Moloka'i (25 page)

She leaned back in the bed and smiled, feeling excited at the prospect; feeling hope.

T

he recuperation from surgery necessitated a brief sabbatical from surfing, but she was able to participate in most other activities—including the weekly ritual of Steamer Day. If she couldn’t actually be
in
the ocean, at least she could get close to it by greeting the newest ship on the Moloka'i run, the SS
Likelike
.

The assistant superintendent, J. K. Waiamau, met each new arrival much as the now-retired Ambrose Hutchison once had—taking down names and ages, arranging for lodging. As the passengers in the last rowboat came ashore, Rachel couldn’t help noticing a tall, slim, strikingly attractive young woman, a little older perhaps than Rachel, climbing up the ladder and onto the concrete breakwater. Her skin was honey-brown, her features delicate; her black hair was piled beneath a straw hat adorned with plumeria blossoms; she wore a tailored blouse, colorful scarf, and long dark skirt, belt cinching a tiny waist. Why, she looks like the Gibson girl! Rachel thought, recalling the fashionable lady whose picture she’d seen in magazines. The newcomer smiled a dazzling smile at the man who’d given her a hand up, then with a confident stride that belied any need for help, she approached Mr. Waiamau, who seemed to take extra pleasure in his job today as he inquired what her name might be.

“Leilani Napana,” she answered, seeming to enjoy his barely concealed admiration.

“Age?”

“Let’s just say, somewhere between fifteen and fifty.”

Waiamau laughed. “It’s not me asking. It’s Mr. Roosevelt.”

“Well, if he wants to know that badly, Teddy can come ask me himself,” Leilani said with a wink.

Waiamau sighed. “Place of residence?”

“Here, I would think.”

“Pardon me.
Former
residence?”

“Honolulu.”

“Do you have friends or relatives with whom to stay in Kalaupapa?” Waiamau asked.

“I’m afraid not.”

“In that case you need to talk with the sisters at Bishop Home. They provide lodging for many unattached women in the settlement.”

Leilani frowned. “Um, I don’t think so. I’d prefer to live on my own.”

“Unless you can tell me for a fact that you’re over eighteen,” Waiamau said with a twinkle of mischief, “regulations require that you go talk to the sisters.”

She thought about that, then muttered, “Well, it never hurts to talk,” and started for Bishop Home, her retreat keenly observed by every man within a hundred yards.

Later that day, Rachel was startled to see the same woman moving into a vacant cottage. A boy from Baldwin Home, strangely, carried her suitcases inside; she rewarded him with a dime, then removed her hat and hairpins, allowing her long black hair to tumble down her back.

Rachel thought this very odd. There was usually great pressure on newly arrived single men and women to live in one of the large group homes; if they wouldn’t, they either had to share houses with roommates or pay to construct their own homes, as Haleola had. But here was this woman, this Leilani Napana, settling into a house all her own!

Her stares brought the young woman out onto her
l
nai
, where she smiled and greeted Rachel. “Hello.”

Embarrassed, Rachel shyly returned the greeting.

The woman came down the porch steps and extended a hand; she seemed so poised and worldly that Rachel felt like a country bumpkin beside her. But her smile was warm and open. “I’m Leilani.”

“I know,” Rachel said.

“You do?”

“I was at the dock when you came in. I’m Rachel.” She peered into the roomy cottage and said, “I, uh, guess you must be at least eighteen after all or Mother Marianne wouldn’t have let you get away.”

“Oh, let’s just say . . . somewhere between—”

“Eighteen and eighty?” Rachel smiled and Leilani laughed, a rich warm laugh: “I’m becoming predictable. I apologize.” As if to show she wasn’t really as vain as she let on, she added, “I’m twenty-two.” She was as tall as Rachel, but where Rachel’s face was round Leilani’s was long and narrow, her features more refined. “You have beautiful hair,” Rachel said with a trace of envy.

“Oh, thank you. But it takes so long to dry I’m thinking of cutting it—maybe to here.” She held two long tapered fingers halfway up her chest. “Yours is lovely too. Have you ever thought of braiding it?”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“Oh, I can show you!” Rachel was swept inside, where Leilani—after emptying one bag of a dizzying assortment of combs, pins, and brushes—began skillfully braiding Rachel’s hair as Rachel watched what she was doing in a small hand mirror. “So how long have you been here?” Leilani asked. “In Kalaupapa?”

“Ten years. And a year before that in Kalihi.”

“I was in Kalihi for two years, off and on.” When Rachel looked puzzled, Leilani explained, “I tried not to let incarceration interfere with my social life.”

Rachel laughed and quizzed her about what Honolulu was like these days; and after Rachel’s hair was twirled and teased into a series of long braided locks they both decided it looked better before, then spent another hour undoing what they’d just created. Rachel learned that Leilani had grown up in a small town on the north shore of O'ahu, but moved to Honolulu when she was seventeen. When Rachel asked how she made a living Leilani mentioned something about having male “sponsors,” and a flustered Rachel decided against further exploration of that subject.

