Shimura Trouble

by Sujata Massey

  “Nice place! I been there a few times to visit a friend.” Charisse dimpled at me. “Anyway, welcome to Hawaii.”

  Someone behind me was making impatient grunts so I got out of the way with my goods and found a seat at a sugar-dusted table just vacated by a mother and two kids.

  The coffee was good, but not quite as full-bodied as I liked. I sipped anyway, and opened the Star-Bulletin. I glanced at a main section full of national wire stories, then started in on the second section devoted to local news. I read about how a private school founded by a Hawaiian princess was struggling to maintain a rule that its students have Hawaiian ancestry. What did that mean, exactly? I wondered, looking around me at the mosaic of mixed features and warm skin tones. Who was Hawaiian here, and hadn’t the Hawaiians themselves emigrated from other Polynesian islands?

  Clearly, I knew nothing, I thought as I moved on to a picture of an adorable sea turtle and the accompanying soft-news story about how tourists on North Shore beaches were teasing them. When I turned the page, I finally saw a story that really intrigued me, about the place where we were staying. Kainani’s developer, Mitsuo Kikuchi, sought to develop adjacent lands where existing derelict plantation housing remained. The land was owned by Pierce Holdings, which was considering either a lease or outright sale to Kikuchi’s Tokyo-based company.

  Kikuchi had to be owner of the grand house I’d seen, I guessed, reading on. Pierce Holdings’ spokesman said that Kikuchi’s planned new restaurant and amusement park would bring a new road and about seven hundred new jobs for leeward Hawaii residents.

  However, a preservation group leader argued that the plantation village should be a registered historic landmark, and a group of Hawaiian activists had already filed papers asserting that the fields contained a sacred worship site.

  Suddenly, I had the sensation that I was not reading alone. I looked behind me and, sure enough, someone was standing over my shoulder.

  “HOWZIT?” ASKED THE spy, who was an undeniable hunk—well over six feet and at least two-fifty, with shoulder-length black hair and skin as brown as cocoa. His sleeveless T-shirt and baggy, knee-length shorts revealed geometric blue-green tattoos on muscular arms and calves.

  He laughed slightly, as if noticing my covert inspection. Embarrassed, I tried to remember what he’d asked me about. “Well, I’m used to very strong Tanzanian coffee, so Kona’s a bit mild for my taste.”

  He looked at me for a second and I had the sense I’d said something very wrong. Then he burst out laughing—a deep, merry laugh that seemed to boom around the store.

  “What’s funny?” I asked cautiously.

  “You a tourist, huh? I didn’t realize at first, ’cause when I saw you talking to Charisse, I thought you just another hapa chick.”

  “Well, I am hapa,” I said, recalling that this was the common term in Hawaii for a person of mixed ancestry. In Japan, the same expression existed, but it was said slightly differently: hafu. In English, it means half. Half a person, not the real thing. Hapa was better; it almost sounded hip.

  The hunk interrupted my linguistic analysis. “Yeah, but I asked you howzit, which means, how are you? I wasn’t asking for an opinion on my coffee.”

  “Your coffee?” I asked. He wasn’t wearing an apron at his waist like Charisse had. He certainly didn’t look like an employee.

  The man laughed again. “I’m Kainoa Stevens, and yes, that cup you’re drinking comes from my cousin’s coffee plantation on the Big Island. I own this place.”

  I shook hands reluctantly, because I expected a man who looked part Samoan to have a crusher grip. But the handshake was just firm enough, and he followed it up by pulling a business card out of his baggy shorts pocket. The card, still warm from his body heat, was decorated with twin palms, his name, and the phrase ‘Coffee and Construction’. At the bottom were four phone numbers. Out of habit, I held the card the way one does in Japan, reading everything before carefully before putting it down. Now, I was obligated to introduce myself: I told him my name.

  “Yeah, Charisse said you staying at Kainani. How did you ever find your way here?”

  “I chanced upon it, when I was jogging through the wilderness area.”

  Kainoa laughed. “Had to be something like that, because the road here is pretty indirect. But you gotta understand that it wasn’t wilderness you crossed. It’s all part of the Pierce Holdings, and if you trespass again, you better watch out that the luna don’t catch you.”

