Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

  Rachel turned to find Francine at her side.

  “Yeah,” Rachel lied, “sure.”

  They were silent a moment as they took in the contents of the store window, and then Francine said, “This maybe wasn’t such a good idea.”

  Rachel took Francine’s gnarled hand in hers, cupped her fingers around it, and nodded.

  T

  he party looked to go on all night but Hina began gathering the girls together around one A.M. This was still cutting it a little close. The wagon ride to Kala'e would take a couple of hours, the descent down the pali another two; they’d be lucky to get back before dawn.

  Cecelia very nearly had to be pried, like a flapjack off the griddle, from the arms of a deliciously naked young man behind the house; and Louisa, having passed out long ago, was mercifully pliant as Rachel and Emily poured her into the wagon, though halfway across the island she woke with a start and began vomiting over the side.

  When Luka stopped the wagon on the outskirts of Kala'e and the Meyer estate, the girls got out and all stood there silently a moment, the same thought passing through all their minds. Emily was the one to vocalize it:

  “Why the hell we going back?”

  Rachel’s heart was racing, out of excitement or fear, she wasn’t sure which.

  “Yeah,” Cecelia said thoughtfully, “good question.”

  Hina pointed out that there were parts of East Moloka'i so remote a person could live there for years without being found.

  “Same thing on Ni'ihau or Kaua'i,” Cecelia said. “We could hide there forever before anyone finds us!”

  Rachel breathed in the air sweet with freedom and adventure. She wanted to keep breathing it, wanted it more than anything else on earth. But now the unease she’d felt in Kaunakakai assumed a shape she could recognize.

  “You’re not free,” she found herself saying, “if you’re in hiding.”

  Hina sneered. “Says who?”

  Rachel said, “I won’t spend my life running and hiding like some criminal.”

  Hina laughed shortly. “We’re already criminals.”

  Rachel replied with a vehemence that startled even herself.

  “No, we’re not!” she snapped. “They can arrest us. They can send us here, make us prisoners. But they can’t make us criminals!

  “I want to leave Kalaupapa as much as anybody,” she told them. “But when I do it’ll be because I’m cured—discharged! That’s the only way I’ll ever be free.”

  Before she could think twice about it, she turned and started walking down the road to Kala'e.

  Francine fell in step behind her. One by one the other girls followed.

  The guard was still there at the summit—seemed to be waiting rather eagerly, in fact—and once again they disrobed and changed back into their burgundy uniforms, waving a cheery goodbye to him as they headed toward the trail. He waved and called out, “Come back anytime!”

  Descending the pali was a hundred times worse than climbing it. The dark of the trail beneath their feet blended with the darkness of the sky and the ground far below—every time Rachel took a step she worried that she was stepping into space. Francine stumbled once and Louisa needed to be supported for part of the way, but at long last they could glimpse the black sickle of 'Awahua Beach in the moonlight; in minutes they were back on solid ground. They hurried to Bishop Home, stealing across the convent’s back lawn, tiptoeing toward their dormitory.

  And as they rounded a corner, they suddenly found themselves facing Mother Marianne—older but no less intimidating—holding a lantern and equally surprised to see them there, in their dirt-encrusted uniforms, at five in the morning.

  Louisa threw up again.

  Hina grasped at something, anything, to say. “Ah . . . we were just . . . just—”

  She stopped, not having the vaguest idea what they were “just” doing. Mother stared, clearly amazed and relieved to see them . . . and after a long moment, she let out a weary sigh.

  “I don’t want to know,” she said, much to the girls’ astonishment. “I really don’t.” She took in their dirty faces and filthy uniforms. “For heaven’s sake get yourselves cleaned up. Go wash your clothes in the stream, no one’s going to do it for you. And we won’t speak of this again. Is that understood?”

  The girls nodded. Louisa still looked queasy. “Child,” Mother said, “if you’re going to retch, by all means do so. The bushes are right over there.”

  Louisa headed for the shrubbery and did as she was told. The others gratefully ran for the dormitory, but as Rachel passed her Mother called out, “Rachel?”

