Honolulu (11 page)

Perhaps everyone was right. Perhaps I had needlessly provoked my husband into violence by taking a job in the fields without his permission. But even if I accepted the blame for that, the problem still remained: how to survive on the few coins remaining after my husband’s gambling?

Marisol generously introduced me to her friend Luisa, who ran a thriving business washing, ironing, and mending clothes for the single men living in the barracks. She charged them five cents a shirt, and needed another hand to help her: for every shirt I washed, pressed, or stitched, I would receive two cents. But I was not brave enough to accept her offer then and there; I could not risk my husband’s wrath again by going behind his back. Instead I brought the matter up one evening after dinner, choosing my words carefully:

“Honorable husband,” I said, “you were right to be angry that I took the field work without asking your permission. You are the Outside Master”
a Korean term for head of the household
“and I should have come to you first.”

He looked at me impassively.

“But I see how hard you work,” I went on meekly, “and how the Tunas cheat you, and I wish to help in some way. A woman here in the camp takes in laundry for the men in the barracks. She has asked me to assist her, for which I would receive a few pennies in payment. I respectfully ask the Outside master to consider allowing me to go to work for her, and thereby contribute some small sum to the household.”

I steeled myself for a possible eruption, but he didn’t look angry, merely contemplative.

“Laundry,” he said after a moment.

“Yes. Washing shirts, ironing, mending.”

“Would anyone else know you are doing this?”

“No. We would do all the work at Luisa’s home, and she would deliver the laundry to the barracks.”

Whether it was the deference I displayed or the fact that laundry was more traditionally women’s work, I don’t know; but at last he nodded and said, “You have my permission.”

I bowed my head in gratitude. “Thank you, my husband.”

I went to work for Luisa the next day. There I would spend eight hours beating the mud out of trousers and shirts, soaking them in a steel wash drum, and stirring the mixture like some kind of foul, bloody stew. I was so proficient at stitching and patching that Luisa eventually entrusted me with all the sewing that needed doing. I found that I was able to work on perhaps twenty shirts a day, earning a daily wage of forty cents-nearly as much as I would have been paid for working in the fields. Then, before the four-thirty whistle blew, I would hurry home and begin preparing Mr. Noh’s dinner.

I was soon earning almost ten dollars a month, though I decided not to share that exact figure with the “Outside Master.” I would use most of the money for groceries, then give my husband some (but not all) of what was left, which he could gamble away with his own wages if he was so inclined. But I was always careful to set aside a dollar or two each month for unforeseen emergencies, hiding the coins in a jar that I buried in our vegetable garden.

The tensions between Mr. Noh and myself lessened; the household was at peace again. I would never feel completely safe around him, but neither did I live every day in constant terror. His better nature surfaced now and thenhe would make a joke or do something thoughtful for me-and it was during one of these harmonious interludes that we had marital relations again. I found myself completely disconnected from the act, almost as though I were sitting in the corner of the room, watching my husband straddle me and thrust himself into my body. I was not afraid, I was not pleasured, I simply was. I did not dare be anything else.

A few weeks later I woke feeling nauseous, but forced myself to go to work. The queasiness lessened as the day wore on, but then I began to feel more and more fatigued as well. I had to relieve myself every hour or so, then would suddenly find myself crying about it, as though it were the most terrible thing in the world-and forget about it just as quickly. That month I missed my menstrual period. In those days there were no blood tests to determine pregnancy, but the plantation doctor knew the signs and congratulated me.

I sat in the infirmary and said wonderingly, “I’m going to have a child?”

He smiled and allowed as how that was the usual sequence of events.

I walked home, elated, though part of me worried how my husband would react. But when I told him that evening, to my relief he broke into a wide grin; he seemed delighted by the news. And for the first time since the night he had spoken so kindly to me over dinner, I too was happy.

