Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  Grandma, in her usual flamboyant way, waved her hand and said, “You’re half right. The town is getting big–but I still know everyone. At least everyone who’s worth knowing.”

  Sister Thomas laughed. She liked being out like this; she even liked Grandma’s brashness. Sometimes she wished she could be at least a little more like that herself.

  “Ah . . . it’s so good to get out of the house,” Grandma said, too loudly. “I’m so tired of the way we live these days. I hate all these posters telling me to hush my mouth. ‘Loose lips,’ my foot. What do I know that anyone wants to hear? I’m just tired of the whole business: Save your fat. Save your string. Save your paper. Don’t wear out your tires. Don’t use too much electricity. Buy bonds. It just never stops. You girls have never had the chance to be young and fancy free.”

  “I know. And my young blood is racing,” LaRue said. Grandma didn’t know the reference, but Beverly did, and she giggled. LaRue began to tap her finger on the counter and to sing with the radio music playing in the background. It was a crazy Spike Jones version of “Cocktails for Two,” with lots of silly whistles and sound effects.

  Sister Thomas said, “The headline in the paper tonight said the government is basing all its plans on the belief that the war in Europe will be over by October 31.”

  “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Grandma said. “I hope they’re right. But how much longer will we have to fight the Japs?”

  That was the question everyone was asking these days.

  When the waitress came back with the drinks, Grandma said, “Tell me, young lady, who are your parents?”

  “You wouldn’t know them. They’re not from here.”

  “Really? Where do they live?”

  “In Southern Illinois. That’s where I grew up.”

  “And what brought you here?”

  “My husband. He’s in the Army. He was stationed at Fort Douglas, but he got sent overseas. I couldn’t go with him, so I decided to stay here where it’s not hard to find a job.”

  “Do you like it here, then?”

  “Well . . . yes.” She sounded hesitant, maybe careful. “I miss home a lot. I guess anyone would.”

  Sister Thomas thought she was lovely, as Grandma had said. She had a simple quality about her, with pretty color in her cheeks and a sweet smile. She reminded Sister Thomas just a little of Bobbi.

  “But are people kind to you?” Grandma asked.

  “Most of them are.”

  Sister Thomas heard the hesitancy again, and so she asked, “Are you made to feel like an outsider?”

  “A little. People always ask me what ward I’m in, and when I say I’m not Mormon, they don’t know what to say to me.”

  “Well . . . ,” Grandma said, in a huff. “They should welcome you with open arms. You’re a beautiful girl. Like one of our own.”

  The waitress laughed just a little and nodded. Everyone but Grandma seemed to catch the irony in the words, but Grandma remained unabashed. “We have to hurry,” Sister Thomas finally said. “We want to get to the Centre Theatre as soon as we can.”

  “I’ll move things along,” the waitress said, and she left.

  As soon as she was gone, Grandma said, “A ward is just a part of town. She doesn’t have to take offense.”

  Sister Thomas looked over at LaRue, and they both smiled. The radio was playing a Glenn Miller song: “Sentimental Journey.” Bea found herself tapping her toe to the music, something she didn’t remember doing for a long time.

  After dinner the four walked to the theater. The movie was certainly as silly as advertised, but Sister Thomas loved the fun of it, the music and the dancing. When it was over and they were all back in the car and driving home, she felt more relaxed than she had in a long time. It was a pleasant evening, and the air coming through the car windows was wonderfully cool.

  “I knew I should have gone to the club,” LaRue told the others. “That show was as dumb as I thought it would be.”

  “Oh, hush,” Grandma said. “You laughed as much as anyone.”

  “Not quite,” Beverly said. “I laughed the most.”

  Sister Thomas liked that. Beverly was too serious for her own good most of the time.

  “I’ll tell you who I like,” Grandma said. “That Don Ameche. I’ve always wanted to kiss a man with a mustache–just to see if it tickles. I kissed my Uncle Henry when I was a girl. He had whiskers and a mustache clear down on his lips. I didn’t like that at all. But then, Uncle Henry chewed tobacco, and that’s all I could think about when I kissed him. What I want is for old Don Ameche to throw me back, the way he did Carmen Miranda, and really smooch me. Just once before I die.”

