Her Own Happiness, page 3
She wanted to make sure nothing stood in Ant’s way, hence the call to Auntie Kay. Now his new landlord was taking him to lunch, and he was going to share boring stats about horticulture careers, public gardens, and other stuff that sounded saner than “I came out here because I thought I’d miss my best friend too much.”
He wasn’t in love with her—let’s be clear on that. But one nice thing about realizing he was asexual and then finding the ace community: he found people who valued friendship the way he did. People understood moving for your S.O. or someone you planned to marry, but it made just as much sense to move for your best friend if they were a big part of your life—and Maya was.
“How does Middle East Cuisine sound?” Auntie Kay led them to a restaurant with outdoor seating and enticing smells. “It is both the food and the name of the place.”
Ant smiled. “Sounds great! I could eat a horse.” Maybe if he stuffed his mouth with falafel, he could keep his true motives from spilling out. Ant knew he was a terrible liar, but it was either keep up the ruse or sound completely insane. And as ruses went, there were worse ones.
Maya
It took Maya four days to stop waking and expecting to be in Honolulu, her eyes casting about her room, looking for the shadows of palm trees or the particular bright gleam of the island sun. Few things were worse than thinking you were in Hawai‘i and finding yourself somewhere else.
Even after waking, Maya couldn’t shake the new heaviness from her limbs, couldn’t ease the stiffness in her movements. She couldn’t seem to get out of bed at all. It was exhausting to try. She slept but didn’t rest. She barely ate. She didn’t respond to her mother’s quiet concern or her father’s much louder encouragement. There was a sucking weariness at the center of her soul Maya simply couldn’t dislodge. She named it “the octopus” because it felt like she was wrapped in tentacles pulling her down, down, down. She remained in bed, feeling every part of her great loss: her home, her career, the life she’d rebuilt for herself over seven years—all gone in a matter of weeks. Sleeping or waking, she was constantly buffeted by memories.
Maya didn’t have to close her eyes to remember the email from her landlord. The memory of opening her laptop to that screen was seared in her brain with all her other waking nightmares. In three terse sentences he’d written that he was selling the house Maya shared with two other social work majors in a month’s time (meaning they had thirty days to move—turned out that wasn’t technically illegal, despite Hawai‘i’s eviction moratorium). She’d spent one week arguing with her friends about trying to fight for the house. Then three more days fighting to keep her friends from trashing the place and losing their deposit. They were all UH seniors, but Maya was the only one planning to stay in Hawai‘i after graduation. For her roommates the experience was awful but not earth-shattering. For Maya it was a major crisis, until something worse made the stealth eviction seem minor in comparison.
Two days before she moved onto Ant’s mom’s couch, Maya saw footage of the Ohana Center engulfed in flames on the morning news. She watched a charred section of the roof crash down onto the lanai, where they had homework club while the schools were still virtual. The mural that she’d designed as part of her AmeriCorps project was scarred by fire. Auntie Lenora—her boss, her mentor, her second mother—ended up having to move, too. The fire had spread from the center to her neighboring tiny house, taking out most of the roof. It was too much.
Soon Maya was on the phone, trying to brainstorm ways of starting again, but Auntie Lenora stopped her. “I’m sorry, Maya. It’s over. I’m too old to start again.”
Though her voice was rough with tears, Maya knew that Auntie Lenora’s answer was final. She was the kind of sweet-faced Native Hawaiian “auntie” who was a force of nature. When it came to the center, her word was the law. And just like that, Maya had lost her home, her reason for being in Hawai‘i, and her career. She’d been working at the center since she decided to stay in Honolulu.
She was the program manager then, but their plan had always been for Maya to take over the center one day. It was why she’d majored in social work—hell, it was why she’d even gone back to school in the first place. Her sister had wisely pointed out that their parents still had her college fund sitting around and would help with room and board if she were in school.
Now the center was rubble. Ms. Lenora was moving in with her brother on the Big Island and there had been nothing for Maya to do but go back to Maryland and, apparently, take to her bed until the world ended.
