Paradise, Passion, Murder

by Terry Ambrose

  “You hit him in the face,” his mom screamed. “How many times did I tell you not to hit them on their faces? And they’re bleeding. For God’s sake, stop before you kill them.”

  His dad spun around, his face black with rage. “Keep out of it. These damn no-good, spoiled rotten kids drive me crazy.”

  “No, you stop.” She shielded her sons with her body.

  “Get away.” His dad stepped toward her.

  His mom stretched her arms across her sons, who cowered behind her. “What’s wrong with you, Bobby? How can you do this to your own kids?”

  “You always put them first. Not me.” He raised his belt and whipped her across the legs.

  Danny sobbed, “Mom, Mom go away. Please. Don’t help us.”

  Tommy darted out from behind her and grabbed the phone. “I’m going call the cops.” He picked up the phone book to look up the number and started dialing.

  Their dad dropped his belt. He marched up to Tommy and snatched the phone book as well as the phone from his hands. Throwing the book against the wall, he bashed the phone into its cradle. Without another word, he left the apartment, slamming the door so hard a figurine on a nearby table crashed to the ground.

  In time, his meek mother avoided his father’s tyranny by disappearing into herself. By the time Danny entered ninth grade, her paranoia had turned into full-blown psychosis.

  “Your mom is a nutcase,” their dad scoffed between chugs of beer. “Look at her, talking to herself and wearing the same thing every day. Hey dummy, that housedress and robe pilau by now. And look at your hair. Why I wen marry a pupule, ugly cow like you?”

  Danny’s mother acted as if she were deaf and dumb, ignoring her husband as she shuffled around the house in her furry house slippers and pink bathrobe, which covered the faded blue flowered housedress she always wore. Her only reaction was to clutch the top of her robe together.

  “Why you no get one job? Five jobs in one year prove you pupule.” His dad pushed back his chair and went up to his wife. He raised his fist. She cowered, but remained silent. He dropped his fist and exhaled in disgust. “No sense.” He returned to his chair muttering. “I tell you, she good fo’ nothing. A chain around my neck.”

  Danny’s mother scurried back to the kitchen to prepare dinner. Somehow, despite disappearing into her own private world, she managed to cook, clean the house, and go to the market. She ceased talking to anyone but herself. Beating her became a non-event to Danny’s father. Instead, he unleashed his anger on Danny and Jolene, but he left Tommy alone.

  Tommy was as big as their father at fifteen—stronger and tougher too. Considered the bull of the school even as a sophomore, no one dared mess with Tommy. Having Tommy as a brother during intermediate school protected Danny from getting into trouble. Wannabe bulls prowled the schoolyard looking for guys smaller and weaker just to beat them up so they could get a rep as a tough guy. But because of Tommy, they left Danny alone.

  “No worry. High school different,” Tommy told him. “The guys who always like fight play football instead. Defense.” Tommy winked. “They mo’ interested in hitting than getting hit.”

  The only time Danny felt at peace was when he was either in St. Patrick’s church or at St. Louis, the Catholic boys’ school he attended. He was grateful to the Catholic Church as they saved him from growing up bitter and angry. The Roman Catholic order of the Marianists plucked both his brother and him from public school and took them into their fold. Tommy got a football scholarship in his sophomore year. At the same time, Danny received an academic scholarship and started St. Louis in his freshman year.

  The first day of school, as Tommy and Danny walked to the bus stop together wearing their school uniforms, starched white button down shirts over navy blue pants, one of Tommy’s Pop Warner football teammates, Lewis, jaywalked across the street to say hi.

  “Howzit Tommy?” Lewis greeted, looking the brothers up and down. “Heard you was going to St. Louis. You sure look different in uniform. But no get me wrong. You looking good in it.”

  Danny knew Lewis said it to be polite. All the boys in Pālolo knew how tough Tommy was and didn’t want to get on his wrong side.

  Tommy ran his fingers through his short hair self-consciously. “Yeah, well. Wish St. Louis had girls, but it’s always one of the top five football teams in the state so, what you going do?”

  “What about your bruddah, Danny?” Lewis asked.

