Daughter of Moloka'i Read online

  She came to an abrupt stop, slamming into a fence post, and cried out. On the other side of the fence, pigs were gorging themselves at a feed trough. She reached down to feel the cut on her leg and her fingers came back sticky with blood—more blood than she had ever seen before. She started crying, crying and calling, “Please, Only, I love you, please come back!”

  Suddenly she heard a bark, muffled as if from a distance. Hopefully, she kept calling his name. The barking drew closer and closer, a four-footed shape separating itself from the shadows.

  But it was a big black German shepherd and he was barking combatively at her. Moments later came the crunch of feet on gravel, a golden halo of light from a kerosene lantern, and a man’s voice saying, “Well, now. Who’s this you’ve found, Hugo?”

  In the lantern light she saw a man in overalls who stooped down and smiled at her. “’Ey, little wahine, it’s okay. I’ll help you.”

  But as grateful as she was to see the man, it was not the help she wanted, from the one she wanted. Only was gone. She knew that now.

  * * *

  She had traveled more than a mile downhill to Mr. Silva’s hog farm on Rose Street, a feat that grudgingly impressed the sisters even as they scolded her for running away. Sister Lu cleaned and bandaged her wound—minor, if messy—but when she tried to engage Ruth, the little girl refused to answer.

  Her anger was like the tough, leathery skin of the lychee fruit, which only grew harder with time. She woke up angry and went to bed angry. When a sister asked her to do something, she did the opposite. Whenever a girl tried to comfort her, she turned her back on her. She refused to eat Thanksgiving dinner because she had nothing to be thankful for. Christmas Day she spent in bed, feigning illness, stubbornly refusing to enjoy the gifts and treats the sisters had gone to great lengths to provide.

  In January, when she turned five—a slice of birthday cake thrown against the wall—Ruth was advanced to kindergarten in the hope the change in routine might improve her mood. Young Sister Augusta was the teacher, and she introduced Ruth to a stack of square wooden blocks—colored yellow, blue, green, orange, red—with funny markings on their sides that the sister said were “numbers” and “letters.” But what piqued Ruth’s interest despite herself were the shapes printed on the other sides, shapes that Ruth immediately identified as animals: a cow, a horse, a fish, even …

  “Is this a dog?” It was a blue shape with four legs, fur, and a muzzle.

  “No, that’s a wolf,” Sister Augusta said. “But there may be a dog in there somewhere. Why don’t you find out?”

  Ruth picked up the blocks one at a time, able to make no sense of the ones with marks like “M,” “8,” “Q,” “2,” or “G”—but whenever she turned a cube over and found an animal, she set it aside with the animal facing up. Soon she had a cow, turtle, duck, eagle, lamb, fish, hen, goose, wolf, and … yes, a dog! She smiled as she admired her wooden menagerie.

  “That’s very good, Ruth,” the sister said. “You’ve sorted out all the animals. Now can you put all the kinds of animals together? The ones with fur, the ones with feathers, the ones that live in the sea?”

  Ruth shuffled the blocks around, grouping the dog, cow, wolf, horse, and lamb together; then the duck, goose, hen, and eagle; and, finally, the fish and the … She frowned. Turtles walked on land, they had four feet like a cow or a horse—but she remembered on a visit to the beach seeing a turtle swimming in the water, so hesitantly she put the turtle alongside the fish.

  “Very good, Ruth!”

  Ruth was indifferent to the sister’s praise. But she liked the blocks.

  She learned quickly that she could stack them too and began building towers of animals, arranging them by color. Halfway through, another girl, Opal, came up and sighed, “Oooh, pretty. Is that a cow? I like cows.”

  “Me too.”

  “Can I have him? My blocks don’t have a cow.”

  Opal snatched the orange cow off the top of its stack.

  “That’s mine. Give it back!” Ruth said.

  “No!”

  Opal jealously gripped the block in her hand and began to walk away.

  Shrieking with fury, Ruth jumped Opal from behind, the two of them toppling like a stack of falling blocks. “Give me my cow, give me my cow!” Ruth yelled, trying to grab it out of Opal’s hand.

  Opal wouldn’t give an inch: “No! It’s mine now!”

