Moloka'i (59 page)

Rachel cried and held onto her for as long as she could. She watched as Ruth walked down the gangway and onto the dock, waved to her as the
Lurline
backed away from the pier and into the bay, and kept on watching until long after the pier had disappeared from sight and the Golden Gate was only a red gleam on the horizon.

On the return voyage Rachel had ample time to consider her future, and what shape it might take; and as she neared Hawai'i she now discovered something else that her father must have felt on his many voyages. As the green palisades with their white skirts of sand appeared in the distance, Rachel could not imagine there was any place on earth more beautiful, any sight more welcoming, than these magnificent islands. And like Henry she knew that no matter how far she might roam, she would always come back to them.

In Honolulu she gave notice to her landlord and began boxing up the belongings she had only just unpacked; and within the week was setting to sea again, this time aboard the interisland steamer
Hual
lai
. She watched O'ahu recede again into the distance, saw the angry waters of the Kaiwi Channel off the port side . . . and watched with satisfaction as they too receded from her view. The western flank of Moloka'i was visible but never close, and soon it was joined on the horizon by the tall Norfolk pines of L
na'i, and then by the terraced slopes of the West Maui Mountains.

At Lahaina Harbor, Sarah happily embraced her sister and arranged for a stevedore to load her belongings into Sarah’s old Ford. Together they wrestled the bags and boxes out of the car and into Sarah’s driveway, from which they would be unloaded, piecemeal, over several days. In celebration they dined that evening at the Midnite Inn; and then, exhausted, Rachel fell into bed by nine o’clock, her books already neatly shelved around her in the bedroom once shared by Sarah’s daughters, including Rachel’s namesake.

Sometime after midnight she woke to the touch of a gentle breeze billowing the curtains and knew at once that it was the Ulola. And blown in on the wind was a sweet floral scent unlike any she had ever known. On an impulse she pulled on a robe, slipped into a pair of shoes and out of the house—making her way
makai
down Dickensen Street, the sweet fragrance growing still stronger. Front Street was empty at this hour and now she stood alone at the sea wall, looking out at dark waters stippled by starlight. In the harbor boats slept rocking on gentle swells, waves lapping at the wharves with a rhythm like drumbeats.

Some bold, reckless voice impelled her to climb over the sea wall and down the rocky slope to the water’s edge. Maybe this was
kapu
, but she no longer cared what was
kapu
. She kicked off her shoes, cast off her robe, and as she’d done so long ago in Kapi'olani Park, waded into the water. She had not been swimming in the ocean for many years but it felt as if she had never left. Her feet were fairly useless so she relied on her hands to backstroke out some ten or twenty feet from shore. Here she bobbed and floated and laughed with delight as the swells rolled gently under her, a tender reminder from Namakaokaha'i of the way Rachel once exuberantly rode the waves. It all came back in a rush, a floodtide of exhilaration.

As she floated like a leaf on the water she looked down the coast toward Mala Wharf, and saw lights which seemed to hover along the shore before moving out to sea. Fishermen? Torch-fishing, did they still do that? Or perhaps they were the marchers of the night, even as the sweet fragrance might have been the rare bloom of the silversword her
makuahine
, Haleola, had often spoken of. She smiled: if Ruth had two mothers, so did Rachel, and they were both here with her on Maui. She drew in a breath, holding the sweet scent of the silversword in her chest as she held Haleola in her heart; weightless with joy, home at last.

Endnote

1970

T

he twin-engine Cessna was gliding low over the grassy meadows of what was still the Meyer Ranch in Kala'e when the ground abruptly fell away and the plane dove into two thousand feet of air—leaving Ruth’s stomach, she was quite certain, behind. The aircraft then banked as if its specific purpose was to exacerbate her vertigo, the view outside the windows rotating a good forty degrees; she had the sickening and unwanted epiphany that this must be what it felt like to be on the inside of a kaleidoscope.

“Mom,” came a voice next to her, “are you okay?”

