Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

  The plane banked as it approached O'ahu, the arc of its flight opening first a wedge, then a quarter, of land in the window—like a second hand sweeping across the face of a clock, revealing more moment by moment. The green crown of Diamond Head greeted her like an old friend, but it was a friend quickly lost amid strangers.

  The city of Honolulu, once a sprinkling of low buildings dwarfed by groves of coconut palms, had erupted far above the treeline and expanded in every direction—even makai, seaward. It seemed to Rachel that the lush garden of her childhood had been pruned of much of its foliage, the greenery now merely garlanding block after block of concrete and asphalt. The marshes and duck ponds of Waikiki had apparently been drained. There seemed to be a new canal where once three streams fed rice paddies and taro farms on their drowsy way to the sea. Hotels dotted the familiar crescent of Waikiki Beach, including one behemoth, a gigantic, shocking-pink palace in the shape of an H. The sprawl of buildings stretched from Kalihi in the west to Koko Head in the east, and had begun penetrating the Manoa and Nu'uanu Valleys, houses blighting the face of the mountains like leprosy tubercles. Even the shoreline had been added to—a new yacht basin fringed the harbor with the masts of expensive boats.

  And then they were landing, and as Rachel walked off the plane and crossed the tarmac she could scarcely believe that the ground beneath her was the land of her birth. Outside the interisland terminal she breathed in as many gas fumes as she did the scent of plumeria leis being offered to tourists at curbside. Rachel looked around in bewilderment at the welter of signs offering directions and instructions; taxicabs and buses rolled by every few seconds. Then she saw a bus approach with the word WAIKIKI emblazoned on its steel forehead, and when it stopped, she stepped through its sighing metal doors and boarded it.

  She dropped the required coins in a fare box and sat up front on a bench behind the driver. She gazed out the windows with fascination as the bus left the airport and cleaved toward a sign reading NIMITZ HIGHWAY EAST, then onto a roadway bigger than any Rachel had ever traveled and into a flow of traffic faster than any she had ever imagined. Eventually the bus weaved through Kalihi, coming within two thousand feet of the old receiving station, and Rachel was surprised to find her heart beating just a little faster as they passed the road that once led to it.

  Across the aisle from her a little boy was staring at Rachel’s clawed right hand and she quickly covered it with her other one, ignoring his puzzled gaze and whispered questions to his mother, who shushed him.

  When she saw a sign announcing WAIKIKI→ she got off at the next stop; but after walking three or four blocks, searching in vain for something resembling a beach, she realized that she must have gotten off the bus too soon. The next to come along was a strange beast: it had the body of a bus but ran like a trolley on tracks, connected by wires to power lines running overhead. She boarded it, but was so fascinated with the “trolley bus” that it wasn’t until it was well underway that she noticed it was heading mauka, toward the mountains, not makai. She yanked the brake cord as she had seen other passengers do, and disembarked this one as well.

  This time she asked for directions from passersby and caught a gas-powered bus heading east on a street named after King Kalkaua. After five minutes she yanked the cord as the bus approached the intersection of Kalkaua Avenue and Kapi'olani Boulevard. She got off at something called “Kau Kau Corner,” where a sign proclaiming itself CROSSROADS OF THE PACIFIC pointed the way to NEW YORK→ ← SYDNEY, and RIO DE JANIERO, among other far-flung spots. And indeed taxis, cars, and buses seemed busily en route to these very destinations, their wheels jostling over unused trolley tracks still cut into the road.

  Suitcase dangling from her left hand, she made her way down this street honoring the king whose funeral procession she still remembered, and thought that there was little royal about Kalkaua Avenue. But it was a wide, pleasant enough thoroughfare, ornamented with tall coconut palms. She passed hotels, gift shops, bars and night clubs, travel agencies, thatched-roof restaurants, street vendors selling leis, even a bowling alley. The pace was breakneck compared to the sleepy Waikiki of her youth, but Rachel rather enjoyed the sight of tourists and off-duty servicemen, the cars whizzing by, the conversation and commerce on every corner. She had drowsed enough in Kalaupapa. She was relieved to find that Honolulu was much more attractive at ground level than it had appeared from the air. The difference between Old Honolulu and New, she would come to decide, was the difference between a beautiful woman who was simply being herself and a beautiful woman calling attention to herself: a little vain perhaps, but you couldn’t say she wasn’t attractive.

