Tia Rosa

Tia Rosa warned me not to marry her son, but when my stomach swelled with something far greater than the weight of the sweet bread she forced upon me, I was not left with much of a choice.

Anthony had grown more mild with age, his eyes and tongue and fists softening with the gradual arrival of adulthood. I suspected it was more of an active choice than a passive change. He wove me wreaths of eucalyptus at Christmas and ti lei po’o year round. We often walked to the reservoir alone as the sun set, hands interlocked, and he would put his soft mouth to mine.

He was nearly a new person by the time he turned eighteen, but he retained the practice of dropping his pants whenever an opportunity presented itself. Even with his child in my belly, I think about him bent over that Abayan girl in the woods behind their house. All of a sudden I’m sixteen again and he’s seventeen, and I’m leaving Tia Rosa’s where I spent the dinner hour helping the poor woman feed and bathe her hungry infants. Then I’m walking through the brush and I hear them. Donna, the Abayan girl, lets out a huff of breath with every stroke and Anthony, I think I hear him weep with satisfaction or shame or something in between. His crucifix pendant thuds against his chest. Then I see them– his hips grinding into her dark body. She sees me, she laughs. Ha. Ha. Got your man.

She saw Anthony and I last week down at the grocery and asked how things were going, now that we were married and all. She noticed my black eye and snickered. Guess it’s not going too well, Tony? Bitch.

In those days, when I saw him, I saw Tio André. When I caught my own reflection in the mirror, I saw Tia Rosa. Gone were Anthony’s woven wreaths, he instead took up the habit of sewing for me that same patchwork quilt of purple, yellow, and green that his mother had donned so many years before. He was careful with his punches at the start, leaving his mark on the skin that was easily hidden. But ‘ōkolehao made him foolish– brash. He hit hard, often. His calloused hands moved from the soft, concealable skin of my legs to my bare neck. He struck my face and left me with an eye a hue of purple all the powder in the world could not hide.

✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥

Tia Rosa did not cry when she saw me, she shook.

“Tia. Tia I do not mean to bring you my problems– they are mine.”

Tia Rosa grunted, tossed her head. She beckoned me inside with a flick of her finger. The old wooden door clattered behind me as I entered and the glow of morning light illuminated the small room.

“Really, Tia. I’m just checking in,” I said, careful to keep the pain from my voice. “And Anthony wanted me to check on you, see how you’re doing.”

In all honesty, I was worried about her up there, all alone. She arrived on Maui with just one leg, the other having been lopped off in the port before departing Funchal. And though it never slowed her down, her left knee grew into a swollen mass and the taut muscles in her arms were fading fast.

Tia began to shuffle toward me, her chair– her makeshift crutch– tucked under her right armpit.

“I told you not to marry him, girl.”

“I did not have much of a choice, Tia.”

“You saw how I suffered, yes? And you chose the same for yourself.”

“Tia, I–”

Her hand rose, as though to strike me, and then lowered before she could land the blow. “I tried to save you from this. I did.”

I opened my mouth to speak but she silenced me.

“You are too soft for him,” she whispered, running her fingers over my unblemished knuckles. “But I am not.”

✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥

Tia Rosa grabbed her bullwhip from the kitchen cupboard– the whip Tio André carried at his waist when he worked on the ranch. She wound the woven leather through her fingers and began to move toward the door.

“Please, Tia. Please, no.”

She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. She was done with words for the day, and it was only eight in the morning.

“If you’re going to do this, at least take the donkey, Tia. I can walk.”

Again, a wave of her gnarled hand silenced me.

Left leg. Crutch. Left leg. Crutch. Left leg. Crutch.

The sound of the wooden chair legs thudding against dirt echoed in my ear as we began the trek from Hali’imaile to Pā’ia. We followed the dirt road, and though we evaded brambles and high grass, people were harder to avoid.

Anthony’s foreman passed us on horseback as he headed toward Pā’ia. “Someone is in trouble, ah?”

By the time we got to town, the news of Tia Rosa’s arrival had spread. Store owners stood outside their shops, pretending to be busy as they awaited her arrival. Children had crowded in the streets to bet, laughing when they realized the fighter they were putting their money behind had white hair and a single, decrepit leg.

My heart sank when I saw the foreman’s horse lashed to the hitching post outside our home. And there my husband was– Anthony sat on the front porch, just as he did when we were children, head tucked between his knees. He began running toward me, face hot– I could already smell the ‘ōkolehao on his breath. I slid from the donkey’s back as he approached, eyes wild.

“Bitch.” he spat. “You’re too old to go running to my mother.”

In a swift movement, he threw me down and pinned my shoulders to the red earth, bringing his snarling face close to mine.

Just as he raised his fist, the crack of the whip sounded. Tia Rosa.