Honolulu (23 page)

“Did Mrs. Noh tell you at that time how these injuries came about?”

“She told me her husband had assaulted her.”

“And were her injuries consistent with such an assault?”

“Yes.”

“Had you observed injuries like this in Mrs. Noh before?”

“Yes, she had come in another time with a broken nose and bruised ribs.”

My attorney then had my medical records entered into evidence.

This time, when offered the chance to cross-examine the witness, Mr. Noh thought for a moment, stood, and asked the doctor, “Do you believe any man in full possession of his senses would seek to kill his unborn child?”

“I can’t answer that,” the doctor said. “Some might.”

“Can men who have had too much to drink commit acts they later regret, and”
there was, I admit, genuine emotion in his voice
“wish they could undo?”

The doctor glanced at the judge for guidance; Heen nodded an assent.

“I suppose they can,” Jaarsma replied.

“That is all I wanted to ask,” Mr. Noh said, and sat down.

My attorney was again on his feet. “Redirect, Your Honor.”

“Go ahead, Counselor.”

“Doctor Jaarsma, in your experience, does such regret on the part of alcoholics stop them from committing further acts of violence?”

“No,” the witness testified, “not in my experience.”

“Thank you, sir. Nothing further.”

It was now my husband’s turn to present his case. Eagerly, he took the witness stand. His tone as he started was quiet and earnest.

“I do not deny my bad drinking,” he admitted. “It is a shameful vice, and its poisonous effects led me to do something for which I can never make amends. Surely even the death of a daughter is to be regretted.”

I knew perfectly what he meant by that, but it seemed to mystify Mr. Tillman. Judge Heen, being part Chinese, may well have understood.

But soon enough, Mr. Noh’s calm voice took on a different tone:

“I entered into this marriage with honorable intentions,” he told the court. “I chose this girl from the many pictures the matchmaker presented to me. As you can see, she is a plain girl, lacking in most feminine graces, and she is fortunate that anyone chose her at all.”

I fought back sudden tears. This casual cruelty stung all the more for being so public, but I was determined not to add to my shame by weeping again.

“I went to great expense to bring her to Hawai’i,” Mr. Noh went on. “I sent her fifty dollars for passage from Korea, and another hundred to be used as she saw fit. I am not a rich man, no matter what exaggerations the matchmaker may have told her about me; yet I gave her a roof over her head and food to eat.”

I recalled this a bit differently.

“But from the start, she was an inadequate wife. Often she did not have dinner ready for me on time, though in truth she was a good cook when she put her mind to it. She was only a fair housekeeper. And she knew nothing of what went on in the bedroom, but I will not go into that.”

My attorney almost interrupted him, then apparently thought better of it.

“All this I could have ignored,” my husband continued, “but then my wife sought to become more than a wife-she wished to be a husband! She brought shame to the household by going to work in the fields, and this I could not tolerate.

“There is an old Korean saying: `If you don’t beat your woman for three days, she becomes a fox.’ My own mother told me, `Son, a woman needs reminding of how to be a good wife. Do not spare her the back of your hand, you are doing her no favors.’ ”

He smiled at this, but no one else did. I began to see why my lawyer had made no objections to this testimony.

Judge Heen asked, “Are you admitting, Mr. Noh, that you inflicted these injuries upon your wife?”

“I admit to disciplining her. Granted, in my drunken state, I did this to excess, and I regret it-but would you fault a father for giving a wayward child one too many straps of his belt? A wayward wife is no different, certainly.

“She then aggravated her misdeeds by forsaking her marital duties and running away, causing me great shame. Now she adds to that shame by seeking this divorce. But despite all this, I am willing to forgive her these transgressions and take her back-if only she makes an effort, this time, to be a good wife.”

There was a moment’s silence as we all came to realize that he was finished with his testimony. My attorney rose from his seat and asked, “And if she does not live up to your ideal of a `good wife,’ are you prepared to beat her again?”

“I hope it will not come to that,” my husband said, sealing his fate.

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Noh,” Judge Heen said with barely concealed distaste, “do you wish to put on any other witnesses?”

