Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

  Rachel was duly impressed, and after they had completed their sandcastle she returned to the ocean, though not to body-surf. Now she lay face down on the water’s surface, drifting on the currents, floating like a mist above a silent forest of coral; and whenever she saw the shadow of a crevice in the coral she would poke a piece of driftwood into it like a spearfisher going for her prey. The first, second, and third pokes met with no resistance; but on the fourth try something gray and fast erupted from the hole, water churned and teeth flashed, and Rachel swam for shore faster than she ever swam in her life, propelled by equal parts fear and excitement, terror and delight.

  S

  he returned to Bishop Home to find an envelope bearing three letters, fresh off the latest steamer.

  Dear Rachel,

  Mama said I should write and tell you how sorry I am for what I did and how I didn’t mean it. I cried so much the day you left. Everybody looks at me in school and nobody wants to eat with me. Becky Thornberry said mean things to me and I hit her and she started screaming because I touched her and they sent us both home for the day. I hate it here now, we may go to a different school next year. Well that’s all, I hope you are O.K.

  Your sister,

  Sarah

  The other two were both penned in Mama’s careful, missionary-taught cursive:

  Dearest Rachel,

  Mama misses you so much, she thinks about you all the time. James and Ben miss you too, they send you their love. I know Uncle Pono is taking good care of you so I don’t worry. Remember to say your prayers at night and put all your love and trust in the Lord God Jehovah, He will put all things to right.

  Love, Mama

  Mea aloha, Rachel,

  Did you find the doll in the trunk? I hope you like it, when you look at it think of your family here in Honolulu. How do you like living with your Uncle Pono, I bet you are laughing all the time with him around.

  Papa’s got to ship out on a steamer next week but I promise to write you from every place I visit. When I get back Mama and I will take the steamer to Kalaupapa to see our baby. I miss you so much little girl. But when I get lonely for you I’m going to sing that song you like so much, and when you get lonely for me you do the same, O.K.?

  Papa

  Then at the bottom of the page, a hastily scrawled P.S. in Papa’s own simple block lettering:

  Don’t sing that song to nobody but Pono, O.K., baby?

  Rachel read the letters and then read them again. Halfway through a third time, she heard a thin little voice say, “You got letters?”

  She looked up. Most of the girls were out playing; the question had come from one of the two bedridden girls, the other, Josephina, being deep in a sound sleep.

  Rachel went to the girl, saw her face up close for the first time: nose and lips swollen to twice their normal size, skin pocked with raw red sores. She thought of the girl she had seen her first day at Kalihi, the one who made her scream and run; but this one filled her with no fear, only sadness. “Hi. I’m Rachel.”

  “I’m Violet.” She smiled, then asked shyly, “Can I read them? I don’t get letters.”

  Rachel handed them to her. Violet read Dorothy’s letter first, then when her eyes had reached the bottom of the page she started again from the top, and only then moved on to Henry’s. She smiled with a kind of wistful pleasure; and when she’d read both letters twice over she looked up at Rachel and asked, “What song?”

  Rachel hesitated, remembering her father’s admonition, but decided he wouldn’t mind her making this one exception. In a low voice she sang a chorus of “Whiskey Johnnie” and Violet’s eyes widened in delight; she clapped and laughed so much that Rachel sang her the next three verses.

  Rachel kept her company a while longer, until the other girls began to drift back into the cottage and it was time for chores. She made a point the next morning to spend some more time with Violet, but when she got back from school that afternoon she saw that Violet’s bed was empty, the mattress stripped of its linens. And as the days went by without Violet, Rachel understood what she couldn’t comprehend at the king’s funeral—feeling an absence even worse than that of her distant family, an absence that was like a sore that wouldn’t heal.

  Chapter 7

  A

  t breakfast, after morning Mass, Sister Victor shared a table with Catherine in the convent’s dining room and apologized for “abandoning” her the day of the beach trip. Over a meal of tea and hardtack biscuits she owned up to her “black moods” and how at times they so overwhelmed her she couldn’t bear to see another human face: “I know what Leopoldina calls it. She says I’m ‘sulking’—as though I’m a truculent child! But I swear, I just can’t get out of bed. My nerves are so raw, I feel as though the slightest stimulus would be intolerable.”

