Moloka'i

  Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!—

  He marks the sisters on the painful shores,

  And even a fool is silent and adores.

  “When we first saw this,” Leopoldina told her, “I said to Mother, ‘Why, it’s beautiful! It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ ”

  “But Mother looked uncomfortable; embarrassed. ‘Yes, of course, it is,’ she replied. ‘But . . . ’

  “ ‘But what?’ I said. ‘Isn’t it flattering?’ ”

  “ ‘Mr. Stevenson is a dear man,’ Mother finally said, ‘but we’re not the ones to be flattered.’ And she bid me to look out on the lawn at the leper girls who were running on lame feet, playing croquet with crippled hands.

  “ ‘There is beauty,’ she said, ‘in the least beautiful of things.’ ”

  T

  he girls’ dormitories, Rachel was aggrieved to discover, were not bleak prison cells but clean, cheerful bungalows providing shelter—or as Mother Marianne would have had it, sanctuary—for some eighty girls and women. The walls were whitewashed and hung with dozens of pictures in a variety of frames, the beds neatly made with frilly comforters; at the head of each bed were private altars of cards, letters, photographs, dolls. Rachel immediately became the center of attention among her new roommates.

  “Hi, I’m Emily, who are you?”

  “You’re Rachel, right? You kick pretty good.”

  “That’s my bed, you can’t have it.”

  “Wanna play marbles?”

  “What toys do you have?”

  Rachel stubbornly resisted all attempts to get her to play, or anything else that might contradict her single-minded dislike of this place. Sister Catherine issued Rachel a wine-colored uniform and assigned her a bed; Rachel refused to put on the uniform and only grudgingly accepted the bed when the groundskeeper, Mr. Kiyoji, came in with her steamer trunk and needed someplace to put it.

  Emily, half-Chinese and half-Hawaiian with a long cascade of black hair down her back, bounced gregariously onto Rachel’s bed. “So where you from?”

  Rachel grudgingly admitted she was from Honolulu.

  “Ooh, big city girl! I’m from Kapa'a. On Kaua'i.”

  There were only two girls who hadn’t approached Rachel, both bedridden and asleep on the other side of the room, and now her curiosity got the better of her anger. “Are those two real sick?” she asked Emily.

  Emily gave them a sad glance. “Yeah. That’s Josephina. And Violet.” She added in a low tone, “They won’t be here much longer.”

  Rachel wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that and didn’t inquire further for fear Emily would tell her.

  One of the sisters now entered the room and announced that it was time for class; a collective groan went up as the girls assembled in a ragged line for school.

  Class was held only three hours each day. The books were old and had DISCARD stamped in red ink on the inside front cover; the crayons were neither as plentiful nor as colorful as those provided at Fort Street School; and the classroom lacked even a globe of the world! After school came lunch, and after lunch there were chores to be done—sewing, washing dishes, mopping floors. This did nothing to endear Bishop Home to Rachel. After chores the girls were allowed to play, but because of the worsening storm they had to do so inside. Rachel used the time to unpack. Her roommates, all enthusiastic collectors of dolls, gathered round to admire hers. Rachel reluctantly accepted their compliments and let them examine her kabuki dancer and Mission dolls and matryoshka.

  By the time the girls finished dinner, the storm had become quite frightful: the wind howled around their dormitory, uprooting shrubs and snapping off tree branches, which then slammed into the side of the cottage so loudly that Rachel jumped and screamed.

  “It’s okay,” one girl assured her, “it’s just the devil-winds.”

  “ ‘Devil-winds’?” Rachel repeated, eyes wide.

  “Ah, they just call ’em that ’cause they’re so nasty,” Emily said. “Come in alla way from the Pelekunu Valley.”

  “Last year a devil-wind ripped a porch roof clean off!” someone else added gleefully. The walls of the cottage groaned under the howling onslaught of wind. The constant howl, the alarming sound of branches snapping in two like breaking bones, terrified Rachel.

  Then to make matters worse, after lights were snuffed out for the night her roommates decided that this was the perfect time to tell ghost stories in the dark.

  “There’s a hala tree in Kamalo,” a girl named Hazel intoned with the requisite quiet dread, “and a long time ago, two keiki, boy and a girl, used to play under it, and talk about how they were gonna get married when they were older. ’Cause they loved each other very much, you know?

  “But then the girl’s family had to move—on account of their taro farm was flooded and no good—to O'ahu, where her papa could get work. Well, she tells her boyfriend and he’s real sad. After she leaves Moloka'i, he cries, night after night, to think he’ll never see her again . . . and late one night, while everybody’s asleep, he takes his sister’s jump rope and he brings it to the old tree, ties one end around his neck and the other to a branch—and—”

  She made an upward yanking motion with her fist that made Rachel jump, then opened her hand and slowly moved it back and forth, miming the swing of the boy’s body.

  “After that, whenever anyone plays under that tree . . . they start choking. They grab themselves, like this”—her hands closed around her own throat—“and they fall to the ground, like something’s strangling ’em!

  “Soon as they’re taken out from under the tree—they stop choking. They’re fine, like nothing ever happened. Pretty soon no one goes near the hala tree ’cause they know about the choking ghost, ’ey? Except . . .

  “Years later, a lady comes to Kamalo. Says she grew up there; says she’s looking for a boy she used to know. Lonely lady. Never married. Somebody tells her, ‘The boy you seek is under the hala tree at the edge of town.’ The people who tell her, they follow to make sure she’s okay, to pull her away if she starts choking. But she sits down under the tree, leans up against the trunk, closes her eyes. No choking, no strangling. The people see a smile come onto her face, and they hear her say, ‘Oh. Oh, how I’ve missed you!’ And then nothing else for maybe ten minutes. Then she opens her eyes, gets up, and leaves.

  “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 u
sed 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.”