The Aloha Spirit

by Linda Ulleseit

  The sun stung her neck and arms, but a nice breeze softened the heat. Palms and banana trees lined the road, and puffy white clouds rolled by overhead. More than half the houses had cars in their carports. Dolores recognized the clusters of plantation cottages they passed by the flowers and foliage in their yards. The Puerto Ricans had coffee and pigeon peas, and the Chinese had lychee. The Portuguese grew grapes along wooden fences, and the Filipinos had the malunggay. Hawaiians, like Noelani and Kanoa, didn’t have their own camp but lived among the others identified by lucky ti plants to protect against obake. Dolores shook her head, unwilling to think about ghosts on her way to church.

  As soon as they could, the girls caught the streetcar to Beretania Street. Dolores dug deep into her pocket and found a nickel to pay her own fare. Maria chose a seat, and Dolores slid in next to her. The streetcar lurched forward, bell clanging.

  “I haven’t seen you at Our Lady before,” Maria said.

  “I used to go to the early Mass with my father and brother.”

  “Don’t tell Noelani there’s an earlier Mass. She’ll make us go to that one and start our chores earlier.”

  Dolores groaned. “Chores? On Sunday? What happened to a day of rest?”

  “Dust and dirt have no respect for God. Noelani isn’t Catholic. She believes we find aloha in hard work, and aloha is her concept of holiness.”

  “She must think I’m a saint,” Dolores muttered. Maria laughed.

  They chatted like old friends as the streetcar left the O‘ahu Sugar Plantation camps. With Diamond Head at their backs, the car rattled down its tracks toward downtown Honolulu and Our Lady of Peace, the oldest Catholic church in the islands. Dolores wondered if she would feel embraced or abandoned in the familiar church—she’d never been there without Papa and Paul.

  They left the streetcar at the corner near downtown and walked the short block to the church. Dolores’s spirits lifted as she sighted the church’s concrete bell tower. They walked through the main doors on the long side of the building and arrived behind rows of pews that mirrored similar rows across the center aisle of the church. The polished wooden pews sat under the floor of the balcony. If she stepped into the center of the church, the soaring curves of the ceiling would lift her soul to heaven. She took a few steps in that direction, already anticipating the comfort of Jesus on the cross above the altar, but Maria tugged at her arm.

  “This way,” she hissed. Dolores followed her to the far end of the church.

  The seat Maria chose was so far from the altar they might as well have been on the beach. From here the priest was an ant. The joy of Mass dulled by distance. In front of Dolores, a fussy child cried as soon as the first prayers began.

  A soldier sat in front of Maria and turned to smile. Maria giggled. Giggled. In church. Dolores stared at him with eyes wide. His army uniform made him look serious and important, his blond hair slicked back shiny smooth. Blond hair was odd on the island—even haoles seemed to have brown. The soldier’s hat lay beside him on the pew, as if distancing him from the baby. Dolores gave him a sympathetic smile. He smiled back, big and warm, and Maria pinched her.

  “Stop flirting, Dolores!” she whispered. Her smile focused on him and twisted around her words.

  Her words astonished Dolores. She couldn’t imagine why she would flirt—she had no interest in boys. They were dirty and noisy. The boys at Noelani’s showed that, the younger ones always muddy and the older ones always arguing. Maria smiled and batted her eyelashes. She lowered her head and looked at him sideways from under her hat brim. Maria’s giggles and smiles made Dolores realize why the older girl had chosen this pew. She sat here every week, and it had nothing to do with Mass.

  During the next hour, the distractions were louder than the priest. Dolores missed the low rumble of Papa’s murmured prayers. She tried to find the soothing spirit that reassured her Mama was watching, but she failed. Dolores gave up on squinting to see the priest and watched Maria make a fool of herself.

  When the service ended, the two girls left the sanctuary. Maria looked for the soldier. “Isn’t he really old?” Dolores asked, a little sharply.

  Maria laughed. “Maybe for a seven-year-old, but not for me. I’m seventeen, after all. Peter is a member of the army band. He’s very handsome, and he’s nice.”

