Nestor was always playing games. “Look again, old woman.” She thought she saw him by the monkey pod tree. The noise in the sky grew louder. Her legs inched forward down the ramp as she grasped the railing for support. With each step she seemed to gain her strength back, stand straighter, remember more. At the end of the ramp Mama no longer needed the railing, arms held out for balance like a toddler learning to walk as she slowly tottered across the grass toward the monkey pod tree on her own two feet.

“Where are you?” she called out.

One more step as the ground shook, the house rattled in protest, and the neighborhood dogs began to bark with the noise overhead. Mama looked up just as the roar of five large blackbirds thundered across the clear sky. “Not mosquitoes,” she said as she watched the big birds fly toward Mauna Loa, two more trailing behind. She shook her head. Pele wouldn’t be happy with whatever was going on. After they passed, her gaze returned to the tree where Nestor stood grinning at her.

Mama smiled. “There you are,” she said, her heart beating at the sight of him. She moved faster, lighter, excited to see him, one step and then another before her legs suddenly buckled under her and she fell heavily to the ground.

43. Faith

43

Faith

The day after Mama’s collapse, Nori sat by her bed and waited for her to regain consciousness. Leia found Mama only moments after she’d fallen in the front yard, still breathing but unconscious. Suddenly nothing else mattered. Nori no longer cared that the bombs dropped onto the vents still hadn’t stopped the flow. She didn’t care about the half-filled box with their useless possessions sitting in the closet, or if the fish market was swallowed up by the lava, becoming nothing more than ashes and memory. All her fears had shifted to the woman lying in the bed in front of her. All that mattered was for Mama to wake up.

Nori watched her sleep, remembering the time she was eight or nine and had forgotten to take the laundry in before it began to rain. Her angry mother had shoved her against the kitchen wall, her head striking it hard and knocking down the picture she’d made from seashells at school. It crashed to the floor, the tiny shells clattering in all directions, as if they were running away. It only made her mother angrier, grabbing her roughly by the arm and pushing her down to pick them up. Later, Mama had soothed her, gently rubbing the bump on the back of Nori’s head, telling her to lie down and rest.

“Sleep,” she said, “will make you strong again, yeah.”