I was frankly horrified at the thought of living here, but I worked up my nerve and entered one of the tenements in search of a manager-who told me there were no vacancies, but directed me down the street to another building, this one no more commodious than the last. It was actually two buildings built side by side, each two stories tall, connected by a sinew of stairways and clotheslines from which were strung freshly laundered shirts, trousers, dresses, and underwear. On the walls outside each room, pots and pans hung from hooks and crude shelving held brown water jugs, iron teapots, and other utensils of daily life. Most of the residents appeared to be either Hawaiian or Chinese. Children played in the muddy midway between buildings; men sat on stools or benches outside their rooms, smoking and playing cards. A dog was curled up nearby and when it saw me it got up, barked once, then, having fulfilled its obligations, returned to its rest.
The manager, Mr. Leung, showed me to a vacant room on the second floor as the keiki laughed and chased each other up and down the creaking wooden stairs. "This one nice unit," Mr. Leung told me as he opened the lockless door. I stepped inside and tried not to show my dismay: it was tiny and narrow, like a shoebox with a window. Its only furnishings were a dining table with two chairs, a moldy old throw rug, and a bed draped with what appeared to be a horse blanket. On the far wall there was a single cupboard, but neither sink nor stove. A dry stratum of dust coated all of it.
"And where is the kitchen?" I asked.
"Out here-off verandah." Mr. Leung led me down the long balcony to a communal kitchen, its rusty, coal-burning stove smeared with a thick scum of grease. Even worse were the shared bath and toilet facilities, of which I will not speak further. (Suffice it to say that rather than immerse myself in the scabrous old tub, I would wash my face at the sink and took to using, once or twice a week, the facilities of a local Japanese public bath, which was kept much cleaner than this. A shower cost only ten cents, and once a month, for a quarter, I would treat myself to a hot bath-complete with bar of soap, towel, and a washcloth.)
The room rented for nine dollars a month. It wasn't worth even that, but I signed a lease and moved in. Little Bastard walked the length of the room, surveying it with what seemed a contemptuous sneer. I couldn't say I blamed him. I did my best to make the place livable, washing, dusting, and scrubbing everything twice over, but I could not work miracles, for which the cat never forgave me.
To be sure, these unsightly tenements were a thorn in the eye, and amazingly they stood barely a mile from stately homes on the slopes of Punchbowl Hill. I was told these slums had their beginnings in the wake of a fire that destroyed the greater part of Chinatown in 1900. Shanties and shacks sprang up beside government-built temporary housing for the displaced, but eventually that temporary housing became the very permanent slums of Kauluwela.
Now that I was situated, however grimly, I turned to the matter of employment. Esther Kahahawai suggested I apply at the Hawaiian Pineapple Company in Iwilei. Although the cannery was nearing the end of that year's "ratoon" harvest, they apparently needed a few extra workers and hired me as a "white cap"-after the white headcaps we all had to wear over our hair-and put me to work in the trimming and packing room. "Brown caps" were women who relieved white caps who had to go to the bathroom or couldn't keep up with production, and "blue caps" were the strict forewomen who oversaw the department. As on the plantation, I was issued my own bango and identification number, as well as a white gown and a pair of rubber gloves.
At the heart of each production line, in a room separated from us by a dust-proof partition, was an elaborate mechanism called a Ginaca machinea massive collection of gears, chains, turrets, and rotating knives which, when operating, looked like the machinery of Hell itself. Pineapples were pushed by a "feed chain" into the maw of a rotating "sizing" knife that removed the outer skin of the fruit with surgical precision, leaving behind a cylinder of pineapple. While a mechanism quaintly called an eradicator squeezed the juice from the discarded skin, another guided the fruit cylinders into something resembling the six-barreled chamber of a revolver. A tube then removed the core of the cylinder, which was eventually cut into doughnut-shaped slices to be canned at the rate of fifty pineapples a minute.
