Silversword

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I would never have recognized Marla as the aunt I remembered. At nineteen she’d been sturdily built like my grandmother, never as beautiful as Noelle, but quite pretty, and able to hold her own in a spirited way that would never take second place to an older sister. Now she had grown much heavier, and she looked impressively handsome in her long, graceful muumuu that concealed curves that had become opulent. Her face was round and smooth-skinned, her eyes dark and lively, searching, measuring, questioning, as they’d always done. Her hair, as dark as Joanna’s had been, was worn cut short and straight, to hang in points on her cheeks, her forehead fringed with long, even bangs.

  The moment she saw me, she came toward me and drew me into her ample embrace, though I was taller than she was now. Then she held me away, her bright dark eyes searching my face.

  “So this is Caroline grown up. You don’t look a bit like your mother.” She glanced toward where Noelle still sat with her sewing, and then gave me another hug. “I remember you as a curious little girl who always got into everything. Of course, you’re someone else now—just as we’ve all turned into different people. Just your eyes look the same—though, well, they look a little haunted now.”

  Her open inventory, however warmly given, embarrassed me, and David must have sensed this, for he crossed the room with the quick flash of a smile that I remembered, and hugged me as he’d done when I was little.

  “Don’t mind Marla,” he told me. “She collects characters for her books, and you’re not likely to escape. As for haunting—that seems natural enough in this house. Don’t you think so, Joanna?”

  Once my grandmother would have risen to the challenge in his words. Now she shrugged, and changed the subject.

  “Of course you’ll stay to dinner, David? Noelle’s going to join us too.”

  “Maybe that’s not a good idea,” Marla said. “It could be upsetting—with her here.” She glanced at me. “I’ll just take Noelle out in the kitchen and we’ll have our supper there.”

  Marla had turned into a woman who took charge—something she’d never have dared to try with her mother in the old days.

  Grandma Joanna, however, could still speak with authority. “The kitchen is where we’ll all going to eat tonight. This is Susy Ohara’s day off and I’m the cook. So we’ll keep it simple. I think the stew’s nearly ready.”

  I remembered from the past that my grandmother had never wanted many house servants around. Those she employed became friends and partners, both indoors and out, but they were few. She’d enjoyed cooking, and made herself at home in the kitchen with whoever was working there.

  Marla gave in with good grace and went to where her sister was sitting. She took the sewing from Noelle’s hands and put it aside.

  “We’re going to dinner now, dear. David’s here and so is—” She threw her mother a questioning look and Grandma Joanna spoke quickly.

  “I’ve told Noelle that Caroline is visiting us.”

  My mother looked at me brightly, accepting. “Yes—she has the same name as my Linny.”

  I steeled myself to show nothing. I couldn’t endure this visit if I was to be torn by every casual word. Nor did I want to accept the compassion I sensed in others.

  I went to Noelle and slipped my hand through the crook of her arm. “May I sit by you? I’d like to get better acquainted.”

  Noelle glanced at her mother uncertainly, and seemed reassured by her nod. “It’s all right, if you want to, Caroline,” she agreed.

  But even as we walked down the room together, I knew she was hardly there, and I wondered what sort of dream world she lived in. What went on behind that smooth forehead? At least she didn’t seem unhappy, except when she remembered that she couldn’t find her child.

  Only in Marla did I sense unspoken disapproval, and I was aware of the way she watched me. Lest I make some misstep with Noelle?

  The big kitchen had been redone since my day, and now there was a terra-cotta tile floor, cabinets of eucalyptus wood on each side of double steel sinks. In the center of the room was a huge round table made from the trunk of a koa tree. I admired the table and handmade chairs, and Grandma Joanna nodded agreement.

  “They’re treasures. Tom O’Neill made them for me. I’ve told him that anytime he wants to stop being a paniolo he can start a shop in Lahaina for his beautiful furniture. Mainland people would be crazy about it, and so would Islanders.”

