“My mother would like to present Mrs. Chong with a baby gift,” Hiro said formally, bowing to Ruth.
“Oh, my,” Ruth said.
Yoshiko bowed and spoke in Japanese. Hiro translated. “She says three is the number for birth.” He offered a plate with both hands. “Three kinds of sushi. You have hosomaki, nigiri, and inari.”
Ruth took the plate. “Mahalo, Yoshiko-san,” she said, bowing back to the neighbor.
Dolores peeked at the gift. Yoshiko had arranged the sushi on a white plate covered with Japanese characters in red. Dolores recognized her favorite sushi, the inari.
“Sushi rice and fried bean curd,” Grandma Jessie said, pointing to the inari. “What are the others?”
“The hosomaki has tuna and rice wrapped in nori—seaweed,” Hiro said. He conversed with his mother. “The nigiri has egg and eel on rice. And wasabi.”
“Tell her it looks ‘ono, Hiro,” Dolores said.
“Delicious,” Grandma Jessie agreed.
AS the months passed, Dolores went about the duties of a first-time mother-to-be. She cleaned the house, sewed tiny clothes, and gathered other baby things. She’d helped Maria do all these things during her pregnancies, but she discovered doing them for her own child meant more.
Since the dinner in January, Manolo had been home on time and sober every night. Dolores hummed as she made dinner. Manolo sat at the table, reading the Honolulu Advertiser. Dolores knew he wanted to talk about something serious when he folded his paper and laid it down. “Queen’s Hospital is the place to go for the birth. It’s nearby and modern.”
“We’ll see,” Dolores said, trying to stay neutral. She kept her eyes on the pot, where she shredded with a fork the kālua pork that had simmered all day. “Ruth had her baby at home.”
“It was her third,” Manolo reminded her. “The first is harder.”
“Maria had her boys at Kapi‘olani Maternity Home. It’s nice.” Dolores explored the subject cautiously. His suggestion surprised her. None of his family had been born in the hospital. Hospitals were huge and impersonal and colorless, so unlike Hawai‘i and its people that she knew she was right to be wary.
Every evening Manolo came home from work and Dolores bustled around the kitchen, telling him about her baby preparations. She knew he couldn’t be as interested as she was, but part of her expected him to at least try. And if she kept talking, he couldn’t discuss a hospital birth. More often as the days passed, though, his pointed suggestions about the hospital accompanied their dinner. Sometimes Dolores stood at the stove serving up his meal, sometimes she sat at the table. He fixed his eyes on her, and Dolores knew he was about to begin again. Over codfish fritters, paella, or Portuguese sausage Dolores heard the same words. They always struck fear into her heart. Babies should be born at home. If this baby wasn’t born at home, it would never feel a part of the family Dolores had worked so hard for.
By May, a month before the baby was due, Manolo was mentioning Queen’s Hospital at every mealtime, and they had their first real fight. They’d argued about many things, but this time Dolores cried, so that made it a fight.
Manolo sat at the table with his hands folded in front of him. Dolores got off her feet for a moment and sat next to him. Relief swept up her calves into her back.
“Queen’s is where the modern woman gives birth,” Manolo said.
Dolores groaned. “Modern woman? Will you buy me a new General Electric Hotpoint range? Or a super-powered Frigidaire?” He tightened his lips. Dolores asked, “Why is this hospital birth so important to you? None of your brothers or sisters were born there, and most of their children weren’t, either. Your family is built on a tradition of home births. Having everyone there when a child is born is a family tradition.”
“I want the best for you, Dolores,” he said.
Dolores rose and turned away. She went toward the stove where Portuguese sausage were sizzling in a cast iron pan. Pao duce, the sweet bread, baked in the oven. The familiar scents calmed her for a moment. “I prefer to have the baby at home,” she said, as firmly as she could manage. Her hand betrayed her. It shook as she turned the sausages.
“I know the hospital’s a new idea for you, but it’s the way it’s done now.”
“Manolo, I don’t want to go to the hospital.” Dolores’s hands twisted in her apron. She wished she could explain her nervousness at the new idea of a hospital birth. Dolores wanted to be around women who had birthed before. Grandma Jessie, and Ruth, and even Helen would guide her and love her. No stranger at the hospital could do that.