“So how did they catch you?” she asked instead. The question brought a hard glint of pain to Leilani’s eyes.

“One of my . . . benefactors . . . became jealous,” she said quietly, “and demanded I see him and him alone. When I refused, he told the authorities I had the
ma
'i
p
k
.”

“That’s awful,” Rachel said, realizing as she spoke them how inadequate the words sounded.

“I have terrible taste in men,” Lani admitted. “But how do you make yourself want vanilla or strawberry when you really don’t have a taste for anything but chocolate?”

Rachel helped her unpack the rest of her bags and was staggered by the sheer volume of dresses Leilani owned—at least twenty, everything from bright floral
mu'umu'us
to the latest French fashions, all of which she claimed to have made herself. She offered to do the same for Rachel. “I enjoy it. I like starting with nothing, just a piece of cloth, and making something smart and saucy.”

Within a month she had fashioned Rachel a colorful frock from a bolt of fabric ordered from Honolulu. And because Rachel and Leilani shared similarly slim, boyish figures, they discovered they could also share clothes.

Leilani introduced her to other new things as well. Whereas before a beach trip meant one thing—surfing—now she and Lani would sit on the sand, sizing up the male surfers and the contours of their wet bathing suits. “That one there,” Lani would point out, “has a huge
ule.”

“Oh, that’s Nahoa. He’s kind of sweet on me.”

“He’s very handsome.”

Rachel shrugged. “I guess.”

“Has he asked you out?”

“I don’t have time,” Rachel replied without really replying. “I have to take care of my aunt.”

Leilani studied her, then said, “You’re still—?” She didn’t need to finish; Rachel blushed her affirmation.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Rachel admitted after a moment, “if I’m waiting too long.”

“And what is it you’re waiting for?”

Rachel considered that.

“I want someone to look at me like my Papa used to look at my Mama,” she said at last. “The way they used to love each other, that’s what I want.”

Lani said, “Then it’s worth waiting for, isn’t it?” and the subject never came up again.

Leilani herself was in great demand among Kalaupapa’s bachelors, who considerably outnumbered females. And though she spent many evenings with Rachel, Lani spent many another dancing with handsome young men at the weekly socials. She enjoyed another kind of dancing too, the
hula
, as Rachel discovered the first time she had Leilani over for dinner.

Haleola watched with fascination as Lani scooped up some small stones from the back yard, cupped them in her hands and artfully shook music from them, performing a traditional Hawaiian “pebble dance.” Haleola was impressed that anyone of Leilani’s age knew the
hula
; the missionaries’ prohibition had driven it underground for many years. Leilani had learned it, she said, at one such secret school, run by her aunt. Haleola nodded slowly, as though something were falling into place in her mind. “You do the dances proud,” she said, and Leilani bowed her head in happy acknowledgment of the compliment.

That weekend Leilani succeeded in dragging a reluctant Rachel to a party at the home of a young man Lani had just met, but only after Haleola insisted, “Am I going to break into a thousand little pieces while you’re gone? Go!” Rachel went, though not happily. The man’s house, on the outskirts of town, was a slightly run-down cottage filled partly with couples dancing and kissing, and partly with men getting very drunk on “swipe” beer. People had been drinking at the Kaunakakai party too, but this was different. It seemed these people were drinking not to celebrate, but to forget. There was a sullen desperation in their faces that made Rachel nervous, even more so when, after Leilani’s first dance, she was whisked away by a handsome young man with the stocky frame of a fireplug. When another nice-looking boy asked Rachel to dance she accepted, and tried to lose herself in the sweet sound of the ukelele.

Halfway through the dance she heard a sudden, piercing cry—coming, it seemed, from outside.

She asked her dance partner, “Did you hear that?”

He hadn’t, and now Rachel noted—faintly, over the sounds of music and chit-chat—another, definitely feminine, cry.

Rachel ran outside, into the back yard. There Leilani’s stocky suitor was savagely battering her in the face—blood pouring from her nose as she kneeled on the ground, as if in violent prayer. Each time she struggled to stand up his fist drove itself into her face as he shouted curses at her. In the dark the blood spotting her dress looked black, like ink stains from a careless pen.

Rachel ran up and grabbed the man from behind, clawing at his cheeks. “Leave her alone!”

He threw her off easily, onto the stony stubble of the ground. Rachel cried out as a rock tore at her bandage and gouged the already-tender tissues of her surgical incision.

The fireplug of a man returned his attentions to Leilani, who had had time to scoop up a handful of pebbles, and now hurled them with surprising force into his face.

He screamed, clawing at the dirt and stones, trying to clear his eyes. Leilani got shakily to her feet.

Rachel got to her knees, ignoring the pain in her leg as she searched the ground for a suitable weapon. She lifted up a heavy rock, and just as Leilani’s attacker was able to see again Rachel sent the stone crashing down onto his head with a loud, disturbing crack, his legs folding under him.

Incredibly enough, he was still conscious. As he attempted to rise, Rachel rushed to Leilani’s side. “Can you walk?”