Keeper of the Night
Table of Contents
Title Page
A Dutiful Daughter
Tamuning
Rides to St. Cletus
Sh-sh
Evaporate
Monday’s List
Techa
Smart Boy
House of Plastic
Sneaky
Lunchtime at St. Cletus
A Meal of Words
Wanted: One Knock-Knock Joke
Magic Man
Dishes
Delia’s New Haircut
Sister Agnes and Sister Rachel
List Maker
My Mother’s Gifts
A Charitable Act
List of Confessions
Making Time
Things to Do That Might Help Us Return to Malesso
Teacher for the Day
Falling into Water
Phone Call
No Crying Over Spilled Milk
Return to Malesso
Malesso
Home
List for Vendors
A Place at the Table
My Room
First Night
First Morning List
First Morning Home
No-Legend Death
Cocos Island
Roman
Teresita
Lorenzo, King of the Cockfighters
The Fish Artist
The Way It Was Before
Second Night
Sleepy Days, Sleepless Night
Lost Birds
Golai HagunSune
Mary Kelly
Eyebrow talk
New Girl Day
An Admirer
Suruhana
Bingo and Cockfights
Not Now
Breakfast of Champions
When Frank Almost Downed
Where Was She?
The Dream
Robbed
Pictures
Chicken Noodle Soup
God’s Instrument
Playing Hooky
Another Visitor
Musical Chairs
Impostor
No-show
Olivia’s Crab
Don’t You Remember?
Ana, Who Likes Animal Crackers, Peanut Butter, and Comics
Taotaomo’na
Evening Watch
The Marks on Frank’s Wall
A Stranger in the House
Not a Rose
Is He the One?
Ana Cruz Gives Birth
Watch Me
Watching Olivia Dance Outside the Cafeteria
Closed Docs
A Different Hat
It’s a Girl
Parents Night
Full Moon
Legend of Santa Marian Kamalen
Nightly Ritual
Gone
The Christening of Carmella Iglesias Martina Cruz Flores
Auntie Bernadette’s Baby Fiesta
A Proposal
Happily Ever After
Collecting in the Jungle
Latte Stones
Mind Your Own Business
Shopping Day
Elvis Lives at the Hard Rock Cafe
Fiesta Queen
A Bridge of Words
The Blue Fabric
Model Mother
Searching for Frank
Inventory
Roman’s Tickets
The Blue Dress
The Boy Who Likens to Blend
My Essay
My Family’s Trip to Disneyland
Bet
An Unwelcome Visitor
Auntie Bernadette to the Rescue
This Week’s List for Vendors
Fittings
Ticket Sellers
Scars
Bikini Blues
Green-eyed Monster
Second Thoughts
List for Olivia
A Different Island
Bathing Suit Switch
A Thousand Miles Away
No Tom Cruise
The Power of Chocolate
Good-bye
Secrets
Breaking Up
Nice Girls
Swimming
Preparations
Sorry
Surprises
List for Fiesta Preparations
Morning of the Pageant
The Legend of Sirena
Someone Else
Primping
A Familiar Face
Queen
Queen’s Ball
Cha-cha
The Great Escape
Cockfight
Dance with Me
Food and Family
Fiesta
I Hat
Who Knew?
Time
Bleach
Clean State
Unraveling
The Morning After
My Fault
Back to School
Do Not Enter
Walk This Way
Introductions
Tick Tock
No Crayons
Sticks and Stones
Mistaken Identity
Show-and-tell
Confession
Talking
Steps
Consequences
Empty
Puppet Show
A Gentle Reminder
Monday, Q & A with Ed
Thief
No Punishment
Frank’s Hospital Room
First Visit
Missing One Ukulele
Exposed
Focal Point
Sleep
Expectations
Open
Sober
Say His Name
A True Love Story
Good
Growing
Matthew Kolby Johnson
List to Prepare for Diving Team Tryouts
Tryouts
Plunge
Repeat, Please
Boiling Water
A Chance
Fly
Growing Up
Golai Hagun Sune
The Gift
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Also by Kimberly Willis Holt
About the Author
GO FISH
Teaser chapter
Notes
Copyright Page
For the people of Guam, with love and gratitude
A Dutiful Daughter
My mother died praying on her knees. Her rosary beads were still in her hands when we found her. She left no note, said no good-byes, gave no last hugs or kisses. Only the empty bottle of sleeping pills that had rolled under her bed proved that she’d meant to leave.
I found her first. But I didn’t know she was dead. I thought she was praying.
That morning, I eased her door shut, tied on her apron, and made breakfast for my little brother and sister. I felt proud to scramble their eggs and butter their toast.
Later I tied blue ribbons in Olivia’s hair and dipped the comb into a glass of water before parting Frank’s. I had no idea it was the first of many mornings I’d be doing that.