  Beverly screeched with laughter. “I’m going to tell Grandpa on you,” she said.

  “Ahh, what does he care?” Grandma said. “He kisses me like I’m an old lady. He puckers up like he’s got no teeth and gives me a little smack that lasts about half a second. I want one of those big old long ones, good and wet.”

  “Ugh!” Beverly said.

  “Well, what do you know? You’ve never kissed Don Ameche or anyone else. A little slobber makes it good. And who knows what that mustache might do? It might be like horseradish on a nice cut of roast beef.”

  Sister Thomas had forgotten she could laugh so hard. She was wiping tears away and thinking how much she needed to get home to the bathroom. She glanced toward the back seat and saw Beverly leaning on LaRue, the two folded up together they were laughing so hard.

  “I don’t know what you’re all laughing about,” Grandma said. “There was a day when I could walk down State Street and stop traffic. Old Don Ameche would have begged me for a kiss–and I would have told him, ‘Sorry, I can do better.’ All the same, I wouldn’t mind trying out that little mustache.”

  By the time the laughter finally quieted down, Grandma was halfway up Twenty-First South, nearing home. Beverly, apparently with kissing still on her mind, said, “In that newsreel we saw, when they showed the soldiers marching in Paris, why were all those French girls kissing our American boys?”

  “Paris is finally free,” Grandma said. “We kicked the Nazis out. For those girls, that’s their way of celebrating–and thanking our boys. French girls are like that anyway–in case you didn’t know.”

  “It sounds like you are, too, Grandma,” LaRue said.

  “Naw. I just talk.”

  “Girls in Salt Lake wouldn’t start kissing soldiers like that, would we?” Beverly said.

  “Well, maybe you ought to, Bev,” Grandma told her. “When the war ends, I want you to kiss every soldier you can find. They deserve it, and by darn, so do you–just for getting through all this.”

  Beverly giggled. “I don’t think I’ll kiss any soldiers,” she said. “Just Wally. And Alex. That’ll be enough kissing for me.”

  The car fell silent, and suddenly, for Sister Thomas, the war was back. She felt the easy mood slip away–in the car, and in herself.

  “I wonder what those two boys still have to go through before it’s all over,” Grandma said.

  That, of course, was just what Sister Thomas was wondering.

  Chapter 4

  Bobbi Thomas and Afton Story were at a ward luau in Honolulu. Parties of this kind weren’t so common now with the war dragging on and so many food items hard to get, but Brother and Sister Nuanunu had been able to buy a pig from a farmer, and they decided to hold the luau at their house and invite the entire ward.

  Bobbi loved the members of her ward, but she had never been able to become part of things as much as she would have liked. She was the one holding back, and not the members, but it just wasn’t her way to be quite so affectionate and open as the Hawaiian members were. Soon after Bobbi and Afton arrived, Brother Nuanunu began to coax them to come over and learn to dance the hula.

  Bobbi had always loved to dance, but only when she could disappear among a crowd. She never liked to be among the first couples out on the floor. And this, dancing by herself, in front
of others–and doing a dance that looked so sensuous–was really uncomfortable to her. But Brother Nuanunu wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You have to understand the hula,” he kept saying. “You mustn’t leave the islands and never learn it.”

  “Let me watch, and you tell me about it,” Bobbi pleaded.

  “No, no. You have to do it, not just see it.”

  Bobbi couldn’t understand that, but she had learned that her logic often clashed with that of her Hawaiian friends.

  “When you dance the hula, you speak with your hands and your feet, Sister Thomas. It’s what we’ve been doing from the earliest times.”

  And so Bobbi and Afton, with some other haole members, lined up behind a pretty young woman from the ward, and they tried to imitate her motions. She moved sideways, back and forth, with her knees bent, her hips undulating. Her hands moved constantly as she spoke words to the ukelele music that a brother was playing.

