The Aloha Spirit

by Linda Ulleseit

Dolores smiled. “Mahalo.” All she could do was thank him. She wasn’t prepared to get into a conversation about the difference between the absent husbands.

  Manolo shook his head in disbelief when he came home to find his sister and her children living with them.

  “It is your mother’s house,” Dolores pointed out. “It doesn’t belong to us. Ruth has as much right to be here as we do.”

  “My buddies will get a kick out of me keeping two women,” Manolo said with a leer. “Not so crazy about all her kids.”

  Dolores clamped her lips to prevent angry words from escaping. Manolo left without eating dinner and didn’t come home until after she was in bed.

  With four children under four at home, life was hectic but full of fun. They praised the Lord when all four napped at the same time. Manolo spent most nights out with friends. Ruth’s presence seemed to give him permission to stay away, and Dolores didn’t mind.

  One day Ruth and Dolores sat on the couch and talked, holding Rosa and Carmen. The babies were sleepy, having just woken from their naps. Ruth wore a pendant on a long chain, something sparkly that caught the light. Rosa cooed and reached for it, kicking her legs. Ruth laughed and lifted the pendant over the baby’s face. She waved it back and forth. Rosa followed it with her eyes. Dolores held Carmen up to see the sparkly thing but got no reaction.

  Ruth frowned. “Here,” she said. She took off the pendant and handed it to Dolores. “Let her see it up close.”

  Dolores took it and held it above her baby. She twisted it to catch the light. From Ruth’s lap, Rosa reached for it. Carmen did not react. “What’s wrong with her?” Dolores asked. She refused to panic yet.

  “She’s younger. Maybe she’s not ready to track things with her eyes yet.” Ruth’s words were soothing, but her tone was anxious.

  Later, alone with her daughter in her room, Dolores waved her hand in front of Carmen’s face. Nothing. She pretended to strike her, bringing her hand as close to her nose as she dared. Carmen didn’t even flinch. Dolores held her up close to her own face. She blew against her stomach to make a sound. Carmen laughed but didn’t look at her mother’s face. Dolores moved Carmen around to look directly at her. Dolores covered Carmen’s face to play hide and seek. They’d played it before, and the baby always laughed. Now she fussed and reached out to her mother. In the wrong direction. Was it possible she couldn’t see?

  The baby glowed with health. Carmen had put on weight and grown out of her clothes. She turned toward the radio and listened. She babbled and had developed noises that showed clear disapproval or delight. But she didn’t react to her mother’s face, or to toys held above her, unless they made noise.

  “Manolo, we need to take Carmen to the doctor,” Dolores told him after dinner that night. He’d come home late from work, but not so late that he was drunk. His hair and tie were a little rumpled, so Dolores estimated a drink or two, that’s all. He’d been drinking less since Hawaiian Electric had promoted him to chief engineer. As his responsibilities increased, he worked harder. He looked tired.

  “Doctor? Why?” He looked at Carmen in her highchair. She babbled away to herself and made drool bubbles.

  Dolores picked up the cold washcloth on Carmen’s tray and held it to the baby’s gums to give Carmen some relief from painful new teeth. “I’m worried about her sight,” she told her husband.

  “Why?” he repeated.

  Dolores dangled the washcloth in front of the baby’s face. She didn’t react. Dolores touched her with it, and she reached for it. “I don’t think she can see it.”

  He came around the table to them, took his keys out of his pocket and waved them in front of Carmen. She looked his way. “She can see these.”

  Did he really believe that? “She can hear them, Manolo.”

  He looked at Carmen. His face glowed with love. “She’s fine. You worry too much.”

  “I don’t think so,” she insisted. Too late Dolores realized he’d had more to drink than she thought. She didn’t know when and where. There was much about his life she didn’t know. Dolores shook her head. “I didn’t see it until now.”

  “Didn’t see it? Are you trying to make a joke? Push me into thinking my daughter can’t see?” His roar made his face redden and his eyes flame.

  “Of course not.” The fury on his face scared her.

  “Why would you make up something like this?” He shouted now. Then he leaned in so close she could feel his spittle on her face. “Is the family’s attention moving on to someone else? You like the attention a sick baby gives you?”

  “What? No!” Dolores backed away.