“Are you afraid?” Like a tiger shark spotting a tiny reef fish, he moved in for the kill. “Don’t be a child, Dolores. You will have my baby in the hospital.”
“No.” Dolores wished the word carried more conviction.
“Do you have a reason? Are you opposed to other helpful agencies like police and firemen? Or does your silly arbitrary denial apply only to hospitals?”
Dolores didn’t answer him because she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. She pretended to be fascinated by the sausage as it got too brown in its pan. If she took it out, she had nothing to focus on but Manolo’s face. She left it to burn.
“Well? Can’t come up with a valid reason? I’m an engineer now, Dolores. Hawaiian Electric pays me well, and I must keep up appearances. No modern wife gives birth at home. You realize many babies die in home births, right? The hospital has all the modern equipment. It’s safer. Everyone I know at work says the hospital is the way to go now. We will not continue this line of conversation.”
He had always listened to her, heard what she had to say. Now he was more concerned with what his colleagues thought than how she felt. Her tears spilled over. Dolores wiped them with her hand, but she still held a sausage on the fork, and grease splattered on her arm. At least it gave her a reason to cry, but they both knew she cried harder than a little grease justified.
They ate in silence. Again.
A few days later, she took the streetcar to Maria’s house. The three older boys were at school, so they had a nice lunch with only little John toddling around.
“He moves fast,” Dolores said. “Did Henry go that fast? I don’t remember.”
Maria laughed. “They’re all fast. Just you wait!”
“Manolo wants me to have the baby in the hospital.”
“It sounds like you don’t want that.”
“Everyone I know has their babies at home or at the Kapi‘olani Center. The hospital is so impersonal. I’m afraid, Maria, and I don’t know why.”
“Anything new is scary. Manolo shouldn’t push you on the first one. Keep aloha in your heart, and I’ll pray for you.”
The juxtaposition of beliefs made Dolores smile. “Toss in a quick sacrifice to the goddess Haumea and we’re covered.” They laughed until Dolores’s apprehension faded.
The next day Dolores walked up the street to Ruth’s. Her baby was now three months old, a precious little angel. Rosa cooed and giggled, kicking her feet in joy. She brought back Dolores’s own joyful anticipation.
“Rosa is growing so fast,” Ruth said. “If you have a girl, I can give you some baby clothes.”
“Obrigada, Irmã,” Dolores thanked her with a smile. Ruth’s baby dresses were beautifully crafted. She would not hesitate to put her daughter, if she had one, in them.
“I’d give you William’s clothes, but he wears them out faster than he grows.” She gave Dolores a wry grin.
“He’s a boy. That’s what they do,” Dolores said, thinking of Maria’s four. William was not even two. Ruth hadn’t begun to see how a boy could wear out clothes!
Manolo continued to jab at Dolores with hospital talk. Every morning he asked, “Should I call Queen’s today?”
Every morning she answered, “No, not today.” It wasn’t even about her nerves anymore, nor about tradition. Dolores had to do what she believed to be the best for her child.
On June first, Dolores awoke feel
ing restless. Pains stabbed her harder than any she had yet experienced. When Manolo asked his routine question, Dolores’s answer was sharper than usual. He looked at her curiously, mumbled something about work, and hurried out the door. Dolores struggled to her feet and rubbed her belly as she talked to the baby, “Are you coming today, little one? Could you manage it before Papa comes home tonight?”
The pains were coming too close together for her to walk to Ruth’s. Dolores picked up the telephone receiver, but it was dead. Hawaiian Bell was a joke. Grandma Jessie refused to install a phone. She called it a decoration on the wall. It was out of service so much she wasn’t wrong, though Manolo insisted on having one.
Dolores threw on yesterday’s dress and made her way across Magellan Street. Grandma Jessie wouldn’t give her any nonsense about a hospital, and she certainly knew what to do. Dolores entered the kitchen door, and Grandma Jessie looked up from the stove. “The baby….” It was all Dolores needed.
“Alberto! Run for Manolo! The baby’s coming,” she ordered.
Dolores put a hand on her arm. “No, please, not yet.”
She looked into Dolores’s pleading eyes. “Never mind, Alberto! Go for Ruth instead.”
