Honolulu (12 page)
Outside, clutching my suitcase, I stood blinking for a moment in the shade of the gabled railroad depot. Now that I was here, where was here? I found myself facing a commercial street crowded with storefronts, ordinary but for what loomed behind: the spent volcano crater known as Punchbowl. It looked a bit like one of the many hills surrounding Pojogae, but with its summit disturbingly lopped off, as if by some giant’s blade. I was only a few steps from this wide avenue called King Street, busy with pedestrians and populated by a wide variety of shops. On this block alone I noted two Japanese apothecaries, a Chinese grocery, a Portuguese tattoo artist, even a Korean shoemaker. From more than one storefront I heard the sounds of commerce being conducted vigorously in pidgin. It felt almost as if I had never left the plantation.
Nearby the depot was a lodging house, the Railroad Hotel, which reminded me of the last time I had been at this railway station: the day after my dockside wedding. Realizing I was not far from the Hai Dong Hotel, I began to retrace the route we had taken that day, instinctively seeking the familiar comfort of the little Korean inn. I walked down King Street to River Street and up River to Hotel Street; but when I finally reached the Hai Dong, I was seized by apprehension. What if the innkeeper, Mr. Chung, recognized me as the bride of Mr. Noh? What did I say if he asked where my husband was? If he realized I was running away, might he not try to contact Mr. Noh and tell him where to find his errant wife? The possibility froze me to the spot. I longed to go inside and be surrounded by at least the trappings of homebut I simply couldn’t take the chance. I turned and hurried back the way I came, not daring to risk the fellowship of other Koreans.
By the time I returned to the railway depot I was hungry and spent some of my meager savings on a bowl of rice at a Japanese restaurant on King Street. I daydreamed that it might have come from the Rice Mountains, which only made me all the more homesick. I yearned to jump aboard the next ship bound for Korea, but even if I could somehow scrape together the steamer fare, where did I go once I got there? Not back home to Pojogae or to Taegu-Aunt Obedience was gone; so was Evening Rose. No, better to be here in Hawai’i, as distant as it was, than to be in my homeland yet unable to truly go home.
Out on the street again I had no more idea where to go next-or even where I was-than before. I went back to the railway station and asked a heavyset porter loading bags into a carriage, “Excuse me? What is this place called?”
“This?” he said. “This is Iwilei.”
He pronounced it EE-vee-lay-as Evening Rose had when she spoke of the friend of hers who had gone to work there.
I felt a jolt of recognition and excitement. “It is?”
“Yeah, this side of the street, anyways.” He grunted as he lifted a heavy bag. “Other side, that’s Palama, but here”he jerked a thumb toward a nearby road that intersected King Street at an angle“this is Iwilei.”
I thanked him and instinctively headed toward the intersection.
Without knowing her name, of course, I harbored no real hope of finding my teacher’s friend. But Iwilei seemed worth a look, if only to be closer, for a moment, to the memory of Evening Rose. And I had, after all, no pressing engagements elsewhere.
I followed a group of pedestrians, most of them male, flocking like pigeons down the intersecting street, along with an increasing number of passing motor cars that bounced along the scored and pitted roadway. The first building we came to was an imposing coral-block structure, surrounded by a high wall, which looked like a medieval fortress and turned out to be a prison. Hardly the most auspicious of sights, it stood silent and forbidding at the fork of two roads; across from it, equally uninviting, squatted a row of ramshackle houses. I followed the crowd down the more traveled of the two roads, and as we passed by the prison I heard a chorus of barks and yelps coming from a dog pound situated behind the jail. The poor animals seemed to be crying out for their freedom, in contrast to the stoic silence emanating from the prison.
The barking of the dogs slowly gave way to the raucous cheers and catcalls of men, many arriving by car to join those traveling on foot. This road was even more heavily trafficked than King Street, and most of the pedestrians were men in some sort of military uniform. I recognized only the livery of the Japanese navy, but from their varied faces and the many languages they spoke, I could see that there were sailors here from all corners of the world, obviously on shore leave.
The street seemed increasingly designed to cater to such men, as evident by the number of saloons out of which floated rude laughter and coarse dance-hall music. Here, too, was a barbershop, a billiards parlor, a tobacconist, and a penny arcade. Even the air seemed to take on a masculine aspect, pungent with the smell of shaving lotion, cigar smoke, and liquor. The mood in the street was festive, as if we had stumbled into the middle of a partyand indeed, the men around me were acting more and more like revelers.