Tamuning
After my mother died, my father couldn’t bear to look at the front door of our home. I overheard Tata tell my mother’s older sister, Auntie Bernadette, that he saw my mother’s ghost standing by the door. That’s why we’re staying with Tata’s sister, Auntie Minerva, in Tamuning.
“Just for a little while, Isabel,” Tata told me the day we moved here, but it’s been five long months. I asked Tata why we couldn’t stay with Auntie Bernadette in Malesso. She lives a few houses away from us. But Tata said, “Bernadette is … was your mother’s sister. Not mine.”
Tamuning is north of Malesso. Stores and restaurants line the streets. All night long, I lie in bed and smell spicy scents from the Thai restaurant across the road. I hear cars pass on the highway. Sometimes a siren whines, reminding me of the morning the ambulance carried my mother away.
We’re stupid staying in Tamuning while our lives take place in Malesso. Everyone we know lives there—Auntie Bernadette and Uncle Fernando, my friends, our dogs. Our store is there, Frank’s school, and my father’s boat. We’re like clubs trying to be hearts in a stack of cards.
Rides to St. Cletus
Each weekday morning, before the sun rises, Tata slips out of Auntie Minerva’s house and heads to Malesso to feed our dogs and spend the day fishing. Later, Auntie Bernadette drives from Malesso to pick us up for school because Auntie Minerva claims she’s too busy with the church. Before taking Frank to the public school, Auntie Bernadette drops us off at St. Cletus in Talofofo.
This is Olivia’s first year at St. Cletus. She’s in second grade, and my father believes when girls get old enough to notice boys, it’s good for them to be surrounded by nuns. I’m in eighth grade. The nuns can’t stop me from looking.
Auntie Bernadette has no kids of her own and is old enough to be my grandmother. Even though she was born with a crippled hand, she’s one of the most respected suruhanas on Guam. Auntie heals aches and pains and helps barren women become pregnant. She drives with her right hand, or, as she calls it, her good one. As if the other hand that stays folded, pressed against her chest, is the bad one.
Auntie Bernadette talks the entire way to Talofofo, and in the afternoon she picks us up and talks the entire way back to Auntie Minerva’s house.
Olivia likes Auntie’s talk because she gets to hear about how Mrs. Cruz’s daughter is going to have a baby, but no husband, how Mrs. Santos spent her entire paycheck at bingo, how Roman’s mom poured a pitcher of water on Roman’s hungover dad and he just rolled over and peed on the couch. Olivia knows more gossip than any seven-year-old at St. Cletus.
One day I tried to remember what my mother said during our daily trips to and from school, but I couldn’t remember a single word. My mother lived in a world of her own—a world filled with sadness that I couldn’t see.
Sh-sh
My school friends, Delia and Tonya, are back to their normal selves, gossiping about Lola, passing notes in class, sneaking bites of dried squid. But, after my mother died, whenever I approached, one of them would quit talking and say, “Sh-sh.”
Even the nuns stopped whispering to each other when I walked by. Sister Agnes nudged Sister Rachel and their bodies straightened. “Hafa adai, Isabel.”
Sh-sh. So many secrets. Don’t they know there’s nothing they can tell me about my mother’s death?
Unless they know why she left.
Evaporate
Whenever I think of my mother, something fills up inside me, like water filling a bucket. It fills me up so much, I’m afraid my feelings will spill over for everyone to see. So I close my eyes and picture the water in the bucket evaporating until nothing is left, not one single drop.
Monday’s List
1. Get up
2. Draw Olivia’s bathwater and wake Olivia
3. Hide Olivia’s nightgown and wet towels
4. Make sofa bed
5. Get ready for school
6. Remind Frank to comb his hair
7. School
8. Clean bathroom and vacuum
9. Homework
10. Eat dinner
11. Finish homework
12. Read until lights-out
Techa
Auntie Minerva is a techa. To be chosen a techa, you must know the rosary in Chamorro. Most people my age understand a few Chamorro words like Hafa adai, but English is our main language. Even though she lives in Tamuning, Auntie Minerva grew up in Malesso, so she leads the rosary for most of our village’s dead. She said the rosary, each of the nine evenings, for my mother.
“I knew the rosary by heart since I was eight,” she tells us for the millionth time.
Of course, Auntie Minerva doesn’t perform the rosary every day, but she finds reasons to go to church. Usually to light a candle and pray for someone. Tonight she lifts her muumuu and shows me the bruises on her knobby knees. “This afternoon I prayed for six hours straight,” she says. “But my suffering is nothing like our Savior’s.”
When Auntie Minerva isn’t fasting, she barely eats. Twice I caught her spitting food into a napkin; she’s afraid to put some meat on those bones. I’ve seen the way she shakes her head, studying Auntie Bernadette’s full hips.
It’s been almost six months since we came to Auntie Minerva’s house. Every couple of weeks I ask Tata when we will go home.
“Soon,” he always says. But he never looks in my eyes when he says it.