  Tom O’Neill came into the room in time to hear her, and he grinned. “I’m happy where I am for now.” He looked at Noelle, and then at me, and again I sensed the disapproval I didn’t understand. He had changed to clean chinos, and his red hair was slicked back with water, but to me he seemed no more prepossessing than ever.

  Joanna ladled generous servings of savory fish stew from the pot on the stove, and Tom helped her to set big green bowls before us. The stew was aromatic with herbs, and pink shrimp floated on the surface.

  Sitting next to Noelle, as I’d planned, with Marla on her other side, watching over her sister, I found myself longing to make my mother aware of me—at least as a friend. Only if she learned to like me could I talk to her, probe into these mists that floated around her shrouding reality.

  Around the curve of the table, David sat next to Marla, and his look still seemed to question me. Sooner or later I wanted to talk to him too, and see if I could find my old friend again.”

  When green salads and crusty loaves of whole-grain bread had been placed on the table, Grandma Joanna sat down and reached out her hands on either side, clasping David’s and Tom’s. Noelle sat with her hands in her lap, staring into her own space. Marla and I looked at each other, and then I followed suit as Marla reached for one of Noelle’s hands, and I took the other. It was the first time I had touched her, and her fingers curled trustingly in mine, as though she were younger than I. Tom held my hand on the other side, though I suspected that he didn’t want to. For a moment we all sat in a simple human joining, and even Tom relaxed a little.

  “It’s good to be together,” Grandma Joanna said. “And good to have Caroline with us again.”

  Then the chain broke apart, and we gave our attention to the hearty food on the table.

  Grandma Joanna talked to Tom about the horses, and I thought of a question I wanted to ask.

  “I remember the word paniolo for cowboy, but I’ve been laughed at back home for talking about cowboys in Hawaii. Didn’t we have them here before the American West did?”

  “Tell her, Tom,” Grandma Joanna said.

  “That’s right. Hawaiians started to raise cattle here in the last century—before 1830. In the beginning they didn’t know how to go about it. So they brought in vaqueros from Mexico, and Hawaiians learned to rope and tie a steer, and to ride straight-legged. They learned how to manage cattle drives down the mountain to the boats, and they called themselves paniolos because the word resembled Espagnol.”

  “It’s all a lot tamer now,” Grandma Joanna said. “Raising horses is easier. Of course you ride, Caro?”

  “I’ve done a little city riding,” I told her.

  Noelle looked up from concentration on her food. “Caro? Do they call you that too, Caroline?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  “Sometimes,” I said gently, and then ventured further. “There used to be someone who called me Linny when I was a little girl.”

  She rejected that at once. “Oh, no! That’s what I call my little girl. I don’t think anyone else would use that name.”

  Grandma Joanna broke in quickly, asking for bread to be passed, and Noelle slipped away again into her own space.

  “Don’t do that,” my grandmother warned me. “You mustn’t remind her, or we’ll have trouble. I shouldn’t have made that slip with your name in front of her. Never mind—you can’t know all the danger points yet. Tell me how Elizabeth Kirby is these days?”

  “She’s a strong woman, and she goes right on running her hotel.”

  “Yes, I suspect she would. I’m afraid she didn’t app
rove of us very much when she was here. She was a white glove sort of person. Keith wanted to take her up to the crater, but she distrusted Haleakala, so she wouldn’t go.”

  “Why?” David asked. “Did she think it was going to erupt?”

  “We assured her that it wouldn’t,” Grandma Joanna said. “The last spurt of lava was easily two hundred years ago, and it didn’t come from the top of the mountain. A side vent opened in the direction of Makena. The mountain’s safely dormant these days, and we don’t have earthquakes, even when the live volcanoes over on the Big Island stir themselves. We’ve all seen that show from the summit here, and it’s pretty awe-inspiring.”