  Sister Augusta rushed over, separated the combatants, and said in her loudest, harshest tone, “That’s enough! Both of you. Right now!”

  The sister hoisted them both to their feet. “Now you young ladies are going to have to learn how to share,” she scolded. A long speech followed about how Jesus would want them to share and share alike.

  The sister took the cow block away from Opal, handed it back to Ruth. “Now, Ruth,” she said, “I want you to give the cow to Opal.”

  “Why? You just gave it to me!”

  “You’re going to give it back like a good Christian.”

  “No! It was mine first!”

  “Give it to her, Ruth,” the sister said, rapidly losing her patience.

  Ruth thought for a moment then said angrily, “Here!”

  She lobbed the block directly at Opal. The wooden cube caromed off the side of her head like a foul ball. Opal wailed.

  Ruth was yanked away by Sister Augusta, who then swatted her repeatedly in her backside, hard: “This—will teach you—not to hit people!”

  The swats stung, but Ruth stubbornly refused to show her pain.

  She was sent to her room for the rest of the day, where she proceeded to energetically punch the pillows on her bed, imagining them to be Opal’s head. Or Sister Augusta’s.

  Not long after, Sister Lu entered the room. Ruth stopped punching and rolled over onto her stomach on the bed. The sister sat down beside her.

  “How are you feeling, Ruth?” she asked quietly.

  “I hate kindergarten! I hate it here!”

  “Sister Augusta told me what happened,” Louisa continued calmly. “I wish I’d been there. I could have explained to her why you did what you did.”

  Ruth rolled over on her back, looking at Sister Lu with confusion and anger. “Everything I want gets taken away!”

  “I know it seems unfair. I know you loved Only.”

  Hearing the dog’s name, Ruth burst into tears. Louisa wrapped her arms around her, rocked and comforted her as she had when Ruth was barely more than a baby. “It’s all right, Ruth. Someday you’ll have everything you want. I promise.” An empty promise, Louisa knew. Ruth kept sobbing.

  Louisa suddenly recalled the words of a Jesuit priest who, years before, had counseled the young nursing sister: “While administering to these little ones, your charges, under God’s care, your hands are His hands; your eyes, His eyes; and your heart, His Sacred Heart, working by, in, and through your very being…”

  Louisa prayed for God’s love and succor to travel from her body, her arms, into Ruth’s. The sobs finally ceased and, mercifully, Ruth fell asleep. Louisa looked at her and remembered other children, in Joliet, who had borne even worse pain—the violent abuse of parents—and whom to this day Louisa regretted not being able to save from their own rage and bitterness. But Ruth was different. She had to be different, Louisa told herself. I am God’s instrument, and I will not fail this child.

  * * *

  The following week, Louisa and three other sisters assembled every girl old enough to walk and marched them two miles down the hill to King Street, where the keiki awaited the arrival of the eastbound streetcar from Fort Shafter. Within fifteen minutes Car No. 55 rattled into view, its exterior painted fire-engine red, its destination sign identifying it as traveling between KALIHI AND WAIKIKI. The girls (all but Ruth) cheered as it braked to a stop. It was empty this early in the morning, which was provident since the fifty girls and four nuns filled the entire car.

  Ruth’s anger had cooled to indifference; even the prospect of a trip to Waik�
�kī Beach could not arouse her interest. Glumly she followed the older girls onto the car and down the aisle. On either side were wooden benches that each sat two—three, if they were small—girls. Ruth started to seat herself up front—until she felt Sister Lu’s hand on her shoulder. “We can find you a better seat than that, Ruth,” the sister said. “Here, why don’t you sit with Mara.” Louisa gently steered Ruth into a seat next to a twelve-year-old Hawaiian girl. “Mara, this is Ruth.” Mara said “Hi,” but Ruth just sat in sullen silence.

  The trip to Waikīkī was long and rough at times—the car’s wheels clattering over the track-joints, the bumps and jolts when it hit uneven terrain, the clanging of the bell at every cross street. But the girls loved every minute of it.

  “Some fancy ride, ’ey?” Mara said to Ruth over the clangor.

  Ruth shrugged.

  “Oh, you seen it all, huh?” Mara smiled. “You one cool cucumber.”

  “I’m not a cucumber.” Ruth had yet to embrace metaphor.

