Honolulu (22 page)

Hesitantly, I worked up the courage to ask, “Do wives who abandon their husbands in Hawai’i risk punishment by hanging?”

He had the jaded air of a man not usually surprised by much in his line of work, but now his eyes widened and he sat a bit straighter in his chair, as if for a moment he embodied the entire American legal system. “No. Certainly not.”

“Will I be forced to confront my husband in court?”

“If he doesn’t contest the petition, no. If he chooses to fight it-yes, I’m afraid so. But there will be bailiffs-guards-there to protect you.”

“Will they protect me once I have gone home, and my husband will now know where I live?”

He admitted they would not.

I asked him how much this would cost. “Normally,” he said, “for a divorce, I’d charge between fifty and a hundred dollars.” When he saw my shock at this he amended, “But in this case I’ll do it for thirty. If we win, of course, I’ll seek to have your legal costs paid by your husband.”

Thirty dollars represented almost all of my savings-but what else could I do? I had only the vaguest concept of American law, and could hardly navigate the legal system on my own. I agreed to the terms.

Within two days my attorney had filed with the First Circuit Court of Honolulu a “libel” for divorce-on grounds of “extreme cruelty” and “habitual intemperance”-and a summons was issued to Mr. Noh directing him to appear in thirty days’ time before Judge William Heen to answer the libel.

I could only imagine my husband’s reaction at receiving such a sum mons, and tried not to consider what his feelings might be about it, and about me. Were I to dwell too much on that, I did not know how I would find the courage to walk into the courtroom thirty days hence.

A source of equal anxiety to me was Jae-sun, as I knew that I finally had to reveal to him the full sum of my life.

He was happy when, after a week of keeping my distance, I approached him at work and said I needed to speak with him. I think he was a bit puzzled that, instead of taking him aside at the cannery, I suggested a walk along the Iwilei shore after work, but his pleasure that I seemed friendly again clearly outweighed any confusion, and he readily agreed.

At the end of the workday, as we walked amid fallen kiawe beans on the beach, I gathered my nerve and told him, “I must beg your apologies. There are things about myself that I have kept from you. I have not been honest with you about my past.”

He seemed undisturbed by this. “I am sure you could never tell me anything that would require an apology.”

“I will let you be the judge of that.” My heart fluttered like a leaf in the wind and I began telling him the whole truth of my life. I spoke of my marriage to Mr. Noh-his drinking, his gambling, the violent storms in which I was swept up-and of the child I lost to his temper. I hung my head in shame as I admitted that I was not, in fact, a widow: I recounted how I ran away from Waialua, and the lie I was living, the lie I had told him. This revelation brought him to a sudden stop, and though he tried to hide his shock, I could see it clearly in his eyes and in the way he rolled slightly on his feet, as if he had taken a physical blow.

Finally, I informed him that I had filed for a divorce from my abusive husband … and to my distress, that word brought the reaction I had feared.

“Divorce?” His tone was as horrified as if I’d said I was considering murder.

You must understand: In Korea at that time, a divorced woman was by the very fact of her divorce a criminal, a contemptible person-a thief, an adulteress, or at the least a jealous harridan or insolent daughter-in-law. Abandonment of one’s marital duty was no less of a black mark. Respectable Korean society made little distinction between a wife who betrayed her marriage bond and one who stole, slandered, or fornicated. I could have been a gossiping, thieving, licentious she-devil and I would have been met with a roughly equal measure of scorn.

However liberal Jae-sun might have become in his years in Hawai’i, he was still Korean enough to be aghast at what I just told him-repulsed not merely at what I done, but at what I was about to become.

“I am sorry,” I said quietly. “I know that does not begin to make amends. I humbly ask your forgiveness.”

He looked at me a long moment, at a loss for words.

“You … you cannot go through with this,” he said at last.

“What should I do, then?” I asked. “Go back to a husband who beat me? Who murdered our child?”

He winced, knowing such pain all too well. “No,” he conceded. “But how …” There was no mistaking the anger and accusation in his tone. “How could you have lied to me as you did?”

I flinched and nodded. “You are right. It was wrong even to have agreed to have lunch with you that first day.”

“Don’t you know,” he said, in growing alarm, “that it is a sin for a man to be with a woman who is already married?”

