The Promise

by Jane Peart

  “Tell me about Honolulu,” Jana demanded. “Did you ever see the king?”

  “The ‘Merry Monarch’? Not often. We hear a great deal about him. The Iolani Palace is beautiful—at least, that’s what people say. I can’t, because I’ve never been invited there myself.”

  “You’re entitled, though, aren’t you? I mean, being that you’re a descendant of one of the chieftains of Hawaii?”

  “So are many students at our school. Queen Kapiolani attended the graduation and awards day at the academy. But I was sitting too far away to get a good look at her. The girls said she was gorgeously dressed, silken trains swishing, jewels sparkling. The king is supposed to be something to see, too,” Kimo laughed. “He has so many medals on his uniform, people have to shield their eyes, because the sun makes them dazzling.”

  “That sounds so exciting. Seeing royalty and all. Tell me more,” Jana begged.

  “I’ve heard other things about the king, but I don’t know whether I should tell you or not. You’re such an innocent,” he teased.

  “I am not!” she retorted indignantly. “Tell me, please. You must,” she pleaded.

  “Well, you’ve heard that the Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson is a great friend of the king’s. He visits the palace often, and they spend lots of time together.”

  “That’s all? Why shouldn’t you tell me that?”

  “You interrupted me. I was going to say that rumor has it he puts away four or five bottles of champagne in an afternoon. However, Stevenson says the king is none the worse for it. If you can believe that. Stevenson also declares that King Kalakua is very fine and intelligent. You knew he was an accomplished musician and composer, didn’t you?”

  “All Hawaiians are talented,” Jana said. “You are.”

  “With my hands,” Kimo conceded. “That’s not like hearing music in your head and being able to put it into notes so other people can play it on instruments or sing the words.”

  “You make beautiful things out of wood. Just like poets make something beautiful with words,” Jana insisted. “Poetry in wood.”

  “Mahalo,” Kimo said quietly. “I’ll remember that.”

  That day together was one Jana would treasure for a long time after Kimo had returned to Honolulu. She was so happy, in a way that was different from other times of happiness. With Kimo she was more truly herself than with anyone else. There was no need for explanations, not even for words.

  In the week that followed, they saw each other almost every day. When Akela came back from Kona to Tutu’s, they made a threesome, often taking Nathan along with them on their picnics and sometimes sailing. Kimo was teaching Jana’s little brother to swim and surf, and those were wonderful days.

  Then at last it was time for Kimo to return to Honolulu. The afternoon before he was to leave the next morning, Kimo came alone to walk with Jana along the ocean.

  They both knew that something had happened, something had changed in their relationship. They were not children, not playmates, any longer—they were something more than friends. What they were now to each other, neither was quite able to say.

  There was a certain poignancy to that last afternoon they spent together. They didn’t talk much, just held hands and walked along the beach. As the wind off the ocean grew cool, the shadows long, they knew it was time to go. Before leaving the beach, Kimo halted by the surf’s edge, sat down on his heels, and wrote something else in the wet sand. Jana leaned over to read the words Aloha ka-ua, Let there be love between you and me.

  He stood up, looked at her with dark, serious eyes. Then he took her hand and they walked slowly up the path back to the Rutherfords’ cottage.

  At the gate Kimo asked, “Will you write to me, Koana?”

  “You hardly ever answer,” she pretended to pout.

  “They keep us pretty busy at school. After classes there’s workshop. Then we all have other duties around the grounds and buildings. Lots of work, not many hours to yourself. But I’ll do better this year, I promise,” he laughed softly. “I like getting your letters on that pretty pink stationery. I get a lot of joshing from the other fellows when they see those envelopes with the flowers you paint on them.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “No, it makes me feel proud. Someone cares enough about me to take the time and trouble to write.” He paused. “You do care, don’t you, Koana?”

  He had to bend his head to hear her reply, “Yes, I do.”

  Then Kimo put his hands on her shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed her on both cheeks, the traditional Hawaiian way. “Aloha, Koana.”