  “I had no idea I was trespassing. I didn’t see any keep-out signs.”

  “That’s probably because you ran through the middle of the fields. There are warning signs on the fence along Farrington Highway.”

  “So, what’s a luna?” I asked.

  “In plantation time, it was the guy who oversaw the workers. No sugar workers anymore, so Albert Rivera just oversees the security of the land. People around here call him the luna because that’s the job his father worked, and his grandfather, too.”

  “Hmm. I guess I’ll have to put together a nice apology for him in advance, because I don’t know how to return to Kainani any other way.”

  “That regular route here is via Farrington Highway, but it’s probably four miles longer than the route you took. I’d say, take a chance if you want run over for coffee again—which I’m not even sure you do.” He smiled at me, but I sensed a challenge behind the straight, shining white teeth.

  “It’s good coffee, Kainoa, just not as strong as I normally have it. I probably should just order a double shot in my latte.”

  “At my cousin’s plantation, he experiments with new varieties all the time. I think I’m gonna tell him, grow me a super-strong bean for strong mainland chicks.”

  “Really, don’t go to the trouble!” I suddenly had a sense he was flirting with me, and I didn’t want to encourage him. Kainoa was not only half a decade younger than me; he was not Michael.

  “Or better yet, I could sell this place to Mitsuo Kikuchi and make my own coffee plantation on the Big Island. What you think of that?”

  “I was reading about Kikuchi’s plans in the paper, as you probably noticed. Are you actually in favor of the development?”

  “Sure.” Kainoa’s tone was casual. “I have a construction sideline business, you know, so I’m for most kinds of development. And as far as this business goes, hell, I’d much rather have two roads that come to my shop than a bunch of old shacks going to waste. When I was a kid growing up, sure I liked to hang out there, smoking pakolo with the mokes. Now that I’m a property owner, I don’t want that kind of stuff over here.”

  “But you wouldn’t be a property owner with anything to gain if you sold to Kikuchi.”

  Kainoa leaned so close that I edged back slightly. “Hey, I’d love to stay where I am. But when Kikuchi has an idea, he gets what he wants. You know the true reason that he built Kainani?”

  “To make money?” I hazarded.

  “More than that. He built it to have a hiding place for his lolo son. People in Japan or Honolulu ask what the son’s doing, and he likes to say Jiro’s running the resort. In reality, this do-nothing Jiro lives in a townhouse with a round-the-clock head shrink supposed to keep him out of trouble. I know because I see the two of them together constantly—at the movie theater, the Safeway, in bars. Jiro even comes in here couple of afternoons a week, trying to pick up Charisse, who’s so simple and friendly she don’t understand.”

  “What do you mean about Charisse?”

  “She’s a great kid, but a chatterbox! She’ll talk to anybody, go with anyone. Even a creep.”

  If Jiro was getting around as much as he did, he sounded as if he was doing pretty well. I said, “So you’re telling me that Mitsuo Kikuchi is making sure his son gets good care within the grounds of a beautiful place, and he doesn’t want people to know his son doesn’t have a job? That doesn’t sound so terrible, especially if you look at the norms of Japanese behavior.”

  “Well, to build this pretty holding plac
e for his son, he screwed everybody,” Kainoa said fiercely. “There was a local community there, about sixty or seventy homes. I grew up in that place.”

  “Is leasehold like renting?”

  “Not exactly. It was something the kamaaina landowners use to profit from selling their land repeatedly.”

  Kamaaina, I recalled, meant child of the land. It generally meant local and Hawaiian, with the exception of the Hawaii-born descendents of the British and American missionaries, many of whom mixed their bloodlines with daughters of the Hawaiian chief class: strategic marriages that resulted in the acquisition of more land.

  “Our parents and grandparents helped each other buy homes as early as they could, and in those days they only had the right to be on the land for a period of time. Usually, the leasehold had a time period that sounded long—sometimes fifty, eighty years, like that.” Kainoa looked down for a minute. “When my daddy turned seventy, he had twenty years left to live on the property. He was anxious about whether anyone would want to buy the place, with twenty years or less left on the lease before re-negotiation. He’d have to sell for almost nothing, to get someone to take it.”