  She slowed as she came to what looked like a vast estate tucked away behind a tall screen of coconut palms. It was the behemoth hotel she had seen from the air, but like most of Waikiki it seemed more graceful and approachable up close. From the street it looked like a Moorish castle in pink stucco, its Spanish design and colors at once incongruous and felicitous, as if the coral reefs of Waikiki had spontaneously fabricated themselves into this pink palace. Eager for a closer look, Rachel wandered down the entry drive and onto the lushly landscaped grounds of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. The rustle of the swaying palm trees was not so different from those amid the rice paddies and fishponds of Old Waikiki. Bamboo awnings shaded the hundreds of windows gazing down on guests strolling toward the Coconut Grove restaurant or up to the shops and sights of Kalkaua Avenue. Fancy cars and taxis navigated a circular driveway to the main entrance, fronted by a pink portico; doormen helped passengers from their cars and through the colonnade to the hotel lobby.

  Rachel loitered a few feet from the portico, taking in this magnificent structure, so much bigger than anything at Kalaupapa. Without even realizing he had approached, Rachel was startled by a doorman who asked gently if a bit condescendingly, “Ma’am? May I help you?”

  His smile was a tad condescending as well, and Rachel’s response was sheer reflex.

  “Why, yes,” she said. “You can take my bag.”

  She held out her suitcase and the startled doorman took it with a little bow of his head. “Yes, of course. I’ll have the bellman bring it to your room.” He pointed to the lobby. “The front desk is right through there.”

  Betraying not a trace of uncertainty Rachel smiled, thanked him, turned, and sashayed into the hotel. She didn’t dare do anything else!

  The main lobby was tastefully appointed with Spanish tile floors, wicker chairs, and potted ferns; a succession of arched doorways echoed the colonnade outside. Rachel walked up to the registration desk, and with a straight face announced, “I’d like a room, please.” Some pragmatic inner voice inside made her ask, “How much are they?”

  The desk clerk answered pleasantly, “For single occupancy we have a range of rooms from sixteen dollars to twenty-six dollars a night, on the American plan.”

  Rachel tried not to look too stunned by that. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I take it the twenty-six-dollar rooms,” she said, smiling, “are made of fourteen-karat gold? With diamond doorknobs?”

  The clerk laughed. “Yes, absolutely. But our sixteen dollar rooms are quite comfortable too.”

  Well, why not? She had to stay somewhere until she found an apartment. And if she couldn’t celebrate her freedom with a little luxury, what was the point in being here and not in Kalaupapa?

  “Yes,” she found herself saying, “that would be fine.”

  A bellboy took her up by elevator—her first!—to the fifth floor, where she was ushered into a small pleasant room painted sea-green, with two beds, a vase of fresh flowers on a bamboo dresser, and a serene view of palm-shaded paths. The bellboy placed her suitcase on a luggage rack at the foot of one of the beds, opened the windows, and pointed out the amenities. Now Rachel became a little flustered: she knew she was supposed to tip him, but how much? Tentatively she handed him a quarter but by the incipient frown on his face she could tell it wasn’t enough; she handed him another, and that seemed to satisfy him.
He tipped his cap and wished her a good day.

  Rachel sank into one of the comfortable wicker chairs by the window and lifted her face to the cool breeze. She looked about at her surroundings and couldn’t help giggling. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, good God! If her friends in Kalaupapa could only see her. If Mama could see her! “Sixteen dollars for a hotel room? Why not toss money in the street, use it to wipe the trolley horse’s behind?”