  Impulsively Jana put her hands up, captured his face in them, held it for a moment, then kissed him on the mouth.

  “Aloha, Kimo.”

  The day after Kimo left for Oahu again, Jana felt lonelier than she had ever remembered. The possibility that the next time Kimo left the island it might be for Germany made her desolate. Something had happened between them during this vacation, something new, something different. Aloha kaua a kau maka maka. She wrote those words over and over, on scrap paper and on the margins of her lined school tablet “may we be friends forever.”

  When school started again, Jana was shocked to learn from Edith that her father, acting upon Bayard’s advice, was investigating schools on the mainland for her to attend next year. Dismayed, Jana exclaimed, “Then, you won’t be graduating with Akela and me?”

  “I know, I’m sorry about that. At first I told Papa I wouldn’t go! Then he kept persuading me”—she dimpled—“bribing me, you might say. Adding things he would do if I’d agree to go. He’s even promised to ship Malakini to Walnut Hills for me to ride when I’m there. And Bayard says that’s near enough to New York to go to the theater and go shopping at the big stores, and there’ll be all sorts of interesting places to go and see. Besides parties and balls at the nearby men’s college.” Edith’s eyes sparkled with excitement at the promise of a new life.

  Jana did not say anything. She remembered Bayard’s voice coming clearly to her from the patio on New Year’s morning: “…she needs to associate with people of our own class, not just Hawaiians.”

  Part Two

  Chapter Eleven

  September 1886

  Edith left for the mainland to the fashionable boarding school she would be attending in Virginia. Jana and Akela accompanied her and the Colonel to Hilo to see them off on the steamer to Honolulu. The friends embraced and said tearful good-byes. Although Edith shed copious tears when she hugged them both, there was an unmistakable excitement in her farewells. As eager for new experiences as Edith was, this was the ultimate adventure for her.

  As they stood on the dock watching the steamer move out of the harbor, a sense of melancholy hung over the two girls left behind. Riding back in the Prestons’ carriage, they were somberly aware of the fact that the two of them would be starting their last year of high school without the third member of their trio. Although they didn’t put it into words, both girls felt that something would definitely be missing in their lives.

  The months that followed Edith’s departure were even harder for Jana than for Akela. Jana felt Edith’s absence more keenly than Akela did. Akela was always surrounded by the large, supportive Kipola family, with their frequent gatherings. Then too, she now had Pelo to love and comfort her. Almost every other weekend, Akela went to Kona to be near him.

  Edith proved a poor correspondent. A month after she left, Jana and Akela received a letter addressed to them both, in which she described her life as “hectic” and said that the school kept them “hopping”:

  There are classes in everything you can imagine! Fencing! Dancing! French! Weekends, we have all sorts of social activities, such as the dansants (that’s French, but means that young men from nearby schools come, stand against the wall, and gawk at us, then clumsily ask some of us to dance, and we all drink fruit punch). I live in a suite of six rooms. There are two girls to a room, and we share a sitting room. My roommate’s name is Vin
nie Albright.

  That was about the extent of correspondence from Edith. She did, however, send picture postcards from many of the “educational” field trips the school took to “historic sites”—one a view of Mount Vernon, another of Jefferson’s Monticello, yet another of the Washington Monument.

  With both Edith and Kimo gone, Jana felt lonely. She missed Kimo especially and more than she had expected to. He had been gone all summer, working at a woodworker’s shop in Manoa on Oahu. After their brief, idyllic reunion at the beginning of the year, she thought his feelings for her had changed, deepened, become more than just affection. Why hadn’t he written? But then, why should she have thought he would? He had told her he wasn’t good about writing.

  However, it was a terrible blow when Jana learned that Kimo had been accepted as an apprentice by the German cabinetmaker. When Akela told her he would leave for Germany without returning to Hawaii, Jana was stunned. What had only been a possibility had become a reality. Germany was a world away. She couldn’t share with anyone, not even Akela, how much it hurt that Kimo hadn’t written to tell her himself. Her feelings for Kimo were buried deep in her secret heart.