Her parents exhibited immense restraint and hovered just enough to make sure she ate and occasionally showered. She scrolled through her phone, not really seeing anything but welcoming the escape from her head. Somehow, she found herself actually watching the Girlboss’s TED Talk, which started with white letters on a black background.
“DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE LIGHT?” —REV. GINA ELTON-DIMARCO
The view changed to a stage. A tall, light-skinned woman stood at the center of it (red hair, halo braid), looking like Athena in a heather-gray jumpsuit.
“That’s the first line to the poem ‘Lightbearers,’ which I found exactly when I needed it, when my dreams and plans were rudely interrupted by life. I’d just graduated with my MBA, ready to take on the world, when my father got a very scary diagnosis that kept me at home to look after him. My world was shrinking, and I was struggling to see a point to anything. Then I stumbled on this poem, and it reminded me that I am light, so the point is to shine. To illuminate. And so I use the resources I have as an angel investor to illuminate the work of BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ entrepreneurs.”
Maya paused the presentation and opened a browser to search for the poem.
Lightbearers Rev. Gina, she typed quickly on her phone. Finding this poem felt vital. Rev. Gina’s words felt like the first glimpse of light after weeks of crawling through a dark tunnel. She needed to find the source like she needed to breathe.
“A YouTube channel?” Maya had been expecting a book she could buy or something less social media–y. But she clicked the “Lightbearers” link anyway. It appeared to lead to a two-minute video of the sun rising over a still lake.
“Did you know that you are light?” The feminine voice was warm and younger than she’d expected, with a slight rasp. The camera moved over the water. “Did you know that you shine by simply being? That you feed those around you? They photosynthesize your presence.”
Maya sat up in bed, watching that camera move through the tree line, caressing the leaves and branches. Something caught in her throat. “Did you know that your existence is enough?” The camera settled on a tiny flapping yellow bird singing its song from the high bough of a tree.
Suddenly tears fell from Maya’s eyes, but for the first time in weeks, they weren’t full of pain. She felt like God had just given her an engraved invitation back to the world—and just in time, too. Up until this moment she hadn’t wanted to leave her room—or even her bed—but she was starting to be afraid of what would happen if she stayed there.
Maya smiled at her phone screen and clicked the link to Rev. Gina’s YouTube channel. She found a playlist of more poetic affirmations and forced herself out of bed. It was time for a bath, and maybe a little yoga afterward.
After a couple of days that started with a Rev. Gina affirmation, morning yoga, and a shower, Maya felt ready to brave the world beyond her former bedroom—starting with the kitchen. For the past month of her incapacitation, her dad had brought her coffee and two boiled eggs in the morning, and her mother had brought her dinner. It hadn’t taken her long to notice a pattern: three days of the same soup, punctuated by a hearty salad—chili-chili-chili, chicken Caesar, then gumbo-gumbo-gumbo, salmon salad. A small part of Maya wondered if her parents were trying to drive her from her room through sheer culinary boredom. If that was their plan, it was brilliant. Maya hated repeating food. As a kid, she’d been the only one who complained about leftovers. It got so bad that when Maya was fourteen, her mom said, “Well, you cook then!”
And she did. That’s how Maya was. With the help of a few episodes of America’s Test Kitchen (thanks, PBS!), Maya whipped up a barbecue-flavored twist on a South African meatloaf that got raves from her sister and dad and grudging respect from her mother. After that, cooking became one of Maya’s chores and probably the only one she loved. When she left home, Maya still didn’t have much patience for repeating food, but she had a lot more culinary skill than the average high school senior—a skill she called upon as she stared into her parents’ fridge once again.
To her dismay, the fridge was about 80 percent occupied with meal kits, stacked three per shelf. Maya had a frugal person’s aversion to meal kits, or anything that seemed overly convenient and expensive. These were values she’d thought she got from her parents, but the panni had changed a lot of things. Mentally, she pushed the meal kits to the side and searched for more ingredients. There was oat milk, soy milk, mushrooms (fine), eggs (yay!), and some cheese: half a tube of goat cheese and a small rectangle of goat mozzarella—something she hadn’t known existed until that moment. Further investigation revealed a bag of fresh spinach, half a Vidalia onion, and a massive jar of chopped garlic.