I felt guilty, but there I had to draw the line: “Don’t be silly. We have not committed adultery.”

“Silly?” he said, raising his voice. “You think it is silly for a man to think the sort of thoughts about a woman that I have thought of you, and then to learn that she is legally and morally bound to another?”

“But you did not know,” I protested. “God knows what is in your heart, doesn’t he?”

“That is exactly the source of the trouble!” he yelled, and I flinched again. “God knows what is in my heart!”

He was more furious than I had ever seen him. He did not attempt to hide it, or the pain, betrayal, and confusion he was feeling. Then he turned and started back up the beach, away from me.

“I am sorry!” I called after him, in tears now; but neither my words, nor his heart, pulled him back.

That night I cried both for the hurt I had caused Jae-sun and for the loss of the first man I had had any feelings for since poor Mr. Lim. I was despondent, but told myself that this was no less than I deserved for having misled Jae-sun. The fact that I had done so out of fear and worry did not excuse it. And now my worry was multiplied, like a knot in the tangled threads of my life, as I feared what I might expect when I met Mr. Noh in court. But what was done, was done; and I had to admit, alongside my fear and anxiety was a relief that everything was at last out in the open.

The next morning I came to work to discover that a small envelope with my name on it had been left with my forewoman, who made it clear to me that she did not appreciate being used as a postal box. In it was a short note written in hangul:•

Please forgive my unseemly show of emotion yesterday.

Where once I thought I would never lack for things to tell you, I find now that I do not know what to say to you.

Until I do, I think it best to say nothing.

I took from this what little encouragement I could-at least he cared enough to tell me he was staying away-but my hopes that he would forgive me receded with the tide of time that passed without any further word. After several weeks, I tried to reconcile myself to life without him. But I missed his cheerful eyes, his laugh, even the tilt of his silly dungaree hat. I consoled myself with the knowledge that even if I was not meant to be Jae-sun’s wife-and that thought pained me more than I could express-then at least my days of being Mr. Noh’s wife would soon be at an end.

On the appointed morning, my attorney escorted me past the gilded statue of King Kamehameha I standing outside Ali’iolani Hale and into the grand hallways of the Territorial Courts Building in downtown Honolulu. I had never been inside a courtroom before, much less an American court, and though Mr. Tillman had given me a rough idea of what to expect from the hearing, there was still much in the proceedings I would find surprising. Not least was the city magistrate overseeing the case. Judge William Heen was both relatively young-in his mid-thirties-and Chinese-Hawaiian, the first person of such background to be appointed a judge in the territory. The last thing I had expected to see behind this imposing bench was someone with facial features even remotely similar to mine. He had just finished adjudicating a traffic violation and the courtroom was being emptied of the previous litigants. We waited for them to leave, and then my attorney showed me to what he called the “plaintiff’s table” in the front row.

Behind his tall bench, Judge Heen was signing some documents for the bailiff. Like most Hawaiians he smiled easily, and laughed at something the bailiff said to him. I was just beginning to feel a bit more relaxed when out of the corner of my eye I noticed someone standing in the aisle to my right, and I turned.

Mr. Noh stood there in the aisle, looking at me.

I jumped, though his was not a threatening look of any kind. He was dressed in the same threadbare dark suit he had worn to the docks the day we were married. His shoes were not polished. He held a battered felt hat in his hand.

He bowed slightly and greeted me in Korean. He took a step toward me and my whole body tensed; I had to fight the blind instinct to run.

My lawyer, seeing my panic, quickly stood and interposed himself between us, though he was at least a head shorter than Mr. Noh. “If you have something to say to my client,” he told him, “you may say it through me.”

“This is my wife,” Mr. Noh said, looking aggrieved.

Mr. Tillman said calmly, “Please take a seat at the respondent’s table”he pointed to one on the right-hand side of the room-“and wait for your attorney.”

Mr. Noh snorted in derision.

“I do not need an attorney,” he replied confidently, but took his place at the table as directed.

My pulse pounded in my head like the roar of the surf, drowning out the bailiff’s voice as he announced the case number and the court was called to order.

