The Aloha Spirit

by Linda Ulleseit

  “Dolores!” called Maria.

  She waved and walked back up the street to the truck.

  “Who was that?” Maria asked.

  Dolores shrugged. “Just a boy.”

  “What’s wrong?” Maria asked, peering at her.

  “I’m uncomfortable lying to Peter, Maria.”

  “A lie is when you make up a story that isn’t true. You haven’t done that. We’re just keeping a secret, like when you buy someone a present and don’t tell them what’s in it.”

  “Peter’s present is the extra money?”

  “Exactly!”

  When they arrived home, Dolores scooted out her door to hurry around and help Maria get out of the truck. They went inside, and Maria hid the day’s lei money in an empty can deep in the pantry. Dinner was well underway by the time Peter got home. He came in the kitchen door, and kissed Maria first, then leaned over Dolores at the kitchen table. She was working on her homework.

  “Are you getting all of that done?”

  His concern warmed her. No one had ever cared about her schooling. “I wouldn’t dream of not completing it.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

  Peter laughed. “You’d better do it all, young lady. How is your math going?”

  Dolores wrinkled her nose. “I’ll never work in an office or anything.”

  Peter turned back to Maria. “Palolo Hill is being sold,” he said.

  Dolores pushed her book away. Anything interested her more than math.

  “They’re converting one hundred seventy acres of pineapple plantation to residential,” he continued.

  “That’s a lot of houses,” Maria said.

  “How big is one hundred seventy acres?” Dolores asked. Peter pushed the math book back toward her. She sighed and picked up her pencil.

  THE Christmas season and the baby’s arrival approached, the latter as eagerly anticipated as the festival of our Lord Jesus’s birth. Dolores hung garlands decorated with foil stars on top of all the windows.

  “Let me help you with that,” Maria said.

  “Absolutely not,” Dolores insisted. “You sit down and string the garland for the tree.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Maria said, pretending to be meek.

  Peter brought in a tiny cedar tree and set it next to the radio in the front room. He fetched a box from the hall closet. “Come help with the ornaments, Dolores.”

  Maria strung a garland with red lehua flowers and white orchids while Peter put some of his mother’s Polish ornaments on the sturdier branches.

  “These are beautiful, Peter,” Dolores handed him the glass ornaments carefully.

  “Someday they will belong to this one,” Maria said as she stroked her stomach.

  Peter went back to the closet for more ornaments. “Maria! Where’s the tinsel?” he called.

  “In the kitchen cabinet! I couldn’t reach to put it up in the closet.”

  They heard Peter walk into the kitchen and go through cabinets. Dolores raised her eyes at Maria. Maria looked nervous but didn’t say anything. Noise from the other room ceased. They held their breath.

  “Maria, where’d this money come from?” Peter came in with the can of lei money.

  “It was a surprise for you, Peter.” Maria didn’t even look nervous.

  Dolores twisted a bit of garland in her hand. She didn’t look at either of her friends. She couldn’t keep the secret any longer. Peter deserved to know the truth. “She earned it making leis for the Moana ladies.” There. She’d said it. Maria looked disappointed. Peter looked shocked.

  “How long have you kept this from me?” he asked.

  “I’ve been making a few leis a day since school started. I never let it get in the way of my other responsibilities.”

  “Do you think I can’t provide for my family?”

  Dolores wanted to tell him that Maria just wanted to help. She wanted to tell Maria that keeping secrets from family wasn’t the way to go. She kept quiet, afraid to leave the room and afraid to say anything.

  “Of course not,” Maria said. “But expenses have been increasing and I wanted to help.”

  “Are you going to drag our baby out to sell leis?”

  Dolores couldn’t help herself. “She doesn’t sell them, Peter. She just picks up the materials, makes them at home, and delivers the leis when she picks me up.”

  “So you’ve known all along? And not said anything?”

  Dolores squirmed under his glare.

  “Peter, stop it. No one deceived you,” Maria said.

  “Then why not tell me?”

  “You worry too much.”