My job was to inspect the cylinders for quality as they rolled past me on a conveyor belt, grabbing them with my thumb in the core hole, and trimming away with a knife any rough edges or blemishes. This may sound relatively easy, but I assure you, having fifty pineapples a minute lobbed at you like mortar shells can be more than a little intimidating. I was dismayed and embarrassed when a brown cap had to step in and catch some of the blemishes and pineapple "eyes," which I had failed to trim as they rolled past me. And I was told by fellow workers that I had only three days to master the task or I would be let go.
Have I mentioned that all this took place against a background of the most ungodly noise I had ever heard? The Ginaca machines produced such a hideous clamor-together with the clatter of tin cans as they rattled along the conveyor belt-that workers and forewomen often had to communicate through a series of hand signals: "stop work," "come here," "hurry up," and so forth. The trimming room was also hot and muggy, and I quickly tired of the sickly sweet, ever-present smell of pineapple. By the end of each day my wrists throbbed, and sometimes my arms would even go numb up to the elbows. But the worst part was the acid burns I would get on my fingers from the pineapple juice, which managed to penetrate even the gloves I wore.
I was distracted and nervous at first, but as my reflexes and facility with the knife improved over the next several days, I soon fell into step with production. Most of the women on the line were also Asian and the room was filled with gossip and chatter in English, Japanese, Chinese, even Korean. They asked me where I was from, when I arrived in Hawai'i, and I answered truthfully, up to a point; then, when I reached that point, I claimed to be a widow, forced to move to Honolulu to seek work.
I was cordial with these women but did not encourage friendships outside of work. I was too wary of someone putting the lie to my story. I was far lonelier than when I had been living with May in the stockade.
And I was poorer as well: the job paid only fifty-nine cents a day, or about fifteen dollars a month. After rent, that left me with all of six dollars a month for other living expenses. Fortunately, rice sold for less than ten cents a pound, and I was able to subsist on that and canned salmon (fifteen cents each), sardines (a nickel a tin), and kimchi (the ingredients for which cost mere pennies apiece). But this left me with almost nothing left over at the end of the month. Clearly, I was not going to be adding much to Blossom's steamer fare while working at Hawaiian Pineapple.
I wrote my brother with my new address-heaven knows what he thought of all these moves, but if he suspected anything was amiss he did not embarrass me by inquiring about it. In my loneliness I became rather voluble, and found myself telling him:
Work is hard, of course, as it is everywhere ... but at least here a woman can work if she so desires. She can walk the streets without a veil, can go anywhere she wishes to go, without an escort or having to ask permission from a man. She is not condemned to live her life within the same three rooms. She is not a prisoner of tradition. It is a freedom I cannot ever imagine myself giving up.
I had never articulated this thought before, even to myself, but it was true: Now that I was here, now that I knew what it felt like to be truly free, I realized I could never go back to wearing the shackles of Confucian dictates.
I was grateful for the companionship of the Kahahawais, and often visited them after work. Joey was growing taller by the day, and the boy who had stumbled gathering kiawe beans was developing prowess as an athlete. I spent several afternoons on the athletic field at Kauluwela Grammar School, watching him play a game of softball on a team that included his schoolmates Henry Chang, "Mack" Takai, Benny Akahuelo, and Horace "Shorty" Ida-the "Kauluwela Boys," as they liked to call themselves. The first time I saw a player wielding a bat, I did wonder about
this supposed boys' game that appeared to be played with laundry implements, but I was proud of Joey as he swatted the ball over the fence and onto the grounds of the Japanese hospital next door, necessitating someone to chase it down as Joey ran the bases.
I had been working at the cannery perhaps a month when-as I entered the main building one morning along with hundreds of other workers on my shift-I first noticed a man staring at me from across the building's lobby. Like me, he was part of the work force crowding inside: he wore denim overalls over a palaka shirt, with a dungaree hat tilted back on his head, and his face beneath the brim of the hat was recognizably Korean.
I felt a stab of panic and quickly looked away, wondering whether he might be someone who had worked at Waialua Plantation and was now trying to place my face. When I dared to glance back in his direction, his figure was lost amid dozens of other men going to work, and I exhaled in relief.
