You think I’ve forgotten. But I remember. I remember everything.
March 2011
32 Liwai Way
“No.” Halia stares at the glowing computer screen. “She didn’t.” Bursting out of the room and pounding towards her adopted sister’s, she screams, “Mia!?”
When she flings open the door, Mia is sitting on her bed with her tablet in her lap and a smirk on her face.
“Yes, Lia?” she questions, pretending to be sweet. “What’s wrong? And can you please knock before -”
“Don’t. Just don’t.” Halia shoves her laptop in Mia’s face. “You hacked my account and made it look like I said all these things!” Halia is in tears, but Mia squints nonchalantly at the screen.
“Could’ve been anyone.”
“But it wasn’t anyone. It was you! You’re the only one who could have guessed my security question.”
“You could have told it to someone. You are very irresponsible, Lia.”
“You know you did it.”
As she stalks out of the room, Halia feels Mia’s inevitable triumph bore into her back.
July 2014
Molokai General Hospital
“What are you talking about, Lia? I can’t imagine doing anything like that!”
“You can, and you have. You’ve done a million things.”
“Can’t you tell I’m unwell, Lia? All you’ve done since I’ve been in the hospital is go on and on about all these things I’ve supposedly done.”
“Stop denying it. If this is you asking for forgiveness or trying to move on or whatever, you’re doing a pretty pathetic job. And my name isn’t Lia. It’s Halia.”
“Well, Halia, I have been in an accident. They say I could have mild amnesia. I don’t remember any of these things you keep telling me. How can I know if you aren’t playing a trick on me? Or maybe you should get your head checked out, too.”
Halia clenches and unclenches her fingers. “You haven’t forgotten all the things you did to me. You know you haven’t. They’re in there, fermenting like an old apple core. Why don’t you just admit it and we could move on!”
“Or here’s an idea: you just forget it.”
Halia turns away. “I can’t. I never can.”
January 2010
Kalaupapa Airport
“Halia, this is Mia.”
“Hey, Mia.” Hali grins at the the short, fit rbunette who stands before her in jean shorts and a floral-print top.
“Hello, Lia,” her new sister says icily.
Halia shifts her weight to her other sandal. “Actually, it’s Halia … or Hali.” She smiles again.
Mia’s glower of distaste deepens. “Oh.”
“Um,” Hali’s mom clears her throat. “We were thinking of going out for lunch. To Kinimaka’s?”
“Is that vegetarian?” Mia shoots at her.
“Yes. They told us you were vegetarian.”
“Oh.” In her moment of slight defeat, Mia Makaiwi looks almost … vulnerable. “Yes … they.” Then she puts her muscular shoulders back and a fresh defiance settles in her features. “I don’t really want to.”
“Oh, okay,” Halia’s mom says, clearly uncomfortable.
“We could do some sightseeing!” her dad suggests. “Show you around the island?”
“What sights?” Mia snorts. “I’ve lived on the Big Island all my life. Molokai is just the same.”
“Not quite!” chirps Hali. “It is the ‘most Hawaiian island’!”
Mia’s black eyes roll toward the matching sky. “And the most boring.”
“Come on, Mia,” Hali urges, “Don’t you think it would be fu -”
The look Mia gives her could have, and likely would have, cooled every volcano that formed Molokai in record time had she been around 1.5 million years ago.
“No thanks, Lia,” she hisses, then, suddenly sweet, she smiles up at her new parents. Halia watches the strange transformation of their faces, as if … Mia has some kind of power over them. “If you don’t mind, I’m really tired and I kind of just want to unwind. Can we go home so I can get settled and stuff?”
And just like that, trees are passing by the windows of the
station wagon, again and again and again.
October 2013
32 Liwai Way
The ice cream cake tastes like chalk in Hali’s mouth as Mia watches her. Halia remembers every moment of the past three years as if it was yesterday: memories wash over her like a vivid waterfall, numbing in its intensity. She can’t ever control it, or choose to forget. Always, always the memories are there. Hyperthymesia, her research tells her she has. It started the day they adopted her sister.
