Moloka'i (29 page)

After breakfast she staggered Rachel by announcing that she would like very much to climb the
pali
.

“What! With your foot the way it is?”

“Not all the way up, just part. Would you believe in all these years I’ve never so much as set foot on the trail?”

“You’re not missing anything, believe me.”

“I want to. I’m going to.” Haleola was adamant, and a worried Rachel was forced to acquiesce.

At the
pali
they threaded through thick undergrowth and onto the trail, widened again several years ago after a mail carrier’s mule lost its footing and plunged to earth, nearly taking the mailman with it. Rachel kept one hand firmly gripped around her aunt’s arm as they made their way up the zigzag path, first one direction, then the other, then back again. Haleola’s bad foot gave her some trouble and she slipped twice, Rachel always there to support her; finally she made it without too much difficulty some fifty feet up the cliff. From here on the trail was more precarious and Haleola motioned her niece to stop.

“This will do,” she said, trying to catch her breath.

“I’m so glad,” Rachel sighed, still holding on to her.

Haleola saw the whole of the peninsula spread out below her: saw both eastern and western shores at once, the green bowl of Kauhak
in the middle. Foaming surf hammered the craggy shoreline, her old friends '
kala and M
kapu standing watch over Kalawao. The scaffolded tower of the lighthouse looked from here like a child’s sandcastle; farther down the coast the U.S. Leprosy Investigation Station was nearing completion. And Kalaupapa with its whitewashed cottages looked deceptively normal, like any small village in the islands. Haleola smiled with satisfaction.

“I wanted to see it, once,” she said, “without seeing the
pali
. Without the walls. As though I were free.”

Haleola seemed uncommonly happy the rest of the day; after supper she sewed and sang a chant Rachel had heard before, one that celebrated a place on her beloved Maui, then began another. Rachel, reading, only slowly became conscious of what her aunt was singing in Hawaiian:

“Hot fire here within

The act of love

Overpowers my body

Throbbing last night.

Two of us

Have felt the power

Calm after passion

Making love within my body . . .”

Rachel’s eyes were wide, her cheeks hot. “Auntie!”

Haleola turned to her niece. “Yes, Aouli?”

Rachel was momentarily speechless—then burst into embarrassed laughter. “You’ve never sung that one before.”

“Not to you,” Haleola said with a grin. Rachel laughed again, went to Haleola and put an arm around her.

“Who were you singing it to? Keo or Pono?”

“Both. I loved them both, so I sang it to both.” She paused, then shrugged a little apology. “I never learned a song for a daughter,” she said, “because I had none.”

She reached up with her good hand and touched Rachel’s cheek. “You have been a gift of the land to me,” she said softly. “It took me from my sons, but gave me a daughter.”

Rachel took Haleola’s frail body in her arms and said, “I love you,
makuahine,”
a word that meant both aunt and mother; and Haleola enjoyed the warmth of her Aouli’s touch for what she knew could be the last time.

She slept well that night, and the night after, and dreamt no more troubling dreams; but on the third night she was awakened by a familiar sound. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw, in a brilliant shaft of moonlight, an owl perched on the branch of the eucalyptus tree outside her window. The owl hooted again, and now she heard, as from a distance, the sound of drums and a chant. She blinked in surprise, and the owl was gone. The chant grew louder, familiar words and a familiar voice, and when she turned away from the window, there was Keo sitting at the foot of her bed.
The act of love overpowers my body,
he sang to her,
throbbing last night. Two of us have felt the power. . . .
He smiled, and beckoned her with his eyes.

She went with him.

