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FOR CARTER SCHOLZ
An abiding friend
An inspiring writer
PART ONE
Hapa
Prologue
1917
A wave of Kona storm clouds rolled across the jagged peaks of the Wai'anae Range, arriving in Honolulu with a cannonade of thunder and the kind of wind and rain Hawaiians called lani-pa'ina, “crackling heavens.” In the harbor even the largest ships seesawed in their berths; one little steamer, the Claudine, barely made it into port by sunset, before the sundered clouds began to weep and rage.
Sister Mary Louisa Hughes stood on the covered lānai of a house high atop a hill overlooking the Kalihi Valley, with a fine view of nature’s wrath. Short and stocky, she didn’t flinch at the trumpeting thunder or the spears of lightning in the distance—in fact, there was a smile on her broad, open face. Louisa had grown up on the South Side of Chicago, her family’s cold-water flat wedged into the middle of a stack of sooty tenement apartments; she had never drifted to sleep to the soothing patter of rain on a rooftop, not until taking her novitiate at the Franciscan convent in Joliet. So what she was now witnessing—the majestic fury of a genuine tropical storm—this was glorious. God’s glory, yes, but also Hawai'i’s. She was more certain than ever that this was where she belonged—glad that she had answered the call for volunteers to make the long voyage to O'ahu to serve at the Kapi'olani Home for Girls.
But there was work to do: Kau'iokalani, the night nurse, was sick, and Louisa had taken her shift. There were fifty-eight girls—ranging in age from twenty months to twenty-one years—living at Kapi'olani Home, and as Louisa entered she could hear the youngest crying out in fright. She went to the nursery, going to each child in turn, lifting them from their cribs, holding and comforting them against the noise and the night. “Ssshh, ssshh,” she told them, “it can’t hurt you. I won’t let it.” Finally, when the storm had abated and the last child had fallen asleep, she went to check on the older girls; she suspected they were probably up long past their bedtime, telling each other blood-curdling tales of obakes—ghosts—in the dark.
But before she could reach the first dormitory, there was a furious knocking on the front door. At first she thought the wind was merely animating a tree branch, but when she recognized a human rhythm to the knocks she hurried to the foyer and swung open the door.
Standing on the porch was a tall, unfamiliar sister in a rain-soaked habit. She was holding a bundled child, its face tucked into her shoulder, shielded from the rain by a swath of blankets.
“Oh my heavens,” Louisa cried out. “Sister, do come in!”
The nun—in her mid-forties, with a wet but pretty face—smiled gratefully and stepped inside. “Thank you, Sister,” she said. She walked with a slight limp, but it didn’t seem to slow her down much.
“My goodness, you’re drenched. Did you walk all the way up the hill?”
“No, I took a cab from the harbor. Most of the moisture is from the steamer trip.” She smiled. “I’m Sister Catherine Voorhies. And I’ve come bearing precious cargo.”
She peeled back a layer of blanket, revealing the sweet round face of a frightened infant—no more than a year old—with the tawny skin of a Native Hawaiian and the slightly almond-shaped eyes of a Japanese.
She was an absolutely beautiful child, in the unexpected ways children could be in Hawai'i.
“Her name is Ruth Utagawa,” Sister Catherine said, “and we’ve come from Kalaupapa.”
“I thought as much. But let’s get you both out of those wet clothes and in front of a warm fire.”
* * *
Within five minutes Catherine had shed her waterlogged habit, toweled her short brown hair as dry as she could, and slipped into a freshly laundered bathrobe offered by the friendly and efficient Sister Louisa. Ruth’s blankets were soaked almost all the way through but her corduroy frock was, thankfully, still dry. Louisa had brought them both into the kitchen, stoked a fire in the oven, heated up a bottle of milk for Ruth and a cup of coffee for Catherine. Ruth drank eagerly, and only when she was done did Catherine allow herself to take a sip of her coffee.
Louisa dragged a chair close to the fire and said, “Please, Sister, sit. You must be exhausted. Can I get you something to eat?”
“Not after that boat ride, thanks.” Catherine sighed. It felt good to have her veil off and to feel the heat of the fire on her face. She reached up and touched her wet hair. “I must look a fright, Sister.”
“Oh, nonsense.” Louisa’s gaze drifted to little Ruth and to those sweet brown eyes—so dark they almost looked black—glancing shyly away. “She’s lovely. And I can tell she’s special to you.”
Catherine nodded. “Yes. Her parents are dear friends of mine. I promised them I would make sure she got here safely.” She felt the first pang of loss, one she knew would only deepen as she drew closer to parting.
“The parents—they’re lepers?”
“Yes. But Ruth is healthy. After a year of observation, she shows no sign of the disease.”
“May I … hold her a moment?” Louisa asked.
“Of course.”
Catherine hefted Ruth and handed her to Louisa—but as soon as the child was in Louisa’s hands, she began to wail.
“Oh dear,” Louisa said.
“Rock her. Bounce her. It took her a while to get used to me too.”