  Tommy smiled and shrugged. “Don’t you know? He’s so smart he going be the governor one day. So watch what you say to him.”

  Danny found his calling at St. Louis. His family rarely attended church, but Danny felt pulled to the priesthood. The stained glass windows, the altar, statues of Madonna and Child, the crucifix, and the priestly vestments created an atmosphere of holiness he yearned to be a part of.

  “What’s with going to church all the time?” Tommy asked him. “It’s boring. I can’t even understand what they’re saying. All that Latin stuff. So why go?”

  “I like it,” Danny replied. “Mass seems more holy in Latin.”

  “You pupule.” Tommy chuckled.

  “You should go to church. Bet you can’t remember the last time you went to confession.”

  “You right ’bout that. Last time I went to confession, I was a little kid. Tell you what.” Tommy smiled. “You go pray for me. That way I no need pray.”

  “You still need to go to confession.”

  “Nah. Father Thomas don’t have hours to listen to all the things I wen do since I was a kid.” Tommy laughed. “You and the Father good friends. Maybe he forgive me if you ask him to.”

  Danny admired Father Thomas, a kindly, soft-spoken man, so different from his father and the men he grew up around. More than anything, he wanted to emulate Father Thomas, who always had time to talk to him, especially about his interest in the priesthood.

  “It’s a serious, life-changing decision.” Father Thomas leaned across the desk in his study. “Pray about it and think hard on it. The priesthood is a life of sacrifice and service. Personally, I can’t imagine a life other than being a priest. It fulfills me to help people. But that’s just me.”

  Danny needed very little convincing. He knew the priesthood was his calling. From then on, he worked towards entering seminary after high school. Knowing where he was headed brought him peace.

  1932

  Danny, Jolene, and Tommy enjoyed listening to radio shows in their free time and prior to their dad coming home. Most of the money they made collecting soda pop bottles and selling newspapers was spent on comic books. Buck Rogers was their favorite. After Tommy got busy with football and baseball, he stopped chipping in to buy comics and became more interested in looking good for girls. Now that Buck Rogers was a radio show, the Myers kids were glued to the radio every Monday through Thursday. Tommy and Danny were big fans.

  Buck Rogers was a World War I vet who became trapped in one of the lower levels of an abandoned coal mine near Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania after it caved in while he was investigating strange activity inside the mines. Exposure to radioactive gas put him into a state of suspended animation until the year 2419 when he finally woke up and joined a group called Air Lords in the strange, new world he found himself in. The Air Lords and a gang called the Bad Bloods were enemies. Buck’s life was constantly in danger as the Air Lords and Bad Bloods were always fighting to gain control of the world. It was the most exciting and thrilling show on radio.

  Just as the Bad Bloods were in the middle of destroying the Air Lords’ airships and killing as many of the Air Lords as they could, their dad walked into the living room and slammed the door. Danny and his siblings were so engrossed, they didn’t move at first. They were used to their dad slamming doors. Whenever he did, they lay low and tried to ignore him, hoping he’d leave them alone if they remained quiet.

  “Children should b
e seen and not heard,” was one of his favorite sayings.

  Danny was lying on the floor with his eyes closed trying to picture the chaos and fiery explosions eradicating the airships as well as the Air Lords’ camp. The descriptions were so vivid, and the narrator’s voice so ominous, he hung on every word. His sister sat on the floor next to him with her back against the couch. When the door slammed, she reached out and grabbed his hand. Tommy was sprawled on the couch above them. He had kicked Danny and Jo off the sofa earlier because he wanted to lie down after football practice. Since Tommy was the closest to the door, their dad went to him first and knocked him on his head.

  Tommy shot up from the couch, “What’re you doing? I nevah do nothing.”

  Their father slugged him. “Damn kid got no respect, talking to your father like that.”

  Tommy jumped over the couch, grabbed the front of his dad’s aloha shirt in one hand, and raised his fist over his head. “You like beef?” he yelled. “You think you so tough, old man?”