  “That’s awful!”

  “Yeah. So here comes Kikuchi, and he offers everyone on-the-spot money for their homes, but that’s if they all agree to leave. And at the same time, Pierce Holdings leaks the information that they may be shortening the lifespan of the leaseholds.”

  “But how could they back out on a lease, legally?”

  “Pierce Holdings is the second largest landholder on the Leeward Side. Its CEO can force the state government to cooperate with them because if they don’t cooperate, the company won’t build a school, or a police station, or a road.”

  “You mean the Pierces actually pay for government buildings?”

  “Sure. For the tax credit, and the power it gives them. If the government here wants to add a road they have to get permission from the big landholders or the military, who own the land where the road would pass.”

  “How did you become owner of this coffee shop, since all the surrounding land belongs to the Pierces?” I asked.

  Kainoa gazed around with an almost wistful expression. “I took over this building after my father died. He bought it from the Pierces back when Ewa Sugar shut down. The sale was a kind of favor, because my grandfather ran the general store for over forty years, which is why my family would look like stink at me if I sold it.”

  Again, a kind of paternalism from the Pierces, but at least the store had stayed in working people’s hands. I said, “Your store is the last living part of the old plantation village. I understand why you wouldn’t want to sell off part of our heritage.”

  “Our heritage? I thought you were a malihini from the mainland.”

  Malihini was a pretty-sounding word, but I knew it meant newcomer, which wasn’t the best thing to be in Hawaii. I said, “Actually, my great-great-aunt came here in the twenties.”

  “For real? Shimura’s not a common name on this island,” Kainoa said. “The only one I know of is one lolo dude who couldn’t possibly be related to you.”

  “I think you’re talking about my cousin Edwin—but what does lolo mean?”

  “Crazy. And hey, I’m sorry. But he’s full of it, when he talks about discrimination against the Japanese. After the war, they took over politics, law, and real estate. The real Hawaiians are the only ones with a right to complain about losing land.”

  “So, may I ask if you’re a real Hawaiian?”

  “A quarter, which was good enough for the Kamehamema Schools. The rest of me is Samoan and Filipino.”

  So I’d been right about the Samoan part, although I didn’t yet understand Kainoa’s inner self. I didn’t care for his playful, insulting behavior, a technique that big, good-looking men like him employed a bit too often.

  As if sensing my thoughts, Kainoa smiled, his teeth sharp and white. “I’d like to shoot the breeze all morning with you, Rei, but I gotta convince Charisse to stop yapping and make more coffee. You try come back here?”

  “Probably,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the counter. There was indeed a long line, but Charisse seemed oblivious, lost in yet another conversation.

  “Well, next time you try a cuppa green tea. You might like it better.”

  I MADE IT back across the Pierce fields unmolested except for by a few knobby passion fruits, which dropped from an old, twisted tree on my head and on the path in front of me. When I entered the townhouse, however, carrying two handfuls of tiny fruit, trouble was waiting.

  My father, Tom and Uncle Hiroshi were all seated at the dining table, with full glasses of water. There were empty plates, and knives and forks and spoons all laid in the proper places. They looked as if they were waiting for someone to serve them. But what? I knew there was nothing in the fridge except for ketchup and sugar left by the previous renters.

  Trying to ignore the accusatory expressions, I put the fruit on the table, and then stooped to unlace my shoes. “Good morning, everyone, I’ve brought you some passion fruits—which I believe are called lilikoi here.”

  “Where were you, Rei?” my father asked sternly.

  “I went for a run, got a coffee, and came back.”

  “You went to drink coffee by yourself? I’d been hoping you’d gone to shop for food for our breakfast,” my father said.

  I glanced at my watch; it was eight o’clock. “I imagine the stores are opening right now. Dad, did you take your pills? There’s that one you need to take on an empty stomach, remember?”

  “Safeway in Kapolei opened at seven,” Tom said. “We wanted to go, but we didn’t want to leave without you, because of course you’d want to choose what you need for cooking.”