“Jeremy chose me,” Mia shrugs today.
“After you told him a bunch of lies about me. I can’t believe you would do that and ruin my birthday.”
“Oh, I think you can believe it,” Mia says in a low voice.
The sixteen candles on the cake flicker as everyone, including Mia, sings Happy Birthday to her. Halia watches her sister’s face go up in flame.
July 2014
Mo’omomi Beach
The tide washes the shore as Halia sips her tea and scarfs down a chicken wrap from the snack bar. The looseleaf in her binder ripples lightly in the breeze, but it’s enough to make the delicate holes tear.
Her parents have barely left Mia’s side since the accident, but Hali isn’t about to camp out in the oppressing hospital. She has studying and biking to do.
“Haliaaaaaaa!” She looks up to see her friend Alamea coming towards her, wobbling precariously on her bike as she waves wildly.
Halia stands up quickly, sending her homework sprawling across the sand, and a few pages of looseleaf floating hurriedly towards the sea. “Hey, Alamea,” she shouts while running after them.
Alamea shakes her head. “Still studying? It’s summer, Hali! Get a life!”
“Wow, thanks.” Halia steps up from the ocean towards her friend, clutching the papers in her hands. “I’m just taking a few summer courses. And it’s not like I have a busy social life anymore … thanks to Mia.”
“Like it’s possible to have a busy social life in this place,” Alamea says under her breath. “And oh yeah … sorry to hear about her accident.”
Halia waves her apology away. “Don’t be. She’ll be fine. She’s just pretending to have amnesia right now … but once her leg heals, she’ll be back to tormenting me again.”
Alamea laughs. “That would have to be quite the bump on the head, to forget all the stuff she’s done to you.”
“I know, right,” Halia agrees, joining her friend’s laughter after a moment. “She still calls me Lia, so that hasn’t changed.”
“I always wondered what was up with that. Like, why would she want to make your names rhyme? She’s so weird.”
“I guess no one will ever really understand Mia.”
“Nor would they want to! A mind like hers must be a disturbing place.”
They laugh again. Laughter is easy now, and they’re both grateful for that. So happy that they were able to put themselves back together.
May 2014
Mo’omomi Beach
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Every tiny crystal that forms and then falls from the ends of Alamea’s blonde hair smashes onto Halia’s heart and makes her wince.
“I thought we were friends,” Alamea says, her thin arms encircling her beach bag, “but I guess I was wrong.”
“We are,” Halia answers desperately. “Best friends. I’m sorry about what happened. It wasn’t me. Well, it was kind of me, but you know Mia, she always -”
“You always blame her. Yeah, she’s a horrible person, and yeah, she’s framed you a couple of times, but this time, it was your fault. You messed up bad, Halia. And everyone knows it.”
“I’m sorry, Alamea, I’m so sorry. I want to explain -”
“Forget it. Just … forget it. You’re different now.” Alamea turns and runs from her.
Halia looks downward at the ground, at the tiny insects digging blindly in the sand, each tiny grain of sand a boulder, even to us.
July 2014
Molokai General Hospital
“And I will lie here
and I will let you say sorry.”
The song plays on 84.2 Molokai Alternative, and Mia and Hali are quiet, listening. The serene feeling in the room is so strange, it feels like they’re surrounded by almond butter; never have they sat together like this, without the tension.
Hali doesn’t want to feel herself soften. Mia still doggedly insists she has amnesia, and of course, refuses to apologize. And for Hali, it takes nothing to remember.
Mia’s lips separate slightly and she breathes harder, and Hali wonders if she’s getting enough air. She’s checking the oxygen machine when she hears another voice singing softly to the fuzzy one on the radio.
“Looking up at the ceiling
I reach for the hem of your coat.