  Tommy towered over his dad. Because of his height and weight advantage, their dad hadn’t attacked Tommy in at least two years. Danny looked down at his dad’s red eyes and bloated face. Although it was still only five thirty in the afternoon, he could see their dad was already wasted.

  Their dad blinked his blood-shot eyes and shrank back. In the background sirens blared, machine guns blasted, and people screamed. Jolene, now fourteen, wrapped her arms around her knees and buried her face between them.

  Fear showed in the older man’s eyes, and he stepped back. Tommy dropped his hands.

  Their mother entered the room and tottered over to her husband and son. Stopping next to Tommy, she patted his arm. Tommy raised his eyebrows. Before he could react, she put her hands on his cheeks and pulled his face down close to hers. Her eyes blazed for the first time in years as she whispered in the gentle, clear voice her family hadn’t heard in a long time, “Good boy.” She kissed his forehead.

  It happened so fast, Danny might have thought he imagined it because just as quickly, the light disappeared from her eyes, and she began muttering to herself again as she shuffled past Tommy into the kitchen.

  Tommy blinked back tears. He grabbed the front of his dad’s shirt again, and glowered. “Don’t ever let me catch you touching my mother again or I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

  Danny attended mass alone at St. Patrick’s Church on Wai‘alae Avenue every Sunday. The Romanesque cruciform structure of white stucco with a red-tiled roof built on a rocky, volcanic slope in Kaimukī, was the closest Catholic Church to Danny’s apartment. Completed and dedicated in 1929, the parish belonged to the Fathers and Brothers of the Sacred Heart. It had been given to them by papal decree in recognition of their missionary efforts in establishing the Catholic Church in the Islands.

  Danny sometimes went there during the week just to sit and meditate or pray before going home. It was dark and quiet inside the sanctuary, so different from the hot, noisy world outside. Embracing the peace his private retreat brought him, he sometimes simply sat in a pew, looking all around and enjoying the quiet beauty of the church. Light filtered in through the beautiful stained glass windows and became colored prisms, creating a magical atmosphere. When the bells rang, he closed his eyes. He imagined himself in Brussels, the exotic European City where stained glass windows and bells were made. What a wonderful place Brussels must be with its historic buildings and staunch Catholic population.

  When he knelt and prayed, the presence of God, Jesus, the angels, and Blessed Mother Mary seemed to converge inside the lovely interior; further sanctifying what was already holy ground. When the world outside got too much for him, he escaped to St. Patrick’s and spent hours sitting in the pews in silence, dreading his return to the chaos at home.

  “Everyone has a cross to bear,” Father Thomas told him.

  His dad was definitely the cross his entire family had to bear.

  Moved by the comforting calm of the church and grateful to the Catholics who ripped him from the public schools where he was bullied, Danny remained determined to become a priest like Father Thomas.

  Danny first saw Sister Maria inside St. Patrick’s Church. He was sixteen years old. In 1909, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart had built a convent and school, the Academy of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, on the adjoining lot long before the church was built.

  If there was such a thing as love at first sight, Danny fell victim.

  The first time he found himself alone with her inside the sanctuary was in the early afternoon. He was surprised. He rarely saw anyone there on weekdays. After that, they seemed to be there at the same time quite a lot. Most of the time, she was already ahead of him, kneeling down in the first row saying her prayers, her rosary entwined in her small hands. Kneeling in the first row across from her, he couldn’t help but stare. She looked very young and tiny. As if sensing his eyes on her, she turned. Her hair was hidden under a black veil, and the standard white coif and wimple covered her cheeks and neck. Even so, it didn’t diminish the beauty of her small, heart-shaped face, big, melting almost-black eyes, and cocoa skin.

  Danny’s heart stopped. He couldn’t stop staring at the most beautiful girl he'd ever laid eyes on. He tried to look away and concentrate on his prayers, but his flesh disobeyed. With his heart pounding inside his chest, he turned to gaze at her again. The nun with the face of an angel made him tremble.

  What was happening to him? He had already decided to enter the priesthood. How could he be attracted to a nun, of all people? Nuns were married to God.