“The gateway drug to meal kits,” Maya muttered, shaking her head. She spread the viable ingredients on the counter and stared at them, willing them to make sense as a meal to her. “Speak to me!” she said, stepping back from the counter. Nothing—of course, because food doesn’t talk. She tilted her head to the side and thought.
Wait, was there butter? Maya opened the fridge again and practically dove into the side door.
“Butter!” she cried victoriously. The presence of butter was always grounding. She set it on the counter, and then an idea came in a flash. “Savory crepes!”
Now the cooking came easily. Making the batter, then chilling it in the fridge. Dicing onions, sautéing the onion and garlic. Getting a sear on the mushrooms and wilting the spinach. It was a little past noon when Maya heard the door of her mom’s sunroom office open and her parents’ footsteps come down the steps.
“What smells so good?” they exclaimed in unison as they came into the kitchen. Her parents were so cute and married sometimes. They were both working from home today. Maya beamed as she took down three plates from the cabinet.
“I’ve made spinach and mushroom filling for some . . .” She glanced at the oven clock. “Lunchtime crepes.”
Her mother came over and gave her a warm side hug. “Well, now I’m happy that parent conference ran long. Fix me up a plate, baby.”
Maya’s mom and dad had worked from home during the whole of the pandemic. Her mom was a guidance counselor for a high school in the county, while her dad was the principal of a DC charter school for boys. Neither of them was playing with Miss Rona. Maya’s mom had had asthma since she was a kid, and her dad had been diagnosed with “mild diabetes” the previous year. Plus, they were both chubby Black people. They were the kind of people this disease liked to kill.
Her mom gave Maya another squeeze and went to get down some glasses. Her dad sidled up to her and peered into the pans. “This sounds amazing, Sprout, but there’s no cow milk in any of this, is there?”
Maya worried her bottom lip thoughtfully. “There’s goat cheese, soy milk, and regular butter,” she replied, adding said butter to a waiting pan. “I’ve never made crepes with soy milk, so we’re gonna see what happens.”
He patted her arm. “Butter is fine—that sounds fine. When you cook, the food always turns out good. I’m being careful about dairy. For some reason my lactose intolerance ain’t tolerating nothing but butter. Can’t even do a splash of your mom’s half-and-half in my coffee.” He shook his head. “There’s something about puking when you’re over fifty years old that’s traumatizing.”
Mom made a noise somewhere between a grunt and groan. “Matthew, we’re about to eat!” She shook her head as she put the ice into glasses. “Please do something useful and get the silverware?”
Dad shrugged. “I’m giving Sprout the lay of the land. Things are different around here.”
Maya shot a meaningful glance to the closed fridge. “Like the meal kits,” she said with a smile.
Her mom was folding napkins as she sat at the dinette table in the kitchen. “Which are from a local Black-owned company—and they saved our marriage. I heard about them on the Kojo show, the one with Emme Vivant. She seems to really be about what she talks about. Her whole book’s about helping other people start businesses.”
The girlboss! “Did she mention a book coming out, something about ‘Adventure Capital’?”
Both her parents nodded. Maya had to chuckle. “That lady has been inescapable since we touched down in DC. I swear every billboard in the airport had her face on it.”
Her dad snorted. “The Vivants love plastering their name on things, so that tracks. In my day it was whole neighborhoods.”
“She ain’t her daddy, Matthew. We all know how you feel about Emile Vivant.”
“More like E-Vil Vivant,” he muttered. “A.k.a. Mr. Gentri-FIRE!”
Maya and her mom exchanged a look as her dad went full “true-crime podcaster,” laying out how and why Emile Vivant burned down one of his company’s apartments when the tenants tried to buy the building. He sounded every bit the impassioned young organizer he once was. All that was missing was his flattop fade.
Momma was less than charmed by this trip down memory lane. “Matthew, Maya’s out of her room. Can we please live in the present?”
