Honolulu (18 page)

Mr. Lim clapped when I was finished, and it was clear to me now why he had requested a kisaeng. All he wanted, really, was to look at the painted face of a smiling Korean girl, to listen to her musical laugh, and to be reminded of the places of his youth. When I asked him if he ever considered returning to Korea, even for a visit, his eyes dimmed and he admitted that he could not afford such a trip. “I had saved enough money for a ticket, but I … invested it poorly.”

Yes-invested in bringing a picture bride to Hawai’i, who then turned around and left, leaving him with no money and no bride. My heart cried for him. When I looked at him I could not see the old pockmarked laborer who sent Sunny running for home: I saw only a sweet man too poor to reclaim his past, and too old and hurt to believe in the dream of a future.

I thought of how I might console him, of how much he needed consolation … as, for that matter, did I. And had I been somewhere else-had I not been wearing this makeup-I might well have given him such consolation. But then, had I not been here pretending, would I ever have set eyes on him again? Would he ever have opened himself up to me as he had tonight?

I ached to take him to my bed … but as fondly as I felt toward him, I could not. As much as I admired and loved Evening Rose, I could not be her … could not become what she had become.

So at the end of the evening I simply stood, bowed, and thanked him for his company. “It is I who must thank you,” he said, bowing deeply in return. “I have not enjoyed an evening more in fourteen years.”

My heart longed to betray me, but I turned on my heel and left the room.

On my way out Mrs. Miyake gave me the cash I was due: two dollars, less fifty cents for room rent, wine, and rice cakes. I accepted the money, then gave it all to May when I got home, asking none in return. I sat down at May’s vanity to remove my makeup, taking one last look at the girl in the mirror-the pretty, powdered face of a woman whom a man had actually desired, and who, much to her own surprise, had perhaps too much selfrespect to do anything about it.

The girl in the mirror smiled at me, and I smiled back.

On the days that followed, the more I thought about Mr. Lim, the more annoyed I became at Sunny for having abandoning him. I knew I could not put off writing my clan any longer, so I sat down and wrote an other carefully composed letter to my brother, one that provided some details of my life in Honolulu, while withholding others. Fortunately, since it was Korean custom for a woman to retain her family name, I did not have to worry about what to use in my return address: it was, as ever, “Pak.” I spoke of my move here in the most general of terms-“There is more money to be made in the city than on the plantation”-with no mention made of my husband, but nothing that would preclude his presence here, either. I told them of my sewing work, but not the profession of most of my customers. And I filled out the rest with descriptions of the islands’ great natural beauty, and of how, more truthfully, I missed my family and wished they could be here with me.

But in addition to this letter, I composed a second one, to Sunny. I began by inquiring after her health and conveying my best wishes to her parents, then told her some of the same selectively edited stories of my life here:

It is too bad that you did not give Hawaii more of a chance, for it is, in many ways, the beautiful land of which Mrs. Kim first told us. It may not be true that the roads are paved in gold, but women have much freedom in this country … even as all Koreans here live free from Japanese persecution.

I recently encountered, quite by accident, your former fiance, Mr. Lim … and with all respect I believe you did not give him enough of a chance, either. He is a good man and a kind one, and would have made you a fine husband. Might you reconsideryour decision not to marry him? He may not be handsome, but I have learned that a pleasing face can cloak a most unhandsome temperament; and by the same token, a homely face can hide a handsome heart.

This was the closest I dared come to alluding to my own failed marriage. I held no great hope that Sunny would change her mind, but I felt I owed it to Mr. Lim to at least try. Within two months’ time, I received a cordial reply from Joyful Day, who if he suspected anything odd about my circumstances had the grace not to inquire. But I never received a reply from Sunny. I knew she could read and write hangul because I had taught her to do so, in preparation for the literacy test of which Mrs. Kim had warned us. Perhaps she was embarrassed by her reneging on her marriage to Mr. Lim; perhaps I should not have broached the matter and subjected her to such embarrassment. Whatever the reason, I never heard from her … and soon had other worries on my mind.

First, there had been the race riots in January. Then at the end of May, a newly arrived prostitute was shot to death in an Iwilei cottage by an estranged lover who had followed her from San Francisco. She did not live far from us, and I heard the three shots her paramour fired into her, as well as the fourth shot that ended his own life.