But not all of them were entering the saloons and arcades-not even the majority of them, who continued purposefully down the road. We passed several canneries and a few more boardinghouses, then found ourselves approaching a high wooden fence at least fifteen feet tall, beside which an affable-looking police officer was stationed. He let the men pass through the gate without a word, but when he saw me carrying my bag he asked, “You new to Iwilei, Miss?”
“Yes,” I told him, “I am.”
“Go on in, then”he gave me a wink and a smile“and make yourself at home.”
“Why, thank you,” I said. Did the police here greet all visitors so warmly? Such a friendly place! I walked inside, feeling welcome.
On the other side of the gate, and on both sides of the street, I now saw row after row of neat little wooden cottages-each painted green with white trim, and each with its own tiny lanai, or porch. They looked not unlike the tidy little bungalows we had lived in at Waialua, and for a moment I wondered if I had wandered onto some sort of plantation. In a way I had, but it was a much different kind of crop that was sown here at Iwilei.
The honky-tonk dance music of the saloons had been replaced by an inharmonious medley of songs, each issuing from a gramophone in the individual cottages: one tapped out a sprightly Spanish flamenco; from another blared the German ballad “Auf Wiedersehen”; and more than one played a then-popular tune called “On the Beach at Waikiki”:
Honi kaua wikiwiki
Sweet brown maiden said to me
As she gave me language lessons
On the beach at Waikiki
The occupants of the bungalows were haole, Japanese, Chinese, and Hawaiian, and all appeared to be female-again, not unlike Waialua, where few but women were at home during the day. But though it was only late afternoon, these women were clearly wearing evening clothes: bright, gaudy dresses made of silk or satin, with plunging necklines and slitted skirts that shockingly revealed more flesh than I had ever seen displayed in public. They all wore bright lipstick, heavy makeup, and musky perfumes, and were either sitting on their porches-smoking cigarettes, fanning themselves in the heat-or visible through a window as they sat inside, chewing gum and reading movie magazines. The men around me slowed as they approached a house, eyeing the women inside like shoppers at one of those stores along King Street.
Suddenly a woman standing on her lanai leaned forward over the wooden railing to grin at a passing man-and her breasts burst out of the scant restraints of her dress! She made no move to cover herself, nor did she display the slightest trace of embarrassment. But I was blushing enough for the two of us.
She was surely teasing me So I caught that maid and kissed her On the beach at Waikiki
As I finally began to “savvy” where I was, I turned and started to hurry back the way I came, away from these unassuming little “pleasure houses.” But in my haste I must have called attention to myself, and now an obscenely obese haole in a white suit and Panama hat stepped in front of me. It was as if a wall of pale flesh and linen had descended from the sky, bringing me up short. “You are new,” he said in an accent that was unfamiliar to me.
“No,
I-I
am not a-” I struggled to think of the English word for kisaeng, then realized that I didn’t know it; this was a term my missionary teachers had somehow failed to acquaint me with.
The man ogled me from beneath his sweaty brow and smiled. “I like new. Are you very new? Perhaps brand-new?”
I tried to step around him, but again he blocked my path. “I am not what you think I am,” I told him. I turned away, but his hand shot out and clammy fingers closed around my wrist.
“Let go!” I cried out, struggling to break free of his grip.
“How much?” he asked me.
“I am not-”
“Hey. Russkie,” someone called out.
I glanced up to see a pretty, curvaceous, blond-haired woman standing on her lanai, fanning herself with a folded newspaper, her expression one of mild boredom as she took in my plight. “Back off. Can’t you see she ain’t selling?”
“We are negotiating,” the obese man insisted.
The blonde nonchalantly stepped down off her porch steps, ambled over to us, then calmly raised the newspaper and gave the fat man a mean swat across the back of his head. His hat flew off; his grip on me loosened.
“Get your fat ass outta here!” the blonde bellowed impressively at him. “You want virgins, go jump in a volcano! G’wan, get lost!”
The obese Russian bent to retrieve his hat, then quickly did as he was told.