  As if she felt him staring, she turned her big, dark eyes towards him. Her thick lashes fluttered down in shy alarm as she twisted a rosary in her praying hands.

  After that, Danny came to the church every weekday at the same time. At first, she showed up only occasionally. But after two weeks of furtive glances at each other, she began coming regularly. They were both too shy to speak to each other.

  Weeks went by. Then, one day, as if God personally helped them, he blessed them with a sudden tropical storm a minute or two after they left the sanctuary. Not only were they hit with pouring rain. Lightning split the gray sky, and a loud clap of thunder shattered the air above them. They fled back into the church, soaking wet from the sudden cloudburst. They stared at each other open-mouthed, rainwater dripping from their faces and clothes. Unexpectedly, she put her hand to her mouth and giggled.

  Danny looked down at himself. They both looked like drowned cats. He started laughing, too. Wanting the moment to last, he had an idea. A strange idea, since he was the serious type who never clowned around. But she provoked unfamiliar feelings in him, and he did something he’d never done before. He acted goofy, bending his elbows and flapping his arms like wings while running back and forth in front of the altar clucking and squawking like a wet chicken.

  If Father Thomas had seen him, he’d have been shocked, disapproving of the sacrilege. Danny was appalled, too. However, he quashed his guilty feelings and gave in to impulse in order to make her laugh.

  She laughed so hard she had to sit down. He sat next to her, and they stared at each other.

  “My name is Danny.” He held his hand out to her.

  She looked down at his hand but didn’t take it.

  “Sister Maria,” she replied in a soft, shy voice with a Filipino accent. She paused as if uncertain as to what to say next. Tiny in stature, the young nun’s eyes were downcast and her hands folded in her lap. She shivered, whether from the wet rain or embarrassment, he didn’t know.

  Mesmerized by her beauty, and proximity, Danny couldn’t speak for a moment. Her face was damp, like she had just emerged from the shower. He longed to take her hand in his. Instead, he shook his head to clear his unholy, sinful thoughts.

  “Maria.” Her name came out like a sigh.

  “Sister Maria,” she gently corrected. She raised eyes glittering
with curiosity and looked directly into his.

  “Sister Maria.” Danny sat, throwing his head back, and staring at the ceiling. He wanted to look at her, too but was timid and shy. As inexperienced as he was, he knew their attraction was mutual.

  She’s a nun, he warned himself.

  Although they remained quiet for a while, he was intensely aware of his raging emotions. Her discomfort betrayed her interest in him. He saw curiosity in the eyes, which refused to look at him as her nervous hands played with the rosary in her lap.

  “Sister I’m a senior at St. Louis.” He immediately felt like an idiot. Everyone from Kaimukī to Kapahulu knew all the young men and boys who wore a starched white button-down shirt and dark navy trousers were from St. Louis. The Academy of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary were mainly elementary school students who wore white shirts and khaki pants.

  “Yes, I know.”

  They stared at each other for a second. Embarrassed, they both looked away.

  “Father Thomas told me you’re planning on entering the priesthood,” she said.

  He was taken aback for a moment. They discussed him?

  “Yes,” he leaned back against the back of the pew, sighed, and began twirling his thumbs. “Why were you and Father Thomas talking about me?”

  “He saw us sitting in church one day,” Sister Maria explained. “After you left, he asked me if I visited the sanctuary often. I guess he knew you came here a lot. I said yes, and he asked me if we ever talked. I said no. He told me you were going into the priesthood after high school.”

  “I see.”

  “What made you decide to become a priest?”

  “I found peace here with the church for the first time in my life. I knew I was called to do this.” He turned to her. “And you? How did you find your calling?”

  “The most wonderful person I ever met was a nun at the convent school in Manila. Sister Agnes was a saint. All the other girls thought so, too, because we all wanted to be like her.” Sister Maria shrugged. “It wasn’t hard deciding to be a nun. Everyone in my convent school was very poor with little chance of bettering ourselves. The Philippines is not like Hawai‘i. That’s why so many Filipinos come here to live. Hawai‘i is paradise compared to my home country. And being a nun or a nurse, or both, is a high calling for Filipino girls.”