Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

  As Catherine lay there in the dark she felt the comforting shape of the room around her—the familiar distance of wall from wall, of the ceiling above, an intimacy of space that brought her unexpected pleasure. The street lights outside were electric, not gas, but they cast much the same shadows on the wall as when she was a girl; and the crickets in the yard chirped as they always had. The air she took in, faintly musty and woody, could have been the same air she breathed on her last night here, thirty-six years before. She felt warm, protected, safe.

  In the two weeks that followed, Catherine played endlessly with the children and attended Mass at her old church on Geneva Street. Steamboats no longer docked at Renwick Pier, but Cayuga Lake was still a fine place for a picnic; after which the family went for a swim at Enfield Falls. As the children peeled off their outer clothes, they were frankly astonished to see Catherine strip off her habit, revealing a borrowed swimsuit beneath. “Last one in,” she announced, “is a rotten egg!” She dove into the water, breaking surface a few moments later. “Seems like we have quite a lot of spoilt eggs out there!” They all jumped in at once, Catherine sputtering and laughing at the geysers suddenly spouting on every side of her.

  “Do you think,” Beverly asked her hopefully, on the way home, “you might consider staying in New York?”

  Catherine said, “I hadn’t really thought about that,” and hoped God would forgive her the lie.

  Back home that evening, after yet another dinner far more sumptuous than any she had ever had on Moloka'i, as she laughed and played with her nieces and nephews, Catherine considered how much of God’s work could be done right here in Ithaca, or Syracuse. There were poor people to be fed here too, after all, and souls to be saved. She had spent thirty-six years away from home and family, had sacrificed all her adult life for the people of Kalaupapa; where was the harm in tending to a flock closer to home and being able to share moments like these with her family?

  That night she lay in bed in her old room, feeling happy and at peace, the ghosts from whom she had fled to Hawai'i having somehow been put to rest, either by time or by the sheer exuberance of Jack’s family.

  She loved it here. She loved her home.

  She wanted desperately to stay, wanted it more than she had ever imagined she would; and despite that, because of that, she knew she had to go back.

  She had never heard God more clearly in her life.

  Chapter 18

  1931–33

  E

  arly in the morning of Tuesday, June 17, 1931, the destroyer USS Gamble anchored off Kalaupapa, having left Honolulu just two hours earlier—a considerable improvement on the night-long, stomach-churning crossings of the Kaiwi Channel of decades past. If anyone parted company with his breakfast on the present voyage, it was not noted. The entire population of the settlement turned out to greet the Gamble’s passengers as they came ashore; the majority gathered in front of Kenji’s store as the manager and his wife watched from the doorway. As the visiting dignitaries, including the territorial governor of Hawai'i, climbed up the ladder and wobbled onto the dock, the Kalaupapa Band greeted them with appropriate fanfare.

  After the welcoming airs, the landing party was whisked off for an inspection of recent construction at Kalaupapa. The visitors saw the new laundry pavilion with its electric washers and hot and cold running water. They toured the new hospital, the renovated and expanded McVeigh Home, and the (named without apparent irony) Bay View Home for the Blind and Helpless. At Bishop Home, when asked by the governor what she would do to improve conditions here, Sister Catherine looked up at the leaky roof and down at the ancient floorboards, then suggested with a smile that a lit match might be the most effective course of action.

  And the dignitaries stopped at the Kalaupapa Store, squeezing inside as the governor stepped up to the counter behind which Rachel and Kenji stood expectantly.

  Rachel said, “Welcome, Governor.”

  The governor—an unassuming man in spectacles with the mien of an accountant, or bank manager—gave her a look of mock irritation. “Rachel, have you forgotten my name?”

  Rachel smiled and amended herself:

  “Welcome, Governor Missionary Boy.”

  The governor of the Territory of Hawai'i, Lawrence McCully Judd, laughed heartily. “That’s better.” He turned to her husband. “Kenji, good to see you again. How have things been coming along here since my last visit?”

  “Very well, sir. The new adding machine and typewriter are much appreciated.”

  “And what about that new accounting system? Has the Auditors Office been making your life easier or harder?”

