12. Emma

12

Emma

E mma fought to keep her voice soft and level. "If you just subtract the ones from the ones column and the tens from the tens column–"

"Stop trying to force me to do it your way!" Kai shouted.

"I'm not trying to force you to do anything. I'm just trying to show you an easier way."

"I hate math!" He crumpled up the hand-drawn set of equations that she had made for him, and her temperature simmered towards the boiling point.

"Take a break," she snapped. "Just go outside."

"Fine! I don't even care! I like Dio better than you anyway!" He ran out, slamming the door behind him.

Emma lowered her head to the table with a thunk .

"Are you okay?" Juniper asked.

"I'm fine." She sat up again and looked at her niece, who was watching her with amusement in her hazel eyes. Her voice took on a pleading whine as she said, "He loves math."

"Sure." Juniper turned off a burner on the stove and lifted the lid off of one of the pots she had simmering; lemongrass and Thai lime perfumed the air, anchored by the earthy smell of māmaki. "That sounded like a kid who loves math."

"He does, though. He used to recite square roots for fun. He loves doing multiplication with his mangatiles. But anytime I try to show him anything on paper, he blows a gasket."

"Didn't you use to do this for a living?"

"Yes," Emma replied shortly. She held back from saying that she would rather wrangle a classroom full of kindergarteners than try to get Kai to sit through a single worksheet.

But that's why she hadn't sent him off to school. He wasn't the kind of kid who could sit still and keep quiet. He didn't even sit and color the way his cousins did.

Unless something could fully capture his interest and occupy his whole brain, Kai was up and out the door. Worksheets felt like torture to him, and she sympathized.

She just wished he could be a little bit easier. Just sometimes.

And then she immediately felt guilty for wanting him to be anything other than what he was.

With a heavy sigh, she slumped back in her chair and closed her eyes against a growing headache. She pressed her fingertips to her temples and massaged them in circles, breathing in the fragrant air of the different herbal tea blends that Juniper was testing.

A mug connected gently with the table in front of her, and she opened her eyes to a steaming cup of herbal tea. Juniper sat down across from her with a mug of her own.

"Thank you." Emma put her hands around the mug in front of her and inhaled the cinnamon steam. The tea was a deep shade of red.

"It's one of my iced teas, but it's not bad warm."

Emma sipped it, savoring the tart hibiscus and hints of citrus. "It's delicious warm. It makes me think of spiced apple cider."

"That's a good idea! I could add even more spices, like star anise, and sell it warm when the weather's cold. Actually, that might work for iced tea too…" She was talking mostly to herself now, jotting notes down on the big yellow pad that she was using to keep track of her experiments. "The basic hibiscus and royal purple teas taste basically the same, so I want to use different spices with each of them to create different flavor profiles. Star anise for the purple could be fun…"

Emma sat back and sipped her tea as Juniper's chatter washed over her. She had been so anxious about her niece coming to live with her, worried that she wasn't up to the challenge of parenting a grieving teenager. But so far, it had been astonishingly easy.

Juniper was working two part-time jobs in addition to helping at the soup kitchen and attending permaculture classes with Emma. Her drive to start her own business was awe inspiring, as was her knowledge of medicinal herbs. Seventeen was a distant memory for Emma, but she couldn't remember being half that passionate about any sort of work.

"Egg delivery," Nell said as she came through the kitchen door. She had all but taken over the daily work of caring for the animals, and Emma felt half guilty about how much her new tenant had taken on.

"Thank you!" she said. "Can't you use any?"

"I have a dozen in my fridge already."

"Well, if they keep piling up like this we could always use them to make something for the soup kitchen."

"Or bring them to A Place of Refuge," Nell suggested. "Hard boiled eggs, maybe? The shared kitchen there can be difficult to work in."

"That's a good idea."

Juniper rose and walked over to the stove, then yelped so loudly Emma thought that she'd burned herself.

"What happened?" Emma asked, standing.

"It's almost four o'clock."

"What happens at four?"

"I really, really wanted to go to this yoga class. It's here in Pualena. I was going to walk, but now I won't make it in time."

"I can drive you."

"Oh, would you?" Juniper put her hands together in front of her chest like she was praying. Then a gleam came into her eyes, and her grin stretched wider. "You should stay and take the class with me!"

"A yoga class?" She ran a hand through her tangled hair. "It's been forever."

"You should come! Nell will watch Kai, won't you Nell?"

"Of course I will."