The months that followed were good ones. With a child on the way, Mr. Noh exhibited a newfound sense of responsibility: he stopped drinking, no longer went out on payday, and abstained from gambling. I asked him to do none of these things; he embraced them on his own, and seemed genuinely eager to save money to raise a family. We talked about baby names, though he never considered the thought that it might be anything but a boy. “We won’t stay on the plantation forever,” he promised. “I’ll get a job in town. As a carpenter, or a yard man to a rich haole. Our son won’t grow up with red dirt between his teeth.”

When I told jade Moon, she admitted that she, too, had missed a period and feared she might be pregnant; she didn’t relish the prospect of doing field work with a baby strapped on her back. The possibility of having to give up work altogether had not occurred to me, but in my third month my fatigue became so chronic and acute that I was unable to continue working for Luisa-it was all I could manage to do our own laundry, cooking, and housekeeping. Mr. Noh was understanding and supportive.

But whereas in the past it was my salary that went to pay for food and other necessities, now it was Mr. Noh’s. I had paid off his debt with the plantation store and once again we could charge our purchases, but when next he received his wages-less the cost of groceries I had already purchased-he was shocked to walk away with fewer than two dollars. The next payday he netted even less, as we had purchased baby blankets, diapers, and other nursery items.

When he had been single, my husband had not had to worry about purchasing food: he lived in the men’s barracks and ate the meals they served there, the cost automatically deducted from his salary. But now he was feeding two people-soon to be three-and he watched his money evaporate like the afternoon rains here in Hawai’i. This began to weigh heavily on him. He withdrew into himself, becoming quieter, more irritable. The happy dream I had been living turned tense and anxious once more. He complained about the cost of food, about my cooking, about any and everything. Each payday, with its meager handful of coins, only seemed to worsen his mood.

I tried to tell him that things would be better after the baby was born, when I was able to go back to laundry work, but he snapped at me, “What kind of man would I be, to be supported by my wife?” I wisely refrained from pointing out that I had been doing exactly that until just recently.

More and more he referred to our unborn infant not as “our baby” but “this child,” as in, This child will need a crib. This child will need clothes. This child changes everything.

The tension grew along with the life inside me. Then one Friday night late in my fourth month, Mr. Noh came home from the fields two hours late-and very drunk. It was not payday; I knew he had no money to be gambled away. Perhaps he had just needed a drink or two to relieve his stress. Don’t do anything to provoke him, I told myself. Act as if nothing is wrong.

I said, “I’ve kept your dinner warm on the stove. Are you hungry?”

He looked at me in disgust.

“No, I’m drunk,” he said combatively. “You goddamn blind?”

“Then I’ll make you some coffee,” I said, and went to put on water.

His hand shot out and grabbed me by the arm. “Did I say I wanted any damn coffee?”

His fingers gripped my arm like an ever-tightening coil. I felt a wave of sickening fear and tried desperately to think of what to say next.

“All right,” I said finally, blandly. “No coffee.”

In the face of my refusal to confront him, his grip on me only hardened. I tried not to cry out, to say anything at all that might trigger his rage. But I should have realized, the trigger had already been pulled.

He squeezed harder, and before I could stop myself, I cried out in pain.

He smiled like a wolf that had scented its prey, and with a jerk of his arm he sent me spinning into space. I crashed into the pantry, the collision knocking the wind from me. I collapsed onto the floor and he was suddenly there, kicking me. The first kick was to my ribs, but as I yelled and reflexively rolled over, his next kick found my stomach. I screamed, begged him to stop, but of course that only encouraged him. I covered my belly with my hands to protect the baby, but he kicked me in my arm and the jolt of pain forced me to let go, exposing my stomach again. He kicked my belly again and again, sending lightning flashes of pain and grief through my body. I heard my child scream in the lightning, felt its helpless agony, until it was too much for me to bear and blackness swallowed both the lightning and the thunder of my husband’s rage, and I lost consciousness.

In the safe quiet darkness I wept, as my child-my daughter, I somehow knew-enfolded me in arms that were not arms and gazed at me with eyes that were not eyes, and told me sadly that it was not meant to be. And she left to go somewhere else, somewhere I could not reach.

Then even the darkness went away.

