Hunting Turtle

Sometimes while Jola is out fishing, Rakki lays down on the cool floor, lights a mosquito-repelling coil, and rests flat on her back next to her children. No pillow, no blanket, just hard linoleum laid over cement. A wind blows in from the lagoon and flutters past green Hawaiian-print curtains. She falls asleep instantly.

In her sleep, she senses Jola’s wooden skiff splutter into the shallow water, hull scraping against sand. It’s after midnight and she gets up wordlessly, stepping over the murmuring shapes of her five children. Outside, in the open-air cookhouse, the embers from the evening fire are still glowing red.

Squatting on her heels, Rakki adds a few more dried coconut shells and blows on the coals. Flames leap. A fire made from coconuts burns differently than a fire of wood, its crackling more delicate, like glass shattering under intense heat. Soon, Jola comes up the beach in the moonlight with the night’s catch on a string: butterfly fish, humphead