If “respectable” Honolulu citizens were questioning how safe a place Iwilei had become, I was beginning to wonder the same thing.

The earliest omens of our dispossession appeared that fall, though few in Iwilei took the signs seriously at first. In recent months there had been increased agitation against the district, including a self-appointed public “vice commission” intent on closing the stockade. At the end of October, this commission began threatening legal action against Iwilei landlords unless they ordered their tenants to vacate by November 1. Many landlords, fearing publicity or jail, reluctantly complied; but one, a Chinese businessman named Y. Ahin, publicly vowed to fight any attempt to evict his tenants.

Within a matter of days, a warrant was issued for Ahin’s arrest on charges of keeping a “disorderly house.”

May, however, was untroubled. She assured me this was all so much bluster, and would “blow over” in a few weeks, “once the blue-nosed old ladies in the Manoa Valley are done beating their drums.”

Mrs. Miyake told me much the same thing. “Every six or seven years, in a great show of decency, someone in government decides to break up the stockade,” she said, citing closures in 1901, 1908, and 1913. “But we always open again. Why? Jin-san, do you know how many soldiers are stationed on this island?”

But then Mrs. Miyake’s husband, returning from a trip to Japan, was suddenly prevented by immigration authorities from returning to Honolulu. He was held at Quarantine island as the authorities debated whether or not to deport him-and his wife-back to Japan. This was enough to convince many of the Japanese prostitutes to vacate Iwilei out of fear they, too, might be deported.

When one landlord’s representative came and told us we could remain, “providing your cottages are not used for immoral purposes,” May laughed out loud and asked, “So what do we do, teach Sunday school? And how do we pay the rent? Or is that on the house?” The landlord, it seemed, was not that interested in promoting morality.

More reassuring was Chief McDuffie who, on his regular visit to receive the women’s health certificates, told them that Iwilei would not be closed “by any damn reformers.” Presumably the police department was not prepared to lose the kickbacks that paid for the blind eye cast toward Iwilei.

A few days later, on November 3, it was announced that a territorial grand jury would be formed to investigate whether Ilwilei should be continued as is, modified in some way, or shut down completely. This occurred even as Mrs. Miyake was arrested on charges of conducting a disorderly house.

Most of the remaining Japanese girls quickly decamped for other quarters. That night all of the houses on the `ewa, or eastern, side of Iwilei Road were shuttered and dark. But those on the Waikiki side were as garishly lit and loudly raucous as always, with the popular song of the moment-“I’m Down in Honolulu Looking Them Over”-blaring from a dozen different gramophones:

I’m down in Honolulu looking them over
I’m down in Honolulu living in clover
Try and guess the way they dress
No matter what you think it is, it’s less …

The following Tuesday, at two-thirty in the afternoon, the fifteen publicspirited men of the grand jury visited the district whose fate they were to decide. They sniffed around like cats, intensely interested in the smell while making it clear they were haughtily above such things.

Soon adding their voice to the debate were twenty-one manufacturing, transportation, and other legitimate businesses based in Iwilei, who requested of the city attorney that the stockade be shut down because their officers, employees, and business guests have to “pass over the same road that is used by prostitutes, pimps, runners, and other hangers-on of the vice industry … in close proximity to factories where large numbers of women and girls are employed.”

When I read this on the front page of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, I began to wonder whether the closure of Iwilei was less a matter of morality than of commerce.

But I believe Iwilei’s fate was truly sealed upon news of the arrest of two local boys, both fourteen years old, who had been running errands for what the papers called “the painted women” of Iwilei. Since prostitutes were legally restricted in the places they could go in Honolulu, they sometimes sent enterprising young boys off to purchase groceries (and perhaps other, not so innocuous items like liquor) for them. Alas, this would not win us any friends on the grand jury.

That night, on my way home from visiting the Kahahawais, a man fell into step with me-a man wearing a wool cap and a sailor’s peacoat. Before I had a chance to greet him, Chang Apana asked, “You start looking new place to live?”

“Not yet,” I admitted.

“Try find. Iwilei pau.”

“People say it’s been finished before. And Chief McDuffie told us-”

“Ah, McDuffie got head up ass,” he said disgustedly. “Not up to him anymore. Federal case now.” Before I could inquire what this meant, he added soberly, “Make quick an’ get out, or you stay Iwilei, all right-in O’ahu jail.”