  The thought of Mama spurred her to locate a telephone book, but a flip to the “K”s revealed no Dorothy Kalama, nor for that matter a Ben, Kimo, or Sarah Kalama. Rachel hadn’t expected to find Sarah; Papa had said she’d gotten married but he’d never mentioned her husband’s last name. For that matter even Ben and Kimo might not still be named Kalama. It wasn’t uncommon for Hawaiians to take an entirely different surname than their father’s, and it was even more likely if one of the family was known to have had the ma'i pk. She sighed and put the telephone book back in its drawer; she knew it couldn’t be that easy.

  Suddenly tired, Rachel stretched out on one of the comfortable beds and the next thing she knew it was close to six o’clock. She’d napped the afternoon away. Waking to waning sunlight gilding the walls, Rachel for a moment could believe the room was indeed fourteen-karat.

  She washed up and went downstairs to the main dining room, getting a little lost on the way. When she finally entered the Monarch Room, she gaped at the high ceiling supported by massive pillars, the glittering chandeliers, the sparkling silverware on crisp white linen. She had never eaten in a restaurant before, but suspected she had started at the top of the heap. When the maître d’ asked her if she had a reservation she admitted she did not; but he merely asked for her room number and escorted her to a small table.

  The menu he gave her was a window into another world: she wondered what on earth a “Consommé Royal” was, or for that matter “Borscht a la Russe” or “Navarin of Spring Lamb aux Primeurs.” Fortunately there were other options in both English and Hawaiian—a few too many in fact. Imagining each item would be a little sample, as at a l'au, she inadvertently ordered two entrees—Filet of Opakapaka and Young Suckling Pig—and three vegetables.

  When it arrived she ate all of it as though it had been her precise intention from the start, and was happy at least that the menu bore no prices, so the contemplation of the cost couldn’t spoil what was unquestionably the best meal she had ever had.

  She listened to the orchestra perform a handful of tunes, then went for a walk on the beach. At last out of the long shadow of the pali, she saw the sunset for the first time in fifty years, a blaze of gold on the horizon; it was every bit as beautiful as she’d remembered it. She wished Kenji could have lived to see this, the two of them enjoying this new world together. She looked into the distance of the Kaiwi Channel, toward the island that had been both home and prison to her for most of her life, and Kenji left behind there.

  “You would have known not to order two entrees,” she said with a smile, and blew him a kiss before returning to her room.

  S

  he knew she couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel, any hotel, for long, so her first order of business had to be finding an apartment. After breakfast she bought copies of both the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser; her search of the classifieds yielded half a dozen prospects, which she then took the bus to inspect. The first was too expensive, the second too down at the heels, but the third, a furnished room on Beretania Street, was clean and affordable at $40 a month. When the landlord asked for references and her last address, unthinkingly she wrote down Kaiulani Street in Kalaupapa and the man’s pleasant demeanor chilled. His eyes went to her crippled right hand, then they clouded with fear; he snatched the application from her hands and promptly tore it up. “This no good,” he announced, “we got no rooms for you!”

  Stunned, Rachel said, “You just showed me a room.”

  “It’s rented. I make mistake. You go!”

  She would soon discover that this landlord was more polite than most. The next, a woman renting out a one-bedroom apartment on King Street, didn’t even bother to make excuses. “What the hell you doing here? You unclean, don’t belong inna city with clean people!”

  Rachel tried to tell her, “I’m cured, I’m no danger to anybody,” but the woman didn’t believe a word and flailed her arms at her. “Get outta here, get outta my house! I call police, they send you back to Moloka'i!”

  Rachel stumbled onto the street, trudging wearily to the bus stop and the next faint prospect.

  She wasn’t about to tell the truth anymore about her previous residence, but with no references she was shown the door almost as quickly. Some landlords deduced her origins on their own, on the evidence of her crabbed hand. One woman became hysterical, screaming for Rachel to get out, she had a child in the house; and an elderly man repeated the threat to report her as an escaped leper.

  Rachel said, “I didn’t escape, I was released,” and took a step forward, hands spread peaceably, trying to make some human connection with him.

  In panic the old man snapped up a crystal ashtray and hurled it at her. It grazed the side of her head, dropping her like a fallen deer; and as she lay stunned on the man’s filthy rug he screamed, “Get out! Dirty leper! Get out!” and ran for the phone.