  “Remarkably for something designed by a government agency, the new system is much simpler and more efficient.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll find a way to make it complicated and wasteful. You are both coming to the meeting this afternoon, aren’t you?”

  Rachel asked, “Who’ll mind the store, Governor?”

  “Perhaps I could declare this a territorial holiday,” Judd suggested, “and require you to shut down for the day.”

  Rachel whipped out the CLOSED sign and handed it to Judd. “Put this in the window on your way out?” she said, and the governor laughingly did as he was told.

  For most Kalaupapa residents it was already a holiday, and they crowded into the social hall for what turned out to be a stupefying number of speeches: politicians, sheriffs, military officers, everyone short of the ship’s bosun. Even the president of the much-despised Board of Health was here to reluctantly commemorate passing of control of Kalaupapa to a newly-formed Board of Leper Hospitals and Settlement. After an official study had concluded that Kalaupapa was “far below par with other territorial institutions,” the governor had wrested jurisdiction away from the Board of Health—not least because it was discovered that in the six years between 1923 and 1928 the Board had allowed to lapse $136,000 in funds allocated to the settlement by the Legislature. Money that might have bought so much, allowed to simply evaporate because the Board of Health lacked the foresight, vision, or will to use it.

  “Today,” Judd addressed his audience, “for the first time since this settlement was established in 1866 the government is presenting a united front for improvements at Kalihi and Kalaupapa.

  “Your problem is one of my main interests as governor. It was difficult to get the people to realize the need here. But now we are ready to stop blowing bubbles and to do definite things for your welfare.”

  He enumerated the further improvements that would soon be made: a new water system, sewer lines, fire hydrants, a refrigeration plant, a gas station, and at long last, a real garbage truck (the old ox would be “pensioned”). The announcement that work would soon commence on an airfield at Kalaupapa brought cheers from the crowd. When Judd told his audience they would also be getting equipment to screen talking pictures, they cheered even louder.

  But the biggest ovation came afterward, when the residents of Kalaupapa followed the governor down to the new power station where Judd threw the switch that electrified every home and building in the settlement.

  The governor caught sight of a pleased and proud Rachel, winked at her and said, just audible over the cheers of the crowd, “Welcome to the twentieth century.”

  T

  he following day Rachel borrowed an old jalopy—a neighbor’s 1922 Model T of shabby gentility—and set off across the Damien Road. She was able to steer passably well even with her clawed right hand; the only thing that worried her was her inability to actually feel the clutch under her left foot, which required constant monitoring to make sure she wasn’t inadvertently stripping the gears.

  The familiar remnants of Kalawao town soon ghosted into view: scattered piles of pili grass, heaps of kindling that once were houses. A pig sat on its haunches in the collapsed remains of an old store, eyes nervously tracking the loud machine that stuttered past. Rachel’s heart ached as always when she came to the remains of Haleola’s home, its termite-ridd
en posts and beams rotting away in the sun. After six months Haleola’s grave was again choked with weeds and Rachel had to hack away the undergrowth with a hoe; she did the same for Keo’s. In the stillness of dying Kalawao, disturbed only by the crashing metronome of the surf, she paid her respects to her aunt and then left to do likewise for Uncle Pono.

  But as she drove up the road to Siloama Church, closed these past four years, she noticed someone sitting in the middle of the street ahead of her. Perched on a folding chair midway between St. Philomena’s Church and the Baldwin Home for Boys, a large man sat facing the church, a paintbrush in hand, dabbing at an easel. Out of curiosity Rachel drove past Siloama cemetery and up another hundred feet to St. Philomena’s; beyond it lay the razed ground of the United States Leprosy Investigation Station, in whose abandonment Rachel felt no satisfaction, only sadness.

  At the sound of the car’s engine the painter looked up, surprised. He was Hawaiian, perhaps eighteen or nineteen years old, and his nose had begun to collapse in on itself as leprosy eroded the nasal cartilage; but his smile on seeing her was bright and whole.

  “Aloha,” he said happily as Rachel parked the car a respectful distance from Damien’s church.