  It was storming again outside, the windows rattling with each chilly gust of wind; Catherine cupped her hands around her tea, grateful for its warmth. Only she and Victor lingered over their breakfasts; the other sisters had already begun the day’s chores. Sister Mary Victor Macardle took a sip of tea. Her eyes were downcast; there was none of her usual sullenness in her face, only weariness. “Back in Syracuse I worked with Mother for nine years, in St. Joseph’s Hospital,” she said quietly. “I spoon-fed children weak with scarlet fever and typhus, and never thought twice about it. I assisted doctors in surgeries, amputations, and never had so much as an upset stomach over it.

  “Mother once told me I was the best nursing sister in the hospital,” she said, more pain than pride in her voice. “She commended me many times.”

  “Dear God,” she said with scant reverence, “how I hate Hawai'i! Had I stayed in Syracuse I’d be enjoying the fruits of a life well spent—the esteem of my colleagues, and not their contempt.”

  “Sister,” Catherine said, “we don’t—”

  “You do. Even I do.” Almost from the moment she arrived on Moloka'i, she admitted, she had been seized by a bleak despair which rarely loosened its grip on her. There had been no shortage of death and disfigurement at St. Joseph’s, so at first she failed to understand why the lazaretto should affect her as it did. But at St. Joseph’s, whatever the horrors she saw in the course of a day, all she had to do to escape them was to step outside. There was a whole other world just beyond the hospital walls: the clatter of streetcars, the comfort of crowds.

  But here at Kalaupapa all was leprosy: leprous sores to be cleaned and dressed, leprous children to be schooled and fed. Leprosy was woven into the fabric of their daily lives, a black thread that could never be cut. Even the fissured heights of the pali seemed to look down on her with the attenuated, leonine features of a leper’s face.

  “It got so I couldn’t bear touching the poor things, let alone dressing their wounds. Isn’t that odd that I should be so frightened—I who had no fear of tuberculosis or typhus?” She smiled wanly. “Mother saw what was happening and put me in charge of housekeeping for the convent instead. But then she asks me to serve tea to lepers and I want to run, I become angry and sullen, I . . .”

  “Sister, we’re all afraid of it. Remember how you saw me the other day? Down on my knees outside the infirmary?”

  Victor nodded. “Yes. But you went back in.”

  “Because of what you told me.”

  Victor shook her head. “No. Not because of me.” Her body sagged under a sudden weight; her gaze seemed to turn inward, eyes fixed on something beyond Catherine’s sight.

  “Isn’t it strange,” she said, not quite addressing Catherine, “how one so afraid of contracting a fatal malady . . . should so earnestly wish for death, as well?”

  There it was, just as she herself had described it: the descent into a black mood, like a swimmer sinking into tar. She made the sign of the cross but it seemed rote, affording her no real comfort.

  “Sister—” Catherine started to say, but Victor abruptly pushed aside her teacup—and stood up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, no longer able or willing t
o look Catherine in the eye. “I shouldn’t be burdening you with this. Forgive me, Sister.” She turned to go.

  “Sister, wait!” Catherine stood, but her companion was already on her way out of the room. Night had fallen on her again, and she hurried into her private darkness.

  Catherine sat down again, listening to the stutter of rain on the roof, wondering at what point rational fear of contagion turned to unreasoning dread, and whether she would know it when she came to it.

  She dressed sores for the next hour and a half, projecting even more false cheer than usual. When she was finished she scrubbed her hands until they hurt.

  Helping Leopoldina clean the dormitories while school was in session, she entered the cottage for the youngest girls and found two of them still there. Josephina was abed and asleep, as usual; it wasn’t expected she would live to see spring. But sitting listlessly on her own bed, fully clothed, was the normally quite energetic Rachel Kalama.

