finally begins to defend you. Rape shield means you can’t ask an alleged rape victim about other sexual encounters. It means you can’t try to prove that whore is her baseline.
The plane ticket was purchased by her brother-in-law. It would be her first time flying over a large body of water. Fifteen hours. The length of the flight alone was exotic.
Dane and Melia lived in Oahu. Dane was stationed at the Schofield Barracks. Melia was tan and had a baby daughter. That Melia was now Dane and Melia was something that occasionally bothered Maggie. Maggie and Melia had grown up inseparable in Fargo, where winter reigned supreme. That her older sister was not hers anymore was one thing. That she was also living in a tropical utopia added insult to injury.
Melia had come home to Fargo for her actual wedding ceremony, which took place over the summer in nearby Wild Rice. Maggie’s bridesmaid dress was complex, strapless and brown, with multiple pickups and gathering and layers. It reminded her of Belle’s dress in Beauty and the Beast.
After the wedding, the sisters flew to Hawaii with the baby. Dane had gone on ahead. It seemed that happened a lot with the army. The man was often going ahead somewhere, to plunge a stake into the land, or to fix a broken water main.
Before they leave, Melia and Maggie go shopping for the trip. Melia tells her nobody dresses up in Hawaii. No heels, just nice sandals and loose, colorful clothes. Maggie buys flowing tops and skirts. There is, in particular, a turquoise tube top that is snug around her chest but pours out and hangs long. She could wear it as a dress, or as a top with a pair of jeans. At the end of the shopping trip, she holds her plastic bags in upside-down bouquets at her hip. She holds them close and gratefully, as though they themselves are experiences, wrapped still, and fateful.
Maggie is stunned by Hawaii from the moment the plane lands. The emerald trees, the vivid flowers. The airport itself is beautiful. She sees her whiteness, for the first time, through the lens of otherness. Fargo has been a vacuum, or it’s been too cold to let her stop and see.
They spend the bright, warm days at the beach, watching the baby suckle up the notes of life. Sifting sand through her round fingers, tasting the brine of the sea. Maggie is likewise a newborn. Everything is alien. The birds make Martian sounds. The temperature is a kind of warmth she has never experienced. The ocean! Maggie has always loved to swim, only she’s never been in such water before. This limpid blue, and the luminescent squiggles of fish. She thinks of leaden North Dakota, its bodies of water slate and freezing.
One day she hikes to the heart of a secret waterfall. The wild black water rushes from between two halves of a green mountain, like a vibrant truffle. Hawaii is the kind of place where Maggie feels she must always be wearing a bathing suit, as the opportunity to swim might emerge in the middle of traffic.
Some people, Maggie thinks, live their lives as if they are sure they’re going to get another one. One more chance to be cool and popular or smart and rich and have a lot of sex. They act as though it’s okay to hang back on this one, and merely watch it like a movie. Maggie is devoutly Catholic and doesn’t believe in multiple lives. She’s intent on making the most of this one. She wants to experience everything, but she also wants to follow the mandates of her religion. She was upset, for example, when Melia first told her she was pregnant. It isn’t right to have sex outside marriage. But Emily, the little girl, is sinless, starry. Maggie can’t imagine her born of sin. Especially now that Dane and Melia have one resounding last name. They have a blender. Nothing is as Catholic and binding as a clean, white blender.
Black and white used to feel decisive to Maggie, but in Hawaii such unambiguity seems unintelligent. Hawaii makes her aware of her contradictions. She spends whole warm nights examining herself. She takes long walks on the beach. She watches her toes burrow into the sand and thinks about everybody back home who will be surprised at who she has become when she returns.
A couple of times—at night when sixteen-year-old girls most rue the decision to stay for so