Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

  She slipped her free hand over Rachel’s gnarled fingers and gave them a tender squeeze. “Go back to Honolulu. Find your daughter. Just as long as you know . . . you’ll always have a home here.”

  Rachel held back tears. “Thank you, Sarah,” she said softly. “I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

  Home. She thought of her vanished home in Honolulu, all the years and memories razed for an apartment building. But now she had new homes, around which new memories could be forged: Sarah’s cottage in Lahaina; Ben’s house in Hna. Her old family made new, except for . . .

  She found herself thinking of another home, one she had never seen. She turned to Sarah and asked, “Isn’t Kula somewhere around here?”

  Her sister glanced at her, seeming to know at once what Rachel was thinking. “About twelve miles upcountry.”

  “You know the way?”

  Sarah nodded tightly. “I know the way.”

  They turned off the Hna Road and onto a narrow mountain lane twisting through thick woods and small upcountry towns: Ha'ik, Makawao, Waiakoa. A mile north of Kula, Sarah turned onto an unpaved road. A jolting five minute ride brought them to a tumbledown old house, surrounded by thickets and edging a forest pungent with the smell of ripe guava. It was little more than a shack—one room, two windows—no running water but a clear stream meandering through the trees and past a wide meadow of pili grass, tall enough for a child to lose himself in.

  Sarah paced off a hundred feet as Mama had told her, leading Rachel to a mound of grass and weeds. They knelt and weeded the plot until the rich red earth could be seen, as well as a small wooden cross with a name carved neatly into the lateral beam: not James Kalama, surprisingly, but Kimo.

  “Mama did this?” Rachel said, and Sarah nodded. “She was reading Ecclesiastes when she came across: ‘A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death better than the day of one’s birth.’ She said she thought about all the love Kimo, as Kimo, had received, and decided that was the name God should know him by, on that day ‘better than the day of his birth.’ ”

  A bird, perhaps a Maui parrotbill, warbled from somewhere deep in the forest. The stream chuckled to itself; the wind rustled the pili grass. It was a good place for a boy to play.

  U

  nited States District Court Judge Walter Birch—a stern-looking haole in his fifties—slipped on a pair of spectacles and scanned the documents in front of him. Rachel, in her new Sunday dress, stood nervously before the bench. This courtroom was several degrees of magnitude more intimidating than the one at Kalaupapa. Despite the summer heat, the room felt cold and formal, and not warmed any by the judge, who seemed to have a permanent scowl engraved on his face. In a flat voice he asked Rachel, “You gave up your daughter for adoption in—1916, Mrs. Utagawa?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rachel said. “Though not willingly.”

  He glanced up. “You were given the option, weren’t you, of having your family on O'ahu hnai her?”

  “Yes, but I couldn’t locate them at the time. And my husband’s family wouldn’t consider it.”

  The judge made a grunt of acknowledgment and glanced at another document. “So your daughter would be . . . thirty-two years old now?” He rolled his tongue around inside his cheek as he read, then asked without looking up, “And what exactly do you hope to accomplish by establishing contact with her at this late date?”

  “I . . . don’t know what to expect from it, Your Honor.”

  He looked up, a bit sharply. “Not expect—hope. What is it you hope to gain? A daughter? A place in her home?”

  “No, that’s not why I’m doing this.”

  “Because you can’t assume, you know, that she’ll have the same interest in you as you do in her. Adopted children are often quite content with the number and quality of parents they already have.”

  Now the courtroom felt very warm indeed, and Rachel was acutely aware of the perspiration trickling down her neck and under her arms.

  “I just want to see her,” Rachel said. “The woman she’s become. I want to hear her story, know that she’s happy. And if I have to walk away from her . . .” She was wilting under the heat and the cold of the judge’s stare but managed to finish, “If I have to walk away, I want to do it because of what we are, or aren’t, to each other . . . and not because I have leprosy.”

  The judge took that in, removed his spectacles. “Do you have anything else to add?” he asked.

  “No, Your Honor.”

  Judge Birch nodded and lifted his gavel.

  “The court will take the matter under advisement.” He rapped the gavel and the hearing was over. Rachel stumbled out into bright sunlight with no idea how the court might rule or how long it might take.

  To occupy herself in the interim, she renewed her efforts to find work, applying for jobs—bank clerk, maid, flower shop girl, nanny—all along the bus route and as far east as Kahala. After a month she was finally offered a position, as a cashier at a gift shop on the corner of King Street and Ward Avenue. The store offered the usual miscellany of snacks and souvenirs: macadamia nuts, guava jelly, pineapples, flower and feather leis. It was easy work, and if the owner suspected that Rachel was a Hansen’s disease patient, he neither acknowledged it nor seemed to care. Then, a day into Rachel’s third week, as she gave a quarter’s change with her left hand to a man buying some Kona coffee, the customer caught a glimpse of her other hand. She saw his blink of surprise, his chill of recognition. He gripped the quarter by the edge—as though it had just turned hotter than the sun—and dropped it into a wastebasket on his way out. No doubt he would seek out the nearest washroom and scrub his hands raw.

