North Star

23 | angry women

"Sorry, can't do that, Hokulani."

I sat up startled as my mother cracked the door open, peeked her head inside, and then entered, quietly closing the door behind her. Despite her daily exhaustion whenever she came home from work, she was always there to pick up the pieces when tensions ran high. I supposed that was the nature of being a mother for a lot of them. (Not all.) (I understood I was lucky to have the family that I did.) Although it often felt like an inability to keep things to myself, as she could sense things even before they happened, it could also be seen as a good thing. If I had to choose, I guess I would rather have a mother who was aware of anything over one who wasn't at all.

"Did Dad send you?" I asked.

Mom laughed. "Have you met your father?"

"You're right."

She was still wearing her work clothes, which meant she must have just gotten home. On top of the guilt I already felt for being a brat in the first place, knowing she could barely drop her purse on the table before having to walk up here and make me feel better only made me feel worse.

"What's going on, baby?"

I frowned. "I'm not a baby anymore."

She laid down beside me and waited until I joined her, running her hands over my head. "You'll always be my baby. Don't dodge the question."

"I'm not dodging the question. I'm just saying."

A pointed stare was all she gave in return. I should have expected that.

"Talk to me," she urged.

"Is Dad okay? He's been tired a lot. And I think he's losing weight."

"He's... fine."

I stared at her. "You don't sound sure."

"You're avoiding the question again."

Fine. "Do you ever just... get angry at the world for no reason? Like, you have reasons, things that happen to you, but never enough to be that angry?"

Talking with my mom was easy, even when I didn't want to talk to anyone about anything. She had a calming quality to her voice that always brought me back down to Earth whenever I let my head float too far up into the clouds because I couldn't handle the rest of the world. And she never judged me for anything I said. Not that any of the rest of my family did, but she had something special about her. Dad had said once that she talked to us a lot when we were still in her stomach. He would come downstairs from taking a shower after work and find her in the kitchen, stirring some pot on the stove while she told us stories about her day or the ones she made up in her head.

"You wanna know my secret?" My mom asked and leaned close. I nodded. "I'm angry every single day. I know you're not supposed to admit that because negative energy, blah, blah blah. But it's the truth. How could I not be? I'm a kanaka woman whose land is still occupied, working at an office filled with men who undermine my worth daily, and existing in a society that values money over life. I was born into an angry world and I'll likely leave an angry world. Those who judge women—women like us—for being angry are no good. Don't do it to yourself."

"But I hate being angry," I told her. "I want to be happy. I want to wake up in the morning and be excited that I can breathe and walk out into the sun, and instead, I just wonder when it's all going to—" I hesitated.

"When it's going to what?"

I swallowed. "When it's going to just stop."

For someone as in love with music as I was, I longed for an eternal silence of a world that stopped.