  Jana tried to fill up the emptiness she felt by concentrating on her studies and her painting. Still, her days seemed long and lonely. She took Nathan with her to the beach and sketched while he played, she helped her mother with household tasks, and somehow time passed.

  Another disappointment came with the news that Edith would not come home for Christmas as they had all hoped. Instead, the Colonel would travel to the mainland, where Bayard would meet them in New York for a holiday of parties and theater-going. Edith had sent a hasty note of explanation along with presents for both her friends—a chiffon scarf for Akela, and a beaded evening purse for Jana. What possible use she would have for it, Jana didn’t know. To make matters worse, Akela would be gone to Kona for the Kipolas’ annual family gathering. As a result, Jana was hard put to pretend she was looking forward to Christmas. For Nathan’s sake she tried.

  As if to lighten her sagging sprits, a few days before Christmas she received a package in the mail. It was heavily wrapped in brown paper, with lots of strings and stamps. From Germany, from Kimo! Excitedly she unwrapped it and found a book of reproductions of lovely watercolors, pictures of Rhineland castles and cathedrals. Inside was a short letter saying that he was living with a German family, managing to learn enough of the language to get along, and that the cabinetmaker to whom he was apprenticed was a hard taskmaster and kept them working long hours.

  I’ve never been good at putting thoughts into words, as you know, Koana, but I do think of you every day. I miss you. I miss our talks, our times together. I miss everything in Hawaii. It is so strange to be so far from everything I love and understand.

  Jana read these few lines over and over. Was she included in those things Kimo loved and understood? In the note, Jana sensed the deep loneliness Kimo must be experiencing, and she wept sympathetic tears, feeling his heartache.

  Spring 1887

  With graduation only a few months away, Jana filled out several applications to a number of women’s colleges. Her parents suggested one in San Francisco that offered a two-year course to earn a teacher’s credential. There was a need for elementary teachers on the island, and finding a position would be almost guaranteed. Obediently but halfheartedly, Jana filled out the forms. She didn’t want to teach—she wanted to be an artist. She had sent for the brochure of a California art school and had learned that there were scholarships available.

  She had discovered Psalm 37, and it had become her favorite. Especially verses 3 and 4, which she said over and over to herself: “Trust in the Lord…Delight yourself also in him, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Why would the Lord have planted the desire to paint so deeply, given her the talent she had, if he didn’t mean to “bring it to pass”?

  The thought of going away from the island to the mainland was frightening. There had been so many changes in her life in such a short time—in the space of a year, actually—with both Edith’s and Kimo’s departures from Hawaii. Jana didn’t want to leave the island, didn’t feel ready for such a change. To be in a strange surrounding, among strangers, didn’t appeal to her. Only if she could win a scholarship to an art school might the idea be more acceptable. Then she could come back to Hawaii and fulfill her dream of being an artist, even if she had to teach to support herself.

  To qualify for one she had to submit a portfolio of her artwork, with one main piece on which her chances for a scholarship would be decided. Both parents were full of suggestions. Her father liked many of the watercolor seascapes she had done, her mother favored copies she had made of famous paintings. Jana knew it should be something entirely original. She wanted to do something that would stand out from other entrants. Something that expressed her in a unique way. Something that spoke of Hawaii, that came from her heart, expressed her feelings. A personal statement. That was what she felt would attract the judges, the people who decided who got the scholarships.

  Jana walked the beach, stared out her window, prayed about it, thought, sketched, and tore up many attempts before at last she got an idea. She would design a quilt, a pattern, blending both styles, Hawaiian and American, into one beautiful, complete design. Just as she herself was a blend of both cultures. Excited as she was about her idea, she knew she needed to learn more about the Hawaiian quilts. She decided to go talk to Tutu, who was always working on a quilt, and share her idea and find out about the “secret” hidden in Hawaiian quilts. She wanted her design to have its own secret meaning as well.

