Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

  The crowd cheered as the SS Lurline, flagship of the Matson Line, arrived at the end of its first passenger voyage from San Francisco since service as a troop ship during the war. From her vantage point Rachel couldn’t make out all the ceremonies going on—a kahuna performing a blessing, the governor greeting the ship’s captain—but it didn’t matter. The ship itself commanded her attention, seized her imagination—a seafaring city out of Jules Verne, one of his “floating islands” like the Nautilus. It was hard to imagine anything so massive staying afloat; she was as impressed as she had been when waiting with Mama at the docks for Papa’s ship to arrive.

  Over the next few days Rachel would discover how much had changed, and how much had not, in this new Honolulu. Kapi'olani Park was no longer laced with canals but was still quite beautiful, and there was an aquarium and a zoo nearby now. Love’s Bakery had moved long ago from Nu'uanu Avenue to industrial Iwilei, but the company’s delivery trucks—emblazoned with the Love’s logo and the motto BLUE RIBBON BREAD—crisscrossed the city, and it pleased Rachel to see them. Kaumakapili Church had burned to the ground in the great “plague fire” of 1900, as officials attempting to burn buildings contaminated by bubonic plague inadvertently wiped out most of Chinatown, and Kaumakapili as well. Another church bearing the name had been built uptown, in Plama.

  Gone too was Kapi'olani Girls Home, its doors closed in 1938, its remaining orphans placed in foster homes or with relatives. Rachel had hoped the sisters there could help her locate her daughter, but now all she could think to do was go to the offices of the Board of Health in the Kapuiwa Building. “Oh, no,” the Chinese woman at the front desk told her, “only records we have here are birth, death, and marriage certificates. No adoption papers.”

  Rachel thought a moment and asked, “Could the adoptive parents have filed for a new birth certificate? Maybe I could find out their names that way.”

  The clerk shook her head regretfully. “Sorry. Three years ago, they change the law—all adoption records sealed now. You gotta go family court, ask the judge to unseal the records.” She gave directions to the courthouse. Rachel thanked her, started out, then turned back. “Did you say you have marriage records here?”

  The clerk nodded. “Marriage licenses and certificates from 1910 on. Before that they were kept in a ledger, but we type it up and send it to you.”

  “Could I get a copy of my sister’s license? So I can find out what her last name is now?”

  The woman looked at her sadly. “Daughter, sister . . . you lose a lotta people, huh?”

  “Yes. A lot.”

  “You know where she got married?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, no problem.” The woman reached under the desk, took out a form, slid it toward her. “Fill this out, give your name, address, one dollar fee, we mail you a copy of the certificate.” She gave her a pen and watched as Rachel methodically filled out the form in block letters with her left hand. The clerk’s gaze slid down to Rachel’s other hand and her eyebrows arched a little. When Rachel had finished the woman scanned the form. “Rachel Kalama Utagawa,” she said; and then, “You out on T.R., Mrs. Utagawa?”

  Rachel nodded, steeling herself. “Yes.”

  But the woman just smiled. “Good for you,” she said. “You got the address for Vineyard Street Clinic, where you go for check-ups?” She scribbled down an address and handed it to Rachel. “We’ll mail you your sister’s marriage license, if we got it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Good luck, Mrs. Utagawa.”

  Rachel then made her way to the U.S. District Courts Building, where she was asked to put in writing her request for Ruth’s adoption papers to be unsealed. The formality of it all, the sober granite face of the building, gave her pause. Did she really want to do this? What if Ruth didn’t want to meet her birth mother? A thousand questions presented themselves, a thousand reasons not to do it. But there had also been hundreds, maybe thousands of patients at Kalaupapa who had died without ever having the opportunity to see their children again. Rachel had a chance now at something they would have killed for; could she just throw that away?

  She handed her written request to the court clerk, was told that a court date would be set to hear her petition, and hurried out before she could change her mind.