Ruth glanced at Peggy and said, “I may have to throw up on you. I hope that’s all right.”

Peggy, now a willowy thirty-year-old, smiled indulgently. “Sure. Better me than a stranger.”

“That was my thought as well.”

Peggy said suddenly, “Oh my God, look!”

Ruth reluctantly followed her gaze. Despite her queasiness she couldn’t help but be impressed by the sight of the lofty green
pali
thrusting up from the peninsula below—like an enormous headstone, she thought, on a tiny grave. But a headstone thriving, oddly, with life and movement: the scudding shadows of clouds across the
pali
, waterfalls storming down clefts in its green face, even the switchback trail zigzagging down with a kind of motionless motion. It was all quite lovely, Ruth thought, but it was also making her quite nauseous.

Then the plane banked away from the cliffs and toward a tiny airport on the western shore. Now the broad plain of the peninsula loomed large in the windows, sudden blustery crosswinds adding to the thrill quotient of the ride, and when the little puddle-jumper finally touched down on the short runway Ruth exhaled in relief.

“Wow,” Peggy said, “was that a trip.”

“Yes. Stimulating,” her mother agreed. In moments the plane had taxied to a stop beside another light aircraft. The pilot opened up the cabin and the four passengers—Ruth, Peggy, and a young Caucasian couple here for a tour of the settlement—wobbled out onto the tarmac.

Inside the open-air terminal pilots chatted with one another as stray cats preened or dozed on plastic seats. A Hansen’s patient—one of two here, Ruth would learn, who operated tours of the settlement—collected the tourists, as Ruth and Peggy were approached by a smiling, fiftyish gentleman in a bright
aloha
shirt.

The face above that smile sent a little shiver of adrenaline through Ruth’s body: the man’s nose was very nearly flat, the merest of ridges; his toothy smile gave him the skeletal grin of a skull, or a jack-o’-lantern.

“Mom,” Peggy whispered.

“Quiet,” Ruth said firmly. But despite her tone she felt flustered: she didn’t want to stare, but was afraid to look away, lest he be offended by that as well.

The man said cheerfully, “Ruth Harada, right?”

He extended a hand to her. Both were gnarled and deformed, even more than her mother’s had been, but Ruth clasped the offered hand without flinching, smiled, and said only half-seriously, “Yes, how could you tell?”

“Aw, I’d know Rachel’s daughter anywhere! I’m Hokea. Your mom and me, we go way back.”

His handshake was soft and gentle, like the brushing of a leaf.

“You’re the painter,” Ruth recalled. “She spoke very highly of your work.”

He seemed pleased by that. “Good lady, your mama. Always came back to see us, at least once a year. Never forgot. Everybody’s very sorry.”

“Thank you.” Hokea’s natural ebullience was becoming more noticeable than his disfigurement. Ruth introduced Peggy, whose nervousness was hardly concealed by her smile.

Hokea took Peggy’s hand. “Ah, such a beautiful girl! Rachel always said how pretty you are, but eh, face it, what else grandmothers gonna say? ‘My daughter’s
keiki
, she sweet but ugly’?” Peggy laughed at that, and her mother could see a little of the tension leave her face. “You two want to come with me, I’ll take you into town.”

As they followed him to the parking lot he explained, “Rules say you can’t go nowhere by yourself,” then with another smile, “except maybe to the potty.”

“Now there’s a welcome exception,” Peggy laughed.

“You know we even used to have separate potties here? Not men and women—patient and
k
ok
kua
. Big signs posted everywhere. No more though. No more quarantine either.”

“Yes, we heard,” Ruth said. “Since when, last year?”

He nodded, pointing them toward a ’57 Chevy sitting alone in the lot. “Nobody ever has to come here if he don’t want to, ever again. It’s over, done,
pau.”
He spat out the word with no small satisfaction.

Ruth and Peggy got into the back seat as Hokea slipped behind the wheel. Ruth was a tad apprehensive at the thought of him driving, but his clawed hands had no difficulty operating the gearshift and he effortlessly steered the vehicle onto the narrow road to town.