  Rachel stopped. Looked nervously at her. But all Mother said was, “Why did you come back?”

  Rachel hesitated . . . then broke into a mischievous grin. She shrugged nonchalantly.

  “We just went to a party.”

  She turned and ran off, and Mother just stood there, quite at a loss for words.

  Chapter 11

  1904

  T

  here is nothing sadder, Catherine thought, than a child’s grave. On a visit topside a few years back she had attended services at Our Lady of Sorrows Church on the island’s south shore. Built thirty years before by Father Damien, it was a charming whitewashed chapel with a red steeple and roof, tucked in the lee of green mountains—a scene as still and peaceful as the waters of the ancient fishpond across the road. It was one of the most serenely beautiful spots Catherine had ever seen, and after the service she spent over an hour—thinking, praying, meditating—on the grassy apron of land that surrounded the church and in the shady tangle of trees that bordered the property. She wandered amid gravestones scattered like runes between trees and church, the saddest burned into her memory even as names were burned into plain wooden markers: Beloved Son, James K. Hua, March 2, 1892–August 12, 1894. She tried to imagine what had happened in that short span of time. Had he spoken his first word, could he name his mother or father before he was taken from them? William Makana, January 1, 1882–January 4, 1882. Christine Mililani, August 4, 1893–August 4, 1893. These were the most heart-rending: had they ever been cradled in their mother’s arms? Had their eyes even opened to see the parents who birthed them? She would never know, and would never stop wondering.

  Here in the Catholic section of Kalaupapa’s own cemetery there was no wondering. Catherine had known almost every young soul committed to this earth. Lucille Wong, November 12, 1888–January 19, 1899. Marianna Kalakini, February 14, 1891–February 16, 1891. Hazel Naa, May 2, 1880–October 12, 1898. Noelani Kapaka, June 5, 1882–July 22, 1899. Josephina Consuela Marcos, March 18, 1887–September 7, 1901. She knew the sound of their voices, the things that had made them laugh; had seen too vividly the scars their illness left behind in its cruel march through their bodies. She came here once a week to remember those she feared might otherwise be forgotten and to meditate on the question she had asked Sister Victor a decade before. Why does God give children leprosy? She still had no answer for it, but smiled at least to think of Sister Victor, living in quiet, happy retirement in Syracuse.

  Catherine said a prayer for her sleeping girls, crossed herself, and left the cemetery for an occasion far from tragic but nevertheless sad, at least for her.

  Normally the dining hall would have been closed this late in the morning but today it bustled with activity and chatter. Sister Leopoldina was cutting and serving slices of chocolate cake as the girls of Bishop Home said goodbye to one of their own: Rachel Kalama.

  A week ago Rachel’s adopted aunt had failed to appear for a planned rendezvous at the beach and a worried Rachel insisted they check on her. They found Haleola abed, her nerves so inflamed that she had been effectively paralyzed for two days. After a week in the infirmary she was greatly improved, but clearly she was no longer able to live on her own. Dr. Goodhue suggested, to Haleola’s horror, the Bay View Home for Elderly and Helpless Women; but before Haleola could cry “No!” Rachel declared she would take care of her auntie. She was two m
onths shy of her eighteenth birthday, at which point she would be free to leave Bishop Home; and Mother, perhaps suspecting that Rachel would do so with or without permission, gave her dispensation for an early discharge.

  The girls at the farewell party were so distraught one would have thought Rachel was moving to Australia and not merely half a mile away. They hugged her and cried with her, and Catherine wondered how many of them would be here a year from now. Despite occasional “spring fever,” many girls stayed in the Home until they married, and a few even chose to remain all their lives . . . however long that might turn out to be.

  Catherine waited for a lull in the well-wishing, then stepped up to Rachel and joked, “Promise me you’ll write!”

  Rachel laughed. “Sure. I’ll even deliver the letter, too.” She hugged Catherine, who found it a bit harder to speak than she had expected and was touched to see that Rachel was trying hard not to cry.

  “Thank you for taking my papa and me to Kalawao,” Rachel said, “and for about a million other things too.”