Dolores closed her eyes in relief.
“Helen! Give me a hand!” Grandma Jessie called.
Manolo’s sister helped Dolores into the front bedroom and Grandma Jessie spread every towel she owned under her. For the next few hours Dolores endured the pain only because of the encouraging faces of Grandma Jessie, Ruth, and Helen. In her head she kept telling the baby to hurry although it was too late for Manolo to insist on the hospital.
Finally, the baby heard her exhortations and made its way into the birth canal. Dolores’s hair hung limp on the back of her sweaty neck, but she pushed. Then in a rush of pain and sweat, it was done. The scream of a newborn split the air.
“What a pretty angel!” Grandma Jessie cooed.
Angel must mean a girl, Dolores told herself. Her eyes closed with mental and physical exhaustion, even though she was triumphant that she had successfully managed a home birth. She’d been right. Having Grandma Jessie here, and Ruth, and Helen, was what she’d needed. Dolores winced as Grandma Jessie pressed on her abdomen to expel the afterbirth. Exhausted and sticky with sweat, she reached for her baby. Ruth put the blanket-wrapped bundle in Dolores’s arms.
“What will you name her?” Ruth asked.
“Carmen Dolores Mederios,” Dolores said. She didn’t mention she and Manolo had discussed only boys’ names.
“Carmen it is.”
“She’s beautiful, Dolores,” Helen said.
Ruth went on to tell Dolores all about how healthy the baby looked, but it was Carmen’s clear blue eyes and round bald head that fascinated Dolores.
Grandma Jessie sent Alberto to fetch Manolo. She and Ruth helped Dolores across the street. Grandma Jessie sponged her face, brushed her hair, and helped her into a clean nightgown and into her own bed. Ruth put little Carmen in the embroidered newborn dress Rosa had worn twice. When Manolo came in, his girls were calm and clean and full of smiles. Manolo took the baby from Dolores and cradled her in his arms as if she were more precious than gold. Dolores smiled. They were family.
He said nothing about Queen’s Hospital.
The entire Medeiros family squeezed into the house to welcome little Carmen with coos and kisses. Manolo’s brothers brought bottles of liquor to toast the new arrival, and their wives brought pretty baby dresses and ribbons and bows. Dolores frowned when Manolo put away the bottles without offering them to everyone. It seemed in bad taste. She pulled him aside.
“You can open at least one of the bottles, Manolo. Your brothers want to toast you.”
“You wanted me to open them? I thought you were the temperance prude.”
His words stung her. She’d imbibed beer and wine with him many times. “How dare you put that on me? I know your family drinks at every occasion.” Besides, if his brothers helped him drink it, Manolo wouldn’t drink so much. But he had gone into the kitchen and didn’t hear her.
Two men who rented out one of Grandma Jessie’s houses came to the door. Manolo went over to speak with them. Dolores watched from the couch where Ruth had laid Rosa next to Carmen on a blanket. The men at the door spoke in low tones, behavior that seemed at odds with the celebratory mood of the baby welcome. Manolo accepted two large earthenware jugs from them.
“Bootleggers,” Ruth said in a low voice. “They pay off the Medeiros men with liquor to not say anything to the police.”
Dolores nodded, her stomach in knots. This arrangement was too easy for her husband. Manolo added the jugs to his rapidly filling liquor cabinet.
FOURTEEN
Manolo 1932
Over the next few months, wisps of blond hair appeared on her daughter’s head. Dolores would let them grow. To cut a baby’s hair before the first birthday invited spirits to touch the hair. No spirits would harm this child. Carmen would be fair like Dolores’s unknown ancestors from northern Spain. She would have to keep the baby covered so the Hawaiian sun didn’t burn her delicate skin. Daily life returned to normal for everyone except Dolores. She had an angel in the house to feed and cuddle, to dress and rock to sleep.
One morning, when Carmen was six months old, Dolores woke up late. She stretched and looked at the clock. Carmen should have cried to be fed. Concern flooded Dolores as she threw on a bathrobe. Maybe Carmen had died in her sleep. Maybe she was old enough now to sleep later. Her heart and mind raced as Dolores hurried to the baby’s crib. Carmen was sleeping peacefully on her side, pudgy little arms and rosy cheeks so sweet. Dolores reached in to wake her. She was surprised when Carmen didn’t open her eyes. She picked her up, jostled her, and lightly tapped her cheeks. The baby’s skin was on fire. Dolores couldn’t wake her.