A few days later, as the steam whistle signaled the end of my shift, I was disturbed to notice the same man looking at me from a closer vantage point as we left the cannery. I didn't know how long he had been gazing at me, but I was growing more certain that he recognized me. Could I have stood in line behind him at the paymaster's office at Waialua? Or passed him while shopping at Mr. Fujioka's store? Worse-could he have been one of Mr. Noh's gambling acquaintances, who now wondered what his friend's wife was doing working here?
I hurried out of the building, doing my best to melt into a mass of female white caps making their way up Iwilei Road. I didn't look back until I reached King Street, and when I did, the Korean man was thankfully nowhere to be seen.
I was terrified to go into work the next day. I even considered quitting my job before I was exposed, then chided myself for my timidity-and for what were, as yet, baseless fears-and forced myself to go back to the cannery.
That afternoon, I glanced up to see the man standing only about twenty feet away from me, at the far end of the trimming line.
I let out a startled gasp, which he could scarcely have heard over the din of the Ginaca machines. He seemed to be trying to get my attention with hand signals, as the foreladies did to make themselves "heard" above the clamor, but these were hand signals I had never learned and did not recognize. He pointed first to me, then to himself; made a kind of ladling motion with his hand; and motioned toward the exit. At a complete loss to under stand him, I told one of the brown caps I needed to go to the bathroom and, working up my courage, went up to the man and asked in Korean, "I don't know that signal, what does it mean?"
He smiled and said, "It means, `Will you have lunch with me tomorrow?' "
I was so surprised and relieved that I just laughed and told him, "Yes, certainly."
He smiled again, said he would come by tomorrow at lunch time, then bowed and left the trimming room. Not only had I not been exposed, I now had, as May had sometimes called it, a "date."
was of two minds about this, of course. I feared getting to know anyone who might uncover my secret, but at the same time I was gladdened that a man, any man, had noticed me in this way. The next day he showed up at the trimming room in his checkered shirt and dungaree hat. It may sound odd, but even though his face had for days been so prominent in my thoughts and fears, it wasn't until today that I really considered what he looked like. He was not unhandsome, with cheerful eyes that brightened his long, typically stoic Korean face, but he was much older than I. It turned out he was thirty-eight, hardly a doddering ancient-but to a girl of twenty, all I could think of just then was that he was nearly twice my age.
He bowed and formally introduced himself as Jae-sun of the Choi clan of Pusan. His given name translates into English as "prosperity and goodness," but as that is somewhat awkward, I shall refer to him hereafter by his Korean name. (The vowel ae sounds like the English a in "bat," and "sun" is pronounced somewhere between "sun" and "soon.")
I introduced myself as Jin of the Pak clan of Pojogae. "Ah," he said with a small smile, "and a gem you are, amidst all these diamonds!"
This was a reference to the diamond-shaped segment on the pineapple's skin, and it seemed amusing at the time. I laughed. And I had to admit, I was enjoying the opportunity to speak again in my native tongue.
Instead of taking me to the company cafeteria, Jae-sun picked up a large basket and a mat, and led me outside to a grassy spot near where the newly harvested pineapples were warehoused. He laid down the mat on the grass. "I beg your indulgence," he said humbly, "as it is a poor table I set before you."
The table was anything but poor. Out of this magic basket he produced a miraculous array of foods: spicy-hot eggplant kimchi; sesame balls filled with sweet red-bean paste and raisins; and naengmyeon, cold noodles with vegetables.
"This is delicious," I said between bites. "Where did you get it?"
"You are too generous. I made it myself, for better or worse."
I had never met a Korean man who could cook, much less admit to having done so. "For better, I think. You are an excellent cook."
"Being a bachelor, I am a cook out of necessity. But I do enjoy it. I used to watch my mother preparing dumplings and fire beef, and asked her to teach me how, but she told me the kitchen was not the proper realm for boys."
"In Korea, perhaps. But here you could be a chef at a restaurant."
"I have dreamed of such a thing," he admitted, "but my English is not sufficient to the task of running such a business. And most of what I know to cook is Korean-there are no such restaurants in Honolulu."
"There are many Japanese restaurants; you might get a job at one of them."