  The baby kicked and Maria’s hand went to her stomach. Peter rushed over to feel the baby’s foot move across her tummy. He smiled, but when he looked up something shadowed his eyes.

  ALL three of them waited, and not for Christmas. One evening in early December, Maria couldn’t contain her discomfort anymore. “I think it’s time,” she said.

  Peter ran for her bag and forgot where she’d put it. Dolores located the bag and the keys to the truck. They shoved her into the truck in such an unladylike manner they all laughed. Maria clutched her belly with one hand and the dashboard with the other as Peter drove to Kapi‘olani Maternity Home on Beretania Street.

  “The most modern facility in the islands,” he’d told them a few months earlier.

  “Our son will be born there,” Maria had promised him.

  A nurse hustled Maria into a wheelchair. Peter and Dolores rushed alongside until the doctor banished them to the waiting room. Windows flanked one wall, open to the breeze. Peter paced, locked in his own thoughts. Dolores watched the sun set over Beretania Street. She dozed fitfully until the sky lightened. With aching back and neck, she joined Peter in pacing the floor. They stopped to listen when Maria’s cries intensified and resumed pacing when the cries subsided.

  Just as the sun rose over Diamond Head, their son, Henry Gabler, arrived. Maria, exhausted from a night spent in labor, nonetheless was beaming. From the moment Peter laid eyes on his son, he was smitten. He barely remembered to ask after Maria.

  “Ho‘omaika ‘i ‘ana,” Dolores told them over and over. “Congratulations.”

  The little family, herself included, came home from the Kapi‘olani Maternity Home to a welcoming environment. When he wasn’t playing in the army band, Peter worked outside from sunup until sundown on the dairy and with the cows. Dolores kept a garden near the kitchen. Maria focused on the baby.

  “How do you suppose this diaper works?” Maria asked Dolores, only half in jest.

  “Didn’t he come with an owner’s manual like the appliances?” Dolores teased.

  Maria laid Henry on the bed and struggled to undo the safety pins on the cloth diaper. “They showed me how in the home,” she said. “But he didn’t wiggle this much for them.” Henry kicked his feet.

  Dolores held her nose. “So much for that pleasant baby scent.”

  Maria pulled the diaper off. As soon as the air touched him, Henry peed a stream of urine straight into the air. “Aaah!” Maria exclaimed, throwing the clean diaper over her son.

  Doubled over with laughter, Dolores wiped her eyes. Maria glowered at her and picked up the wet diaper. “You take this one,” she told Dolores.

  “He peed on the clean one, too, right?” Dolores asked.

  Maria groaned. “We’ll never keep up with clean diapers! Grab his feet and lift him a bit.” Dolores did. Leaving the diaper that covered Henry, Maria slid another clean one under him.

  “Ready?” Dolores nodded. “Okay, take it away.” Dolores snatched the soiled diaper, and Maria hurried to bring the ends of the new diaper up between Henry’s legs.

  “We did it!” Dolores said.

  Maria fussed with the safety pins. Henry kicked, and a pin stuck him. He howled, and Maria’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no!”

  Dolores peered at the baby’s skin. “It’s just a poke. He’s fine, aren’t you, baby?” Her high, light tone ca
ptured Henry’s attention. Maria pinned the diaper and slid on plastic pants to cover it.

  “I’m worn out,” she told Dolores.

  “I’ll get his bottle,” Dolores said. She went into the kitchen and warmed a bottle of formula made from evaporated milk while Maria moved into the front room with Henry. Dolores watched as Maria fed her son.

  Sometimes Dolores bathed Henry, but the bulk of the baby work was Maria’s. That left the house to Dolores. She made it her personal mission to keep the house clean. She always swept out the back door to keep all their misfortunes behind them. Dolores kept every superstition she could since she didn’t dare offend any deity. God had his place in more than one culture, after all.

  Peter gave direction to the dairy foreman and went to work at the fort. When he arrived home, he immediately sought Henry. “Where’s my boy?” he called from the front door.

  Dolores, finishing dinner preparation in the kitchen, smiled. “Having his diaper changed,” she called back.