  Maria pulled her arm, maneuvered them toward the man; then she acted surprised he was there. Dolores shook her head in consternation.

  “Peter, let me introduce my younger hānai sister,” Maria said. She leaned close as if the crowd were pushing her toward him. “This is Dolores.” Maria put her arm around Dolores as if she were her sister. Dolores smiled at him.

  “Hello, Dolores,” Peter said kindly. “Where did you come from?”

  “Pleased to meet you, Peter. I’m living with Maria’s family until my father returns for me from the mainland.” She said the words aloud for the first time. She hoped Peter couldn’t hear the longing in them. Papa would return for her. She knew it in her heart, even if her brain sometimes doubted.

  “Pleased to meet you, too, little miss,” he said with a grin.

  Maria’s hand clenched Dolores’s shoulder until she winced. “Dolores, have you ever had an ice cream soda at Benson-Smith’s?”

  Of course not. She shook her head and clasped her lips tight to keep in the sharp words.

  “Come on along, then,” Peter said.

  It had been much too early for ice cream after the Mass Dolores attended with Papa. Papa had deprived her and Paul of a special memory. She shook her head. Papa never had the money for ice cream. Nonetheless, it would have been a nice treat and a wonderful family memory.

  Maria stepped up next to Peter, and Dolores walked on her other side. Many of the parishioners from Our Lady of Peace were strolling in the same direction. Others veered off toward Chinatown or headed back up the hill to Punch Bowl. The three of them walked makai, toward the ocean. Above and behind the Fort Street shops, Dolores could see the swaying coconut palms that lined Kalakaua Avenue as it snaked along Waikiki Beach past the tourists who were breakfasting at the Moana Hotel.

  The clerk at Benson-Smith’s cash register smiled as they entered. Dolores scanned the floor-to-ceiling shelves that contained all manner of candy, perfume, and toiletries. A soda fountain ran the length of the store. Soda jerks in white uniforms with white caps stood behind a gleaming stainless-steel counter whose stools already contained a cross section of Honolulu’s population. Two large native men spooned ice cream sundaes into their mouths and laughed at a joke told in Hawaiian. At the other end of the counter, a Chinese couple with their small son sipped root beer floats. The couple sat straight as surfboards and looked much too rigid and ceremonious to be in this place. Their son had probably begged for the treat this morning.

  Peter selected a stool midway down the counter, and Maria sat next to him. Dolores scrambled up next to Maria, who dug Noelani’s coins from her pocket.

  Peter saw her with the coins and said, “Oh, no, let me pay for all of us to celebrate Dolores’s first visit to Benson-Smith.”

  Maria giggled, hid her mouth with her hands, and gasped her thanks. Dolores looked directly at Peter. “Mahalo,” she told him.

  “Are you from the islands?” he asked.

  “I was born on Kaua‘i, but we moved here when I was young.”

  “Like she isn’t young now?” Maria said, patting Dolores’s head as she might a puppy.

  Dolores sipped her ice cream soda in silent delight.

  “Dolores, do your parents go to the earlier Mass? Why don’t you attend with your mother while your father is on the mainland?” Peter asked.

  Dolores looked at Maria in confusion. She’d introduced Dolores as her hānai sister. Didn’t Peter know what that meant? “My mother died when I was a baby. My father left me to go to the mainland to find work.” She tried to keep her voice even, but a traitorous quaver snuck in at the end.

  “I’m sorry for asking. I should have realized.�
� He looked at Maria and grimaced.

  “It’s all right,” Maria told him. “I’m sure her first ice cream soda makes up for it.”

  They laughed and sipped their drinks, but Dolores didn’t share their amusement. An ice cream soda could never replace her father.

  When all three glasses were empty, Peter stood up. “I’d better take my leave, ladies. Dolores, I enjoyed meeting you. Maybe you’ll join us next week, too?”

  “I’d like that,” she assured him. Looking at Peter made her smile.

  “We need to go, too,” Maria said. “Keep aloha in your heart, Peter.” She stood up and brushed off her skirt.

