List for Vendors

50 cans of Spam
20 pints of Häagen-Dazs ice cream
15 dozen eggs
12 gallons of milk
10 boxes of various candies
1 case of Coca-Cola
1 case of Diet Coke
1 case of 7UP
1 case of Dr Pepper
4 cases of Miller Lite
4 cases of Bud Light
5 gallons of tuba (buy from Roman’s dad)
Betel nuts

A Place at the Table

While I was in Tamuning, it was as if what happened to my mother didn’t happen. It was as if we were away on a trip and she was waiting on the other end of the island. But now the house is filled with her—the room where she died, her zoris by the front door, her ukulele. Everywhere I go, I bump into my mother’s ghost.

At dinner, her chair is empty, the chair she chose so she could see the ocean from the window as she ate. Olivia stares at my mother’s seat, then quickly squeezes her eyes together, like she does when I clean her scraped knees with alcohol.

“Let’s trade places,” I say.

“Like musical chairs?” she asks.

“Sort of. But we won’t take any chairs away.”

Tata is still fishing, but Frank, Olivia, and I lift our plates and swap seats. I sit in Olivia’s chair. Olivia sits in mine. Frank takes Tata’s. No one chooses our mother’s.

Olivia thinks trading places is a game. But Frank and I look at each other and quickly glance away.

I’ll never have one special place at the table. I’ll sit in a different place every day. Then if I go away, no one will miss me just by looking at an empty chair.

My Room

In a special room I have a four-poster bed with an ivory bedspread and lacy pillows at the headboard. A yellow desk is in the corner. There my secret journal is locked in a drawer with a key I wear around my neck. The journal knows my secrets.

There’s also a lock on my door. No one can come in without knocking first. Not even Olivia. That is the special room of my dreams.

I share my real room with Olivia. I don’t keep a journal because I don’t have a yellow desk with a lock on the drawer. I do have a nosy little sister who likes to tell secrets.

We have twin beds, no headboards, just mattresses on top of box springs on top of metal bed frames. Most nights our beds stay against opposite walls. During typhoons, we push our beds together in the middle of the room. Some nights we push them together and I hold Olivia and tell her stories about talking pigs that wear sunglasses and drive sports cars.

Tonight there are no typhoons or any new stories in my head about talking pigs. But we push our beds together anyway.

First Night

Olivia wakes twice from nightmares.
Two trips to the bathroom.
I don’t sleep at all.

First Morning List