Chapter 13

C

atherine grieved for her mother’s soul and raged against the God she was supposed to love. After confession she and Father Maxime had knelt together in prayer at the altar of St. Francis’s Church, Catherine focusing on the priest’s voice with its melodious accent, allowing no words but his to enter her thoughts. But on her return to the convent, kneeling in the sisters’ own chapel, she had no such anchor; the supplication in her whispered prayers became edged in anger and her humility before God was transfigured into contempt. She watched wax drip down the length of a candle, its flame writhing as if in torment, and only then realized the breadth of her anger, far worse than what she’d felt on the long-ago day she’d struck Rachel. It was a deep, black, bottomless rage and as she plumbed its depths it seemed to possess her: she wanted to lash out, to overturn the altar and smash the sepulcher, hurl the holy relics to the floor and watch the candles ignite the fine white linen. She wanted to destroy it as God had destroyed everything she held dear. She didn’t know which was worse, the sacrilege of the thought or the black exhilaration it brought her to think of it. With a shout of sudden contrition she leapt to her feet and ran from the chapel out of fear for what she might do.

She took refuge in her room, seeking the oblivion of sleep, but this time the angry darkness would not lift with first light. Quite uncharacteristically she stayed in bed the whole of the next day, leaving the room only to void herself or to drink from a bathroom faucet. When one of her sisters would meekly knock and inquire if she was all right, she feigned illness but doubted any of them believed it. Still, no one violated her privacy by opening the lockless door, for which she was grateful; she didn’t trust herself to contain her rage and knew that none of the others would truly understand it. More than anything she wished that Sister Victor were still here; then with an unhappy laugh realized that in a way she was.

She slept a great deal and remembered little of her dreams but for sensations of sorrow and jolting movement, and long silences that were somehow loud and frightening. By the end of the second day she tried again to pray,
Our Father who art in Heaven,
but the words made her weep and not adore, and what began as devotion turned quickly to confrontation.
Why?
she demanded of God.
Why do you make us fallible and then condemn us when we fail? Why do you punish us for being human?

The morning of her third day of seclusion she was awakened by an insistent knocking and Leopoldina’s urgent tone. “Sister? Sister, do you hear me?”

To Catherine’s surprise the doorknob turned, the door swung open. Leopoldina stood hesitantly in the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” she told Catherine. “But I have a message for you. From Rachel Kalama.”

Catherine sat up, suddenly attentive.

Leopoldina said, “Her aunt passed away last night,” and Catherine was up and out of bed before she could think about it.

R

achel woke at seven A.M., saw Haleola still in bed, and knew at once something was wrong: rarely if ever did Haleola sleep longer than she. At first Rachel thought she was sick, a recurrence of the “bug,” but when she called to her and there was not the slightest movement, Rachel knew. She rushed to her aunt’s bedside and saw her once-puffy features now strangely clear, fluids drained from diseased flesh: death’s mocking gift to the leper, an illusion of life and health when both had long fled.

Dr. Hollman, the assistant physician, concluded after a brief examination that Haleola had succumbed to a heart attack in her sleep. “A gentle death,” he consoled Rachel, who nodded mechanically, too stunned yet to weep. He asked her what kind of funeral arrangements she wanted to make, but Rachel just looked at him blankly. “I don’t know.”

“Was your aunt Catholic? Protestant?”

Rachel said softly, “She believed in the land,” and Dr. Hollman, hardly enlightened, told her he’d make arrangements for the body to be transferred to one of the settlement’s funeral societies.

“I’ll wait here for them,” she said.

“Are you certain you want to do that?”

“Yes, I am. Thank you. Would you mind telephoning the convent and telling Sister Catherine what’s happened?”

He said that he would, and reluctantly left. Rachel dragged a chair to Haleola’s bedside and contemplated the woman who had been aunt and mother to her these past fifteen years; only now did she begin to comprehend the enormity of her loss. Haleola had been Pono’s lover and Pono had embodied everything good in Rachel’s childhood. Whenever Rachel had looked at her aunt, she had seen the comforting face of family, of '
ohana
. Soon she would see that face no longer and one of the last links to her life’s happiest moments would be gone. Tears filled her eyes. She touched her aunt’s arm and was surprised at how disturbing the absence of warmth could be. She leaned over her aunt’s face, draped in sleep, Rachel’s tears trickling down Haleola’s cheek as if she too were weeping, and kissed her one last time. And as she sat there watching over her, Rachel understood what she owed her, and what remained to be done for her.