When I woke, not long after, I was still lying on the kitchen floor. I looked down at myself and saw my skirt sodden with blood-felt it trickling out of me along with my broken water-and at this I blacked out again, mercifully so.

My husband passed out not long after he assaulted me and killed our child. When he awoke, he had no memory of what he had done, a gift that was to be denied me. He saw me lying bloodied on the floor and ran in a panic to the infirmary. I’m told I was taken there in an automobile, and one of the first things I recall was the plantation doctor, Dr. Jaarsma, telling me that I was lucky that the blows had not damaged any of my internal organs. I did not feel lucky.

He also assured me I had not been hurt so severely that I would not be able to bear another child. The prospect terrified me.

Then the doctor, sitting beside my bed, soberly asked me if I wished to file a charge of assault against my husband. I was lost in grief, and strangely empty of rage. “Would men in your country,” I asked him, “really put another man behind bars merely for beating his wife?”

“Well,” the doctor allowed, “he might serve a few months, at least.”

“And what then?”

He had no answer for that.

I told him I would not file charges. He started to rise. I asked whether my baby had been male or female.

“It was a girl,” he said. I just nodded.

Soon Mr. Noh came to my bedside, wallowing in guilt and repentance. He wept and promised that he would never strike me again, that he would never take another drink, so help him God. He begged my forgiveness, but if I could not bring myself to have him jailed, neither could I forgive him-or believe that his promises would stand the test of time and temptation. I said nothing and closed my eyes as if drifting to sleep, denying him the absolution he so ardently craved.

Other wives in the Korean camp-including some of the very ones who had advised me to take my husband’s beatings without complaint-brought me bowls of seaweed soup, a common Korean restorative for women who have just given birth. They also urged me to spend the traditional thirty days afterward in bed, a tradition I was happy to observe: for at least the first week I could not have gotten out of bed had I tried.

While in the infirmary I received an envelope postmarked in Korea. Because it took so long for mail to cross the Pacific in those days, I was only just receiving my elder brother’s response to my letter home:

Honorable Little Sister,

We are all happy to hear from you and to know that you have safely reached your destination. I read your letter aloud to Mother and Blossom; little sister-in-law had me read it to her twice, and says to tellyou that she misses you, as do we all.

Congratulations to you on your wedding. From your descriptions, Hawaii truly seems like a paradise. How wonderful it must be to live there. It pleases us all to know that you are happy and fu filled in your new life …

I cried myself to sleep that night.

After three weeks I had recovered sufficiently to be discharged from the hospital. I could still barely walk, and Mr. Noh had to make his own breakfast and pack his own lunch. Marisol helped me do laundry and prepare dinners. I forced myself to walk from one end of the tiny house to the other, slowly gathering stamina. Gradually, I came back to myself, and found the strength to do what I knew I must.

It went against all I had been taught a good Korean wife should be: loyal, sacrificing, obedient. But I could not remain in this house and possibly deliver up another child for the slaughter. I told only Jade Moon of my plans, and she did not discourage me; she even offered to give me money, but I thanked her and declined. I had money, at least a little.

And so it was that one morning after my husband had left for work, I dug up the jar of gold coins I had buried in the garden, packed my suitcase, and walked the mile to the train station at Waialua, where I purchased a ticket for the end of the line, the farthest point from Mokuleia Camp and Mr. Noh removing my silver wedding pin from my hair as I boarded the next train bound for Honolulu.

This time the lush green landscape rolling by held no charms for me, and the exotically named stations we passed seemed merely signposts in a country of despair. The shriek of the brakes as we pulled into each station unnerved me, and the drumbeat of the train along the tracks took on a pounding, reproving tone. No escape on my part, it seemed to say, could bring back my daughter-and nothing else seemed important. I sat there wondering what her voice might have sounded like … tried to imagine the shape of her smile, or how her eyes might have caught the morning light. I tortured myself with all the infinite lost possibilities until at last I felt the train slow and heard the conductor call out, “Next stop, Honolulu!”-the end of the line, nowhere else to run. I got up and disembarked the train.