Moloka'i (13 page)

“Nobody ever chokes under that tree, ever again. A week later, somebody sees a story in the Honolulu paper ’bout a lonely old woman who came home from a short trip . . . borrowed a jump rope from a little girl next door . . . and next day they find her hanging inna kitchen, and her face looks like this.”

Hazel contorted her face into a death’s-head grin, and half the girls, including Rachel, screamed—even as the other half giggled appreciatively at a fine tale well told. But before anyone could start another Sister Albina stalked in and put an end to talking story for the evening.

Rachel couldn’t sleep for fear a choking ghost might slip under her bedcovers and strangle her. She’d heard ghost stories before, but before she could always call out for Papa or Mama, and Papa would come and comfort her or Mama would walk in and snap, What silliness is this! Get to sleep or I show you something
really
scary!, and either way Rachel felt better.

But Papa wasn’t here, or Mama, and all at once Rachel felt their absence so keenly that she began to cry. She wept into her pillow to muffle her grief, but as she lay there half-sobbing, half-suffocating, she heard a whisper.

“Rachel?” Rachel turned over, found Emily standing at her bedside. “You okay?”

Rachel wiped her nose, nodded. “Guess I got scared.”

“It was just a story. You know, for fun.”

“Yeah.” Rachel looked at her a moment, then said, “How long you been at Kalaupapa?”

“Year and a half.”

“Your mama and papa, they ever come to visit you?”

To Rachel’s surprise, Emily laughed. “Who cares? Not me,” she said indifferently. “My papa, he used to hit me for every little thing. Broke my nose once, right here; see?” She pointed, went on cheerfully, “I go to Kalihi, they take care of me, nobody hits me. I come here, we get good food, the sisters look after us, the sores I get ain’t half as bad as the ones my papa’d give me. Happiest day in my life was the day I got leprosy.” She gave Rachel a sisterly pat on the arm. “See, it’s not so bad here.”

As Emily returned to her own bed, Rachel reached out and grabbed her newest doll. She hugged it close, feeling the rough
kapa
skirt against her skin like the stubble on Papa’s face when he kissed her.

T

he next day was clear and bright when Haleola and Pono arrived for a visit. Rachel was ecstatic to see them, and more than a little surprised. So was Haleola: she had half-expected to be barred from Bishop Home by Mother Marianne, but found that none of the sisters were anything but cordial to her. Perhaps they didn’t know that Haleola was such a promiscuous siren, and a
kahuna
to boot!

Pono drew Rachel into a croquet game on the lawn with the other girls, but he put a bit too much elbow into his first swing and sent the ball hurtling through space and off the convent grounds. The girls cheered as it disappeared from view and Sister Leopoldina had to go chase it down. Haleola thought this a dull and somewhat pointless game, even for
haoles,
but she dutifully knocked the ball through the wire hoops. Rachel’s team might have won had it not been for Pono, who, having gotten rousing cheers and laughter on his first try, couldn’t resist getting more: this time the ball went crashing into the side of the convent, narrowly missing both a window and Sister Leopoldina. Haleola snatched the mallet away from him. “The object of this game,” she snapped in whispered Hawaiian, “is not the killing of luckless nuns.”

The afternoon went by pleasantly enough, though Rachel cried again when her uncle and his friend had to leave. Back in Kalawao, Haleola helped Pono compose a letter to the Board of Health requesting that Rachel be allowed to live with him, as well as a letter to Henry Kalama suggesting that he write the Board as well. Although the letters would go out on the next steamer, it might be weeks before any response came from Honolulu. In the meantime she and Pono tried to visit Rachel as often as they could, always under the watchful gaze of one of the sisters.

The day the steamer left with his letters, Pono was complaining of a heaviness in his limbs common to many leprosy sufferers; Haleola made an herb tea to bolster his strength and they agreed she should go alone to Bishop Home that day. There she found Rachel and a dozen other girls about to leave for the beach—one of many excursions the sisters organized to relieve the tedium of life at Kalaupapa. It was being led by Sister Catherine, who saw the crestfallen expression on Haleola’s face and invited her to join them: “I could use another eye or two on this group.” Sister Victor was to have assisted her but was in one of her “moods,” as Mother called them, stubbornly refusing to leave the confines of her room.