  He stepped forward and stood with his legs spread, hands on hips, shoulders back. He was the most aggressive she’d ever seen him. Carmen, still in the highchair, whimpered.

  Manolo’s anger erupted. He raised his hand to Dolores, across his chest so he could backhand her face. The force of the blow snapped her head back. The shock of it took her breath away. “I don’t know why I ever married you!”

  He stormed out of the room, and Dolores heard him rummage in the cabinet where he hid his bottles. Then the front door slammed behind him. Carmen cried, no doubt frightened by her father’s loud anger. Dolores sank to the floor, her back against the wall. She hugged her knees and let herself cry. She had never been hit before. Not by Papa, not by Noelani or Kanoa, and not by Maria or Peter. It was a bruise to her soul as well as her face.

  The door slammed behind Manolo, and the noise brought Ruth upstairs from her rooms in the basement. Dolores, on the floor, cried and stared at the baby in her highchair. Carmen cried, too. Ruth dropped to her knees and held Dolores. “Are you all right?” Then she noticed Dolores’s reddened cheek and sucked in her breath. “Did Manolo do that? Oh, Dolores, I’m so sorry.”

  Dolores drew comfort from her sister-in-law’s arms. She didn’t need to talk about her husband. They cried together there on the floor. When Dolores could stand, she pulled Ruth up with her. Ruth picked up Carmen. She bounced the baby on her hip until she quieted.

  Dolores got a cold washcloth for her face.

  “I hope it doesn’t bruise too badly,” Ruth said.

  “Ruth, what do I say to him? What do I do?” Dolores was lost. It seemed everything she held dear was built on clouds.

  Ruth said, “It’s like Grandma Jessie says—‘ohana is everything and everyone is ‘ohana. Nobody is perfect in the family, but we are all here to help each other through it. I’ll help you, Dolores.”

  Dolores nodded. “And I’ll help you, Ruth.”

  The next day Dolores powdered her face heavily. She dressed Carmen in a baby blue dress that had grown a little tight. She filled Grandma Jessie’s plate with homemade sugar cookies since her mother-in-law would be the first to tell Dolores that returning a plate empty brought bad luck.

  Dolores crossed the street to help with lunch as she did every day and looked for Manolo’s car. She was relieved to see her husband wasn’t there and relieved when Ruth and Helen took Carmen to play with Rosa. When his mother asked, Dolores told her she didn’t know where Manolo was. She glanced at the right side of Dolores’s face, and Dolores held her breath. She frowned but looked away. Dolores resumed breathing. Alberto sat on Dolores’s right side and peered at her cheek. Dolores ignored him. He frowned, but she talked to Ruth across the table.

  Much later, Alberto volunteered to walk her home. “Oh, mahalo,” Dolores told him, “but I can cross the street on my own.”

  He snatched one of Dolores’s cookies off the plate and joined her anyway. Grandma Jessie’s door was barely closed behind them when he asked, “How you get dat bruise?”

  “Bruise?”

  “Dolores, no play dumb wit’ me. Someone slap yo’ face, hard. You try cover it, ya?”

  She didn’t want to tell him Manolo had done it. She didn’t know what he’d do. Better to change the subject. “I’m worried about Carmen. I don’t think she can see well.”

  They had arrived at her front door. �
��You take her to doc?” He opened the door and motioned for her to precede him.

  “Not yet. I just noticed it yesterday.”

  “Get yo’ purse. We take her now.” He hadn’t even closed the front door. “On the way you talk story about yo’ face.”

  Dolores lifted her chin and said, “Manolo did it.”

  “Lōlō kanapapiki,” he swore. She knew lōlō meant crazy. She knew kanapapiki was nothing she wanted her daughter to hear. Alberto curled his hand into a fist. Dolores could see the muscles tense in his arm. “I get some ice, ya?” he said.

  It was too late for ice to curtail the swelling, but Dolores let him go. When he returned with a dish towel full of ice and placed it gently on her face while holding her daughter, she was so grateful for his kindness she almost cried. “Mahalo,” she said. “He didn’t mean—”

  Alberto cut her off, his face hard with anger. “I sorry, Dolores, but it not orait.”