After Auntie Minerva’s tasteless dinner tonight, I ask Tata again. And when he answers the same thing, I tell him, “You always say that. Are we going to live here forever? Why can’t we go home?”
Tata glares at me. “We will go when I say so.”
I should know better. Tata always does as he pleases, never minding anyone else’s feelings. When I was younger, I pretended I wanted to fish so I could be near him, but he never asked me along. And when he returned from the sea, he claimed he was tired. He was never too tired to drink beer in the cabana with his friends almost every night. Frank was the one he spent time with, but that changed when Frank became afraid of the water.
Back then I liked going to Mass because he went, too, and we sat on the pew together like a real family. But Tata hasn’t been to Mass since my mother died.
Sometimes I get angry when I watch television programs that show fathers who take their kids to the movies, play basketball with them in driveways, and give great advice. I don’t know any dads like that.
Smart Boy
Frank would rather do my math homework than show me how to work the problems. “I don’t understand,” I tell him when he works out my algebra without any trouble.
“What don’t you understand?” he asks.
“If I knew, I’d tell you.”
He shrugs, then lowers his head and tackles the next problem. After he’s done, he pushes the paper toward me. “See?”
I shake my head.
He sighs, taking back my assignment. His pencil meets the paper and he doesn’t stop until he finishes my homework. I don’t object. I’ll just make sure that I erase some of the right answers and replace them with wrong ones. Sister Agnes would never believe I aced my algebra. But would she believe me if I said my seventh-grade brother did it for me? Frank hasn’t even covered variables. He’s taking pre-algebra this year. It doesn’t seem fair that Frank got all the smart genes in the family.
House of Plastic
Auntie Minerva’s house may be made from concrete brick, but inside it’s plastic—plastic on her furniture, plastic Tupperware in her cabinets, plastic smile on her face.
Today Olivia’s foot accidentally brushes the coffee table.
Auntie Minerva gives her a stiff smile. “Olivia, you must be careful with the blessings God has given us.”
“Did God give Olivia that coffee table?” I ask.
Auntie Minerva shoots me a sharp look and her lips purse. Then her mouth slides into that plastic grin. “Isabel, don’t you have homework?”
“No,” I say.
“Then read Leviticus 19:32. Maybe you will learn something new about how to speak to your elders, especially those who, out of the goodness of their hearts, take you under their roof and put food in your belly.”
Auntie Minerva is a terrible cook. When I tell Auntie Bernadette this, she says, “That’s because Minerva doesn’t like to eat.” Auntie Bernadette has a magnet on her refrigerator that says never trust a skinny cook.
Sneaky
Frank shares the guest bedroom with Tata while Olivia and I share the sofa sleeper in the living room. We sleep with two folded towels beneath us because the night my mother died, Olivia wet the bed. She hasn’t had a dry night since. In the mornings I rise before anyone in the house. I hide the wet towels and Olivia’s nightgown in a sack inside my book bag, fill the bathtub for Olivia, and fold the couch into place.
Auntie Bernadette and I are like spies on a secret mission. She takes the towels and Olivia’s nightgown home and washes them, then gives them back to me after school. Auntie Minerva is always at church when I get home, so I can slip the towels between the sheets before she returns.
Olivia never looks at the wet towels in the morning or the clean ones Auntie Bernadette hands to me every afternoon. Maybe she’s pretending nothing ever happened.
Lunchtime at St. Cletus
Fish stew day.
Sit with Delia and Tonya day.
Eat sour mangoes and hot sauce day.
Pass notes in class day.
Tell secrets about naughty Lola and the boys day.
Nothing’s changed.
A Meal of Words
Frank hasn’t made any friends in Tamuning. After school, he does his homework at the kitchen table. He’s smart and makes the honor roll every year but hates to read. I love to read, but I haven’t been on the honor roll since third grade.
Today I sit across from him, trying to study for my science test. I reread the same page three times, but the words won’t sink in. I don’t like to read just anything. “You’d make straight As,” Tata says, “if they gave a quiz on romance.” I read love stories. I’ve read hundreds. I like happy endings.
Frank writes tiny letters in his notebook. I try to read them upside down. When he catches me looking at his notebook, he tears the paper away from the spiral and rips it into thin strips, wads them into pea-sized balls, and pops them in his mouth. He swallows each bite and frowns at me. After every word disappears through his mouth, every sentence slides to his gut, he announces, “Delicious!”
Wanted: One Knock-Knock Joke
Once Auntie Bernadette asked Frank why he was so quiet. Frank looked at her a long moment and said, “I’ll tell you when I have something to say.” He was eight when he said that and I remember thinking what a weird thing for a little boy to say. But Auntie said, “Frank, you are an old soul.”
When he did speak, he told a lot of knock-knock jokes.
“Isabel, knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Knock, knock.”
Sigh. “Who’s there?”
“Orange.”
“Orange who?”
“Orange you glad I didn’t say knock, knock?”