After years of cradling orphans at Guardian Angel Home in Joliet, Louisa thought she knew how to soothe infants. She rocked Ruth gently back and forth, but the baby was not to be placated. Between sobs she repeated a single word: “Wih-wee,” she cried, the word resonant with loss, “wih-wee, wih-wee!”
“You’d best take her back.” Louisa handed her to Catherine, but Ruth continued her lament. “What is it she’s trying to say?” Louisa asked.
“Lily.”
“Is that her mother’s name?”
Catherine shook her head. “Lillian Keamalu is the matron at the Kalaupapa nursery,” she explained. “The babies are taken away from their mothers at birth. The parents are only allowed to see them from behind glass in the nursery. The only mother the children know—the only one who holds and comforts them—is Miss Keamalu.”
Louisa ached to hear this. She was new to this world of children and leprosy; there were always, it seemed, fresh cruelties to discover.
They sat in silence a while, Ruth’s cries gradually fading until the only sounds in the room were the drumming of the rain and the rattle of the windows as the wind shook the house like a tambourine.
Louisa noted, “Strange how a place as beautiful as Hawai'i can have such bursts of stark, sudden fury.”
“Beneath that beauty,” Catherine said, “the land has molten power. These islands have borne many wounds over the years—not the least of them leprosy. I think sometimes they wake and cry out in rage at the injustice.”
Louisa hadn’t the faintest inkli
ng of what Catherine was talking about, and it sounded uncomfortably close to paganism, to boot, so she said nothing. Finally, Catherine spoke again.
“Sister,” she said softly, “I would count it a great favor if you would do something for me.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Take care of her?”
Catherine’s voice broke when she said it. It was clear to Louisa that this child meant a great deal to her.
“I will. I promise you. She will not want for affection.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
Not knowing what else she could say, Louisa stood. “Let me find you a fresh habit and a warm bed. We have an extra crib for Ruth in the nursery.”
Catherine hesitated. “Would you mind if—if she sleeps with me tonight?”
“Of course.”
Louisa led them outside, where they hurried through the downpour to the modest cottage that served as a convent. The other Sisters of St. Francis were all asleep but for the Home’s matron, Sister Helena Haas; a sliver of light peeked out from under her door as she worked into the night. Louisa found Catherine a fresh habit, then brought her to a small, spartan room at the end of the corridor.
“Sleep well, Sister. Mass begins at six, if you care to join us.”
“Thank you, I will.”
Louisa left. Catherine sighed and walked to the room’s single window. Out there, across the water, behind a wall of storm clouds, Ruth’s parents on Moloka'i were mourning the loss of their daughter, hoping she would find a good home. Catherine felt something of the same emotions. She took off the girl’s dress, slipped on her tiny pajamas, then climbed into bed beside her. She gave her a tender kiss on the head and said softly, “I love you, sweet baby. May God protect you.” This was far from the first child Catherine had held and comforted in her twenty-four years at Kalaupapa—but Ruth was the one most dear to her. She was the daughter of a lonely child who had grown into a strong woman and a dear friend; she bore the same name Catherine had been christened with; and, most important, of all those girls Catherine had cared for, Ruth was the first one who would know what it was like to be free.
Chapter 1
1919
The sky above Diamond Head was a spray of gold as the sun seemed to rise up out of the crater itself. From atop its windy hill in Kalihiuka—“inland Kalihi”—Kapi'olani Home took in the sweeping view, from the grassy caldera of Diamond Head to the concrete craters of the new dry docks at Pearl Harbor. On a clear day, even the neighbor islands of Lāna'i and Moloka'i could be seen straddling the horizon. The big, two-story plantation-style house on thirteen acres of trim lawn stood alongside the sisters’ convent and chapel. The Kalihi Valley was largely agricultural, and the Home was surrounded by acres of sprawling cow pastures, hog breeders, and backyard poultry farms whose hens nested in old orange crates and whose roosters announced Morning Mass as well as any church bell. On the other side of Kamehameha IV Road there were groves of big-leafed banana plants, tall and thick as trees, prodigal with hanging clusters of green and yellow fruit; taro patches filled with heart-shaped leaves like fields of valentines; and terraced rice paddies glistening in the morning sun.
As in most Catholic orphanages and schools, the Sisters of St. Francis required that the corridors remain quiet, orderly—places of silent contemplation, not to be desecrated with idle conversation. Other than this, there were only three major rules at Kapi'olani Home:
1. After breakfast no standing around talking but do your work quickly and well.
2. Do not throw your clothes on the floor nor rubbish in the yard.
3. Line up and march orderly.
Morning call sent the girls springing out of bed, into washrooms to scrub faces and comb hair, then dress. Filing quietly down corridors and into the dining hall, they went to their tables—ten girls at each one—and stood behind their chairs, joining with Sister Bonaventure in reciting the blessing:
Thank you for the world so sweet,
Thank you for the food we eat.
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you, God, for everything. Amen.
This was followed by the scraping of sixty chairs on the floor as the girls seated themselves and ate a breakfast of poi, rice, eggs, and sausages. It was near the end of breakfast that a three-year-old girl—standing on tiptoes and peering out the dining room windows—made an exciting announcement:
“Cow!”
