A Fish Out of Water: Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Competition and Conflict

As soon as Keoni woke up in the morning, Malie came into the bedroom, picked him up, and carried him out to his high chair where a bowl of cereal was waiting for him. She placed him in the high chair, and Keoni took up his little plastic spoon and ate his breakfast. He finished eating, and Leimomi walked over to him, but just as he was about to pick him up and let him out of the high chair, her cell phone rang and she picked up the call. "Hello? ... Pardon? You spent the last thousand Simoleons I loaned to your fledgling business on what? ... I've been generous in helping you out so far, but if you really are serious about following your dreams like you keep saying, you'd have been more responsible in the first place. And that includes repaying your debts. ... Very well. Good luck in your future business endeavors." Leimomi hung up the call, put her phone away, lifted Keoni up out of the high chair and placed him on the ground. Keoni wasn't quite sure what his grandmother had been talking about, but he decided not to worry about it, and he went back into his bedroom to give Beach Bear a hug.

Keoni changed out of his pajamas, toddled outside, and found a spot on the beach where he thought the sand could use some sprucing up.

Unfortunately for him, his mother and aunt were already out on the beach, and he got caught very quickly. "Keoni, would you please not make a mess on the beach?" Malie asked.

"But I wanna make the sand pwetty!" Keoni protested to his mother as Hokulani went into the house.

"Then let's build a sand sculpture instead, okay?"

"Okay!"

Malie and Keoni went over a few more steps away from their house, decided on a spot for their sculpture, and started shoveling sand into a pile.

They made their sand pile nice and big, and then they formed it into its shape. Hokulani arrived back out on the beach just as her sister and nephew were finishing their sculpture. "Look, sis," Malie exclaimed, "we made a sea turtle!"

Keoni couldn't resist putting his two cents' worth in as well. "I wuv sea turturs!"

"That's cute, guys," Hokulani commented. "Unfortunately I don't have time to play around; I've gotta look for odd jobs." She pulled out her cell phone and started scrolling through something on the screen. Malie went to mop up the mess Keoni had made earlier, and Keoni toddled back into the house to answer the call of the potty.

When Keoni was done with his business, Malie came into the bathroom and picked him up. "Come on, your father's competing in the fishing tournament today! We need to go support him!" With that, she carried him out of the house and down the beach.

Malie put Keoni down near a big wooden platform that stuck out from the beach into the water. Hokulani and Leimomi were already there. Keoni toddled towards his grandmother, while Hokulani greeted her sister. "Malie! You wouldn't believe the odd job I found -- it'll be a great opportunity to brush up on my photography!"

"After all," Hokulani went on, "nowadays anyone who's gonna make it big in showbiz absolutely must have their selfie game on point for all that social media attention."

Keoni didn't really understand what his aunt was talking about, nor was he actually paying that much attention. He reached up towards his grandmother. "Hug time!"

Leimomi knelt down on the sand, and she and Keoni wrapped their arms around each other for a moment. Then Keoni looked around and noticed that Kapena and that warrior guy Mr. Koa were both standing on the edge of that wooden platform with long sticks that had even longer strings dangling into the water. Even though Keoni was a bit of a distance away, he thought he overheard Mr. Koa say "I'm going to beat you at your own game, fisherman!"

"You'll never win this tournament if you keep throwing back everything you catch," Kapena retorted.

Keoni wandered around for a bit, seeing what there was to see at the section of beach around the fishing tournament. Then he put his swimsuit on, grabbed a rubber ducky, waded into the water, sat down in the shallows and started playing and splashing! Of course, Leimomi was there to keep a close eye on him.

More people gathered around to watch Keoni play in the water and to make sand sculptures. After a while, Keoni stood up and started playing tag with the waves, running into the shallows, and then when a wave came in, he tried to dash back to the shore before the wave could splash him! What fun!

However, before long, the fun had to end. "Hokulani," Leimomi asked her daughter-in-law's sister, "would you please get Keoni back home before his curfew?"

"Sure thing," Hokulani replied. "Come on, kiddo." With that, she picked Keoni up.

Hokulani carried Keoni down the beach to the family home. When they got back home, she went into her bedroom and changed out of her bathing suit and into her regular clothes, and then she came back out and helped Keoni change out of his bathing suit and into his regular clothes. Then she picked him up again and tossed him onto her back, and they pretended to be airplanes soaring through the sky together!

After Keoni was finished playing with his aunt, he went into the bedroom to have a chat with Beach Bear. Then Malie came into the bedroom, picked Keoni up, and carried him out to his high chair where a bowl of peas was waiting for him to eat for dinner. Kapena was already seated at the dining room table, eating a plate of leftover mua kalua pork. Malie placed Keoni in his high chair, and the toddler started to dig in!

Hokulani sat down at the opposite end of the table from Kapena, looking upset. "I found a really good odd job today," she complained, "but I missed the deadline because you'd insisted that everyone in the household absolutely had to be at the fishing tournament for the whole entire time you were competing, no exceptions! And then you went and took all day!"

"Well, it's only fair that everyone in this household should support my fishing," Kapena countered. "After all, fishing is the family business. If I didn't fish, we wouldn't have a roof over our heads or food on the table. You should be especially grateful, Hokulani, since we took you in after your would-be acting career flopped."

"I know," Hokulani replied, "and I am grateful. But I need the money from doing odd jobs so I can save up for university. Once I graduate, I'll be able to get back into showbiz with a drama degree as my ticket to success!"

"Education is essential, of course," Kapena said, "but to be honest, I'm surprised that you're so career-focused, given that you and Malie grew up in a very traditional family. After you came crawling back from Del Sol Valley with your tail between your legs, I figured that you'd give up on the whole fame and fortune thing and start looking for a good husband to settle down with instead."

"I support Malie's life choices," Hokulani responded, giving her sister a smile for a moment before she turned her attention back to her brother-in-law. "But I'm just not like the rest of my family."

"Well, you're living with my family in our home now," Kapena scolded his sister-in-law. "And I'm the head of the household. My house, my rules. And my most important rule is everyone plays their part to support the family business!"

Malie pretended not to notice her husband and sister's argument. Since Keoni had finished his dinner, she picked him up in order to let him out of his high chair.

Meanwhile, Hokulani was still venting her frustrations. "When are you going to get it through to your head that I have my own life that doesn't revolve around you guys and your precious family business?"

"Everything in this household revolves around the family business!" Kapena countered. "My father, and his father, and all our fathers since our ancestors first came to Sulani were fishermen, and fishing has seen us through every single hardship we've had to deal with over the generations. Without the family business, we would all be homeless and starving!"

When his feet were on the ground, Keoni toddled off to use the potty once more. After he finished that, Malie came into the bathroom to prepare a bubble bath for her son. As usual, Keoni relished splashing in the tub and playing with the bubbles! When bath time was unfortunately over, Malie dressed Keoni in his pajamas and brought him to the bedroom. He crawled into his bed, and Malie read him a story until he fell asleep.