As Hokea and Peggy chatted, Ruth gazed at the landscape rolling past. She had been to Maui, of course, to visit Rachel, but never to Kalaupapa, and she was surprised at how beautiful it was, how vibrant the colors: the rich green mantle of the
pali
, the black lava coastline shadowed against a tourmaline sea. She remembered Manzanar as nearly colorless: steel gray barracks and the dun of the desert sand, the frequent dust storms leeching even the sky of color. But the
pali
, though not as tall as Mount Whitney, was nearer to the village than Whitney had been to Manzanar, and loomed as an even more forbidding barrier than the wintry peaks of the Sierras.

Equally forbidding was the large number of cemeteries they passed on the way to town: a seemingly endless garden of crosses and headstones overrunning the shore. But eventually it did end, and then they were in a sleepy little village of cozy cottages sprouting TV antennas, neatly trimmed lawns, white picket fences. There were cars in every driveway, all without license plates, and people out weeding in their gardens. They passed a fire station, a general store, a gas station, even a bar. It all seemed perfectly normal.

And all at once it dawned on Ruth: I was born here. This is where I was born!

“It’s so lovely,” Peggy said softly.

Hokea nodded in agreement. “I know people on the outside, they say, ‘Times are tough.’ Hard to make a living, you know? We don’t have to worry about that here. Or about people giving us the stink-eye. Most of us, we’ve been here all our lives; this is home.” He added, “Now we only hope we get to stay.”

“What do you mean?” Ruth asked.

“I’m on the Kalaupapa Patients Council, I hear things. The legislature swears we can stay here the rest of our lives, but you can’t tell me the State of Hawai'i wouldn’t love to move us all to the hospital in Honolulu. And the minute they do, you bet your sweet behind they’ll sell alla this land to Sheraton or Hilton for a big resort. Been talk about it for years. The land’s too valuable.

“To them it’s just real estate, but to us it’s a lot more. The government forced us to come here, and now that it’s the only place we know, now that it’s home, they want us to give it up?” He shook his head. “We won’t go without a fight, though. Not this time.”

Ruth was touched by the passion in his voice, but apologetically he said, “Eh, listen to me! Running off at the mouth when you’re here to bury your mama. I’m sorry, you want me to take you to her?”

“Can we go to her house first?”

“Oh, she gave that up when she moved to Maui. Six weeks ago, when she come back to Kalaupapa, she went straight into the hospital, she was so sick. Lotta patients here die of kidney trouble, you know; the drugs we take for leprosy, they’re hard on the kidneys.”

“I know.” Ruth remembered her last conversation with her mother; with Sarah gone, Rachel wanted to spend her final days here among her Kalaupapa
'ohana
. Though Rachel had only just been to California, Ruth offered to fly her back again so she could care for her in San José; but Rachel had been adamant. This was where she wanted to be buried, and this might as well be where she died.

“I got all her stuff at my place,” Hokea said. “Except for the books, she gave those to the library here.”

Hokea’s house was impossibly, magnificently cluttered. Ruth and Peggy were astonished by the hundreds of canvases hung, stacked, and stored in every nook and corner: oils and watercolors and sketches of Kalaupapa and Kalawao, the rugged coastline, Father Damien’s church, Baldwin and Bishop Homes. “You must’ve painted every square inch of this peninsula twice over,” Ruth marveled.

Hokea chuckled. “Yeah, and I painted over plenty more ’cause I couldn’t afford new canvas.”

“Excuse me for asking,” Peggy said, “but how do you paint with your—hands like that?”

“Oh, no problem.” He reached for a device lying on a table, slipping his right hand through a metal loop that Ruth now saw was attached to a brush. “One of our people, Kenso, came up with this for forks and spoons, so if you’ve got no hands you can wrap it around your wrist and use it to eat. He made me one for my brushes.”

He slipped it off again and took them into the living room, where three large cartons were neatly stacked: “Here’s your mama’s stuff, all except the books. And her Sunday dress, she wanted to be buried in that.”