  Bobbi felt awkward, but she fell into the rhythm of the dance. She had watched hula dancers many times and had some idea how the dances were supposed to go, but she ­couldn’t forget herself and enter the motion fully the way the Hawaiian girls did. She and Afton laughed as they bumped into each other or got off step. By the time the first dance had ended and another had started, however, Bobbi had begun to think less about the people watching and more about the dance, and she found a surprising satisfaction in the gentle movements. Still, when the second dance ended, she used the opportunity to slip away and sit down.

  Afton continued to dance, and Bobbi watched. Hazel Nuanunu came to Bobbi and sat down on a kitchen chair that she had brought outside. Hazel was a large woman with a pleasant, round face and an enormous smile. She was wearing a bright muumuu, full of yellows and oranges and reds, which contrasted beautifully with her rich brown skin. “That’s not the real hula,” she said. “It doesn’t tell the old stories. There ­shouldn’t be this silly music. There should be a chant.”

  “How did it get changed?”

  “I don’t know. I think it all comes from picture shows. It’s what the haole tourists could understand. But the real hula is a religious dance.”

  “Someone told me it’s all about the myths of the old gods.”

  “That’s right. About Pele and her sisters. About the way Hawaii came to be.”

  “But you don’t believe any of that, do you?”

  Hazel didn’t answer for a time. And then she only said, “There are many things to believe.”

  Bobbi wasn’t sure how to think about that. She didn’t want to think that Hazel accepted other gods–and superstitions.

  “It tells us who we are, Sister Thomas. The haoles came a long time ago, and they took almost everything. But we have to keep some of the old ways. If we don’t, we lose too much. We lose us.”

  Bobbi told herself she needed to be accepting. “I’ve studied the Greek myths,” she said. “Some of the stories are wonderful, and they teach good lessons. I really find them very interesting.”

  Hazel smiled. There always seemed something deep and complete in her pleasure, and now she was clearly enjoying some irony she found in Bobbi’s words. Bobbi knew that, and it embarrassed her.

  “You couldn’t give yourself to the dance, could you?” Sister Nuanunu said. “You learned the steps, and the hand movements, but you wouldn’t show yourself to the boys the way our girls do.”

  “It just seems a little too . . . suggestive.”

  Hazel laughed, her whole face illuminated with some delight she seemed to find in Bobbi’s choice of words. “Men and women make babies. It’s what life is all about. Didn’t your mother tell you those things?”

  Bobbi knew she was blushing. And suddenly she felt herself in over her head. Was the hula somehow about that? “I thought you said it was religious,” she said.

  “Having babies is religious. Haoles are too embarrassed about things that are part of life. I can never understand that. You’re afraid to let yourselves move.”

  “Yes. I think you’re right about that,” Bobbi said, and she laughed at herself. She was wearing a muumuu, which was comfortable, but whenever she went out in public dressed that way, she felt as though she were walking around in her nightgown.

  “Haoles. Every time you enjoy yourselves, you stop, look around, and say, ‘What if someone sees me having a good time?’ Hawaiians aren’t like that. We know how to be happy.”

  “That’s really true, Hazel. Sometimes I wish I could let go just a little bit more. But it scares me. It’s just not the way I’ve been raised.”

  “You think too much. You have to explain everything. You don’t know how to listen to your hearts. God doesn’t speak to us with words, Bobbi. He touches us. He fills up our chests. If that’s God’s language, don’t you think haoles should learn to understand it?”

  It was a stunning perspective, and Bobbi thought it explained so much of the problem she had with her own faith. “That’s true,” she told Sister Nuanunu. “I do feel the Lord’s spirit that way, but I try to put it into words–to explain what I’ve experienced–and sometimes the words confuse me. Then I lose the feelings.”

  Hazel took hold of Bobbi’s hand, kissed it, and then pressed the palm to her cheek. “It doesn’t matter. I love you. You can’t help it that you’re not Hawaiian.” She laughed in her deep, full voice.

  On impulse, Bobbi did something out of character. She pulled Hazel’s hand to her own lips, kissed it the same way, and said, “Hazel, I love you too. I hope I’ll be part Hawaiian before I leave Honolulu.”