  Blood trickling down the side of her face, Rachel fled the apartment. She didn’t stop running until she was at least three blocks away. She pressed a handkerchief to her temple, and in the reflection of a store window she could see that it was just a tiny cut, nothing serious. But enough to make her want to cry.

  Finally, at the end of the day, she found a rooming house whose landlord didn’t care that she had no references as long as she paid three months’ rent in advance. It was a dreary, one-room furnished flat on South King Street, with a Murphy bed and a greasy little kitchenette, overpriced at seventy dollars a month.

  She leapt at it, signing the lease immediately, happy to have found it.

  She spent a last night at the Royal Hawaiian but could no longer enjoy its dreamy fantasy. She knew what freedom really looked like now. She rose early to move into her new home, such as it was. Her neighbors ranged from salesmen and seamen to mothers with children but no husbands, and women who might have been prostitutes. But they all smiled and welcomed her, and one fatherless keiki even showed up on her doorstep with a batch of cookies his mother had baked. Rachel insisted he eat some of them himself, which—solely to please her, of course—he did.

  She bought cleaning supplies and groceries at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket, itself a revelation to her: so many kinds of food, so many different brands! Rachel wandered up and down the aisles, frozen with indecision, overwhelmed with choices. Should she buy a can of Coral Tuna or Mid-Pacific Tuna Flakes? Star-Kist or Chicken of the Sea? Which was the better coffee: Schillings, Chase & Sanborn, Chock Full O’ Nuts, Maxwell House? For breakfast cereal there was an array of brightly colored boxes with inscrutable names: Kix, Pep, Cheerios, Post Toasties, Rice Krispies. Did she want to feast tonight on Eastern Grain-Fed Pork or California Stewing Chicken? How about Utah Yearling Leg-O-Lamb? What about her wash—should she use Oxydol or Clorox or Rinso? What on earth was Nucoa Sandwich Spread? Did the phrase “Boston Butt” on the meat package mean what she thought it meant? Why would anyone want to drink sauerkraut juice?

  She bought fresh pineapple and papaya, deviled ham and bottles of big Greek olives, freshly ground chopped meat and plump lamp chops. She had to stop herself from buying more; it all looked so good! She also took home an armful of detergents and soaps, where she scoured a layer of grime from the windows and wiped rancid grease from the ancient stove. And as she mopped and dusted and scrubbed, her new home began to look . . . well, not as bad.

  She slept soundly that night and the next morning went out intending to see more of Honolulu. She got more than she bargained for. There was an unusually festive atmosphere on the streets, with everyone she saw in bright aloha shirts or dresses; women wore fragrant plumeri
a blossoms in their hair, men wore red carnation leis banded around their hats or draped around their necks. There was an air of celebration as hundreds of pedestrians swarmed makai for some reason, and Rachel amiably fell in step with the crowd heading toward the harbor. “What’s all this about?” she asked one man, who looked at her as if she’d been living underwater and said, “It’s Lurline Day,” then moved on, leaving Rachel no more enlightened. No matter; she found the mere presence of so many people around her exciting. Being in a real city again, amid a crowd of faces she didn’t know, was strangely thrilling. She happily followed the crowd to its mysterious, irrelevant destination.

  Suddenly a roar split the air above and Rachel looked up to see a squadron of Army and Navy planes passing low over the city and out to sea. Straggling behind was a tiny biplane trailing a banner reading ALOHA LURLINE. Who the hell was Lurline and how did she rate a welcome like this?

  At the harbor Rachel was astonished to see an even larger crowd at Pier 11, where the Royal Hawaiian Band was playing. The music was nearly drowned out by whistles and sirens from a flotilla of tugs, sailboats, yachts, all making the loudest racket they could as their flags saluted in the breeze. Rachel at last understood what everyone was waiting for as the most enormous ship she had ever seen steamed into port—planes buzzing it in greeting, boats circling and blaring their horns. The ship was as long as an entire city block and from the waterline to the tip of its smokestacks it was as tall as a five-story building! And she laughed to see that, like so many people here, the steamship sported a colossal orange lei around its bow.