  Peter headed to the baby’s bedroom. Dolores could hear laughter and the voices adults use with small babies they adore. Then silence. She stopped stirring the sauce and listened.

  “You know I didn’t mean that.” Maria’s raised voice sounded defensive.

  “Well, you’ve lied to me before.” Peter stalked down the hallway. He looked into the kitchen at Dolores, a storm on his face. “Anything you need to tell me? Any other secrets I should know?”

  Dolores shook her head in consternation. Peter went outside. Through the window, she could see him walking to the barn. She turned off the sauce and untied her apron. “Maria?” she called as she headed for the back of the house.

  Maria sat in the rocking chair in Henry’s room, the baby in her arms. She looked up at Dolores with a stricken look. “Will he ever forgive me?”

  “What now?” Dolores leaned over to hug Maria. It wasn’t the first time in the last few months that the lei incident had reared its ugly head.

  “He doubts everything I say. He doesn’t trust me.” Maria took a deep breath. “I may as well be cheating on him the way he’s treating me.”

  “Cheating?” The idea shocked Dolores. “Of course, he doesn’t think that. You never lied to him. You just didn’t tell him. When he asked, you told him the truth.”

  Maria smiled as her words to Dolores echoed back at her. “I know, I know. It doesn’t seem to matter. And to make matters worse, the money is spent.”

  “Let me go finish dinner. You sit and rock Henry for a while. That helps.” Dolores walked straight through the kitchen and outside. Peter leaned against the plank wall of the barn.

  “She send you out here?” he asked.

  “She’s too upset. What are you thinking? This is your first Christmas with your son. It should be joyous. You love Maria and she loves you. Everything she’s done has been to make your life together better.”

  “Every time I see the baby in a new outfit I wonder if she’s bought it with that money, if I couldn’t provide it for my son.”

  “Now you’re being silly. You can love her without loving everything she does.”

  Peter’s mouth turned up. “Sounds like something Maria would say.”

  FOR the first time since she’d come to Honolulu, gifts lay under the Christmas tree for Dolores. By Christmas Eve, the joy of the season had overcome all their hurt feelings. Dolores shopped along Fort Street. She planned carefully to make her small allowance stretch to three gifts, buying Maria a pretty scarf and Peter a small box of his favorite Whitman chocolates. She found a darling outfit for Henry and couldn’t wait for Maria to open it. Maria and Peter bought Dolores a lovely green dress and fashionable cloche hat—something a young lady would wear, not a child. Dolores felt very grown up when she wore it to Christmas Mass. Maria and Peter enjoyed their gifts, too, and laughed as Henry fussed in the starchy new outfit.

  After the excitement of Christmas morning presents, Mass, and breakfast, Dolores took Henry from an exhausted Maria. “Familia es todo,” Dolores told her. “‘ohana is for everyone.”

  Maria said, “Keep aloha in your heart, Dolores.” She directed her words to Dolores, but her eyes were on Peter.

  NINE

  Papa 1927

  The first week of sixth grade passed with a yawn. While at school, Dolores was anxious to return home where Maria needed her. Henry was almost three, his baby brother Alfred a year and a half, and baby number three would join them in January. Maria needed her. No one at Waikiki Elementary School did. Besides, taking her to school was out of the way for Peter, who already had enough to do with the army band and the dairy.

  Dolores hated the rides with Peter because Maria had not stopped making leis when Henry was born. Lokelani, a woman who made leis outside the Moana, arranged for her grandson Kimo to deliver flowers to Maria after Peter had left for the base every day. At the end of the day, Kimo picked up the finished leis and paid Maria for them. Dolores feared discovery every day, either by something she let slip, by Peter coming home early, or by Kimo being late.

  One day she let herself in the front door as Maria called, “Mail for you on the sideboard!”

  Mail? She picked up the envelope. From California. She tapped it absently on the sideboard as she looked around the kitchen. Maria always kept flowers on the table to explain the floral scent that permeated the house. Dolores peered at the floor and sink. No flower bits. Good. “Are you feeling better, Maria?” This pregnancy had been harder on her sister.