  “You like Waikīkī?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “What place you like best?”

  “The zoo.”

  Mara smiled again. “I like that too. My mama used to take me an’ my brothers there. I liked the pikake—the peacocks. Struttin’ around with their tail feathers stickin’ outta their 'ōkole.”

  She laughed, but Ruth was focused on something else Mara had said: “Your mama took you there?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Nothin’ happened. She lives in Kaimukī.”

  Ruth didn’t understand this at all. “Then why don’t you live with her?”

  Mara shrugged casually, but her smile had faded. “My papa, he got leprosy. Got sent Kalaupapa. Mama, she couldn’t afford to keep us anymore, so—I come here, and my brothers go to St. Anthony’s orphanage.”

  “She … couldn’t keep you?” Ruth said, not quite grasping it.

  “Papa made alla money. Mama took a job in a factory, but it still wasn’t enough, not with four mouths to feed. She told me, ‘You be better off with the sisters, they feed you an’ take care of you.’” Seeing the sadness in Ruth’s eyes, Mara added brightly, “It’s not so bad. Mama comes visit me when she can. The sisters even let her take me to St. Anthony’s to see my brothers.”

  Mara told her about Kaimukī—playing in the red volcanic dirt, beneath a ceiling of sheltering kiawe trees—and about her brothers, how they all used to take the trolley to Waikīkī to go body-surfing. Ruth could tell how much she loved them and missed them. She talked about her papa, how the bounty hunter had arrested him and sent him to Moloka'i just before Mara’s birthday. And as she listened, Ruth began to understand that maybe there were even worse things in the world than not being able to keep a dog you loved.

  Soon the streetcar was rattling across the McCully Street Bridge, as the girls all groaned at the rotten-egg stink floating up from the duck ponds and hog farms that still made up a large part of Waikīkī. A bulldozer roared nearby, dredging one of the three streams that emptied into Waikīkī, working to build a new canal that would one day drain all the duck ponds and rice paddies. Then Car No. 55 headed down Kalākaua Avenue, driving past the stands of tall coconut palms that lined the street, and excitement bubbled among the girls as the car approached the end of the line at Kapi'olani Park.

  Sister Louisa and the other nuns led the girls out of the car, but instead of turning toward Waikīkī Beach, Louisa stepped off the curb as if to cross the street. “Before we go swimming, what do you say to a visit to the zoo?”

  A chorus of cheers greeted this suggestion. At the entrance to the Honolulu Zoo, Sister Louisa paused to take a head count. Ruth had already entered at record speed, but Louisa saw Mara standing a few feet away and gave her a small smile of thanks—a smile that faded once she saw the girl’s face.

  Mara stood gazing up at the entrance to the zoo, tears in her eyes.

  * * *

  Louisa was helping Sister Bonaventure clear away the Sunday breakfast dishes when Sister Praxedes breathlessly appeared in the doorway to the dining hall. “Sister Louisa, I thought you should know. There’s a couple here—a Japanese couple. They’re Issei—first-generation Japanese nationals, born in Japan—and they’re looking for a Japanese girl to adopt.”

  Sister Bonaventure raised an eyebrow at this.

  “And unless I’m mistaken,” Sister Praxedes went on, “the only girl here with any Japanese blood is—”

  “Ruth Utagawa,” Louisa finished for her.

  “Perhaps you might like to join me in taking Ruth to meet them?”

  Louisa looked to Sister Bonaventure, who nodded her assent. “Go ahead, Sister. I’ll be … interested to hear what comes of it.”

  Louisa thanked her and, with Sister Praxedes, hurried to find Ruth.

  Ruth had quieted down enormously after her chat with Mara, but when Louisa and Praxedes told her about the couple who wished to see her, a shadow of her old anger eclipsed her sunny mood. “No,” she declared defiantly. “I won’t go!”

  “This time it’s different, Ruth,” Praxedes insisted.

  “No!”

  Louisa could hardly blame her; she had been disappointed often enough. “It is different, Ruth. This couple—they asked especially for you.”

  God forgive me. But it was, in a sense, the truth.

  Ruth said, “Me?”

  “Yes. They don’t want to see any other girl in the Home. Only you.”