As she ran delightedly out of the dining room, the other girls flocked to the windows. Yet another of Mr. Mendonca’s cows, having decided that the grass was, in fact, greener on the other side the fence, was grazing contentedly on their front lawn.
“Wow, look at the size of its whatzit!” said one girl.
“I believe she needs to be milked,” Sister Bonaventure noted calmly. “Now, girls, let’s all get back to our—”
Too late. What moments before had been a docile group of girls eating breakfast became a stampede out of the dining hall.
On the second floor, Sister Louisa, hearing the drumbeat of footfalls below, raced down the staircase to find a raging river of girls surging past her.
And far ahead of them all was a three-year-old with amber skin and almond eyes, crying out, “Cow! Cow! Big brown cow!” at the top of her voice.
“Ruth!” Louisa immediately broke into a run herself. “Come back!”
Ruth burst out the front door, down the porch steps, and went straight to the grazing heifer, which was completely oblivious to the fuss it had stirred up.
“Hi, cow!” Ruth welcomed it. “Hi!”
Ruth stood about three feet tall; the cow, perhaps a foot taller. Ruth reached up and gently stroked the side of its neck as it chewed. “Good cow,” she said, smiling. “You’re a good cow.”
As Sister Louisa rushed outside, she saw the child she had promised to protect petting an eight-hundred-pound Guernsey, whose right hoof, with one step, could have easily crushed the girl’s small foot.
“Ruth! Please! Step back!”
But Ruth’s attention was drawn to the cow’s swollen udder. And what were those things sticking out of it like big fat fingers?
Intrigued, Ruth reached up and took one of the cow’s teats in her hand—examining it, pulling it, squeezing it.
A stream of raw milk squirted out and into Ruth’s face.
The other girls exploded into laughter. Sister Louisa pulled Ruth away from the animal. Either due to the warm, yellowish milk on her face or the mocking peal of the girls’ laughter, Ruth began to cry.
“It’s all right, little one,” Louisa said, leading her away. “Let’s go inside and wash that off your face.”
The other girls clustered around the cow as the elderly Sister Helena arrived, frowning. “I do wish,” she said, “that Mr. Mendonca would keep his livestock away from our live girls.”
Eddie Kaohi, the Home’s young groundskeeper, ran up, rope in hand. “I’ll take her back where she belongs,” he said, lassoing the cow’s neck.
“Mahalo, Mr. Kaohi,” said Sister Helena. Then, with a sigh: “Girls, really. You’d think none of you had ever seen a cow before.”
“She’s cute,” said ten-year-old Addie as she swatted a fly away from the cow’s face. “She has the prettiest eyes!”
Sister Helena gazed into the heifer’s soulful brown eyes, her stern face softening. “Yes,” she allowed, “I suppose she does.”
* * *
In the bathroom Sister Louisa scrubbed Ruth’s face with soap and water and asked her, “So what have you learned today, Ruth?”
“Cows shoot milk.”
Louisa stifled a laugh. “That’s why only dairy farmers should touch a cow’s udder, not little girls who could get hurt.”
“They laughed at me,” Ruth said in a small voice. “Again.”
“Again? When have the girls laughed at you before?”
“When I showed ’em my gecko.”
Ah yes, the gecko. “Only because the gecko decided to r
un down the front of your dress.”
“Ran away. I loved it and it ran away!”
“I know.” Ruth loved every animal she had ever met. On a trip to the Honolulu Zoo, Ruth was enchanted by the monkeys, lions, swans, and Daisy, the African elephant. Sometimes Louisa thought the child would embrace a boa constrictor but for the welcome fact that there were no snakes in Hawai'i.
“An’ they yelled at Ollie,” Ruth lamented, “an’ scared him away too!”
“Ollie was the mouse?”
Ruth nodded.
“Some of the younger girls were scared of Ollie,” Louisa explained gently. “That’s why they were yelling and—well, screaming.”
“He was so cute!”
“I thought so too.”
“They hate me,” Ruth declared.
“No, they don’t. They just don’t love animals the way you do.”
Ruth’s face flushed with shame. “One girl called me a bad name.”
Louisa straightened, concerned. “Who did?”
“Velma.”
“What did she call you, Ruth?”
Ruth looked down and said quietly, “Hapa. She called me hapa.”
Louisa laughed with relief. “Ruth, that isn’t a bad word. It’s just a Hawaiian word. It means half.”
“Half?”
“Yes. Like if I gave you a cookie, then split it into two pieces and took away one piece, you’d have half of what I gave you.”
Ruth’s face wrinkled in confusion. “She called me a cookie?”
“Well, your papa was Japanese and your mama was Hawaiian, and so you’re half Japanese and half Hawaiian. Hapa. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the word.”
Ruth wasn’t so sure. It still sounded like Velma was calling her half a cookie, which anyone knew wasn’t as a good as a whole cookie.
“Sister Lu?”
“Yes, Ruth?”
“Can I meet my papa? And my mama?”
Louisa said softly, “I don’t know, Ruth. Maybe someday.”
Daughter of Moloka'i Page 1
