Moloka'i (26 page)

Leilani’s lovely face was bruised and bleeding. “Hell, I can
run
,” she said, voice husky with pain.

They hurried through an open meadow and across Waih
nu Stream, glancing behind them constantly, at last reaching the hoped-for sanctuary of Haleola’s house. Rachel’s auntie took one look at them and sprang to her feet. “Some sonofabitch beat the hell out of her,” Rachel explained breathlessly. Leilani’s knees buckled and Rachel caught her. “Bring her to my bed,” Haleola directed, and between the two of them they were able to get her into Haleola’s bedroom and onto her straw pallet.

Haleola examined the bruises on Leilani’s face, then, noting a patch of blood soaking through Leilani’s dress, said, “I’ll have to take this off.” Leilani looked terror-stricken but Haleola had already lifted up the torn skirt.

Leilani had a nasty gash along her ribcage that was bleeding copiously, and livid bruises to match the leprous sores on her legs, but Rachel saw none of these; all she could see was what dangled between Leilani’s legs.

In a shocked whisper Rachel said, “You got an
ule!”

Lani winced, half in pain and half in embarrassment.

“Yes,” she sighed, “I’m afraid I do.”

Rachel was so stupefied she couldn’t speak. Then she noticed that Haleola, who was pressing a clean cloth against the gash on Leilani’s side, did not seem in the least surprised.

“You knew?” Rachel accused her.

Haleola shrugged. “The role of
m
h
s
in preserving the
hula
is well known.”

“Why didn’t you tell me!”

Haleola said simply, “It was not mine to tell.”

Rachel’s face was flush with anger, betrayal. “You’re a lie,” she accused Leilani, “a big fat lie!”

Leilani seemed in greater pain than when she was attacked. “No,” she said softly, “that thing down there is the lie.”

Good God, Rachel thought; am I so naive or stupid, not to have realized? She felt furious, ashamed. “Some joke,” she said coldly. “Just a big joke on me!”

“Rachel . . .” But Rachel was already storming out of the bedroom and the house. Lani tried to rise, but Haleola pushed her down: “Don’t.”

“She hates me,” Leilani said miserably.

“Can you blame her?”

Leilani allowed as she could not.

R

achel drifted aimlessly through Kalaupapa’s quiet streets, many of them named for thoroughfares in Honolulu—Beretania, Kapi'olani, School Streets, all of which seemed to mock her as Leilani had mocked her, not a damn one of them what they pretended to be. She couldn’t believe the extent of her own gullibility. Had she really lived so cloistered a life that she couldn’t have seen the truth?
You grew up in a convent, you blockhead, how much more cloistered does it get?
And yet all those men who ogled Leilani—they’d been fooled, too. No, wait, they’d slept with her—him—so they
had
to know. Maybe they just didn’t care. She was shocked at the idea, and shocked that she was shocked! Stupid naive little convent girl!

But the man who’d assaulted her had been fooled, and he sure as hell cared. So maybe Rachel could give herself the benefit of the doubt.

She wound up sitting on Papaloa Beach, watching the tide come in, and when her concern for Leilani’s injuries had finally eclipsed her anger, she returned home, where Haleola was dusting Leilani’s cuts with powdered herbs.

Rachel stood in the doorway a moment and asked her aunt, “Is she all right?”

My God, Rachel wondered, why do I still think of her as a
she?
Haleola nodded. Leilani smiled gratefully. “Your aunt is a talented healer.”

Rachel took a step inside. “So I guess this is why Bishop Home didn’t take you.”

“Brother Dutton at Baldwin Home wasn’t too thrilled to meet me either,” Leilani admitted with a bruised smile. “Poor man was rather tongue-tied. Mr. McVeigh was called in, and he thought it best I had my own quarters.”

Haleola dressed the last cut and Leilani gingerly slipped her dress back on. She thanked Haleola, offered to pay, but Haleola wouldn’t hear of it. After an awkward pause, Leilani said, “Well . . . I’d better get on home.”

Rachel said, “I’ll walk you.” Leilani looked surprised. “In case your friend comes back.”

“If he comes back you call for the constables,” Haleola cautioned.

Rachel promised that she would, but the streets she and Leilani traveled were nearly empty, with not a sign of Leilani’s angry suitor. Maybe they’d killed him, but she doubted it. He looked too mean to die.

They walked in silence until Rachel said, “I never heard that word before.
M
h
.”

“You mean there are some things a Catholic education still doesn’t teach you?” Leilani smiled. “They say that in the old days in Hawai'i,
m
h
s
were accepted as part of everyday life here—like a third sex.”

Rachel walked another step or two, then asked timidly, “How do you . . . I mean, two . . . men, how do you—”

She didn’t finish. Leilani told her, and despite herself Rachel looked a little queasy.

“That doesn’t sound very sanitary,” she observed.

Leilani laughed.

“We can’t all be lucky enough to have a
kohe,
like you. So we make do with what we have.” Lani paused, then added quietly, “Since as long as I can remember, I knew I was meant to be a girl. I played dolls with my sister and wanted desperately to wear the pretty
mu'umu'us
she did. A few years later, I got into a fight with a boy in my neighborhood, we were wrestling on the ground—and, my goodness, my
ule
suddenly stood up and took notice!” She laughed. “He was quite taken aback by it! Though eventually we did become, um, better friends.

“Every night of my life ’til I was sixteen I’d pray to God, asking Him to please make me a
wahine.”
She shrugged. “He made me a leper instead.”

Now, as they neared her house, Leilani said, “I’m sorry, Rachel. I should have told you. But it was so . . . nice . . . being accepted
as
a woman,
by
a woman.”

As they stood for a moment in front of Leilani’s cottage, Rachel suggested, “Maybe I should stay a while. You think he’ll come back for you?”

“That kind is usually too embarrassed to admit they were taken in by someone like me. I wouldn’t worry.”

Rachel nodded. “So, you . . . want to go to the beach tomorrow?”

Leilani looked pleased. “Yes. Sure.”

Rachel turned and started back the way they’d come; then suddenly turned, walking backwards as she called out, “If that sonofabitch comes back, we’ll show him he can’t get away with hitting
wahines!”

Leilani smiled as Rachel turned and headed for home.

I

n November Emily celebrated her eighteenth birthday by moving out of Bishop Home, and readily accepted Leilani’s invitation to share her cottage. Six months later, when Francine also abandoned the sanctuary of the convent, Leilani and Emily decided the house was really more than big enough for three. And as they and Rachel enjoyed the first thrilling flower of their adulthood, the settlement too came of age, in a different way.