1. Dress

2. Make bed

3. Make my father’s bed

4. Make breakfast for my family

5. Brush teeth

6. Fix Olivia’s hair

7. Sit in cabana and wait for customers

First Morning Home

1. Dress—My clothes aren’t in the drawer. Olivia has shoved them under the bed next to deserted gecko eggs.

2. Make bed—Olivia won’t get out of bed so that I can make it.

3. Make Tata’s bed—His bed is already made. He’s never made a bed in his life, not even at Auntie Minerva’s.

4. Make breakfast for my family—Tata says, “I’m not hungry,” as he leaves for his boat. Olivia refuses to eat my “mushy” pancakes.

“I like mushy pancakes,” Frank says, and gobbles down his tall stack.

5. Brush teeth—My toothbrush tastes like toilet water, stinky pee flavor. Olivia giggles outside the bathroom door.

6. Fix Olivia’s hair—I don’t even try to comb out her tangles.

7. Sit in the cabana and wait for customers—I can always count on some things to go as planned.

No-Legend Death

“Your mother would have been proud,” says Auntie Bernadette, “if she knew you could make the golai hagun sune. Why don’t you make it for her first anniversary rosary?”

Six months ago no one worried about what would make my mother proud.

“Erlinda will be lucky to have a church burial,” Auntie Minerva had told my father then. Not long ago, people who committed suicide didn’t get a rosary or a funeral blessed by the church.

But Auntie Minerva was wrong. No one questioned giving my mother a proper burial. No one questioned or said anything about the way she died. At least not around us. Every night of the nine-day rosary my family wore the same thing—our best clothes and shoes and a coat of shame.

On Guam there’s a legend about two lovers. It’s an old story, hundreds of years old. Everyone on our island has heard the legend. Two young people in love hoped to marry. But the girl’s father, a head chief, forbade the union because he had promised her to a Spanish captain.

Not willing to live without each other, the two young lovers climbed to one of the highest cliffs on the island, tied their long hair together, and leaped to their death.

A giant monument stands there now—two bodies intertwined. They call the place Two Lovers Point. People visit the statue and pay homage to true love.

No one built a monument for my mother’s death. Only looks of pity are left, like the shells that remain on the beach after the tide leaves.

I don’t want to make the golai hagun sune.

Cocos Island

After school I used to sit in the cabana with my mother and she’d braid my hair while we waited for customers. She’d laugh when I told her something silly—like when Sister Agnes tried to juggle guavas, then fell after slipping on a dropped fruit. Those days my mother smelled like chicken kelaguen or fried fish or whatever she cooked for dinner.