  Maria grimaced and rubbed her lower back. “Still sick every morning and aching all day. Don’t worry about me. Open your letter.”

  Dolores tore it open.

  Dear Dolores,

  I still love California and have a good job here, but I find that my home is not complete. Paul and I rattle around a house we rent in Sunnyvale. He’s fourteen now, strong for his age. I’m sure you wouldn’t even recognize him. I know you have built a new life there in Hawai‘i, but would you consider joining us in California so the family can be whole again? Please write soon so I know your heart.

  Love,

  Papa

  Incredulous, Dolores read the letter again. It had taken four years for him to call her to California. The first year after he left, she didn’t think she would live until this letter, but for a long while now she hadn’t even thought of California. Could she tell him no? The idea of refusing sickened her stomach. They were her father and brother. She loved them. She barely remembered them.

  Dolores stuffed the letter into the pocket of her dress. “Henry’s up. I’ll get him.” Dolores escaped into the boys’ bedroom.

  At dinner, Peter asked, “I hear you got a letter from California. Everything all right?”

  Dolores nodded. “Papa and Paul are fine.” She took another bite of paella, wondering if Papa cooked Spanish food. Did Paul help in the house? Maybe they wanted her to come so they wouldn’t have to do the chores. Dolores sighed.

  “Big sigh,” Peter observed, “for nothing wrong.” His eyes met Maria’s across the table.

  Dolores set her fork on the table. “Papa asked me to think about going to live with them in California.” She wiped the milk mustache off Henry’s face so she wouldn’t have to look at them.

  Maria sucked in her breath. Peter glanced at her but nodded. “I figured he would eventually.”

  “What will you say?” Maria put in.

  “He left me.” Dolores was proud of how even her tone sounded. “I lived on Kaua‘i, then with Noelani, now here. I don’t know why I would want to start over again for a fourth time.”

  Maria began to breathe again.

  “It’s your decision, of course,” Peter said. “We love you, though, and would hate to see you go so far away.”

  Inspiration struck. “If I go to California, I probably won’t have to attend school. Maybe I could quit after this year if I stayed?”

  Maria smiled. “We could work something out, I’m sure.”

  “No,” Peter said. “Quitt
ing school is not something you trade such a life-changing event for. This decision must be made independently of such promises, Dolores, and only by you.”

  Abashed, Dolores hung her head. “I’m sorry, Peter.” She almost called him Papa.

  After dinner, Dolores went to her room to write the letter.

  Dear Papa,

  Life is very busy here right now. Maria has two small sons and another child on the way. Henry will be three soon. He is walking now and will soon be into all sorts of mischief. Albert is crawling and pulling himself up on things. He needs constant supervision. They’re good boys, but they are boys. Maria needs my help around the house. Peter relies on me to keep her company when she wants another woman to talk to. He’s away from the house a lot, either at the base or in the dairy. I know he doesn’t worry when I’m there to watch the family.

  I’m not sure now is the best time to move to California.

  Dolores

  Dolores reread it and wondered if her father would care about the baby details. Would he even remember what it was like when she and Paul were little? No matter. Dolores sealed it and tucked it inside her math book to mail the next day. She ignored the guilt that haunted her false words. Why couldn’t she say plainly that she wanted to stay?

  “Dolores?” Maria poked her head into the room. “I’ve been thinking.” She crossed to sit on the bed next to Dolores’s chair. “Your Papa lost his wife and job, and then moved to a whole new world. It was hard for him, too, not just for you. He’s your family. Maybe you should go to California.”

  Dolores stared in shock. Was Maria sending her away? “He’s not family.” Hearing her own words, Dolores stopped. After a minute, she said, “He and Paul are my family by blood. Families are about more than blood though. You and Peter and the boys are family by heart.”

  “But your father and brother could be that sort of family, too. You deserve to have your own family instead of sharing mine.”

  “I guess.” Dolores thought about how Peter struggled to make the dairy profitable. Maybe they would be glad to see her go, glad to save money. Maybe Maria could stop lying to Peter about the lei money. Maybe they could use her room for the baby.