My rescuer turned to me. “Sorry about that, hon. We don’t get many civilian gals in here. You okay?”
“Yes,” I said, but my voice was trembling. It had been too familiar, too much like the treatment I had become accustomed to in my own house. Without meaning to, I suddenly burst into tears.
“Aw, hell,” the blond woman muttered. I tried to stop crying, but found that I couldn’t. She sighed. “Okay, c’mon, take a load off.”
Through tears I said, “Pardon me?”
“Sit. Come in and sit down a minute.”
I leaped at the opportunity to get away from the sweat and swagger of the men around us. The woman took my bag, and as I followed her up the porch steps I felt a bit calmer, reining in my tears as we entered the bungalow. “So what gives, hon?” she asked. “You F.O.B.-fresh off the boat?”
This much I understood, and thought it wise to say that I was.
“You take a wrong turn at the docks and wind up here?”
“Yes,” I said. “A wrong turn.”
Her little bungalow, like all of them here, consisted of just three rooms: a parlor or sitting room; an adjoining bedroom; and behind the bedroom, a tiny kitchenette. The only furnishings in the parlor were a lamp, a gramophone playing “On the Beach at Waikiki,” and an artistic rendering of a nude woman hanging above a worn couch. Over the latter was draped a pair of stockings with several long runs in them, a few garish dresses also in various states of disrepair, and a large orange cat dozing with its head on its paw.
“That’s Little Bastard, don’t mind him.” Of course the name meant noth ing to me, another failing of missionary education. My rescuer pushed aside the dresses to clear a place for me to sit. “So what’s your name, kiddo?”
A casual question, but it threw cold terror into me: Could I trust anyone here with my true name? What did I tell her? Then Evening Rose seemed to gently whisper in my ear and I found myself saying, “My name is Jin.”
She laughed. “Yeah? I’ve got a friend named gin, you want to meet her?”
Confused, I merely smiled, which she took as assent. “I’m May,” she said, going through the bedroom and into the kitchenette, “May Thompson.” As I heard her pouring something I idly reached over to pet the cat, which now opened its eyes, regarded me skeptically, then flopped over on its back, presenting an ample tummy to be rubbed. I began stroking the soft fur of its belly when the cat’s paws suddenly closed around my wrist and its teeth sank into the back of my hand.
I yelped in pain and tried to yank back my hand, but the cat held on with both paws and teeth. I tried to shake him off-once, twice, three timesthen on the fourth try he finally let go, perhaps out of boredom, and landed on his feet to resume his lazing position on the couch.
Two bubbles of blood welled up on my hand. May reentered the parlor with two glasses of what appeared to be water, saw me rubbing my hand and the cat licking himself for a job well done. “Ah, Little Bastard makes another friend,” she said, handing me a glass. “Here you go. Bottoms up, toots.”
I was quite thirsty and had taken a large gulp when I realized the liquid was not water. I choked on it at first, but whatever it was felt comfortingly warm as it worked its way down my throat-a feeling that soon radiated throughout my whole chest. It was not unwelcome. I took another swallow.
“You okay, honey?” May asked. I nodded a response. She downed her drink in two gulps, as if it were lemonade.
There was a knock on the open door. A young American sailor with hair the color of wheat stood impatiently on the porch: “Hey, Maisie, you busy?”
“Gimme a sec, okay, hon?” May turned to me. “Finish your drink, toots, money just walked in the door.”
I did as she said, draining the glass. The warmth in my chest spread to my arms and legs as well.
“You feeling better, kiddo?”
“Yes,” I said with a smile. “Fine. I should go. Thank you for your help.”
I stood up. The world tipped on its side, then started spinning.
I toppled backwards like a felled tree, onto the couch. The last thing I heard before I passed out was May’s voice saying, “Oh shit.”
Whatever that meant.
I woke once, around midnight, from a disturbing dream in which I was being pursued by a herd of squealing mice through our barn in Pojogae. I opened my eyes, but alarmingly, the sound did not go away. I was lying on May’s couch, a pillow under my head, a cotton blanket draped across me. The only illumination came from moonlight seeping around the drawn window shade, framing it in a ghostly white light. Slowly I identified the sound as the squeaking of bedsprings from the adjacent room-further punctuated by the occasional grunt, pant, gasp, and moan.