  I

  nevitably, Rachel found herself staring up at a two-story stucco apartment building two blocks from Queen Emma Street, which now stood on the lot where her childhood home had once been. There was not a trace left of the house in which she’d spent her happiest years; Filipino and Japanese children played just as happily upon its grounds, but not a reminder anywhere of little Rachel Kalama, her family, or the life she had led. And she grieved to realize that the home she had so loved existed now only in memory, as distant and insubstantial as the kingdom in which she’d been born.

  It was thirty years since Papa had told her about Kimo selling shoes at McInerny’s, but she hoped someone there might know where he was today. At the corner of Fort and King, McInerny’s Shoes seemed to Rachel a palatial store, with polished mahogany walls, stained glass windows, and expensive Chinese rugs on the floor. The plush upholstered chairs in which customers sat to try on shoes were nicer than any Rachel had ever seen in anyone’s home! But when she asked if James, Kimo, Kalama still worked here, no one in the store recognized the name; and one older gentleman went so far as to assert that he couldn’t recall anyone by that name ever working here.

  She had even less to go on in tracking down Ben. Papa had said he was a boatbuilder in Kaka'ako, but a walking tour of the docks there yielded no shipbuilder who had ever employed or apprenticed a Benjamin Kalama.

  Broadening her quest beyond the immediate family she combed the telephone book for Mama’s brother Will or his son David. She found neither, but did stumble across a familiar pair of names: Kiolani, Elijah and Florence, 1901 Ulewele St. Her pulse quickened at the discovery: Aunt Florence—Papa’s sister—and Uncle Eli! It was a different address than the one she remembered, but it had to be them, it had to be. Excitedly she sought out Ulewele Street and was soon standing on the doorstep of a neat little saltbox house with the name Kiolani stenciled on the mailbox. Beside herself with anticipation, Rachel rang the doorbell and waited as, inside, footsteps shuffled slowly to the door. It was opened by a woman in her eighties, white hair stark against brown leathery skin. Rachel gasped. It was her, it was Aunt Flo who made the best haupia pudding anyone ever tasted, smiling pleasantly as she said, “Yes?”

  “Aunt Florence?” The woman looked at her blankly. “Aunt Florence, it’s me—Rachel. Henry’s daughter.”

  The smile vanished from Florence’s face, replaced by a scowl. “Not funny. Rachel dead, long time ago.”

  Rachel laughed. “No, I’m not. Look at me, Auntie, it’s Rachel, I’m back from Kalaupapa!”

  At that word, the old woman flinched.

  “Rachel?” she said. Her voice was soft, and the realization in her eyes not a dawning but a darkening. “Oh my God, baby. Oh my God.”

  “They released me, Auntie. I’m cured!” She felt tears running down her cheeks. “I can’t believe I found you! I’m so happy to see you!”

  Florence’s gaze swept up and down the street, then back to Rachel. She took in Rachel’s clawed hand and a look of distress spread across her face. “Why do you come here?” Florence asked, and now even Rachel could see the black blossoms of fear in her aunt’s eyes.

  “You’re my 'ohana,” Rachel said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world—and Florence flinched again because it was.

  “Baby,” she said softly, “you know after my brother Pono got sent to Kalihi, we took in his family; you know?”

  “I know,” Rachel said.

  “The Board of Health, they send people out all the time to check on Margaret and the keiki. Bring ’em to Kalihi to test for ma'i pk. Then they start testing me and Eli and our keiki. They tell our neighbors, ‘These people have relatives wi
th leprosy.’ Nobody wants to go near us anymore. People break our windows, they say, ‘Go Moloka'i where you belong!’

  “Somebody from the Board of Health goes to Eli’s job, tells his boss that Eli’s brother-in-law, his niece, are lepers. He loses his job, just like that.” The memory was still vivid enough to make her wince. “Never once any of us tests positive for leprosy. Never once! But nobody cares. Eli gets a new job, then somebody tells somebody else about you and Pono, and no job anymore. Soon we can’t afford to take care of Margaret and her keiki. They go leeward side, where nobody knows them. Never come back to Honolulu. Margaret dead now.”

  Florence reached out, touching her hand gently to Rachel’s cheek. “Took years before everybody forget about the ma'i pk. Nobody here knows. Nobody.” She glanced around as if afraid people were watching even now, watching and judging. “Go ’way, baby,” she said softly, sadly. “I’m sorry. Please, go ’way.”