Emma looked at her, feeling guilty again. "You don't have to."

"It's no trouble. He's so sweet with Cassie and Everett."

It was true. Her wild child who couldn't sit still and got into daily arguments with his friends was angelic when it came to kids smaller than he was. She looked back at Juniper, who was still employing prayer hands and puppy-dog eyes.

"Please, Auntie Em?"

Emma sighed and looked down at her clothes. She was wearing an old shirt of Adam's and a pair of pajama pants. "I'll have to change."

"You have time if we're driving. Go on!"

She laughed and held up her hands in defeat. "Okay, okay."

A few minutes later, her hair was up in a bun and she was clad in an old pair of yoga pants and a fitted tank top.

Juniper had changed into a pair of loose pants that tied at the ankles and one of those tiny tops that every girl her age seemed to be wearing these days. Her wavy brown hair, which she had cropped short a year or so ago, was just long enough that she could tuck all of it into a little ponytail.

She was so beautiful that it made Emma's heart ache; she loved her niece every bit as much as she loved her own son. And she liked her a whole lot more most of the time… not that she'd say as much out loud.

The past couple of weeks had been rough.

"I think we need another day in Waipi‘o," she muttered, running a hand over her eyes.

"What did you say?" Juniper asked.

"Nothing. Just thinking out loud."

"You need yoga. Let's go!"

She laughed. "Okay, okay, let's go."

They said goodbye to Kai, who was up a tree with the cat, and drove the few miles to this yoga class that Juniper had heard about. It was tucked into a residential neighborhood, but from the number of cars parked out front, Emma figured they had the right spot.

They got out of the car and rounded the corner to see a dozen yogis rolling out their mats on a huge covered patio. A roof sheltered them from sun and rain, but the space was open to the sea air on three sides. It faced the ocean, though albizia trees in an unoccupied lot across the street blocked the view.

"New faces!" A willowy figure danced through the crowd and came to stand in front of them with her arms open in welcome. "Are you here for class?"

"Yep!" Juniper said.

"We don't have yoga mats," Emma told her.

"That's fine! I have some you can borrow. Props and pillows too, if that's your thing. Come on through, I'll show you where everything is."

Once they were equipped with everything they needed, the woman floated back up to the front of the class. She moved like a dancer, like someone fully at home in her own body, and it made Emma realize how disembodied she had been lately.

She had always lived in her head, but Adam had helped to balance that out. When he died, she'd spiraled into herself. She had climbed back out into the world these past few months… but not completely.

"Hello!" their teacher called out, pulling Emma's attention back to the present moment. "We have a few new faces here, which is always so wonderful to see. For anyone new here – and also anyone who takes a few tries to learn a new name, I feel you, you're my people – welcome! My name is Fern."

She brandished the green fern tattooed on her arm and continued, "Actually my mother named me Fernanda, which means intrepid traveler. Word of warning, folks, be careful what you name your babies. Like Ferdinand Magellan, I circled the Earth. Several times, actually. I wandered nearly my whole life, and I am very happy to finally be settled here on the Big Island."

Emma rolled her borrowed mat out next to Juniper, who was already touching her toes in pre-yoga stretches that made Emma realize how long it had been since she really paid attention to the fact that she had limbs. She'd stayed reasonably active these past few months – goats and weeds and Kai made sure of that – but she hadn't done any deliberate exercise, hadn't stretched or jogged or danced. All of that and just sort of slipped her mind.

She had been surviving. That was it.

Maybe it was time for something more.

"Now as I go through these poses," Fern said, "I want you to think of them as suggestions. You're here to get into your body and move in a way that feels good to you. If it hurts to stretch beyond a certain point, ease back. If you can go farther than me, go farther.

"I don't believe that yoga should be prescriptive. Think of it as inspiration rather than benchmarks that you have to meet. If you want to sink into child's pose at any point or go full shavasana, no one's going to judge you. Only you know what your body needs.

"Okay?" Fern clapped her hands together. "Okay, let's get started."

She led them through a fluid series of poses, and Emma's body slowly began to wake up to the old motions. Years ago, before Kai, she went to yoga classes in the Santa Cruz mountains three or four times a week. Even more than the exercise, she had loved the peace and community that she had found there.

Fern's class felt the same: women moving together for the joy of it, simply because they wanted to be embodied and present. Fresh ocean air moved through the open space along with the susurrus of leaves, and some deep pain in Emma's chest loosened.

She was still alive. And in that moment, that felt like enough.