I believe I’m sorry but
Maybe forgiveness is an unreachable country.”
Halia feels two tears prick her eyes, twin drops of ocean. But a wave of remembrance washes over her, a wave filled with screaming and crying and hatred, and she finds her way back up onto the dry, hot sand.
August 2014
32 Liwai Way
Mashed potatoes are being spooned onto plates like clouds falling from the sky. “So, Mia, glad to be home?” Dad asks, his grin wide.
Mia nods at her plate, avoiding eye contact with Halia. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
Hali smiles warily at a point somewhere between Mia’s dinner and her downcast black eyes.
“Maybe you and Halia could do something fun this evening, like go to a movie?” Mom wants to know. Hali starts to grunt out a disagreement, but then she looks up to see Mia looking right at her, a question in her eyes.
“S - sure, that would be ... great.”
August 2014
Kualapu’u Town Cinema
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! You don’t understand why … I did it,” the ginger on the screen wept. Mia and Hali sit with their eyes passively glued to the screen, shoveling popcorn into their mouths. They’re the only people at this showing of the movie.
“I like this movie,” Halia whispers to Mia. Mia nods up and down. “You know … there was a reason … I did it too,” she says slowly.
Halia startles. “Did what?”
“Was so terrible to you all these years … well, not really a reason. I mean, not an excuse. But … a trigger, I guess.”
“Okay …?”
“Once, I had a sister, just like you. Leeah. Her name was Leeah, and we did everything together, until our dad died. After that, she became so cruel … she pushed everyone away, and she always played these horrible tricks on me, and tried to separate me from my friends. We went and lived with our great-aunt, who had cancer. It had been in remission for years, but one day it came back. It came back and overcame her so quickly … and then, almost like she’d infected Leeah, my sister got brain cancer. Nothing could help her, and she started to be less and less like herself … repeating the same questions, the same mean jokes about me. In the end she didn’t even know me. And … that was the end.”
Halia stares at Mia. “I’m so sorry, Mia. That’s just awful. ”
Mia looks at a popcorn kernel, turning it, holding it in front of her face. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have ...”
“You should have told me. We could have talked about it. We could have been real sisters.”
Mia’s face breaks into a small, hesitant smile. “Well, we’re doing all those things now, aren’t we?”
November 2014
Mo’omomi Beach
“Pick up the phone, pick up the phone, pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.” The ringtone which Alamea finds so annoying but Hali likes, is muffled by her towel.
“Pick up the phone, pick up the phone -”
“I’m picking up, I’m picking up,” Hali tells it, digging through her beach bag.
“Pick it up, pick it up, pick -”
“Hello?”
“Halia!!” Her mother’s frantic voice sounds fuzzy, out here with little signal.
“Mom? What -”
“Hospital … Mi … Where are you …”
“What? What happened? I’m at the beach with Alamea! Did you say Mia -”
“Does Alamea have her car? Ask her for a ride!” The dial tone comes on, an eerie sound in the beautiful day.
“Alamea!” Halia screams for her friend, but she can’t hear her from where she is belly-boarding in the waves. Halia runs into the water wildly, and screams Alamea’s name again. Alamea begins paddling towards her, and Halia realizes that the water is up to her chest, and her cell phone is still clutched in her hand. She brings her phone, like an anchor, up out of the sea, and it’s dead. It makes her panicky again, and she scrambles out of the ocean and shakes herself, looking up at the horizon.
“What is it?!” Alamea cries, crawling onto the beach behind her.
Halia holds her middle and pants. “Mia. We have to go to the hospital.” She runs towards Alamea’s jeep and they jump in.
“Do you have any idea what happened?” Alamea wants to know as they speed towards Kaunakakai.
Halia shakes her head, feeling the wetness of her clothes soaking into the jeep’s seats.
“What is it with her?” Alamea mutters. “She just got hit by that bus in June.”
“A tourist bus,” Hali specifies absently. She draws her knees up and rests her chin on them.