  Slowly but firmly she closed the door on her niece.

  If with a thought Rachel could have ended her life in that moment, she would have gladly done so. Denied that mercy, she was forced to walk away from her aunt’s house with an even heavier burden than she had arrived with.

  Somehow she managed to find the bus stop and stagger home, if that was the word, and into bed, where she cried herself to sleep as she had that night aboard the Mokoli'i, her family having been left behind on the shores of O'ahu.

  She made no further attempts to contact her family for weeks, instead bearing down on the unpleasant but necessary task of finding a job. But the difficulties were similar to those she encountered looking for an apartment. If she listed her work experience at the Kalaupapa Store and Bishop Home she was announcing herself as a Hansen’s disease patient, and the employers inevitably hired someone else. But if she didn’t list them, she seemed to have no prior work experience and that didn’t help her prospects either. She applied for positions as a grocery store clerk, waitress, hotel maid, cook, seamstress, and cleaning woman; but she was competing in a crowded postwar job market and failed to land any of them.

  Her room was nowhere as nice as her cottage in Kalaupapa, but after a few weeks of hard work and some new curtains, it had become quite livable; even cozy. And it had one thing the house on Moloka'i didn’t: a world outside its doors. Within walking distance there were movie theaters, concerts, museums, bookstores . . . already Rachel had found two Jack London books she didn’t have for a mere 25¢ apiece! She was getting to know her neighbors and the local merchants, starting to lay the foundations for a new life; and if this wasn’t the Honolulu she’d grown up in, it was the only Honolulu she had.

  Two separate but similar pieces of mail arrived within days of one another. The first was from the United States District Court, family division, notifying her that a date had been set for the hearing regarding her daughter’s adoption papers and that she should show up at nine A.M. on the morning of June 9, 1948.

  The second envelope also bore a government address, this one from the Territorial Department of Public Health. She opened and unfolded a pale photostat of a marriage certificate.

  How could such a simple document—a standardized form, an artifact of haole bureaucracy—engender such awe and terror as Rachel felt now? She had not a doubt that this was her sister’s marriage certificate; her parents’ names jumped out at her. The document went on to note the name of the person issuing the license, as well as the witnesses to the ceremony, including one Dorothy L. Kalama.

  Almost before she realized she was doing it, Rachel’s left hand had picked up the phone and she was using a pencil held in her crabbed right hand to dial the operator. She requested a phone number for a John and Sarah Kaahea on the island of Maui; and when the operator replied, “I have a Sarah Kaahea on Waine'e Street in Lahaina,” Rachel thought her heart would burst. She cradled the receiver between chin and shoulder and with her good hand scribbled down the number—LAH 7939—and asked the operator for the address, jotting down 633 Waine'e Street, Lahaina.

  She hung up, staring at the address and phone number for so long that they nearly lost their meaning, becoming a set of random letters and numerals signifying nothing. Should she dial the number? What if it wasn’t her Sarah? Almost as bad—what if it was her? The two of them had hardly been close. Perhaps, like Aunt Florence, Sarah would prefer not to be found.

  She thought of nothing else for the rest of the day, and when the weight of it became too much to bear she took herself to the new Bob Hope picture, Sorrowful Jones, playing at the Hawai'i Theatre. She lost herself in laughter for an hour and a half, then browsed in the shops along Kalkaua Avenue before strolling home; and by the time she woke the next morning she had made her decision.

  If she called her sister on the phone, it would be too easy for Sarah to hang up; too devastating for Rachel if she did. Perhaps if Sarah saw her, saw the lengths to which she had gone to find her, she wouldn’t be as quick to turn her away. Perhaps she might even invite Rachel inside to talk for a little while; to reminisce. That was all she wanted really—some touchstone to her past, her family. And if Sarah did turn her away, as Aunt Florence had, at least she would have seen her sister, however briefly.

  But what if by some wild chance the Sarah Kaahea in the phone book wasn’t her sister? Making one concession to practicality, Rachel took a deep breath, picked up the phone, and carefully dialed LAH 7–9–3–9. It rang twice, and then a woman answered.