  “It’s all right, Alberto. He’ll be sorry when he comes back. He loves Carmen. It will be all right.” Dolores used to know he loved her, too, but now she wasn’t sure.

  “You sho you no trying to catch fish in the air?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Come on, let’s get our girl to the doc.”

  Without an appointment, they had to wait to see the doctor. Alberto entertained Carmen with his keys. Dolores didn’t tell him that reminded her of Manolo the night before, trying to test the baby’s vision.

  Both Alberto and Dolores stood close by while the doctor examined Carmen. “She’s eight months old?”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Carmen said.

  “And she had pneumonia, I recall.”

  “Yes.”

  “That may have had some effect. They give seriously ill infants strong medication. Or the oxygen they gave her could have been too pure. There’s a possibility it won’t get any worse as she grows, but there’s also a possibility she may be totally blind as an adult.”

  Alberto put his arm around Carmen. “She a beautiful angel,” he said.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Dolores said. She picked up Carmen and squared her shoulders. “Carmen won’t be treated any differently than the others. My daughter won’t be a burden.”

  The doctor nodded as he left the room.

  In the car, before Alberto could say anything, Carmen said, “Don’t tell Manolo unless he asks.”

  “You t’ink he no ask? Or you afraid o’ him?”

  Dolores didn’t answer. She’d never been afraid before, but being hit was new. She wasn’t sure how she’d feel when she saw Manolo again. “I don’t even know where he is.”

  “I know a couple his buddies at a bar in Chinatown. I find him if yo’ need him, ya?”

  She shook her head.

  They finished the drive in silence. At home, Alberto helped her change Carmen into a nightgown and put her down in the crib. Dolores stood and stroked the baby’s back, her thoughts full of love and support no matter what Carmen could see. Alberto watched her from the doorway. When she came out and closed the baby’s door behind her, he pointed toward Grandma Jessie’s house and said, “I right dere. Any time, day o’ night you come get me if you need me, ya?”

  “I will.” The intensity of his eyes and the tension in his muscles made her feel supported rather than afraid. How much would the rest of the family support her? How could they refuse Manolo when he needed so much help? Help she didn’t know how to give. She could only hope that the family would help them both.

  SIXTEEN

  Balancing Act 1939

  In January, people reflected on the past year and made resolutions for the new one. Dolores’s birthday fell on the fifteenth. It was usually a private affair, tucked into the recuperation time after the Christmas season. The decorations, the shopping, the food, the parties were all over, and normal daily life returned.

  This year, as Dolores turned twenty-three and reflected on the holiday season of 1938, she was content. Carmen would turn seven in June. Her younger sister, Betty, would be two years old next month. Manolo doted on the girls and would do anything for them. This included a promise not to drink so much. Each holiday Dolores monitored his drinking with anxious trepidation, especially at Christmas and New Year’s. Every holiday, though, he stopped after one drink. Carmen and Betty loved their daddy, and Dolores did, too. Manolo still got angry over what seemed to be little things. Dolores had learned to defuse his anger, and they’d developed a fragile peace once Manolo stopped blaming her for Carmen’s eyesight problems.

  Dolores chased her daydreams out of her head and focused on dressing. Manolo was taking all his girls out to dinner to celebrate her twenty-third birthday. Dolores fastened the buttons of her newest dress and preened in front of the mirror. The skirt was longer than her older dresses, quite in fashion. The fabric was silky-swirly, a favorite of Carmen’s, and the waist sat snugly against her, a little higher than her natural waist. It was blue, like the tropical sky, and scatter-printed with white plumeria. Dolores liked the way the skirt felt as it moved against her rayon stockings.

  “You look beautiful,” Manolo said as he came into the room behind her.

  Dolores turned to greet him with a wide, open smile. “Mahalo, ku‘uipo.” He kissed her, and she stepped back to admire him. He wore his usual white shirt with a gray striped tie. Dolores had bought him one in bold geometric colors, but he refused to wear it. His jacket was also gray but fit him like it was made for him. He was as handsome as the day she’d first seen him at Hanauma Bay eight years earlier. “You look wonderful, too, Manolo.”

  Carmen and Betty sat on the sofa just like little ladies. Their blond hair was curled and tied with ribbon, and their dresses were clean and pressed.

  Betty kicked her feet and scowled at the shoes. “Mama, no shoes.”