  “Aloha.” She approached him, but his easel was angled so that she couldn’t quite make out what rested on it. “Lucky I didn’t run you down,” she said with a smile. “Sitting here in the middle of the street with all this traffic.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, maybe I get run over by a wild pig.” He gestured toward a drowsy-looking swine sunning itself under a pandanus tree.

  She nodded to the canvas. “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Sure. But it’s not finished yet.” He turned the easel around so she could get a good look at the half-completed painting. The outlines of St. Philomena’s had been lightly brushed in, its sea-green roof floating above half-formed white walls. Behind it the pali rose in vibrant green strokes, crowned by a white mist. Rachel was impressed. “It’s beautiful,” she said, “even unfinished.”

  She noticed that the painter was gazing at her as intently as she’d been studying his work. He saw her discomfort and laughed sheepishly.

  “Sorry for the stink-eye, but we don’t see many wahines over here, you know?” He nodded toward Baldwin Home across the street, its frame cottages squatting behind a low plastered stone wall. “Brother Dutton used to go through our magazines, and if there was a wahine with this much skin showing below the neck”—he pinched two fingers together—“out came the scissors, and out went the paper lady, into the trash!” He laughed with more fondness than resentment. “He was specially vexed by that National Geographic magazine—alla those bare bosoms. He’d cut ’em up into tiny pieces, and oh, what work to put ’em back together after you pick ’em outta the trash!”

  Rachel laughed too, if a bit nervously. “This, uh, might be a good time to mention I’m a married woman.”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” he said with a wave of his hand, “no worry. I always figure, what wahine’s gonna want to kiss a face like this, eh?” He held out a hand. “I’m Hokea.”

  “Rachel.” He had a gentle grip, like ferns brushing against her hand.

  “So what’s life like,” she asked, “without Brother Dutton?” After a lifetime of uncertain penance but undisputed service, the seemingly indestructible Ira Barnes Dutton had passed away just one month shy of his eighty-seventh birthday. And with the passing soon after of seventy-six-year-old Ambrose Hutchison, the last living ties to Damien’s time were finally severed.

  “Oh, the other brothers ain’t nearly as strict. They let us have the National Geographic without big holes in it.” Hokea sighed. “No more thrill.”

  Her gaze was drawn again to the half-finished painting of St. Philomena’s. “This really is beautiful.”

  “Ah, not yet. Not as good as others I’ve done.”

  “You’ve done others? Of the church?”

  “Yeah, plenty. Like to see?”

  She said she would and Hokea was immediately on his way to Baldwin Home. “I go get ’em,” he said. “Brother Maternus’d have a stroke if I brought you inside.”

  Minutes later he returned with a stack of canvasses under one arm. “I only bring the best ones.” He spread them out on the surface of the road, unmindful of the dust.

  Her neuritis objecting, Rachel bent down to take in the paintings. St. Philomena’s was their common subject, but there the similarities ended—each was unique. Some depicted the church’s east face, some the west; some showed backdrops of lush green pali, some a blue wedge of ocean. Most were rendered in watercolors, a few in oils, one in charcoal. Each captured the church in a different mood as well: radiant under bright skies; storm-tossed, the white cross over its door just visible through sheeting rain; somberly framed by the graveyard in the foreground or joyously reaching toward heaven, its steeple reminding Rachel of the tall spires of Kaumakapili Church.

  Hokea said, “I never get tired of looking at it. There’s strength to it, but also maluhia.”

  Serenity. Rachel nodded. “I have a friend who says the same about another of Damien’s churches, up topside. Our Lady of Sorrows.”

  “I’d love to paint that,” Hokea said wistfully. “Next, though—” He turned around to face the aging facade of Baldwin Home. “I’m gonna do this. While it’s still here. Won’t be long ’till they ship all of us over to Kalaupapa.”

  “You think so?”

  “Only thing kept us here was the old man. Cheaper to have us all over in Kalaupapa. Soon as they figure out where to put us, you bet we’ll be gone. You bet.”

  Hokea grew quiet, looking around at Baldwin Home, the church, the ocean, the twin talismans of 'kala and Mkapu in the distance. “Maybe that’s right,” he said quietly. “Maybe this place ought to be empty, so we remember better. So we hear better the voices of the dead.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “But I’ll miss it.”