So when the men from the funeral society arrived, Rachel thanked them for coming but told them that although she would welcome their help in acquiring a casket, “I’ll be preparing my aunt’s body for burial myself.”

“You mean you—want to pick out the clothes to bury her in?”

“No, I mean I intend to prepare her body for burial myself. In the traditional manner.”

They stared at her in disbelief.

“What about the grave?” asked the first man.

“What about it?”

“Which cemetery do you want her buried in?” the second asked in exasperation.

“I have a spot picked out,” was all Rachel would say, and once they’d agreed to deliver the casket to her, she quickly ushered them out of the house.

Once alone she took a deep breath and hoped she was equal to the task she was setting for herself. She went to her aunt’s bed, pulled back the blankets. Haleola’s arms and legs were a disturbing shade of blue; rigor mortis had set in, but fortunately the body was in the extended position and not flexed to any degree. She had once watched Haleola do this, but that was long ago; she hoped her aunt would forgive her if she neglected anything.

At the Kalaupapa Store she picked out several bolts of
kapa
cloth of two different thicknesses. “Do you have any string
kapa?”
she asked. “Or, um,
hau
rope?”

The shopkeeper shook his head. “Just hemp.”

“All right, I’ll take a dozen yards of that.”

Cloth and rope slung over her shoulder, she carried her purchases back home, dropped them off, then headed for the house shared by Leilani, Emily, and Francine, who immediately offered their help. “We’ll need shovels,” Rachel told them, and Emily set about borrowing some while Leilani and Francine disseminated the sad news.

Rachel returned home and stood in the bedroom doorway a moment, overwhelmed with grief and loss and more than a little apprehension; and then she began. She unwrapped the thinnest bolt of
kapa
and slid it under Haleola’s legs; the body’s rigidity made this easier than she had expected, but she paled when she saw that the underside of her aunt’s body was covered with a purple mottling where her blood had settled in the hours after death. When Rachel touched one of these spots the pressure of her fingers dispersed the blood, causing the skin to turn white. Her hands trembled as she wrapped Haleola’s legs in one bolt of cloth, her torso in another, and her head in a third, until the entire body was bundled head to toe in a thin layer of
kapa
.

She took the heavier cloth and repeated the process, draping it over and under the body, then did it again. Uncoiling the rope, she tied a length of it around Haleola’s bundled ankles, cut it with a knife and knotted it. Soaked in sweat, Rachel wiped both tears and perspiration from her eyes, then cut several more lengths of rope. She saw to it each bundle of
kapa
was securely tied, until Haleola’s rigid body was tightly cocooned.

The casket arrived within the hour; Rachel and Leilani placed Haleola’s body inside it, and with Francine’s and Emily’s help carried it out to Haleola’s rickety old wagon. At this point Sister Catherine arrived expecting to lend comfort to a grieving Rachel—only to find her wrestling with a coffin and tossing shovels into a wagon, as if she were both mourner and mortician, griever and gravedigger.

“You can’t be serious,” Catherine said, stunned.

Rachel explained her reasons and assured her, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to do anything more than show up.”

Catherine thought about that a moment, then picked up one of the shovels and climbed into the wagon.

“Sister,” Rachel warned, “you do realize this won’t be a Christian service?”

“At the moment,” Catherine admitted, “I’m not sure I care.”

Everyone climbed into the wagon as Rachel took the reins. But instead of turning left toward the coast road and the grim necklace of cemeteries garlanding the shoreline, Rachel turned right. Catherine had assumed Haleola would be laid to rest in the graveyard reserved for Hawaiian and Buddhist burials; but as soon as Rachel turned onto Damien Road the sister knew where they were heading.