Having delivered this stern fatherly warning, he melted into the crowd of soldiers and sailors still thronging Iwilei Road. I didn’t know why Chang had taken such a benevolent interest in me, but I took his words seriously. I went home and, after May’s last client left at two A.M., related to her what the detective had told me. When I mentioned his saying this was a “Federal case,” her eyebrows shot up and the skepticism in her face drained away.

“What does this mean, `Federal’?” I asked innocently.

“It means we start packing tomorrow,” she said, and went to bed.

A little after three A.M. we were awakened by the roar of automobiles into the stockade, followed by the bangs and crashes of doors being kicked in and the sounds of shouting and fighting. May and I ran outside, fully prepared to find police storming our lanai, but the officers-including one identifying himself as a United States marshal-seemed to be targeting only a few houses, out of which they soon dragged, ungently, a baker’s dozen of men, all of them procurers. The only women being arrested-for now-were those living with the pimps.

“Apana’s right,” May said soberly as she watched the men being forced into patrol cars. “Iwilei ispau.”

This all occurred early on Monday morning. Monday night, Iwilei was dark: the few women who remained sat behind locked doors and drawn shades, the muffled sound of phonographs from within a tinny echo of Iwilei’s former brass. By Wednesday the grand jury had returned indictments against one hundred and fifteen women at Iwilei on charges of “commercial prostitution.” Bench warrants were issued. Miraculously, May’s name was not on the long list of women who would have to surrender and face a hearing in judge Ashford’s courtroom at ten o’clock on Friday morning.

By this time, of course, we were long gone, having packed up our belongings-including a rather truculent Little Bastard-and secured rooms at a small, out-of-the-way hotel off Richards Street.

On Friday morning, in Judge Ashford’s court, all but seven of the stockade’s women pled guilty and received suspended sentences-with the judge warning that should they be arrested again within the next thirteen months, they would not be so fortunate. Virtually as one they all headed for the steamship offices, most of them to purchase tickets to “the Coast”San Francisco or Los Angeles.

May surprised me by joining the exodus, booking passage aboard the SS Sonoma, bound for someplace called Apia, in Western Samoa.

“Ah, I’ve had it up to here with all this so-called `civilization,’ ” she told me as she packed her bags. “Gimme a little grass shack in Samoa, least till all this blows over. There’s a gal in Apia who’ll front me for a job as a barmaid. I’ll set up shop there for a while. Maybe once things’ve cooled off here, I’ll come back.”

“I will be sorry to see you go,” I told her.

“Yeah,” she said, “it’s tough shit, ain’t it, kid?”

May was quite the sentimentalist.

“But listen, hon-they won’t let me bring Little Bastard into the country. Think you could keep an eye on him till I get back?”

I quailed at the thought, but smiled blandly. “Of course. But how will you find me when you return?”

“You’ll stay in touch with Esther and Joe, right? I can always ask them. Don’t worry, it’s a small island. I’ll find you.”

She peeled off a handful of bills from a thick wad she kept in her purse. “Here, this’ll pay for the little guy’s upkeep, and help get you set up in a place of your own. You can keep the sewing machine, too.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind.”

May picked up the cat, bounced him in her arms, and told him, “Okay, pal, I’ll be gone awhile, but Jin’s gonna take good care of you till I get back. Treat her like you would me, and don’t give her any trouble, okay?”

He let out a small Nyep, which I took to mean, “I make no guarantees.”

May deliberated endlessly about what to take with her, finally deciding on two suitcases of clothes, her gramophone, her ukulele, and several bottles of gin. She fretted even longer over what to wear onto the ship, finally settling on a white dress, white hat, white stockings, and white kid leather boots. We were very late getting to the docks, but May wasn’t worried the ship would leave without her: “I know the purser. They’ll wait.” In fact they did. She hurried up the gangway with her gramophone, its morning-glory horn tucked under her arm like some rare and enormous bloom, and onto the deck of the Sonoma. She waved a farewell to me, winked at a ship’s officer, and vanished like a pale shadow onto the ship. It lifted anchor at seven P.M., a dockside band sending it off to the tune of “I’m Down in Honolulu Looking Them Over.”