The first carton contained clothing that Ruth and Peggy decided to donate to Goodwill, with the exception of one particular dress that Ruth now set aside. In the second carton were photographs and the accumulated bric-a-brac of a lifetime, which Ruth would keep; while the third box held Rachel’s treasured doll collection. Some of them, like the Chinese mission dolls and the
sakura-ningyö
, were so tattered and worn they seemed as if they might fall apart at a glance. Others were newer: a papier-mâche folk doll from Mexico; a wooden
kokeshi
bought in Tokyo; a stuffed koala bear from Australia; and others purchased on Rachel’s various travels over the past twenty years. These would occupy places of honor in Ruth’s home as well as in Peggy’s and Donald’s . . . all but one.

Tenderly Ruth took out an old, handmade doll with cloth “skin” the color of Ruth’s own, a round face and black hair, wearing a miniature
kapa
skirt. The tiny shell
lei
around its neck had long since broken apart, but it still wore a pin where a note had once been affixed.

“Is this the one?” Peggy asked.

Ruth nodded. She turned to Hokea.

“I’m ready now,” she said.

At the funeral home, Ruth and Peggy were left alone with their mother and grandmother, laid out in her Sunday dress in a casket she had selected herself. Rachel’s face showed the scoring of time, certainly of tragedy, but also of a life well lived: of laughter and adventure as much as grief and ill fortune. Even now, in the lines around her mouth, Ruth saw the ghost of a smile haunting her mother’s face. She touched her cheek, and she and Peggy sat and visited with her again, one last time.

After Ruth finalized the funeral arrangements, Hokea took her and Peggy on a walking tour of Kalaupapa, starting with the grave of Mother Marianne near the convent where a handful of Franciscans still lived and worked. On the grass nearby Peggy was amused to see a pair of painted lava rocks. One bore a bright yellow happy-face, while its companion urged the passerby, SMILE—IT NO BROKE YOUR FACE! And automatically Ruth did smile, thinking of Manzanar and how even there children had laughed and played, people had danced and made love, babies had been conceived.

Along the way Hokea introduced everyone they happened across. Ruth and Peggy met Kenso Seki, the resourceful tinkerer who’d invented the fork-and-spoon device as well as special hooks that allowed fingerless hands to button shirts and open flip-top cans. Lively and charming, he wore clip-on sunglasses perpetually tilted up like a blackjack dealer’s visor and gave them a tour of his workshop. They stopped for soft drinks at Rea’s Store—actually more of a saloon—owned and operated by Mariano Rea, who, Hokea told them later, used his profits to fund college educations for scores of nieces, nephews, and cousins in his native Philippines.

When Hokea first entered Rea’s with Ruth and Peggy, someone cried out, “ ’Ey, Hokea! What, you robbing the cradle again?”

“Ah, piss off, same to you.” Hokea laughed, then explained to Ruth, “My last wife, she was ten years younger’n me, and nobody ever lets me forget it.”

“Hokea, how many wives have you had?”

“Only three. My first one died, second we get divorced but still friends, third left me for an older man.” He laughed again. “True story.”

Ruth smiled. Love, marriage, divorce, infidelity . . . life was the same here as anywhere else, wasn’t it? She realized now how wrong she’d been; the
pali
wasn’t a headstone and Kalaupapa wasn’t a grave. It was a community like any other, bound by ties deeper than most, and people here went to their deaths as people did anywhere: with great reluctance, dragging the messy jumble of their lives behind them.

That afternoon most of Kalaupapa’s remaining residents clustered around an open grave in the Japanese cemetery along the coast. It was a bright, clear day, the tradewinds brisk, the surf lapping up nearby Papaloa Beach, where, Ruth knew, her mother had spent many happy hours riding the waves. She would have paid good money to have seen that! A Buddhist priest chanted a
s
tra,
and toward the end of the ceremony, when the time came for eulogies, of which there were many, Ruth chose to speak last.