Daddy exhaled and nodded sheepishly, and Mom brought the conversation back to the twenty-first century.
“Anyway, in the before-times, we’d only eat together a few days a week. But ’cause of the Rona, we found ourselves having to ask each other ‘What do you want for dinner?’ every night.”
Her dad seemed to shudder at the memory. “It was a nightmare,” he added, putting the forks and knives in their place. Maya started to laugh but then looked at his expression. He wasn’t kidding.
“But they are expensive!” her mom continued. “I have to stretch one box for three days to justify the cost.”
Maya smiled as she added the goat mozzarella to the crepes. Her parents were the same people after all.
She dished up two crepes per plate and assessed. They weren’t as crispy as she normally got them—that was probably the soy milk—but they remained crepes. She tore a small piece off the nearest corner.
And damn good ones! she thought.
“Here comes lunch!” Maya said, using her former waitress skills to balance one plate on her forearm. She set a plate in front of each of her eager parents and set the last one down for herself. “Let’s eat!”
And they ate. Her mom and dad exclaimed over the crepes (profusely, but sincerely) and talked of little but the meal. Once all plates were clean, her mom leaned back and patted her belly—her noticeably smaller belly.
“Momma, have you lost weight?” Maya asked reflexively. She immediately regretted the question because there were all sorts of terrible reasons to lose weight during a pandemic. Maya had probably lost a chunk of her own quarantine weight by being overwhelmed with depression since she’d been back in Maryland, battling “the octopus.” Also, fuck diet culture. Also, a little rude. “Sorry, that’s not a thing to ask.”
Her mom patted her hand. “It’s all right, baby. I did lose a bit of weight. It’s been a hell of a lot of work, so I’m glad you noticed. I can do a split now, too!” She shimmied her shoulders and smiled her familiar, warm smile. Maya noticed that her mom’s face was a bit slimmer, too. It made her look closer to her age, in a way Maya found distressing. In her mind her mother was forever twenty-eight. She knew she should get over that since she herself was in her thirties now.
“These days your momma usually drinks her lunch,” Maya’s dad added. “And I’m not talking ‘three-martini’—I’m talking smoothies. Goopy and green. Every day. We got a blender just for smoothies.” He gestured to the small rocket ship on the rear kitchen counter. “This is the first real lunch you’ve had since September.”
Momma rolled her eyes. “He’s grumpy because I work out during lunch now instead of talking to him. Like we have enough to say for two sit-down meals a day.” She gave a small chuckle. “Since I’m fully vaccinated, I’m not as scared at the prospect of going back to in-person school in the fall. It’ll give me a chance to miss him.”
Maya blinked. Momma’s fully vaccinated now. What else did I miss while I was wallowing in bed?
She focused on her mom again, who was looking at her plate a little sadly. “I would have been big mad if I missed these. I forgot what a gift you have!”
Maya gave a sheepish half smile. She knew that wasn’t a dig, more of a wince at how long it had been since she’d been back home. “I’m glad y’all think I still have the touch.”
They were all quiet for a moment. Maya could tell they were treading lightly. They’d been so sweetly gentle with her, she could only be grateful. She swallowed and broke the silence. “Thank you, for everything since I’ve been home. And before. This was all such short notice. And I spent most of April in a sadness cocoon . . . thank you.”
“Of course, baby,” her mom said, springing up to wrap her in a hug.
“We’re always here, and everything we have, you have,” her dad said, squeezing her from the other side. They held the hug until tears came to Maya’s eyes. Happy ones this time. She quickly wiped them away as they took their seats again.
There was a silence, not so much awkward as anticipatory. Her mom had her hand on her dad’s forearm, probably keeping him from jumping in with any painful questions. They looked at her and waited. They wanted her to lead.
She sighed. She didn’t know where to begin.
“I don’t know what to do now.” She sighed. “I was preparing for a very specific life that is gone. The Ohana Center was everything to me. I was a leader there. I watched so many kids grow up . . .” She trailed off, swallowing. The grief was still too much.