  A few days later Rachel was let go with no explanation from her employer other than, “I’m sorry, this isn’t working out.” He at least gave her a week’s severance pay.

  David and Helen were among the new parolees who’d followed Rachel to Honolulu; over dinner one night David complained of how old friends and former employers seemed reticent to offer him work. “We may have to move out of town, maybe a neighbor isle—someplace where no one knows us, and people don’t look at you as if you’re—”

  “Dirty,” Rachel said.

  “Unclean,” Helen agreed. She told of getting back her old job as a bank clerk only to be informed a week later that her fellow employees had gone to the branch manager and threatened to resign en masse if “that leper girl” continued to work there. “At least in Kalaupapa you had your dignity,” she said, “and you could work an honest job like anyone else.” The territorial legislature was considering changing the official designation of leprosy to Hansen’s disease, but they couldn’t legislate the fear and ignorance from people’s hearts.

  That week Rachel was notified that Judge Birch would rule on her petition the following Monday. When Rachel appeared on the appointed day the judge’s stern gaze swept over her as he announced, “In the matter of the adoption of Ruth Dorothy Utagawa, the court finds that petitioner has demonstrated good cause to unseal the court records in case number 45601.” He rapped his gavel, dust motes flying up from the bench as if startled. “Next case.”

  A dazed Rachel was taken by a court clerk to the records division, where he brought out a musty sheaf of documents stamped with the case number and smelling of the past. “You may inspect these as long as you wish,” he told her, giving her pencil and paper to make notes, and Rachel slowly began sorting through the file.

  On top was a sheet bearing her own signature as well as Kenji’s: the form they’d signed legally relinquishing “custody and control” of their daughter. It hurt to look at it. This was followed by pages and pages of medical records from Kapi'olani Home; and when at last Rachel came to the adoption papers her hands began to tremble.

  TAIZO AND ETSUKO WATANABE

  216 S. KUKUI ST.

  HONOLULU, T.H.

  In pro per

  UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT—

  TENTH DISTRICT

  COUNTY O
F HONOLULU

  In the matter of the Adoption

  No. 45601

  Petition of:

  PETITION FOR ADOPTION

  TAIZO AND ETSUKO WATANABE

  Adopting Parents

  According to the petition and adoption application, dated June 7, 1921, Mr. and Mrs. Taizo Watanabe of Honolulu—a former plantation worker at Waimnalo, now a general contractor, and his wife—were Japanese nationals who had resided in the islands for eight years, presently with three sons. The application listed questions about the Watanabes’ religious background, their economic status, their family health history; all answered innocuously enough. In addition to the petition there were other court papers, pleadings and court transcripts, that Rachel read in their entirety, as engrossed as if she were reading Jack London or Conan Doyle. At the end of which she saw:

  WHEREFORE, petitioner prays that the Court adjudge the adoption of the child by the petitioners, declaring that the petitioners and child shall henceforth sustain toward each other the legal relation of parents and child, and have all rights and be subject to all the duties of that relation; and that the child shall be known as RUTH DAI WATANABE.

  Rachel’s sadness at the words “shall henceforth sustain . . . legal relation of parents and child” was mitigated by her pleasure that her daughter’s name was still Ruth.

  Finally there was a new birth certificate, asserting that Ruth Dai Watanabe had been born in Honolulu on January 8, 1916, thus sparing her the stigma of having Kalaupapa as a birthplace.

  The current telephone book had no listing for a Taizo or Etsuko Watanabe on O'ahu, or any of the other islands. Nor was there a listing for a Ruth Watanabe, though surely she would have married by now. The clerk helped Rachel search voter registration files, but this just confirmed the bad news. “Sometimes, you know,” the clerk told her, “Japanese plantation workers would fulfill their contracts, then take the money they’d made and move back to Japan.” The thought was a dull ache in her heart; if they had taken Ruth to a foreign country there was virtually no chance of Rachel, with her limited resources, locating them.

  She took a bus to 216 E. Kukui Street and went door to door, inquiring of the neighbors whether anyone had known a Japanese family named Watanabe who’d lived here in the Twenties. Most hadn’t; a few recalled the name but had little else to offer. There were, however, a number of Japanese families still in the neighborhood, and remembering something Kenji had once told her, Rachel asked about the Yakuba, the neighborhood archive of family histories. It was from this she learned that the Watanabes had moved out of the neighborhood in 1923. But there the trail ended, with no record of a new address.

  In desperation Rachel called Sister Catherine, who, she hoped, might know someone who had worked at Kapi'olani Home at the time, someone who might be of help. Catherine in turn called Sister Mary Augusta, now retired after years of service at both Kalaupapa and Kapi'olani Home.

  Sister Augusta knew nothing of the Watanabes, but did recall that Ruthie had been a favorite of Sister Mary Louisa’s, now also retired and living in Honolulu. This eventually yielded a letter, in a woman’s flowing cursive, addressed to Sister Louisa and dated September 12, 1923:

  Dear Sister,

  This is to let you know that we have all arrived safely and are settled comfortably into our new home. Horace and Ralph got seasick on the voyage over but Stanley and Ruth were fine. It took Mr. Watanabe a few months to find an appropriate lease but we are now settled on a hundred acres raising strawberries and Tokay grapes. It is very beautiful here, we are very happy.