When they reached the eastern shore, Rachel brought them to a certain abandoned cottage whose disrepair brought tears to her eyes. She tied up the wagon, watered the horse from an old cistern, then began distributing shovels in a businesslike manner. Catherine took hers a little queasily but would not shirk the task. A week ago she might have quailed at it, but just now she was not nearly as concerned with propriety.

They followed Rachel into a back yard overrun with
pili
grass and lantana; Rachel hacked away at the scrub with her shovel until she was able to see the small wooden marker at the rear of the property. Rachel weeded Keo’s grave as the others cleared another plot beside it. By the time they’d finished they were soaked with perspiration—all before they’d even turned an ounce of soil.

As her shovel bit into the yielding earth Catherine’s mind began circling Death again, gazing into a black sun which seemed to pull her ever closer. She fought off its terrible gravity by concentrating on her obligation to Haleola, but even that led to thoughts better left untouched: here she was, digging a heathen grave for a woman who had been a kind of priest of a pagan religion, and yet she did not hesitate; in fact she rather relished it. Was this the act of a true bride of Christ?

Halfway through the dig a confused Brother Dutton appeared just beyond the broken stone fence bordering the property. He saw a sweaty quartet of girls and one grimy nun digging a hole six feet deep by three feet wide. With trepidation, he called out, “Sister?”

Catherine winced to herself but replied cheerily, “Mr. Dutton. Hello,” not pausing in her toil.

“And, ah, what exactly would you all be up to here?” he asked nervously.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Catherine asked. “We’re digging our way to China.”

The girls chuckled. Brother Dutton smiled wanly. No fool, he said, “This is hardly consecrated ground, Sister.”

Sister Catherine stopped digging, straightened, and looked at him. The words emerged from her mouth without any prior consultation with her brain:

“It seems to me, Mr. Dutton, that in its own way, this whole peninsula is consecrated ground.”

He considered that, and after a moment he nodded.

“I take your point, Sister.” He gave them a little salute with the fingers of one hand, then walked away.

When the grave was at last dug they stripped off their clothing—only Catherine retained her underclothes—and washed away the dirt and sweat in the ocean. But Catherine found that the sea was nowhere near as cleansing as it had been on that distant night with Sister Victor, failing utterly to purge her doubt and anger.

Shortly the mourners began arriving on horseback and in wagons. There were fewer than Rachel would have liked, a reflection not on the esteem in which Haleola had been held but on the transience of life in Kalaupapa. Haleola had outlived most of her friends and patients. They, Rachel hoped, had already gathered on the other side of life to welcome the healer who had tended them through illness, alleviated their pain, delivered their babies.

But Ambrose Hutchison was here, and a subdued and respectful George Wakina, and a dozen others who now gathered with Rachel on this side of life. Rachel, standing beside Haleola’s coffin, felt a flutter of stage fright, but in her mind’s eye she saw the words she needed to speak, like lessons on a chalkboard.

“Lawa, Pualani,
'
eia mai kou kaikamahine, Haleola,”
she intoned somberly. (Lawa, Pualani, here is your daughter, Haleola!)

Ambrose, a Catholic, was dismayed, but others recognized the ancient words and picked up the call to ancestors.
Lawa, Pualani, here is your daughter, Haleola!

“Keo, here is your beloved wife, Haleola. Pono, here is your lover. Grief for our home without our friend!”

The ritual reply echoed in the gathering dusk.
Grief for our home without our friend!

Rachel, Leilani, Francine, and Emily lifted the casket, one to each corner, and gently lowered it into the grave, the head of the coffin facing east. Rachel then stood at the foot of the grave and declared in a resonant, confident voice:
“Haleola,
'
eia no
'
oe ke hele nei!”
(Haleola, here you are departing!)

The words thundered in her chest, filling her with pride and a solemn grace.
“Aloha wale, e Haleola, kaua, auw
!”
(Boundless love, O Haleola, between us, alas!)