  Emily rapped a spoon on her cake plate, calling for quiet. “Okay, finish stuffing your mouths and listen up!

  “Bunch of us were trying to figure out how to say good luck to Rachel, out there in the big bad world”—she rolled her eyes—“three blocks away.” Everyone laughed at that, even the nuns. “So Rachel—you want to come with us?”

  A puzzled Rachel was led out of the dining hall, onto the front lawn, and instructed to keep her back turned until told otherwise. Catherine smiled at the look of confused anticipation on Rachel’s face and when Emily announced, “Okay, you can turn,” Rachel fairly spun around.

  Francine, Emily, Louisa, and Cecelia were standing next to—were in fact dwarfed by—a nine-foot surfboard, crudely fashioned but no less beautiful for that.

  Rachel gasped in amazement and delight. She hugged each girl in turn before she allowed herself to touch the sleek board. “It’s beautiful! It looks just like Nahoa’s!”

  “ ’Cause it is Nahoa’s,” Emily laughed. “We didn’t have time to have one made, so Nahoa sold us his. He wanted to make a new one anyways.”

  “But where’d you get the money?”

  Emily shrugged. “Around.” She didn’t elaborate and Catherine hoped Rachel wouldn’t inquire further, or notice the brief flick of Emily’s gaze toward the sister.

  Rachel was too enamored of her new board to ask questions, though one did now occur to her. What if Mother sees it? She turned to suggest that they might discreetly move the board before the Reverend Mother got wind of it . . . only to see, standing on the front steps of St. Elizabeth’s Convent, the frail figure of Mother Marianne herself, a bemused if not entirely approving smile on her face. And more than anything else could, that smile told Rachel that she was on her own now.

  Later, she discovered how difficult it was to squeeze the past seventeen years inside her old steamer trunk. When she had turned ten, with a growing thirst for reading barely quenched by the Bible and religious storybooks on hand in Bishop Home, Rachel had asked her father if from now on he wouldn’t mind sending her books instead of dolls. A month later came the first volume of her library: an illustrated edition of Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. The next decade would see added Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Captains Courageous, and The Call of the Wild. Only one book was ever confiscated by the Sisters: Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, which they feared might be too horrible for her sensibilities. Clearly they had never heard a good old Bishop Home ghost story in all its glory.

  So it was a heavy trunk that the convent’s handyman helped Rachel carry to Haleola’s small cottage off Damien Road. She didn’t have the fine bed she had in Bishop Home, just a simple straw pallet, but that didn’t matter; she had Haleola, who despite protestations that she could take care of herself was immensely pleased to have Rachel here.

  In Bishop Home all of Rachel’s needs—food, lodging, clothing—had been met by the sisters. This was technically true outside the convent as well: the territorial government provided each resident of Kalaupapa with a weekly allotment of taro, beef, sometimes rice or fish, as well as “ration tickets” good for clothes and other incidentals. But the diet was limited and the clothing allowance inadequate. Residents could supplement their diet by fishing, hunting, growing their own vegetables, or by purchasing other items at the Kalaupapa Store. Some patients came to Moloka'i with adequate funds; many did not. If they needed or wanted more money they could work—at the infirmary, the dormitories, or other settlement offices—and be paid a modest government salary. Even in Kalaupapa there was some distinction between rich and poor: haole patients generally had more money, and the government even provided them better food, justifying it on the grounds that non-Hawaiians could not be expected to subsist on a “native diet.”

  Rachel received a little cash each month from Papa, and Haleola had some small savings as well. Rachel was able to enjoy a few small luxuries in addition to the basic government supplies. In the days that followed her release from Bishop Home, she took unexpected pleasure in some of these: getting up early to buy fresh bread from Galaspo’s Bakery (as Mama once had at Love’s), or drinking a cup of hot tea at Will Notley’s coffee shop. It was the freedom to do whatever she wished that excited her most, a freedom she hadn’t known since her childhood in Honolulu.

  But freedom could be scary too, as she discovered on the beach one day when her surfing pal Nahoa suddenly kissed her—and though part of her wanted to return his friendly ardor, another part made her pull back.