  Thank you again for the kindness you have shown for our Ruth. She still talks of her “Sister Lu.” Please know how grateful we are to have her, and for everything you have done for us.

  With warmest regards,

  Etsuko Watanabe

  R.R. #2, Box 12

  Florin, California

  Rachel’s hopes sank on reading of the “voyage over,” but rose again at the return address: California! If her daughter was on the mainland at least Rachel had a fighting chance to locate her. The long-distance operator informed her that Florin was in Sacramento County, but there was no telephone listing anywhere in the county for a Taizo, Etsuko, or Ruth Watanabe. Rachel was under no illusions: Ruth could be living in Idaho or New York or Timbuktu by now. But if her adoptive parents had owned a farm, it was possible they were still there—maybe they just didn’t own a telephone. Lacking a better idea, Rachel sat down to write a letter which would take her two full days to compose.

  August 13, 1948

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe:

  My name is Rachel Kalama Utagawa. You may recognize my name. I am Ruth’s mother by birth.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe:

  My name is Rachel Kalama Utagawa. I gave Ruth up for adoption.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe:

  My name is Rachel Utagawa. My husband and I gave Ruth up for adoption.

  I am living in Honolulu again and would like to contact Ruth. I mean no disrespect to you. I just want to talk to her.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe:

  My name is Rachel Utagawa. My late husband and I gave Ruth up for adoption.

  I am living in Honolulu now and would very much like to contact her. I intend no disrespect to you. I would just like the opportunity to talk with the little girl I

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe:

  My name is Rachel Utagawa. My late husband and I gave Ruth up for adoption.

  A day has not gone by since that I haven’t thought of her. I wonder how she is. Is she married? Does she have children of her own?

  Sister Mary Louisa Hughes has told me what good people you are, and how much you love Ruth. I’m happy to know she had such good parents.

  I would give anything in the world to hear her voice or see her face, even once. It is a longing, a setsub which has never gone away.

  I intend no disrespect to you. I am her mother by blood, but you are her parents by law and by love. I hope you will look kindly on this request. Thank you.

  Sincerely yours,

  Rachel Utagawa

  1726 S. King St.

  Honolulu, T.H.

  ph. HON 68412

  She read it over at least a hundred times, then stamped an envelope and placed the letter inside. It sat like that on her kitchen table for another day before she scraped together the courage to seal the envelope, walk it to the end of the block, and drop it in the mailbox.

  She told herself it would probably be returned as undeliverable, but at least she’d tried; at least she’d honored the memory of those who had never been able to try.

  She wrote a thank-you to Sister Catherine, and a week later received a letter back—smelling as usual of formaldehyde from the fumigation to which all mail was subjected before leaving the settlement.

  Dearest Rachel,

  I’m happy to have been of help. I hope it bears some fruit. But even if it doesn’t, you can be comforted by the knowledge that our Ruth was raised by loving parents. Not every child in this world is lucky enough to say that.

  Kalaupapa seems so lonely without you and the others who have been released. But it’s a loneliness I celebrate; each empty house represents another life regained. Superintendent Judd continues his reforms. His latest brainstorm: he’s going to allow patients to take sightseeing flights of the neighbor islands on one of the little planes that service Kalaupapa. Maybe even meet with family members at airports on Maui or Kaua'i. Who would ever have dreamed of such a thing, when you and I first saw that little biplane over Kalaupapa forty years ago?

  As for me, I had a nasty bout with influenza a few weeks ago, but Dr. Sloan pulled me through. Still, when you come that close to an unexpected reunion with the Lord you think of everything you never did, everything you never said but should have.

  I have no regrets, Rachel, about the life I chose. The one thing I lacked, you have in part given me. Thanks to you I know a little of the joy a mother must, the pride in a child well
grown. I pray you shall know it too. God bless you and keep you, Rachel.

  All my love,

  Catherine

  L

  ate in August and early on a Sunday morning, Rachel’s phone rang, jolting her out of lazy dreams. She answered it groggily and a little out of sorts, no friendly “Hello,” just an irritated “Yes?”

  In someone’s hesitation she heard the hiss of long distance and then a woman’s voice.

  “Is this—Rachel Utagawa?”

  The voice sounded so much like Rachel’s own, she was momentarily disoriented—was this real or was she dreaming?

  “Hello?” came the voice.

  “Yes,” Rachel said quickly, “this is she.”

  Another moment of hesitation, then, “My name is Ruth Watanabe Harada.”

  Rachel tried to pull a sound up out of her throat, but found that she couldn’t.

  The voice, so eerily similar to her own, seemed to float suspended in space, like something out of a radio drama, tinny and faintly unreal. “It’s three hours earlier in Hawai'i, isn’t it? I must’ve woken you up.”

  “That—that’s all right,” Rachel said finally. “I’m sorry, I . . . wasn’t quite . . . prepared for this.”