  “Rachel, why aren’t you in school?”

  Rachel just shrugged.

  “Aren’t you feeling well?” Catherine asked.

  Rachel shrugged again. “I guess.”

  Catherine sat down beside her. Rachel’s face, usually so animated, seemed so languid, her eyes dim. Catherine started to reach out to feel her forehead . . .

  And hesitated—just for a moment, but long enough to startle and dismay her. She forced herself to press her palm against Rachel’s forehead. There was no fever but for the one Catherine felt in her own cheeks.

  “Rachel, is something wrong?”

  The question hung in the air for a moment before Rachel blurted out, “Did Violet die?”

  Violet? the nun thought, for a moment unable to place the name; and then she remembered. The little girl by the window. They had laid her to rest the other day, Father Wendelin and Mother Marianne her only mourners.

  Catherine nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry, she did.”

  Rachel took that in, thought a moment, and asked, “What happens to you when you die?”

  “Why, you go to Heaven. To be with Jesus.” When Rachel didn’t respond Catherine nervously filled the silence. “Don’t feel badly for Violet, Rachel. She’s happy now. God called her to Heaven.”

  Rachel said, “Why?”

  Catherine blinked. “Why what?”

  “Why did God call her to Heaven?”

  The question startled Catherine. “Only God knows that, Rachel. But I’m sure He had a good reason.”

  Rachel persisted: “Why can’t we know what it is?”

  Catherine’s pulse quickened.

  “Well, we . . . we will, someday,” she said. “When God calls us to Heaven, too.”

  “Why can’t we know now?”

  Catherine took a breath. “Because we can’t.”

  “I think God is mean,” Rachel said angrily, “to not tell us.”

  Catherine flinched. “He’s not. He—”

  “He killed Violet!” Rachel shouted. “I hate him!”

  As if she were merely an observer, Catherine watched herself lash out and slap Rachel across the face—hard.

  “Don’t say that!” she cried, and even Rachel could hear the panic in her voice. “Don’t ever say that!”

  Tears sprang to Rachel’s eyes, but the hurt inside her was far worse than the stinging of her cheek. She ran. Out of the dormitory, into the rain, without a look back.

  The awfulness of what she’d done now came home to Catherine; but she felt anger too, a storm raging within her as violent as the one outside. The voice of remorse told her to go after Rachel and apologize, but another voice said, No excuse for it, got what was coming, and then she heard Rachel asking Why? Why can’t we . . . Shut up! she commanded the voices, stop it! She ran from the cottage and into a wet wind, her skirt billowing as she dashed across the muddy lawn to the convent. She tore into St. Elizabeth’s, ignoring a greeting from Sister Albina, hurrying to the tiny one-room oratory that was their chapel. Inside she slowed her pace as she approached the altar, dropped to her knees. She crossed herself and began to pray.

  Praise the Lord, O my soul, in my life I will praise the Lord: I will sing to my God as long as I shall be . . .

  She fairly shouted the prayer in her head, seeking to drown out all but the psalm she conjured from memory.

  Blessed is He who hath the God of Jacob for his helper, whose hope is in the Lord his God: who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all the things that are in them . . .

  The babble of confused voices grew weaker, softer. She took a deep breath, finding solace in the words.

  The Lord looseth them that are fettered: the Lord enlighteneth the blind. The Lord lifteth up them that are cast down: the Lord loveth the just. The Lord keep-eth the strangers, he will support the fatherless and the widow . . .

  Anger and doubt erupted again like lava, emotions entirely inappropriate for this place, this act. She sprang to her feet and bolted from the chapel, startling a sister about to enter, and retreated to the safety of her room. There she fell again to her knees, knitting her hands together in a tortured mimicry of prayer. Whenever she felt the anger bubbling up she would stop, take a few minutes to compose herself, then start again; but though the anger slowly cooled she found that oozing up between the words of contrition and adoration was a troubling fear. Fear of herself and what she was capable of, what she had done to that little girl; and fear that perhaps Sister Victor was right, that contagion was all around them.