Dolores tore through the house with her baby in her arms. To her surprise, Manolo was asleep on the couch in the living room. Dolores screamed his name, but her nightmare continued. She couldn’t wake him either. Then she took in his rumpled white shirt, his tie askew, and his sour breath. In disgust, she left him to sleep it off. Once again, her greatest help was across the street.
Grandma Jessie was in the kitchen, her strong hands kneading bread dough. When she saw Dolores’s face, she wiped her hands on her apron and took the baby.
“I can’t wake her! She’s got a fever! Oh, I can’t wake her!” Dolores sobbed through her words.
“Pull yourself together. She’ll need you.” Her mother-in-law tried everything Dolores had to wake Carmen. “She’s unconscious. Get Alberto.”
Dolores raced down the hallway, her bare feet like thunder on the hardwood floor, her bathrobe swirling like a cape. Alberto was just coming out of his bedroom when she got there. His eyes widened. No doubt Dolores looked like the goddess Pele swooping down the fiery volcano. She pulled him back with her to the kitchen, gasping out explanations. He was awake and running before she finished. Grandma Jessie bundled the baby against the December morning. Helen rushed out of the pantry to see what was wrong. She noted Dolores’s bathrobe and wrapped her in a floor-length raincoat. It was Honolulu-chilly, meaning just under seventy degrees. Dolores wrapped Helen’s coat tighter around her and got into Alberto’s car. Grandma Jessie slipped into the back seat. They sped toward Queen’s Hospital with the sick baby.
It wasn’t a long drive, but time seemed to stretch. The light posts were gaily decorated for Christmas, hung with garlands and topped with stars. In the front window of houses they passed, Christmas trees awaited Santa in his red canoe. A few houses had trees lit with electric lights. Someone had even strung garlands on a palm tree in their yard. Dolores’s fear for Carmen was so great she could not at that moment embrace the season. She muttered prayers blessing God and pleading with him as her fear threatened to choke her.
At the hospital, doctors and nurses bustled around, taking over her baby’s life. As the adrenalin wore off, Dolores started to shake. Grandma Jessie put a
n arm around Dolores and guided her to a chair. Dolores leaned against her mother-in-law’s shoulder and hid her face, trying to block out all fear.
Alberto paced the room. “You want I call Manolo at work? Go get him?”
Grandma Jessie responded, “Mahalo, Alberto.”
“Wait.” Dolores sat up. “He’s not at work.”
Alberto frowned. “Why he no bring you?”
Dolores realized she was sitting there in her nightgown and a borrowed coat, her hair a mess. She never left the house in such a state. She remembered how Manolo had looked, sprawled on the couch. The similarities were striking. “He’s drunk. Passed out.”
Alberto swore and kicked a chair. Grandma Jessie chastised him. “He need to get control. Too often he….” He trailed off as he caught sight of her face.
Today was about Carmen, not Manolo. If she’d been wrapped up in her baby while her husband nurtured a drinking problem, who could fault her? Dolores knew she didn’t want to discuss it. Not here. Not now.
“Sit down, Alberto,” Grandma Jessie said.
“No, I be back later.” The grim set of his mouth told them he would get Manolo. Dolores didn’t have the energy to care.
Then the doctor came. “Mrs. Medeiros?” Grandma Jessie rose to stand beside her. They clutched one another for support. “I’m afraid your baby … Carmen … is very sick. She has a high fever and pneumonia. She probably won’t live out the day. I’m so sorry.”
The doctor’s words swirled around Dolores’s head. They sank in until her heart froze in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. The doctor led them into the room. They’d put Carmen in a basket-like box with a clear plastic covering and too many tubes for such a tiny person. She lay still. Dolores could see her but couldn’t hold her, couldn’t talk to her. All she could do was cry, but that she refused to do. Plus Dolores must remain strong for Carmen. She was Carmen’s link to family, to aloha. She must be strong.
The Aloha Spirit Page 13