  “I was able to get some good shots of the last Kilauea eruption,” David said. “She blows her top every once in a while. I’ll show you the pictures sometime, if you like, Caroline. Oh, by the way—I’m going over to Ahinahina tomorrow morning to take some photographs for the art society brochure. Would you like to come along? Since you used to live there.”

  “I’d love to,” I said.

  Beside me Noelle stirred. “Ahinahina—silversword.”

  She looked so troubled that Marla put an arm about her. “That’s just the name of a house, Noelle. But you probably don’t remember the house.”

  “Of course I remember.” She nodded at Marla with assurance. “I haven’t been there for a long time.”

  I wanted to suggest that she come with us, but my grandmother was already shaking her head at me, and Tom spoke a low warning in my ear.

  “Let her alone, Caroline.”

  Marla said strangely, “That’s right, Caroline. Don’t stir sleeping serpents.”

  What did she mean—that my mother slept safely in some sort of Garden of Eden, and mustn’t be awakened to outside dangers? But I couldn’t ask now, with Noelle listening.

  “I don’t remember the house as well as I do Manaolana,” I told David. “Just bits and pieces of it. Though I’m sure memories will come back when I see it again.”

  “Will you use the pictures for your book, David?” Marla asked.

  “Maybe some of them, since that house is still a showplace. But the brochure is my first job right now.”

  “Is Koma still planning the text?” Again the question came from Marla.

  “I hope so. He’s pretty busy with his Park job—”

  “And all that activist stuff,” Marla put in.

  David let that pass. “Marla, have you shown Caroline your books?”

  “There hasn’t been time. I’ll show her the ones you’ve done the photos for.” She spoke with more eagerness—this was something that clearly interested her.

  “Tell me about your books,” I said.

  “I write them for children—about Hawaii. Mostly they retell the old legends, though I want young people to know about the monarchy too. David has done the photographs—really good!—for the last two.”

  Noelle spoke gently, “Your paintings are so beautiful, Marla. Will you use them for your book?”

  Unexpectedly, it was Tom who answered Noelle. He’d had nothing to say until now, and I wasn’t sure he’d even been listening.

  “Marla doesn’t want to paint anymore. You remember that. You’re the one who paints beautiful pictures.”

  Noelle only shook her head vaguely and slipped away again. She seemed to move in and out of a web of forgetfulness she wove about herself, so that one could never be quite sure what she paid attention to, or understood.

  “I’d like to see some of your photographs, David,” I said into a silence that became suddenly uncomfortable.

  “There are several around the house,” Grandma Joanna told me. “That stunning sunrise picture of the crater over the mantel in the living room is one David took up there a few years ago.”

  “There’s a photograph in my room upstairs,” I recalled. “Of a statue of Kamehameha the Great, with leis hanging from his arms clear to the ground. Did you take that, David?”

  “Yes, for the anniversary of the king’s birthday.”

  Marla’s enthusiasm returned. “There’s a wonderful resurgence of interest in the past all through Hawaii. For a while people seemed not to care very much.”

  “A lot of that history was pretty brutal and ugly,” Tom O’Neill put in. “Some of what they’re doing now could get ugly too. We can’t go back to the way things were before Cook came in and everything started to change. Besides, I don’t think today’s kamaaina would want to go back—not most of them.”

  “Koma does,” David said. “He gets pretty fervent at times.”

  “Oh, sure!” Tom sounded scornful. “That whole Kahoolawe affair—crazy!”

  “I don’t know about that,” Grandma Joanna said. “The protests have had some effect. If I’d been Koma’s age, I’d probably have gone along to try to stop the bombing.”

  “Bombing?” I was lost.

  “The Island of Death,” Noelle sounded suddenly excited, and Marla put a gentle hand on her arm, quieting her.