Catherine took them up the coast to Papaloa, a sandy fringe of beach bordering the settlement’s many cemeteries. Some girls wore flannel bathing suits with skirts and pantalettes; most merely stripped down to their underclothes. They danced around lapping waves, built sandcastles on the beach, or body-surfed the waves. Even Rachel was enjoying herself; Catherine clearly saw that the only moments the girl seemed at all content were those spent in Haleola’s or Pono’s presence. Rachel triumphantly rode a big swell, waving to Haleola, only to be dumped moments later into the churning surf—but wasn’t under long before popping out again, wet sand matting her hair.

Catherine loved the ocean too; the girl called Ruth would have liked nothing more than to join them. Her habit couldn’t have been any more cumbersome than those bathing suits! But of course it was out of the question and she had to be satisfied to watch—just as well, since she could be more vigilant out of the water than in it.

A terrifying thought came to her, then: what if one of the girls got into trouble? A muscle cramp, an undertow? Then she
would
have to go in after them. What if she couldn’t save them because she was flopping around in a sodden habit? Suddenly she no longer took delight in the girls’ play; she wanted them all out of there, now, this instant!

Haleola read the panic in her eyes and said, “Don’t worry.
Keiki
here learn to swim before they walk.”

Catherine blinked in surprise. “Am I so transparent?”

“Clear as water,” Haleola said, and her smile made Catherine smile as well.

“Well,” Catherine sighed, “at least it’s safer than croquet.” This brought a hearty laugh from Haleola.

“I understand you knew Father Damien,” Catherine said, and Haleola nodded. “What was he like?”

Haleola thought about that a moment, then replied, “Very . . . stubborn.” Catherine laughed at this. “It’s true, he was the first to admit it. He’d say, ‘Oh, I’m just a stubborn Belgian,’ when he was fighting with the Board of Health or his superiors in the church—trying to get lumber to build new houses, or more taro, or medicine.” Haleola paused. “Kamiano, he did great good for the people here,” she said at last. “No one can dispute that. He was a good man, a kind man.

“But you know, so was my husband Keo. So were hundreds of other men who lived and died here. Yet sometimes it seems the world is more moved by the death of one white priest than by the passing of hundreds, thousands, of Hawaiians. Everyone knows Damien’s name now, but will anyone remember these girls, other than you and me?”

Catherine watched ten-year-old Lucy race past and into the sea, the water hiking up her baggy pantalettes to reveal legs riddled with sores. Rachel got dunked by another wave but quickly surfaced again, a beard of sand stubbling her chin.

“If only the sea could just . . . wash it all away,” Catherine thought aloud.

Rachel ran back into the surf, paddling out to the first set of breakers.

“It does,” Haleola said. “For a while.”

After half an hour, a waterlogged Rachel returned to shore where Haleola agreed to help her make a sandcastle. Looking for just the right real estate on which to build, Rachel’s eyes popped at something she saw.

“What’s that?” she cried out, running on ahead. When Haleola caught up, Rachel was already poring over the odd assortment of stones she’d found: some long and flat, some thick and squat, none more than six inches high, arranged in a kind of diamond pattern. Even Rachel could see that their shapes were not natural, that people had chipped away at them to create miniature bricks, slabs, pillars.

“Ah,” Haleola said, “it’s a
heiau
. A shrine.” Rachel still looked puzzled. “A holy thing, like an altar in a church. People prayed here.”

“What’s it doing by the ocean?”

“Fishermen built it here to pay respect to the gods of the ocean. Ku'ula was the greatest, he had dominion over all the gods of the sea.”

Rachel frowned. “Mama says there’s only one God.”

Haleola sat down beside the ruins of the tiny shrine and smiled. “Well, maybe now there is. But not so long ago, people here prayed to lots of gods. There was a god of the sea; a god of mountains; a god of mists, and rain, and wind. There were even gods for things that you couldn’t see: a god of healing, a god of sleep.”