  They followed Peter out of the store. He waved good-bye and walked back up Fort Street toward the church. Across the street, Culman’s curio shop remained closed like all the Fort Street shops on Sunday. Dolores would have liked to buy a picture postcard there to send to Papa. Maybe Noelani would allow her time to do that during the week if she worked hard.

  The girls caught the streetcar and headed back down Beretania toward Diamond Head. Dolores sat back and relaxed, full of ice cream and holiness. Outside the streetcar, Honolulu lazed in the spectacular Sunday sun. A white bird sang from a clump of bamboo, and colorful parakeets flew among the treetops. People in summer dresses and suits walked along the street. No one hurried. Maria, too, seemed content to sit quietly.

  Back at Noelani’s, the whirl of activity engulfed them as she prepared a gargantuan feast. Dolores mashed taro roots with a stone pestle to make enough poi for the entire United States Navy. At least with laundry, both arms hurt evenly, she thought as she shook out her poor right arm. Maria shredded the kālua pork, and the little girls attempted to set the table. It surprised Dolores when the door opened and large Hawaiian men and women filled the room. They called greetings in pidgin, Hawaiian, and English and put piled-high plates of food on the table. Everyone talked at once.

  “How many people are coming?” Dolores asked Maria.

  “Sunday dinners are a big thing,” she said.

  “Aren’t the twelve of us enough?”

  Noelani heard them. “Everyone be ‘ohana,” she said. “It nevah hard work when it for ‘ohana.”

  Dolores disagreed. Everything near Noelani was hard work. And everyone was a stranger.

  “What wrong, haole?”

  She never could hide what she was thinking.

  “People no be perfect,” Noelani admonished her with a fierce scowl. “They make the mistakes and have spats, but ‘ohana embrace them. It be aloha spirit, muse of the islands. The work of our hands is offering, ya?” She waved a hand off into the distance as if she were performing.

  Dolores shook her head, too tired to deal with this raw new family. She spent her weekdays drowned in laundry; now her Sundays would be drowned in poi. Dolores couldn’t feel any aloha spirit. “If you say so.” The words came out snippy, even to her ears, and she cringed. Noelani’s eyes darkened, and her lips clenched into a line, but she said nothing.

  When the extra people began to leave in ones and twos, Dolores turned her back on the sink full of dishes. “I’ll be outside,” she said. Maria, her arms sudsy to the elbows, shook her head. Noelani, with the dishcloth in her hands for drying, clenched her lips again. Dolores turned away before they could see the tears welling in her own eyes. She was so tired, so sore and tired. It wasn’t possible for her to work one more minute. In the yard, a group of young men stood and talked. All the women sat on the lana‘i and talked story. For some reason, they didn’t have to work themselves to death like Noelani. Dolores leaned against the lana‘i pole and absently twisted the bougainvillea until the brilliant pink flower came off in her hand. As the bustle in the kitchen ebbed, Dolores collapsed on the lana‘i steps.

  Kaipo came to find her. “You need to learn to be part of us,” he said. He stood above her and leaned against the lana‘i pole she’d held up earlier.

  “What do you mean?” Dolores didn’t even look up at him.

  His neutral tone sharpened. “When you give Mama attitude, she takes it out on all of us. She ordered Kali and Meli to bed early.”

  Dolores couldn’t help it. She snorted a laugh before she could stifle it. “How did Leia escape their fate?”

  Kaipo’s eyes darkened. “Those little girls did nothing to you, yet your behavior got them punished.”

  “I did nothing.”

  “You made Mama angry with your scowls, and you embarrassed her in front of ‘ohana when you refused to do your chores. She always responds by punishing everyone. That’s not fair.”

  “Nothing’s fair.” It seemed odd for him to warn her about getting the hānai children punished. He and Leia could do no wrong in Noelani’s eyes. How fair was that?

  “Your life will be miserable if you continue,” Kaipo said. “Mama will punish you, the keiki will hate you, and the rest of us will ignore you. Mama’s Hawaiian roots are the most important thing to her. The food, the music, the ‘ohana—it’s all part of a way of life that is being swallowed by haole sugar planters. She works hard to hold on.”

  “What about Kanoa? Does he feel the same?” she asked.