  “It wasn’t really called that,” David said, “except in a novel that chose to be fanciful. But a jealous goddess was supposed to have put a curse on the island. There’s no water, and in modern times few have lived there. Goats ate it barren, and the U.S. Navy leased the island for practice bombing. It’s the bombing that a lot of Hawaiians resented.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “I mean, what did Koma do?”

  “A few years ago he and several other boys took a boat out, and then swam over to the island by night and camped near where the Navy was target practicing. There have been other invasions of what the military regards as its property.”

  Noelle looked around the room, suddenly tense. “Did you hear that, Mother?”

  “It’s only the wind, dear.”

  “No—it’s Linny! She’s crying. I can hear her. I must find her right away—she needs me!” Noelle jumped up from the table and ran from the room.

  “I’ll take care of her.” Marla rose more slowly and went after her sister, undisturbed—perhaps used to this, as I wasn’t.

  How could I ever accept what had happened? To find my mother alive after all these years, yet lost to me, seemed unbearable.

  Grandma Joanna saw my face and stood up. “Help me clear the table, Caroline. We’re having papaya for desert.”

  She was accustomed to Noelle’s reactions, and her matter-of-fact words steadied me. I carried dishes down the big room, and when we stood together at the steel sink, my grandmother spoke to me softly.

  “Perhaps she’s better off this way—not remembering. Try not to mind so deeply, Caro honey.”

  How could I not mind? “Why do you protect her all the time and keep her the way she is?”

  Joanna Docket could freeze into a woman who seemed made of stone—lava rock perhaps! A woman whom no amount of battering could change, and her gentle affection for me vanished.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Caroline. Perhaps you had better make this a short visit, so that you don’t upset her too much.”

  She put plates of sliced papaya in my hands, and I carried them automatically to the table, where David and Tom were talking. By then I hardly knew what I was doing. I’d not only found and lost my mother, but apparently I’d lost my grandmother too. I could never go back to being the child who had loved her so dearly and found comfort in all she had to give me. She was old now, and a stranger. It was at this moment that I stopped calling her “Grandma” That was a child’s word. From now on she would be Joanna to me. I still wanted to know her better as she was now, but the relationship must be different for us both—more equal—if it could ever be found and developed. She already seemed to be urging me to go home.

  I went back for more plates of papaya and lemon wedges, and she looked at me sadly, as though she sensed a change that separated us still more.

  “Perhaps I was wrong, Caroline. We couldn’t either of us turn out as we dreamed. You’re remembering a younger grandmother—a woman who wasn’t as tired a
s I’ve become. And I’m recalling a small granddaughter who is as lost to me as Noelle’s Linny is to her. Perhaps we could find a newer, richer relationship, if only there were time. But I know now that you mustn’t stay. For your sake, as well as Noelle’s. We must do nothing to send her more deeply into her withdrawal from reality.”

  I wanted to cry for all those lost people who had lived twenty-six years ago, and were gone now, even though some were still alive. But my eyes were dry and I felt mostly hollow. I could find no words to answer her—neither to reject nor to accept. Yet—how could she be so sure she was right?

  She stared at me with eyes that were still the silvery green I remembered. “It’s no use, is it, Caroline?”

  I wanted to protest that this didn’t have to be true. Yet I knew it was true—because Noelle stood between us now. And I was no longer on my grandmother’s side.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t try,” Joanna said.

  I carried the rest of the papaya to the table just as Marla brought her sister back into the room. There were traces of tears on Noelle’s cheeks, but she was smiling again. An empty smile that broke my heart. Joanna was older and wiser than I was—I allowed her that. But perhaps somewhere over the years she had learned to take her older daughter’s condition too much for granted. If I moved slowly, gently, and with love surely a change would come. Only now there wouldn’t be time.

  What had happened had set a restraint upon us all, and we talked very little as we finished our dessert. At least, in a small way, I could enjoy the yellow-orange fruit on my plate. Taste was like smell—never really forgotten, once experienced. Yet almost impossible to describe when it came to subtleties of fragrance and a feeling on the tongue.