“Why so many?”

“Well, each was responsible for different things. For instance, La'ama'oma'o was a goddess of winds and storms. If a fisherman was going out on a cloudy day, he might pray to her to grant him safe passage around a storm. If he needed to feed his family he’d pray to Hinahele or to Ku'ula to put many fish in his net that day.

“There’s a story about Ku'ula,” Haleola said, “from my home, Maui. It was said that from time to time a god would assume human form and live among us here on earth. One of these was Ku'ula, who a long time ago lived on East Maui, where he was caretaker of a fishpond.”

Rachel said, “I saw fishponds in Waikiki!”

“Ah, good. So you’re an expert. Well, Ku'ula, he was the best fisherman in all the islands. His pond was always full of fish; his village never went hungry.

“But some people can’t stand anyone having something they don’t, and one of these was a chief named Keko'ona—who lived right here on Moloka'i. This chief was a man of great power, and his body could take on many shapes. One of these was that of an eel—
three hundred feet
long!”

Rachel’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“He was horrible to see,” Haleola said. “A huge black body speckled with white—a mouth as big as your head, with teeth like a saw blade! He swam across the channel between Moloka'i and Maui, his tail whipping from side to side with such ferocity he sent waves crashing to shore—swamping beaches, overturning canoes, drowning men, women, children!

“Finally he reached Ku'ula’s pond, which teemed with fish. The giant eel wriggled through a narrow inlet into the fishpond, opened his huge mouth, and greedily ate everything in his path. In less than half an hour he’d eaten
every
fish in the pond!

“He was very pleased with the evil he’d done, and it tasted good too, but when he tried to leave the pond . . . well, can you imagine what happened?” Rachel shook her head. “He’d eaten so much that he could no longer get through the inlet and back to the ocean!

“He tried to hide in a deep hole, but Ku'ula baited a huge hook with roasted coconut meat—so delicious he knew the greedy eel wouldn’t be able to resist taking it. Keko'ona’s jaw clamped down on the coconut meat and the hook tore a bloody hole through his lip. He thrashed helplessly, trying to throw off the hook . . . but the hook was attached to two strong ropes and at last the eel was dragged to shore. And before it could change shape, Ku'ula smashed a rock into its head, shattering its jaw!”

Breathlessly, Rachel asked, “Did he kill it?”

“Yes he did. Ku'ula’s people gutted and ate the eel; the only things left were the shattered bones of its jaw. Ku'ula turned the jaw to stone, and you can still see it today near the shore, the great mouth with its jaw gaping open, forever hungry.

“And that, little Aouli, is why Ku'ula was the god of all the fish in the sea and why men prayed to him.”

Rachel was duly impressed, and after they had completed their sandcastle she returned to the ocean, though not to body-surf. Now she lay face down on the water’s surface, drifting on the currents, floating like a mist above a silent forest of coral; and whenever she saw the shadow of a crevice in the coral she would poke a piece of driftwood into it like a spearfisher going for her prey. The first, second, and third pokes met with no resistance; but on the fourth try something gray and fast erupted from the hole, water churned and teeth flashed, and Rachel swam for shore faster than she ever swam in her life, propelled by equal parts fear and excitement, terror and delight.

S

he returned to Bishop Home to find an envelope bearing three letters, fresh off the latest steamer.

Dear Rachel,

Mama said I should write and tell you how sorry I am for what I did and how I didn’t mean it. I cried so much the day you left. Everybody looks at me in school and nobody wants to eat with me. Becky Thornberry said mean things to me and I hit her and she started screaming because I touched her and they sent us both home for the day. I hate it here now, we may go to a different school next year. Well that’s all, I hope you are O.K.

Your sister,

Sarah

The other two were both penned in Mama’s careful, missionary-taught cursive:

Dearest Rachel,

Mama misses you so much, she thinks about you all the time. James and Ben miss you too, they send you their love. I know Uncle Pono is taking good care of you so I don’t worry. Remember to say your prayers at night and put all your love and trust in the Lord God Jehovah, He will put all things to right.

Love, Mama