  Ruth didn’t know what to make of that. “Why?”

  “Why don’t you come with us and find out?”

  Ruth grudgingly agreed and even allowed Sister Lu to scrub the dirt from her hands and knees. But she was determined not to show the slightest bit of interest in these people. She knew better than that.

  The Japanese couple was waiting in the library. They were in their late thirties, the husband thin and dressed in a dark Western business suit; the wife petite, smiling, wearing a black cotton kimono.

  But Ruth only noticed one thing about them.

  Their eyes. Their eyes were just like hers.

  She forgot her indifference and stared at them in absolute fascination.

  “Ruth,” Sister Praxedes said, “this is Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe.”

  “Hello,” Ruth said, still staring.

  The couple bowed in greeting. The wife said, “Konnichiwa. Hello, Ruth.”

  “Sit down, Ruth.” Louisa gave her a little nudge. Ruth went to the small chair reserved for children.

  The couple sat opposite her, the man studying Ruth closely.

  “She is—part kanaka?” he asked in halting English.

  “Yes. Her mother is Hawaiian. Her father is a Nisei,” Sister Praxedes explained, using the term for second-generation, American-born Japanese.

  “She is very pretty, don’t you think, Otōsan?” the wife said with a smile. Her English was a bit smoother, more assured.

  Mr. Watanabe nodded, both in agreement and, it seemed, giving license to his wife to continue speaking. “How old are you, little one?” she asked.

  “Five,” Ruth answered. Now this was starting to feel familiar. Even the woman’s smile, as friendly as it was. All the smiles were friendly, weren’t they? But it always ended in tears.

  “Such a serious face,” Mrs. Watanabe said. “Why do you keep looking at us like that, Ruth?”

  “’Cause of your eyes,” Ruth said bluntly.

  “Ah, I see. We have eyes like yours, yes?”

  Ruth nodded.

  “That is because we come from Japan. Do you know where Japan is?”

  Ruth shook her head.

  “It is an island like this, but far, far across the sea. We came a long way to get here.”

  “Why?”

  “We came to Hawai'i to work.”

  “I’m told you were both contract laborers at Waimānalo Plantation,” said Sister Praxedes.

  The husband nodded. “Three years. I grew up on a small
farm—in Hōfuna, Okayama Prefecture. I wished to buy my own farm here, but … too difficult.”

  “So much of the land in Hawai'i,” Mrs. Watanabe noted, “is in the hands of a very few.”

  “Very few haoles,” Mr. Watanabe added, then, realizing his tactlessness: “Sumimasen. Beg pardon. I mean no offense.”

  “None taken,” Sister Praxedes said with a smile. “So you moved to Honolulu and became a contractor?”

  He nodded. “On a farm you are always building, fixing things. I like farming numbah one, but I like building too.”

  Mrs. Watanabe turned to Ruth. “And what do you like to do, Ruth?”

  Ruth had never been asked this before. “I like animals,” she blurted out.

  “You do?”

  “We went to the zoo and I saw a bear and a monkey and an elephant and a lion and a bear,” Ruth exhaled all in one breath.

  The woman smiled. “Do you like cats? We have a cat.”

  Ruth’s eyes widened. “You do?”

  “Oh yes. In Japan, cats are very popular. They are said to bring good luck.”

  Ruth’s indifference forgotten, she asked, “What color is your cat?”

  “She is black,” Mr. Watanabe declared. Ruth’s eyes went to him. “Americans think black cats bad luck. No cat is bad luck.”

  “Mr. Watanabe found her in an alley,” his wife explained. “And she has brought us nothing but good fortune.”

  “What’s her name?” Ruth asked.

  “Mayonaka,” the wife replied. “It means ‘midnight.’”

  “Mayo … na … ka?” Ruth repeated.

  “Yes, very good,” Mrs. Watanabe said.

  “I wish I could meet her,” Ruth said wistfully.

  Mrs. Watanabe glanced at her husband. He gazed at Ruth a long moment, then looked back to his wife and nodded.

  Mrs. Watanabe told Ruth, “You will meet her—and your three brothers—when you come home with us, if you choose. Would you like to be part of our family?”

  Ruth’s heart fluttered. Joy, hope, longing, and fear washed over her in waves. She began to cry.