  He stood there silently, and in the emptiness Rachel could hear those voices; some even called her name.

  ______

  H

  old still, now.”

  A sound rasped in Rachel’s right ear, as if a dull knife were scraping the surface of some thick fabric. At the periphery of her vision there was a gleam of light on metal, and then the new resident physician, Dr. Luckie, drew back the scalpel which Rachel saw bore a thin shaving of her own flesh. He pronounced it “Excellent,” and smeared the scraping onto a glass slide. “One more ear—unless you have a third one you’re keeping from me,” and again the scrape of steel on skin, but no pain at all, not even a sensation of pressure against her ear.

  “You don’t flinch. That’s good. Most patients, even though they can’t feel anything, they flinch a little when they see the scalpel coming.”

  “I’ve gone through this often enough,” Rachel sighed, “with Dr. McArthur and Dr. Goodhue.” After the latter’s retirement it seemed as though there were a constant rotation of doctors through Kalaupapa, either lacking Goodhue’s commitment to the settlement or, frustrated by the old Board of Health, walking away in disgust.

  Luckie glanced at her chart. “So I see. This is your . . . fourth snip this year? All negative.” He swabbed her earlobe with alcohol, then moved on to her right hand. “Two more after this, you know, and you’re eligible for temporary release.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “You know how many time I’ve gotten my hopes up, only to have the rug pulled out from under? I swear the damn bug is in there laughing at me.”

  “Speaking as a physician, I can assure you that bacilli leprae rarely laugh. They don’t have much in the way of a sense of humor.”

  Rachel said, “Fourteen.”

  Luckie tapped the shavings onto a slide. “Pardon me?”

  “That’s how many patients got T.R. last year. Fourteen out of six hundred! Lousy odds.”

  “If that’s how you feel, why even bother with this?”

  “I only do it because my husband wants me to.” This was not st
rictly true but she was feeling obstinate today.

  “Yes, he’s next. He’s had two negatives in a row, I believe.” Luckie labeled the last slide. “Well, that’s it. I’ll have the results in a day or two.”

  “Take your time,” Rachel said lightly, as if she didn’t care. She waited as Kenji had his snips taken; then as they walked back home together he asked, “What would you do if we tested negative all six times?”

  “Buy a house in Honolulu. With our winnings from the Irish Sweepstakes.”

  “Seriously, what if we did?”

  “It’s called temporary release,” she reminded him. “We’d still have to get tested every two months, and the first time we went positive again—”

  “I know. But even just two months of freedom . . . what would you do?”

  Rachel conceded, “I . . . guess I’d try to find Mama, if she’s alive. And Sarah and my brothers.” After a moment she added quietly, “And I’d like to see her. Just once.”

  Kenji knew that by “her” Rachel did not mean her mother or her sister. He took her hand in his.

  The next day, when Dr. Luckie confirmed that both their snips had been negative, Rachel just nodded and thanked him, a bit tersely; and when Kenji expressed excitement at their prospects she dismissed it with a short, “Don’t count your chickens before they’re snipped,” which didn’t make much sense but he understood nonetheless.

  She said much the same thing two months later, when Kenji’s fourth snip and Rachel’s fifth again tested negative—but secretly she found herself dreaming of Honolulu, and cursed the bug for doing it again, for getting her hopes up one more time.

  W

  ith the long-overdue arrival of electricity in their homes, Kalaupapans embraced American domestic engineering with a vengeance. Now Steamer Day became more than just the day the mail arrived and the groceries were delivered. Steamer Day was standing on the shore waiting for the new Frigidaire you’d ordered, the excitement of seeing the big carton with your name on it, the pride of showing it off to your neighbors. It was getting your first Philco so you could listen to the Army-Navy football games on KGU, or music broadcast live from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, or Lum ’n’ Abner. It was vacuum cleaners and phonographs and waffle irons and toasters and even cocktail shakers . . . all the little luxuries and indulgences that helped make life at Kalaupapa seem a bit more normal.