  Tutu welcomed Jana as usual and was eager to share her wisdom and talent with her.

  “We take quilt making very seriously in Hawaii,” she began. “It is considered an art, an individual, creative expression of each woman,” she said in her soft voice. “The missionary ladies taught Hawaiians to quilt and showed them how to cut out the patterns and sew them on the cloth. Gradually, instead of copying the designs the missionaries gave them, Hawaiian ladies began to create their own.” Tutu’s capable brown hands moved slowly, taking precise, small stitches. “My mother made beautiful quilts. She was a very spiritual lady. She prayed over her quilts, blessing the persons who would receive them as a gift, sleep under them.” She paused, then went on thoughtfully. “Her designs were often the result of a vision or dream. An idea would come and she would cut it out from memory, with no pattern.

  “The cloths used by the missionary ladies for bedcovers were much different from the ones Hawaiians used. In the olden days, people slept on mats woven from the lauhala, the ribbonlike leaves of the pnadanus. They were soft and fine, almost like silk to the touch. Before the missionaries came, Hawaiian women were skillful in making tapa cloth from the inner bark of the wauke plant. They wet it and shaped it into size, dried it in the sun, pounded it. It was a long, tedious process. Tapa cloth was then used for everything, for clothing as well as for bedcovers.”

  “But the quilts you make, Tutu, are constructed much like the ones my mother has, like the ones my grandmother makes. A padded undercloth, then the design part on top.”

  “Yes, I know. The basic quilt is the same. All of us who attended the missionary schools learned how to cut and sew and make quilts like we were taught. The difference is in the design. For some reason, we were quick to learn the skill of handling needle and thread and stitching the appliquéd patterns. The art was in creating our own designs.”

  Jana watched, fascinated, as Tutu’s needle weaved in and out around the pattern she was applying to the quilt. It was the shape of a pineapple.

  “Hawaiians took to quilt making very easily,” Tutu went on. “Hawaiians love happy occasions and any reason to celebrate. They love to make gifts to give loved ones at special times, such as weddings, birthdays, new babies, and other joyful happenings. Quilts are perfect for this. My mother made wedding quilts for all her daughters and daughters-in-law, and many, many baby quilts.” Tu
tu laughed her deep, throaty laugh.

  “But what about the secret, Tutu? Tell me about them,” Jana asked. She was curious about this element, which made the Hawaiian quilts different from the ones her mother’s aunties had given her.

  “Well, there’s a code of ethics about the quilts. The person who creates a design keeps it a secret. To exchange an original design is a sign of a deep bond of friendship and is rarely done, but when it is, the person who receives the design alters it slightly to put her own stamp upon it and to respect the originator.” Tutu halted, holding up the part she was working on, putting her head to one side, and studying it for a minute before continuing. “Even the giver of an original design does not necessarily confide the hidden inspiration of it to the person receiving it—that is her choice. Sometimes it is too personal or has such intimate meaning that she wants to keep it to herself. Often it could be a particular event, or a meaningful episode in her life, that she does not want to share with anyone.”

  Jana could understand that. In her mind, an idea for her “secret” message in her design was forming, and it was something she knew she wanted to keep private.

  “What about the quilt you’re making now, Tutu? Does it have a secret?”

  “Aha, Koana—if I told you, it would no longer be a secret, would it?” she chuckled. “But no, this is one I’m making by request. My sister wanted me to make this one like one I made before. It’s a more common design. Hawaii has so many beautiful flowers and fruits, most of the simpler designs are drawn from pineapple, breadfruit, and anthurium shapes. One of my personal favorites is a quilt I made after I was baptized.”

  “The one hanging in your bedroom on the wall opposite your bed?” Jana had often admired the colorful design of that one. With its orange-colored fruit, red flowers, and green foliage on a white background, it looked like a garden in full bloom.