  Kaipo hesitated. “The lunas in the fields beat down the men who work for someone else’s wealth.”

  “Not too enjoyable,” she said, meaning to convey empathy.

  He bristled. “Let me give you some advice. If you want any chance to enjoy your life, you won’t alienate all of us.” He didn’t wait for her response and slammed the screen as he went into the house.

  Still confused about the seriousness of her transgression, Dolores turned away and looked makai, toward the unseen sea, out over the street, over the houses and foliage of the plantation camps. Across that sea, the man who’d always treated her well was trying to start a new life. She must not think of him anymore. She must focus on her own new life.

  Standing, Dolores brushed her skirt with her hands and headed to bed. The little girls were already asleep, dried tears on Meli’s face. Dolores felt a pang of guilt that something she had done might have caused those tears. As she parted the mosquito netting and eased her aching body into bed, Maria lifted her head off the pillow. “This was a long day, going from church to family dinner. Tomorrow, though, you have school.”

  “You don’t?”

  She shook her head. “Noelani doesn’t believe in high school. I stopped going when I was in sixth grade. A lot of island kids do.”

  That meant Dolores had five more years of daily reprieve. Five more years to learn something that would make her useful to someone other than Noelani. To Papa. She would work hard to feel the aloha spirit until she could make a better way for herself.

  FOUR

  School 1922

  Dolores returned to Waikiki Elementary School feeling like a very different girl than the one who had completed first grade there. As she walked to school with Makaha and Polunu, she tried to lag behind, to distance herself from them, but Makaha seemed to know what she was doing. “Come on, little sis, catch up,” he said, waiting for her with a wicked grin.

  Polunu pulled from his pocket a grubby piece of sugar cane, about four inches long and almost an inch in diameter. He waved it in the air as if herding her with it. When she scowled at him, he gnawed on the cane, sucking sweet juice from the pulp before spitting it on the ground.

  As they neared the playground, Dolores spotted her friends, Rose and Kimiko. Rose had a new dress, stiffly starched, and a matching ribbon in her straight brown hair. Kimiko always reminded Dolores of a doll because she was so dainty. They waited for Dolores as usual. Now the world felt normal. She would spend schooldays with her friends just like she always had. She waved to them with her whole arm. Polunu and Makaha drifted away to find their own friends, or trouble, whichever came first.

  “Where were you all summer, Dolores?” Rose asked as she approached. Without waiting for an answer, she continued, “We went to the zoo in Kapi‘olani Park. They have a new monkey!”

  “Really?” squeal
ed Kimiko. “The old one was nasty. He threw things at the people.”

  “Have you been to the zoo yet?” Rose asked.

  The words washed over Dolores as if foreign, from a strange world she no longer knew. She shook her head, overcome with emotion. Her life had changed so much, so very much. If her friends invited her to the zoo today after school, even if Noelani allowed it, Dolores knew she’d be so exhausted she wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.

  “Dolores? You all right?” Kimiko said.

  She opened her mouth to reassure her friends, but before she could speak, a shout drew the attention of every student within range. Makaha stood on a bench. “Just wanted everyone to know Dolores is now my sister! Welcome to my ‘ohana, Dolores!” He laughed. Polunu and his friends laughed along with Makaha as they always did.

  Dread shrouded Dolores as she watched horror spread over Rose and Kimiko’s faces. She swallowed hard and tried not to curse in her head at the boys.

  “Dolores?” Rose was already recoiling but gave Dolores one last opportunity. Kimiko tuned away.

  “I’m living with their family now,” Dolores admitted in a whisper.

  “But why?” Kimiko asked.

  Dolores didn’t know what to say. Because her father had left her? She shook her head and tried to laugh. It sounded like she was being strangled.

  Rose said, “Those two are trouble. My parents will never let me come visit you there.”

  She backed away as she spoke and turned to join Kimiko. They walked to the farthest corner of the yard and looked over their shoulders at Dolores every few feet.

  Dolores stood alone on a playground filled with chattering children. Noelani believed working hard would give her the aloha spirit, the feeling of love for all, but when Rose and Kimiko left Dolores alone, no chores could have cheered her.