Pahala_Anti personal growth and personal manifestation (Jackie)

Pahala is a place where female personal growth and self worth is very difficult to develop. Whether it is the mother or family member reprimanding a growing woman or a school companion, the narrator which we later find out is Lucy, doesn't get the opportunity to fully express what she feels and there isn't anyone who is willing to sit down and ask her about her uncertainties and reassure her. In the short poem Haupu Mountain, it broke my heart when her mother kicked her out of her house and left her to fend for herself. I am finding it very difficult not to judge her but how can she do that to her own child who has done nothing wrong except try to make the best of her remaining days as a child. As the narrator quickly enters womanhood there are so many things happening within her body and in her external world as well. She is in real need to a woman role model to teach her the proper lesson of a period and how to be careful of sexual predators not a made up story used to scare little girls about the creepy man next door. Anyway, in the poem Haupu Mountain, although it was horrible that her mother, the person who brought her into this world and the one that is morally obliged to care and love her child, kick her out of not only the house but out of her life as well. If I were in the narrator's shoes I would feel so alone in the world and terrified. Luckily, the narrator has Bernie, the only man in her life who has the purest intentions with her. After reading the poem Kala:Grad Party where the narrator is raped I feel that every other man in the novella is bound to do the same so it was a lovely surprise that Bernie was different from say Jimmy. Bernie takes her hiking up to Haupu Mountain and has her sit on the grass and relax and enjoy the scenery as a way of keeping her mind off of what she just went through. I took the part where Bernie tells her "There my house, he say. There the shop. Over there the Catholic church. Where your house?     There.     Way over there," as if to tell her that her problems are physically so far away from her now that everything is okay. I really enjoyed that heartwarming moment because Bernie reassures in a subtle way and he let everything sink in in her mind. This poem made me feel hopeful for the narrator, that she has at least one good person in her life.