  “Ladies must wear shoes in a restaurant, darling. Your sister doesn’t mind shoes, do you Carmen?”

  Carmen’s blue eyes danced, and her mouth twisted up in the devilish grin Dolores always saw in the Medeiros boys. She held up her hand to forestall her oldest daughter’s words. “Never mind! We are all wearing shoes!”

  The girls laughed as they rushed into their mother’s arms to hug her. Manolo brought the car around, and the three of them joined him. They were off to a nice dinner, something they enjoyed doing but just couldn’t afford as much as they’d like to. Dolores supposed that made it special for all of them. Imagine being so wealthy you could take your family to dinner often enough to tire of it.

  Manolo drove them to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Betty loved the pink hotel and described its color and flowers to her sister. “Walls pink, Carmen, and flowers pink and all pink.”

  Carmen could see shadows, but discerning pink was beyond her. The doctors now said that her vision would deteriorate as she got older, but Dolores refused to let it affect how she raised Carmen. Carmen would learn and play and do chores just like her younger sister, probably more since she was the oldest.

  The Royal Hawaiian was a special treat. The restaurant menus had covers that were color etchings of paintings by John Kelly. Dolores loved his work since it depicted Hawaiian people. Her favorite was Lei Makers on Greensward, which reminded her of Maria and the Hawaiian women who made leis at the Moana Hotel. Whenever they came to the Royal Hawaiian, Dolores hoped to get a menu with a copy of that painting.

  They sat in the dining room like they did it every day. The room glittered with beautiful people. Dolores imagined they were actresses and actors, wealthy families on holiday from the mainland.

  Manolo ordered for all of them. The soup came in a giant tureen embellished with tiny pink painted roses and gold trim. Dolores heard Betty mutter, “Pink roses, pink.”

  “Betty, you’re a good sister to describe everything to Carmen,” Manolo said.

  Dolores looked at him, always suspicious when he spoke of Carmen’s lack of sight. They’d never discussed it at length. She’d told him about the doctor visit soon after it happened. For the ensuin
g five and a half years, it seemed Manolo weighed everything Carmen did or said. He loved his daughter very much, so Dolores said nothing.

  The waiter brought rolls, served on a platter that matched the tureen. Dolores traced the gold rim. “Isn’t it beautiful? I love this.”

  “Put it in your purse,” Manolo suggested.

  Dolores couldn’t tell if he was joking. She eyed her lauhala purse. It was big enough. “No, I can’t,” she protested. The platter was so pretty. The girls were too young to understand. It was her birthday after all. Dolores giggled as she divided the rolls among their four plates and opened her lauhala purse wide. She slipped the platter inside and stuffed it so that the woven straw sides of her purse bulged. Betty’s eyes grew wide, and Manolo slapped both hands across his mouth to keep from laughing. Dolores, too, held in her laughter with difficulty when the waiter came to the table. He did a double take when he saw the rolls on their plate but no platter. He asked no questions though.

  Manolo’s eyes sparkled. “What a terrible role model you are,” he teased.

  “I see what I want and go after it,” Dolores said trying to put a positive spin on it. “I’ll tell everyone it’s a birthday gift.” The girls talked to each other and ignored their parents.

  Betty described, in her limited vocabulary, the entire restaurant and its patrons to Carmen. Manolo ordered a glass of wine instead of a bottle. Dolores had pink lemonade and ordered the same for the girls.

  “‘Okole maluna,” Manolo said. “To my beautiful ladies!”

  They all had a wonderful meal, full of laughter, and returned home full and happy. Dolores washed her beautiful platter and set it in a place of honor on a shelf in the kitchen.

  The next day the entire house shook so hard that the platter fell off its shelf and shattered. Dolores scooped Betty up in her arms and pulled Carmen after her as she rushed outside. All along the street, people were doing the same. By the time Dolores’s mind registered that it was an earthquake, it was over. Carmen and Betty seemed unfazed. They ran inside and resumed playing with their dolls. Dolores walked from room to room. Pictures hung askew on the wall, and things on top of dressers had moved. Some had fallen, but nothing had broken except the platter. When Manolo came home, Dolores was sitting in the kitchen, beginning to feel safe in her home.