  “You’re so pretty, Rachel,” Nahoa said, so sweetly Rachel felt guilty for pulling away.

  Flustered, all she could think to do was to say “mahalo” for the compliment, kiss him on the cheek, and run back into the surf. It seemed to work—Nahoa accepted the mild rebuff gracefully enough—but how much longer it would work, how much longer she wanted it to work, she didn’t know. The sudden license she had to make love with him if she wished was overwhelming, and more than a little frightening. Sisters Catherine and Albina and Leopoldina were no longer there to stand sentinel over Rachel’s virtue . . . and she was actually beginning to miss them!

  T

  he latest of Dr. Goodhue’s therapies, and the most popular, was the eucalyptus bath. Similar to Dr. Goto’s old treatment, now abandoned, it was essentially a pleasant immersion in hot water infused with eucalyptus oils. The baths didn’t cure leprosy, but did alleviate many discomforts associated with it; and the eucalyptus scent kept away mosquitoes bearing other diseases. One day, while helping Haleola as she stubbornly continued to make her rounds of patients, Rachel made the mistake of suggesting to George Wakina that the eucalyptus bath might relieve some of his aches and pains. He exploded at her.

  “Hah! Last time I went to a haole doctor was to get a vaccination—so I don’t get sick with measles or smallpox! Instead I get leprosy! You think that was an accident?”

  “It wasn’t?” Rachel asked innocently.

  “Hell no, no accident! Haoles wanted our land, right from the start. They give us shots, we get leprosy and die, they take our land! Big coincidence, eh?” He snorted contemptuously. “No haole doctors for me!”

  Rachel had to admit, she flinched a little at the hypodermic needle the next time she saw Dr. Goodhue for her weekly dose of chaulmoogra oil. But this time Goodhue surprised her by saying, “Rachel, it’s become apparent the chaulmoogra hasn’t yielded much in the way of results for you. I’d like to try something else.”

  “You mean like Solol treatment?”

  Goodhue chuckled. “You know the lingo almost as well as I do, don’t you? No, this is a new approach—my own, for better or worse. I want to try treating leprosy as a surgical disease.”

  “Surgical?” Rachel asked nervously. She could only imagine what Mr. Wakina would say to this!

  “Yes. You see, leprosy is a fairly localized disease; it is
n’t present in a person’s blood, just their tissues. I believe that by excising the tumors where they grow, it might discourage the growth of new tumors, might even eliminate the disease entirely from your body, eventually.

  “Now I must admit, some of my colleagues disagree with me rather vociferously about this. But I can’t help thinking that they oppose it out of fear I may be right—fear of performing surgery on infected patients.”

  “And you’re not afraid?”

  Goodhue shrugged. “I’m hardly fearless, but I suspect leprosy isn’t nearly as contagious as is generally assumed. Father Damien contracted it, but he welcomed patients into his home and would even eat from the same calabash as his flock. Yet look at the Franciscan sisters: in fifteen years, not a single nun has come down with the disease. Why? Because they take commonsense precautions.”

  Rachel frowned. “If it isn’t contagious, what are we all doing here?”

  “It is contagious, to an extent. And your people are more susceptible to it for the same reason you’re susceptible to measles or smallpox. You simply had no resistance to it, or any of the other foreign plagues we’ve brought you.

  “Some of you have more resistance than others, though, and I think you’re one of them, Rachel. I think I can help you. I’d like to try.”

  Though a little apprehensive at the thought of someone actually cutting into her body, Rachel agreed to the surgery.

  Her apprehension wasn’t mitigated any when, on the day of the operation, Goodhue wrapped her in Esmarch bandages so tight she had difficulty breathing—or perhaps that was just her anxiety. “What are these for?” she gasped out.

  “To reduce bleeding. To arrest your circulation.”

  “Well, boy, it’s sure working then,” she said breathlessly.

  “Just try to take a deep breath and relax.” He started to describe the procedure. “This first operation, I’m only going to excise this sore on your left leg. I’ll do what’s called a radical dissection of all the leprous tissues, then irrigate it with zinc chloride—”