Learning that my husband was not represented by counsel, Judge Heen asked him whether he understood that he had the right to engage an attorney. This was in the days before courts would appoint free counsel for a defendant, so when Mr. Noh repeated that he did not need a lawyer, no one seemed at all concerned that perhaps he could not afford one (or, more likely, that he had gambled away any legal funds he might have had).

“So you wish to represent yourself in this matter?” the judge said. “Under the Constitution you have the right to argue pro se-in your own behalf-but I don’t recommend it.”

Mr. Noh pointed to me. “By what right does a wife bring such an action against her own husband? In Korea only a man may seek a divorce, never a woman.

“That may be the case in Korea,” the judge said, “but you were married in the Territory of Hawai’i and under our laws either husband or wife may sue for separation and divorce.”

“But we are Korean,” Mr. Noh insisted.

“As long as you are living in Hawai’i you will abide by our laws. Do you understand that?”

Reluctantly, Mr. Noh grunted an acknowledgment.

“Was that a yes?” the judge said. “For the record?”

“Yes,” Mr. Noh replied.

“Very well, then. Let the record show that respondent has chosen to serve as his own counsel. Mr. Tillman, you may make your opening statement.”

My attorney briefly summarized the facts he promised would come out in testimony: the manner of my engagement to Mr. Noh; what I was told about him in Korea and how this measured up to the facts as I learned them when I came to Hawai’i; my husband’s habitual drinking and gambling; and finally the violent acts he committed against me. As he spoke of the latter, I stole a glance at Mr. Noh and saw the anger and humiliation in his face rising like mercury in a thermometer. Mr. Tillman also made clear that I was not seeking alimony and there was no property to be divided or custody of children to be considered.

When my attorney had concluded, the judge asked Mr. Noh if he wished to make his opening statement now or wait until after Mr. Tillman had put on his case. When Mr. Noh seemed uncertain as to what this meant, the judge patiently explained it and added, “If you are unfamiliar with American trial procedure, the court is willing to grant a continuance-a delay-so that you might engage the services of a private attorney. Are you sure you don’t wish to do so?”

Mr. Noh stubbornly shook his head. “No delay. I will tell my story after she tells hers.”

“Let the record show that the respondent has reserved the right to make his opening statement after the completion of plaintiff’s case in chief,” the judge told the court stenographer. “Mr. Tillman, you may proceed.”

My attorney called me to the stand and asked me a series of questions with which he had previously made me familiar. But it was a far different thing, answering in this imposing courtroom in front of complete strangers. As Koreans, we are taught that to make public one’s emotional or family problems is a shameful acknowledgment of personal inadequacy, as well as a burden to the community. So I was nearly as embarrassed as my husband as I told of how he would drink and gamble away his wages; how I tried to bring money into the house but was physically attacked for my efforts; how I felt nearly constant fear when I was living with him; and finally, how he assaulted me and murdered our unborn daughter.

“So you left Waialua out of fear for your life?” Mr. Tillman asked me.

“Yes. I was certain he would kill me next time.”

“Are you still afraid of your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Could you ever see yourself continuing to live with him?”

“No, never.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Noh. That is all. Your witness.”

Mr. Noh looked puzzled. The judge explained, “You may cross-examine the witness-ask her questions. In light of her stated fear of you, however, I suggest you ask your questions from where you are…

My husband looked at me and said condescendingly, “It is unnecessary for me to question my own wife. She cannot tell me anything I do not already know.”

Mr. Tillman and Judge Heen exchanged astonished looks, then the judge turned back to Mr. Noh. “You waive your right to cross-examine this witness?”

“Yes.”

“All right, let the record reflect that. Mrs. Noh, you may step down.”

Relieved, I returned to my seat beside Mr. Tillman, who now called on the plantation physician at Waialua, Dr. Jaarsma. He confirmed that on the evening of November 5, 1915, I was admitted to the plantation infirmary with multiple injuries including a concussion, lacerations to the head and torso, two broken ribs, a bruised kidney, loss of blood, and the spontaneous abortion of the fetus I had been carrying. Upon this last utterance I lost my composure and began sobbing despite myself. I had been able to recount these horrors myself without breaking down, but hearing it from another was too much to bear. I was by this act doubly shamed. My attorney paused in his questioning to give me his handkerchief. The judge asked if I would like a “recess,” but I shook my head and forced my tears to a stop. My attorney then turned back to the witness.