His cheerful eyes suddenly hardened. "No," he said sharply. "I will not work for the Wai barbarians who have stolen our country from us."
Startled but not shocked by his vehemence, I changed the subject and asked how long he had been working at the cannery and what it was he did. He told me he worked in the facility that ground up the pineapple shells into bran for use as cattle feed, loading twenty-pound bags of pineapple bran onto conveyor belts. He had been here for four years, having worked at Waimanalo Plantation for eight years previous to that. He was a widower, he said, though he did not elaborate.
"We are both widowed, but only one of us may marry again," I said. Widows in Korea were prohibited from remarriage; I brought this up to discourage his interest in one who was, unbeknownst to him, still a married woman.
But he just laughed at that. "In Korea it would not be seemly for a man to cook in his home-and yet are you not even now eating my kimchi and noodles?"
I had to smile and concede the point. I was impressed. Was he truly so lib eral a thinker that he would sanction a woman to marry for a second time? Or was he merely pretending to be enlightened, as my husband had appeared at first?
I enjoyed our lunch, and the next day, when Jae-sun asked me out to dinner that weekend, I found myself accepting. We ate at Hop Hing Lun's restaurant on 'A'ala Street, where I told him about my family in Korea and even about my desire for an education, which did not appear to alarm him. I did not volunteer any details of my marriage and he did not ask for them. By this time the difference in our ages no longer seemed so important, but I wondered whether it was cruel and futile to encourage his attentions when I was still legally married to Mr. Noh.
It was on a Wednesday evening in mid-January, as I pondered this question while sewing, when I heard a knock on my door. I assumed it must be either my landlord, Mr. Leung, or one of my neighbors-but when I opened the door I was staggered to see a familiar figure in white on my doorstep, a pile of luggage at her feet, and a gramophone tucked under her arm.
11 Hiya, toots!" May greeted me brightly. "Ain't this a kick in the pants?"
he barreled past me and into the room, depositing the gramophone with a thud on my wobbly table. "Boy, am I sick of lugging this goddamn thing halfway around the Pacific!" She took in my cramped, narrow quarters and blanched. "Jesus! Put a couple of handles on this place and you've got yourself a coffin." I laughed: it was true
. Suddenly an orange ball of fur propelled itself off my bed and into May's arms. "Hey, there he is!" she cried out happily. "There's my Little Bastard!" She stroked his mane and, transported with bliss, the cat climbed up her chest and wrapped himself around her neck like a stole, purring contentedly.
I asked, "Did you not go to Samoa?"
"Oh yeah, I went, all right."
"And what happened? Why are you back so soon?"
"Oh, baby, that's a long story. Listen, I'm starving. You got a kitchen in this dump?"
"Why, yes," I said airily, "it's off the verandah. "
In the communal kitchen I stir-fried some vegetables, water chestnuts, and tinned salmon while May used the facilities. She came back and announced, "No offense, kiddo, but this rattrap makes Iwilei look like 'Iolani Palace."
"It is the best I can afford at the moment."
"You find a job?"
"Yes, at the cannery. I cut out pineapple eyes."
"Smart. That way they can't see it when you slice 'em to pieces." She opened the cupboard and rummaged through it. "Any hooch in here?"
Finding the cupboard hoochless, May went out onto the balcony and called down to a small boy playing in the courtyard. "Hey, kid! I'll pay you a quarter to go down to the corner and pick me up a fifth of gin!"
She flipped him a quarter and the cost of the gin, and the boy took off like a bullet, returning in record time. We brought the food back to my room and May finally told me about her trip. "So here's the straight dope," she said around a mouthful of food. "I'd had a bellyful of `civilization' and all I wanted was that little grass shack in Samoa. Which isn't to say I didn't want to have a good time getting there, so I threw a little party in my cabin. Lasted about ten days." She hooted with glee. "That's the beauty of being aboard ship-there's no shortage of available men! I was pretty tight the whole time, and I couldn't give you their names if you put a gun to my head, but let's just say I worked my way up through the ranks. If we'd been at sea another day, hell, maybe the skipper himself might've signed on for a hitch."