  “Hello?”

  Rachel dropped the receiver into the cradle as if it had become electrified. There was no doubt in her mind: she had just heard her sister’s voice. And she knew for certain now that she could never be satisfied just to hear that voice; she had to see her, no matter if Sarah wanted to be seen or not.

  A

  irfare from Honolulu to Pu'unn Airport on Maui was sixteen dollars, and Rachel’s purse bulged with another fifty for incidentals. The Hawaiian Airlines DC-3 was a larger aircraft than she had flown on from Moloka'i, and a good deal noisier; but you couldn’t beat the flight time, barely an hour and a half from Honolulu. From the air Maui appeared to be everything that Honolulu no longer was: lush, green, sparsely populated. It almost appeared to be two islands, connected by a narrow isthmus—one capped like Kalaupapa by a dormant volcano caldera, the other ridged by some of the most magnificent mountains Rachel had ever seen. Terraced farm fields covered most of the island; a sprinkling of towns clustered along the coasts. The plane banked over one of these on its way to Pu'unn a short way down the narrow neck of the isthmus. The DC-3 touched down at what used to be a naval air station; abandoned by the military after the war, it now serviced commercial flights.

  Rachel carried no suitcase; she expected to be back here by five P.M. to catch the last flight back to Honolulu. Looking for a bus she was told the only one on Maui ran only within Wailuku, and she would have to rent a car or hire a taxi to get to West Maui. Car rental was out of the question—she had no driver’s license, none being needed at Kalaupapa—so she approached one of the few taxis dawdling at the airport. “I want to go to Lahaina,” she told the Filipino driver, who whistled and said, “Helluva trip, rental car cheaper,” but finally quoted Rachel the dizzying fare of fifteen dollars to West Maui.

  “I flew here for sixteen,” she noted in mild protest.

  He asked her, “You ever drive the Pali Road before?”

  “No.”

  “After we drive it, you think fifteen is too much, I’ll knock it down to ten. Fair enough?”

  She agreed and got into the cab.

  “No bags?” the driver said, puzzled. She shook her head. He shrugged as if to say, Not my business, and pulled away from the curb.

  Soon they were making their way down a two-lane road winding lazily through fields of spiked pineapple crowns and jungles of tall green cane stalks.

  “You a tourist?” the driver asked, curiosity apparently getting the better of him.

  “No,” Rachel said.

  “Been here before
?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve come to see my sister.”

  The driver nodded, satisfied now. “Makes more sense. Maui don’t get enough tourists to field a softball team.”

  Near a sugar mill on their left a column of brown smoke twisted like a maile vine in the gentle wind; Rachel inhaled the sweet pungent smell of burning cane almost as a treat. “It’s beautiful here,” she told the driver.

  “Yeah, nice. My father came over in nineteen-nine to work for Wailuku Sugar. Didn’t pay worth a damn, but he liked the island; left the mill, worked the docks at Kahului, after a few years bought a cab. Mine now.” He laughed, gestured to the outside. “This don’t pay worth a damn either, but hey, look at the office I got.”

  When they reached the base of the isthmus and turned right onto the Pali Road, Rachel understood why there were no buses to Lahaina. The Pali Road was a narrow single lane clinging to a sheer cliff. On their left was a steep drop-off, a view both hair-raising and spectacular: ocean surging around black lava coastline. The road on which they traveled was paved, and wider than the pali trail at Kalaupapa, but Rachel still anticipated it crumbling under them, the cab plunging down the pali to be impaled on lava daggers. And it was just as switchbacked as the one she’d climbed years before. Rachel stopped counting the zigzagging curves after she’d reached a hundred, and for the first time in her life started getting carsick.

  “They call this the Amalfi Drive,” the driver said, “ ’cause the view’s supposed to look like Amalfi, Italy.”

  “Stop the car,” Rachel blurted.

  The driver hit the brakes. Rachel opened the rear door on the driver’s side and sent her lunch hurtling down the steep face of the pali just half a foot away.

  “Whoa,” the driver said, looking down, “plenty of food for the fishes today.”