  I felt that sinking feeling again, now certain that I was expected to cook and clean for them. If I didn’t want to wind up like an overworked picture bride, I would have to subtly resist. I smiled and said, “Yes, I’d like to help you go shopping,” before disappearing into my bathroom to shower off all the red field dust. After that, I hustled past them with the towel wrapped around me, into my room, where I unpacked khaki shorts, a black tank top, and sandals. I went out with wet hair, because the warm Hawaiian air would probably give me a natural blow-dry within a half-hour.

  Tom took the wheel, in order to practice driving on the right side of the road, and I navigated. Safeway was easy to find, smack in the middle of a strip mall anchored by two mainland chains: Blockbuster Video and RadioShack. Inside Safeway, however, I was pleased to find two long aisles devoted exclusively to Asian foods, ranging from umpteen kinds of sweet bean cakes to sembei crackers and dozens of different instant noodle brands with instructions only in Japanese, Chinese and Tagalog.

  Local pineapple and papaya was plentiful, but it was harder to find locally grown vegetables. I did the best I could, searching out island-hatched eggs and local lettuce and tomatoes, and then dealing with my father’s shock at the prices when it was time to pay.

  Even with the added weight of a dozen grocery bags, the minivan made it back to Kainani, where I prepared a large breakfast of scallion-and-tomato omelettes for everyone—two whites and no yolk for my father—plus toasted slices of a sweetish white bread. Tom performed surgery on a Maui pineapple, cutting its flesh into perfect triangles. I cut into the passion fruit I’d picked up on my run, and scooped its runny yellowish interior into a small bowl.

  When I tasted the passion fruit, I almost swooned. It was sweet-sour, fragrant, and the perfect complement to the excellent pineapple, which was not just sweet but complex, with almost a hint of coconut flavor.

  Once we all had food in our stomachs, the mood around the table improved. I found myself enjoying a conversation with my uncle and Tom about what was happening in Japan.

  “Rei-chan, I think you’re ready to become a wife,” Uncle Hiroshi said, wiping his mouth with satisfaction on one of the decorative paper napkins I’d bought. “I wonder what kind of dinner Edwin’s wife will make
for us?”

  “Margaret?” I asked, resenting the easy sexism my uncle displayed. “Who knows if she’s the family cook? It could be Edwin, or maybe the children, Courtney and Braden, if they’re old enough.”

  “They all have Western names,” Tom mused.

  “That seems to be the pattern of most Japanese-Americans,” my father said. “It probably has something to do with not wanting to be noticeably foreign, after what happened during the Second World War.”

  “Yes, we cannot expect them to be Japanese at all,” Uncle Hiroshi said. “It’s been a century, almost, since our great-great-aunt arrived. It’s only natural they are more American than Japanese.”

  I THOUGHT ABOUT my uncle’s words that night as we drove the minivan into the neighborhood where Edwin and his family lived. I’d expected it to be a flashy neighborhood, but Honokai Hale turned out to be an older community, a hodge-podge of modest homes that seemed to have followed no architectural master plan such as I’d seen in the town of Kapolei. Chain link fences, monster trucks, and barking dogs greeted us as we parked on Laaloa Street in front of an asphalt-shingled two-story house with rusted air-conditioners fixed in the windows. But because of the height of the neighborhood, it offered a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean in all its glory, punctuated only by the containers and buildings of the shipyard I’d noticed earlier.

  “My goodness,” my father said, interrupting my contemplation. “Could that be Edwin’s father—our ojiisan Yoshitsune?”

  Startled, I looked at an elderly man coming around the side of the house, dragging a hose. He wore knee-length rubber boots, dirty khaki pants and a white undershirt. With a complexion like keyaki wood, squint lines around the eyes, and a shock of white hair, he looked like an aged Japanese peasant.

  My father bowed deeply and murmured a traditional Japanese greeting, but the man frowned as if puzzled, and asked in a heavy pidgin accent, “You the one from Yokohama?”

  “No, I am he.” Uncle Hiroshi came forward, bowing, and introduced himself in very formal Japanese, not the usual way a banker would speak to an old man in a dirty undershirt and fisherman’s boots. Tom joined him, bowing and introducing himself.