She sees the bus in front of her eyes, like a theatre backdrop was suddenly dropped on the stage of her mind. The shiny, metallic blue of it, the painted “snapshots” of various locations in Hawaii painted on the sides. She shakes her head, but that just sends random memories raining into her head as if from a sprinkle shaker. Sprinkles raining onto Mia’s birthday cake …
And she sees the sky. Always, always the sky, yesterday, today, and forever, until she doesn’t know which is which anymore.
November 2014
Molokai General Hospital
“What happened?!” Halia stands breathless and haggard in the door of the hospital room. Her mother raises a finger to her lips; shhh. Halia walks over to where Mia lies on the hospital bed, tucked under the sterile covers, tiny and still and broken. Again, broken.
“Lia,” Mia says softly, her eyes opening a crack. And then they close again.
“Yes. Yes, it’s me, Lia. I’m right here, Mia. I’m here.” Then, turning to her mom, she asks quietly, “What happened?”
“She got hit by a bus,” Mom says, clutching Mia’s hand with one of her own and wiping away tears with the other.
“The bus,” her dad adds, swiping at his own face.
“You’re kidding.” Halia’s mouth drops open. “The same one?”
“The one and only,” Dad says grimly. “Different driver though.”
“Halia,” Mom says, “You’re sister’s not going to …”
“No!” Hali shouts, and with the sudden jolt comes a hailstorm of recollections. Her sister’s smile, her sister’s laugh, her sister’s love of coffee. “She’s going to make it. She’s going to be fine - she always is! You hear me?” She shakes her sister’s limp shoulders but Mia doesn’t respond. “You’re fine! You’re going to get better and come home again! You are! You’re coming home again.” Her head sinks onto Mia’s chest, tears flooding the pale yellow hospital gown, reminiscent of that place where the ocean meets the the sunset, and both join together to greet that place where everything goes to cease existing.
December 2014
Father Damien Kualapu’u Church
Halia’s arms hang by her sides as she steps up to the podium. Her memory washes over her until she’s numb and her soul scraped raw. Behind her, a slideshow of Mia’s life plays. She smooths her already flawless black skirt.
“Mia and I didn’t always agree, and we weren’t always friends,” she says. “But … I believe I loved her. A lot of people loved her. And only a few months before … her second accident, she and I were actually becoming close. We were finally like sisters.” Memories and tears blind Hali, but she screws her eyes closed and fights through them. “Mia Makaiwi didn’t deserve what life handed her. She deserved a wonderful life, but instead she lost everything she loved. Now I’ll never know … what we could have been,” she says quietly into the microphone. “I wish I could tell Mia I’m sorry. With all the things I remember every day, I don’t ever remember telling her I loved her, and that’s the biggest mistake I ever made. But I know that Mia forgives me, just as I forgave her.
“In Hawaiian, Halia means, ‘the memory of one who was loved,’” she tells the small gathering of people. “And I promise you, as long as I’m still breathing, Mia will be remembered, every moment. Because we’re sisters now. And I love her.”
Halia teeters on her high heels back to her folding chair and folds her arms into her lap.
I will always love you, Mia.
Hey there,
Right.
Pretty original. Such a story of half-sisters has been done many times but they are mostly poorly executed. You told it in a very different light.
The structure does justice to the story.
It's lucid, and it flows quite well.
it's sensual.
There are typos ( for example-fit rbunette) but they can be easily corrected.
I like the part about being able to forget certain memories. it created a sense of depth in the story.
Anyway, a nice told story which seemed quite genuine.
Keep writing!
WOW. This was an absolutely beautiful story
I loved the way you told it, and really don't think there would've been a better way to.
While there are a few nitpicks I could make here and there about grammar and sentence structure, I really don't think it's necessary.
You told a great story and told it in a great way.
Keep on writing
Thank you so much! It's only like my second/third draft and there are lots of things I want to fix
Thank you so much again!