  “Oh, you sweetheart. You’re learning.”

  Bobbi wanted to think so, but she was self-conscious now, and she let go of Hazel’s hand.

  “Now tell me about your man,” Hazel said. “What’s happening to Brother Hammond? When will he come back and make pretty babies with you?”

  “I don’t know, Hazel. Not until the war is over, I guess.”

  “He’s the best looking haole we ever had in our ward. Does he write letters to you?”

  “Yes. But the letters are slow getting here.”

  “That’s all right. He loves you. I could see that.”

  “I think he does, Hazel, but he’s careful. He doesn’t say much about love. I think he’s afraid he’ll be killed–or badly wounded–and he doesn’t want to make any promises until he comes home safe and sound.”

  “And what about you? Do you make promises?”

  “I’ve made more than he has.”

  “And now you worry about him, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Hazel crossed her thick arms over her chest, and she nodded, looking serious. “Haoles are the best worriers I know. They think of every reason not to be happy.”

  Bobbi laughed. There was too much truth in that. “But so many terrible things could happen to him. He’s on a ship, in the middle of the fighting, I think. I don’t even know exactly where he is.”

  “Does the worry help you in some way? Does it help him?”

  Bobbi smiled and shook her head.

  “Does it change anything?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a strange thing, this worry. It does no good, and yet you hold on to it so tightly. And now, I see our people learning how to do it. I think it came like the smallpox, from other lands.”

  “I can’t help worrying, Hazel. I want Richard back, and all I can think is that I’ll lose him, the way I lost my brother.”

  “It will be as God chooses. Nothing can change that.”

  Bobbi thought of Gene’s words: “I do believe there’s a heaven. So everything will be all right.” But she didn’t want to give Richard up. How could God want that to happen?

  “You have to trust the Lord, my dear. That’s what haoles never want to do.”

  Bobbi thought about that, too. And then she nodded. “You’re right, Hazel. It’s what I need to do. But it’s not easy for me.”

  “It’s like the hula. You have to let go a little.”

  Bobbi looked
across the yard at Afton, who was still dancing and was letting herself flow with the music now. She had on a pretty muumuu, all blue and lavender. With her dark hair and suntanned skin, she looked as though she might be Hawaiian.

  “Do you see what my boy Samuel is looking at?” Hazel asked.

  Sam was Hazel’s handsome son, who was a marine. He had been wounded in the Marshall Islands the winter before. Bobbi and Afton had heard his story when he had spoken in sacrament meeting the previous Sunday. He said he had been hit with shrapnel from a mortar shell. A fragment in his chest had collapsed his lung and nearly killed him, but he had called out to the Lord to save him so he could complete his work on the earth, and he had felt strength pour back into him. A hospital ship had taken him to San Diego, where he had spent several months before being discharged. He had come home only a couple of weeks before.

  Bobbi had been amazed by Sam’s talk. He had sounded like a mainlander, not only in his pronunciation but also in the way he organized his talk. And yet, he was possessed of that powerful faith so many of the islanders had. At the end of his sermon, he described how he had been serving a stake mission when the war had begun, working alongside the full-time elders. He told of administering to a woman, commanding her to arise from her sickbed, and how she had gotten up and cooked him and the other elders a wonderful dinner. He laughed, and the members laughed with him, and it all seemed quite natural to him, this island personality to go with his haole style of speaking.

  But the talk had also perplexed Bobbi. She didn’t know how much was God’s choice and how much depended on man. Had Gene called out for help in his last moments? Why hadn’t the help come? Did God really make the decision about each person’s time for dying? Or, in Gene’s case, had a bullet decided?

  After the meeting Bobbi and Afton had spoken with Sam briefly, and then, on the way home, Afton had said, “I wish he wasn’t Hawaiian. I think he’s the handsomest man I’ve ever seen.”

  “You mean . . . except for Richard?” Bobbi asked.

  Afton laughed and said, “Except for nobody. He looks like Nephi must have looked. All those muscles and that bronze skin.”