23 | angry women

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2010

"Tell Kanani to take out the trash! Just 'cause she's in college now doesn't mean she shouldn't have to do anything in the house. Why do you always gotta tell me to do it!"

"'Cause, it's your kuleana, Hoku—"

"It's your kuleana, Hoku," I mocked.

That just about did it. Dad was now mad.

There were only three times Dad got angry—when some haole didn't throw a shaka or wave after he let them into his lane, when someone disrespected his family, or when one of his children disrespected him.

It wasn't that he asked much from us. He rarely raised his voice in the house. But teenagers were teenagers and even someone as soft and forgiving as my father could be pushed to the edge where raising his voice was the only answer.

I never claimed to be the best daughter, nor did I ever try to be. (Being a middle child practically guaranteed I was never going to be their favorite.) (Every parent had a favorite child, even if they didn't want to admit it.) But sometimes my acceptance of this arbitrary ranking went beyond complacency. Nowadays, whenever I was in a bad mood, a really bad mood, it was like I tempted him to get mad at me. I wanted to find a reason to fight because at least that made me feel like I was doing something. Like I mattered.

Even as my dad stared at me with his angry, narrowed eyes, I knew it wasn't healthy, and I knew it wasn't something I could ever keep up with for a long time. As soon as I pushed him to this point, I folded like the coward I was, but it was always too late and I found myself at the mercy of his ire.

But Dad was always the more forgiving one and would let his anger pass far sooner than I would have if I was in his position. I knew because of how I fought with Kanani.

"Auwe. Go to your room! I no get time for deal with back talk." He coughed and held a fist to his mouth. It took a few seconds for it to stop, long enough that I paused my steps. This had been happening frequently for the past few months. "Go. Now."

Without another word, I raced up the steps until I was back in the safety of my room. Even though I knew it would only upset him more, the door slammed shut behind me, and I listened for his thunderous footsteps, followed by a threat to take the door off the hinges for a week, maybe more. He had never followed through on that threat before when I'd exhibited my usual petulant child behaviors, but I still feared that he would one day.

After jumping onto my bed face first, I screamed into my pillow. I didn't know what was wrong with me or why I felt so angry all the time now. I was a fairly calm person most of my life. While there were times I couldn't hold something in, like the night during my freshman year when I punched Lake Williams, I was still good at holding things in. Letting them bubble under the surface and take their toll on my body so I didn't have to subject any of it to the people I love.

Maybe that was the reason why I had been acting up these past few months. Bottling all of that in for years wasn't healthy. Instead of talking to someone, anyone, about what went on in my head, I let it drown me out at sea, invalidating my own problems before I could let someone else do it, which meant operating under the assumption anyone would, like my family or friends.

It was tiring. It was tiring and I didn't know how to stop it.

After a few minutes, there was a knock at the door.

"Go away," I mumbled into my pillow, assuming it was Leimomi coming to comfort me. She tried to do that a lot whenever she heard our dad and me arguing.

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