  R

  achel fled into the pouring rain, her only thought to put as much distance as possible between herself and Sister Catherine. The wind lashed her hair around her neck as she raced between buildings; she was relieved to see on glancing back that the sister was not pursuing her. She took refuge behind the girls’ dining hall, under its scant overhang and behind a waterfall of rain sluicing off the roof. She drew her chin up to her knees and allowed herself some tears. She hated this place—hated the rain and cold and wind. She hated it because Mama and Papa weren’t here, and because Uncle Pono was but she couldn’t live with him. And because people died here, and now she knew what that meant.

  She sat and she cried, thunder booming in the distance, and after a while heard someone call her name. She looked up. One of the sisters stood aghast on the other side of the curtain of rain: “Child, what are you doing out here! Have you no sense?” She grabbed Rachel roughly by the hand, mistaking the tears on her cheeks for rain, and led her back to the dormitory where she made Rachel towel her hair and change into dry clothes. The sleeping girl, Josephina, was still dozing her life away, and all at once Rachel wanted to go to school.

  As she listened to arithmetic lessons she had already learned at Kalihi, she looked out the window and imagined the outline of O'ahu behind the clouds bunched on the horizon, and wondered if Sarah and Ben and Kimo were in school right now. She would have given anything, any number of days of her life, just to hear Sarah call her “Little Miss Shoe.”

  The rain wore on. When afternoon came and there was no sign of Haleola or Pono, Sister Leopoldina suggested that the main road was either flooded or too muddy to navigate. But Rachel wasn’t so sure. Uncle Pono hadn’t been to Kalaupapa all week and whenever Rachel asked about him, Haleola just said he was tired. Rachel was becoming adept at sensing when something was going unsaid by adults: it was as if there were an invisible object sitting amid their visible words and Rachel was learning to judge its shape and size by feel alone.

  “If Uncle Pono’s sick, can’t I go visit him?” Rachel insisted, but Leopoldina just shook her head and Rachel had to spend the afternoon inside, playing with dolls. During dinner the rain finally slacked off. As Rachel left the dining hall she was preoccupied, thinking of Pono; only when she nearly bumped into her did she realize that she was face-to-face with Sister Catherine.

  “Rachel?” The guilt in the nun’s face was apparent even to a child. “May I speak with you a moment?”

  Rachel gave her a sullen shake of the head and strode p
ast her. The sister looked even more hurt, but Rachel found it hard to care. No matter what Sister Catherine was feeling, at least she could leave here anytime she wanted!

  H

  aleola placed a jar under the latest leak in Pono’s ceiling, less than half a foot from the bed on which he lay. The resident physician, Dr. Oliver, sat on a small stool by Pono’s bedside, palpating his patient’s groin. “When did you first notice it was painful to urinate?”

  “Last year,” Pono told him. “Middle of June.”

  “I gave him some herbs,” Haleola said, “and it went away for a while.”

  “When did it start again, Mr. Kalama?”

  “We’re gettin’ pretty close, Doc, you can call me Pono.”

  Oliver smiled. “When did it start, Pono?”

  “ ’Bout a week ago. And it comes out this funny color. Pink, kinda smoky.”

  The doctor nodded again, examining Pono’s abdomen. Haleola watched nervously. When Oliver first arrived at Kalaupapa she had heard rumors about his sobriety, or lack thereof, but in his two years here she had never seen him touch a drink, and he certainly seemed sober enough now.

  The haole stood. “Well, Pono, it appears you have an infection of the kidneys. As inconvenient as it may be, I need you to drink as much water as possible.” He took a small bottle from his medical bag. “Salicylic acid, for the fever. And complete bed rest is essential.”

  “Hell of a rest I’m gonna get,” Pono said with a wan smile, “getting up to piss every half hour.”

  “Ah, well, we in European medicine have a marvelous invention for that,” Oliver said, picking up one of the jars on the floor. “We call it a bedpan.”