosalinda on her head and her shoulders, breathing in
to receive the hug.
 

Frank would have a heart attack, she
thought.
 
No, he’d probably hug her
himself, she realized, and she tightened her arms a bit around the smiling little
girl, experimenting with this newfound connection.

Rosalinda went to bed easily, asking Celeste
to keep her door open so that the hall light could peek in.

Celeste walked out in the cool darkness onto
the front porch, seating herself a few steps down towards the ground.
 
She let her eyes acclimate and then
made out the additional flowering lavender plants that Eddie had planted right
along the front porch line.
 
He’d
called it a ‘hope perimeter’, and she had let his words float between
them.
 

After a peaceful hour or so, she moved back
indoors, sat down on the living room sofa, covered herself with a wool throw
and pulled out a news magazine, turning the pages to read about the world
outside this Eden.
 
She checked her
cell phone, no texts and it was 9:54 pm.
 
He hadn’t said what he was doing, just that he’d miss dinner.
 

She and Eddie had never fought about money
except for the one quarrel back in Detroit but the sting to each of them, the
covert embarrassment each felt kept them separate and silent on money issues.
 
They split the house rent while he
covered all living expenses and Rosalinda’s expenses and all the dive shop
costs, until the dive shop started making money.
 

He had put out a small silver bowl that he’d found
in a back cupboard of the cottage and asked her to put any receipts for cash
and debit card expenses she had and he reimbursed her the same night.
 
His face would light up, he’d pull out
his wallet and peel off enough $20 bills to cover whatever receipt she showed
him.
  
For the first time in
her adult life, Celeste felt the sweet comfort of being provided for.

She did not put Rosalinda’s clothing receipt
in the bowl when they got home.
 
She instead put it at the bottom of Rosalinda’s dresser drawer, in case
they’d need it for an exchange or a return.
 
It felt good to do something nice for Rosalinda, who was so
sincerely grateful for the small sum of $50 for two outfits.
 
She had written a check for the first month’s
tuition payment and decided she wouldn’t put that into the bowl until they got
a letter asking for the next payment.

Her eyes were tired, and she felt her head
loll to the side, waking her up.

Now it was 11:59, midnight, and no Eddie.
 
Celeste stirred enough to get herself
to bed alone.

Back in Detroit, it had been easier to not
hear from Eddie for a day or two.
 
It was just her.
 
She had
her apartment to be in, she had work to go to.
 
If he needed time to wander until his head and heart lightened,
she let him take the time.

Here on Maui, she had a little girl about to
go to her first day of a new school.
 
The moonlight lay across his pillow.
 
She rolled close to his side of the bed and fell asleep,
wondering if he’d be home before her phone alarm went off at 7 am.
 

At 2:27, she woke up, sitting quickly, half
asleep, checking under the covers for him but he was not there.

At 5:08, she awakened again, feeling echoes of
that college all-nighter with too much caffeine hangover she’d had so many
times while juggling school and jobs.
 
This time, it was layered with a sense of dread.
 
She was sure Eddie was okay.
 
She was worried about what lay ahead in
the next three hours, waking a sleepy child, overseeing her brushing her teeth,
dressing, making breakfast.
 
And
now, the unthinkable, driving her alone to the drive-thru drop-off that she’d
never been part of in her own childhood.

At 7:20, after hitting her snooze button
twice, she bolted out of bed, pulled on a bra, a sweater and a pair of slacks,
ran a brush through her hair and moved quickly into the kitchen.
 

The fire in the fireplace was fairly easy to
light.

Rosalinda had brought in twigs from the
redwoods on the property and they’d set up the fireplace the night before.
 
A store bought, hour-long log that
Malia had dropped off, made from coffee grinds, sat on the grimy metal log
grate, some newspapers were crumpled up underneath with a few of the redwood
twigs broken apart into the newspaper for the scent.

Celeste heard Rosalinda quickly roust herself
out of bed, the little girl joined her in making strawberry scones from
scratch, with only the firelight and the rising sunlight to guide them.

The smell of the sweet pastry dough from the
night before’s last minute mixing, the tartness of the diced strawberries with
a dash of lemon juice, the scent of the crackling redwood twigs pushed
Celeste’s worries about Eddie out of her mind.

She went through the motions of her new life,
warming herself by the fireplace, and was aware of the strange split in her
heart.
 
Part of her had never been
happier.
 
Another part of her
realized that the man was missing.
 
She thought about the wisdom of some of what Frank had said.
 
In Detroit, she had batted his words
away, they were too threatening.
 

Eddie might not be perfect, she might not be
complete and mature, but sometimes the only available transportation is a leap
of faith, and she had taken it.
 
And instead of going to sleep with her head dizzy from liquor and her
heart lonely from empty sex and the subsequent abandonment, she had slept in a
lush bed, in a house with a fireplace set up for a morning fire, the fixings of
a lovely warm breakfast prepped on the countertop.
 

And a little girl had slept nearby, whose life
she clearly impacted in a good way.

Who knew where Eddie was?
 
But she knew him better now, knew how
deeply he wanted to redeem his life with Rosalinda, how much he wanted success
in the dive shop so he could feel whole himself, that he wanted to survive his
mental war wounds and be productive and take care of her and Rosalinda.
 
He was a partner in a way that he
hadn’t been in Detroit, before she knew that he had a daughter, before she saw
how much he wanted to live a good life.
 

If he was alcoholic, or an addict, it wasn’t
by choice, she thought.
 
He fought
bitterly within himself to do the right thing for Rosalinda and for her.
 
And when he couldn’t do something like
take Rosalinda to sign her up for school, it wasn’t simply that he was a bad
father.
 
He had asked explicitly
for her help in doing what he could not bring himself to do, because of his own
unspoken wounds.
 
So, now, with him
absent, she knew it was sadder that he would be missing the ordinary moments of
grace, the crackling fire, the happy before school bustling of his child and
the contentment and wonder of his girlfriend.
 

When he came back, she would ask him to tell
her the truth, because in this place, she felt sure that Frank would agree, in
this house, on this land, surrounded by these pungent trees and these scented
rose bushes, she was more herself than she had ever known possible.
 

Her own wounds, the loneliness, the longing
for her mother, were coming up more gently and she was able to nod and say yes
to her thoughts, yes I hated that knock at 5:15 p.m. because it meant that my
mother wouldn’t be home but I also kind of liked the old lady, she had enough
spunk to have a little girl like me over every day.
 
Yes, I was broken-hearted when my mom died and I felt so
tortuously alone on the planet, but having the old lady to check in on as an
adult made me feel not so untethered, not so orphaned.
 

And last night, here in the upcountry, she had
walked out onto the porch to hear the whispering of the trees, and it’d sounded
very much like the whispers of her mother’s voice into her own little girl ears
back in their small shared bed in their tiny apartment.