No.

“Do you wish to make a closing statement?”

“I have just made my statement.”

“Mr. Tillman, rebuttal?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Your Honor.”

What happened next was unusual, but not unprecedented, according to my lawyer. Judge Heen announced, “Inasmuch as there are no questions of custody, property, or alimony to consider in this case, its disposition seems straightforward. Plaintiff has amply demonstrated the injury she suffered at the hands of the respondent, who has admitted under oath to having been the cause. As there is abundant evidence that this marriage has been irreparably breached, the court therefore finds for the plaintiff on grounds of extreme cruelty and habitual intemperance, and further directs the respondent to pay the plaintiff’s legal fees.

“This divorce decree shall, per statute, go into effect in thirty days’ time.”

He rapped his gavel, and almost before I understood what had just happened, I was a free woman. Or nearly so.

Mr. Noh looked truly astonished-as if he had never doubted that the court would see the propriety of his actions.

My attorney and I thanked the judge for his ruling and quickly left the courtroom. Outside, on the courthouse portico, Mr. Tillman explained to me how territorial law required a “cooling-down period” of at least a month in order to discourage “hasty” divorces … but after that, my marriage would be legally ended.

I was so thrilled at our victory that I did not notice Mr. Noh bearing down on us until he was but a few steps away.

His loss of face in the courtroom now stoked a fury easily matching that which I witnessed on the night he killed our child. He raged at me, “How dare you bring such shame upon your own husband!”

“You are no longer my husband,” I replied, as calmly as I could, even as I fought to quell the terror rising in my throat.

My attorney again stepped between us, but this time Mr. Noh grabbed him by the collar and threw him aside as easily as I might cast open a window curtain.

“Schemer! Whore!” He spat each word into my face. He raised his right hand and balled it into a fist. I had absolutely no doubt he wished to kill me.

Fortunately, I had taken certain precautions.

Before Mr. Noh knew what was happening, someone had grabbed his left arm and twisted it behind his back like a stick of taffy. Mr. Noh yelped in pain and surprise, dropping the hand that had been raised to strike me.

Chang Apana now seized that arm too, bending it backward with a snapping sound, and Mr. Noh cried out again. The detective quickly spun my would-be assailant around and propelled him into the side of the courthouse. Its concrete face met Mr. Noh’s with what I believe is called a “wallop,” and my husband let out a whimper of pain. I saw blood trickle down the wall.

Apana yanked him back from the wall and asked, “Hana hou? Do again?”

“No!”

Chang laughed. “You like beef, ‘ey? Only not so tough when da beef’s not with wahines.”

“Thank you, Detective,” I said. “Mr. Tillman, are you all right?”

My attorney nodded. “Yes. Fine.”

Chang asked him, “You want press charges?” To Mr. Noh he said, “We go station, thirty days’ jail, eh?”

Mr. Tillman looked at me and said, “We won’t press charges-if Mr. Noh agrees to return to Waialua and stay away from his former wife.”

But my husband, despite his pain, was unrepentant.

“She is still my wife!” Mr. Noh spat out. “I do not recognize-”

Calmly, Detective Apana again bounced him off the brick wall. Mr. Noh’s face came away even bloodier than before.

“You one dumb sonuvabitch,” Apana said. “Like try again?”

Mr. Noh groaned and capitulated. “All right,” he said. “I will go!”

“And you stay go?” Chang asked, not yet loosening his grip.

“Yes! Yes!”

“Good.” Apana yanked him back from the wall and pushed him toward the courthouse steps. “Start now.”

As we watched my soon to be ex-husband stagger dazedly down the steps and onto King Street, Apana shook his head and said to me, “Some puka head you marry.” Puka is Hawaiian for “hole,” as in “hole in the head.”

“Mahalo, Detective. I’m sure he would have killed me this time.”

“No mention,” Chang said with a smile. “He give you any more pilikia, you let me know, eh?”

As he followed Mr. Noh down King Street, making certain he was headed for the train station, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the detective was thinking of poor Kim Pak Chi Ser-and if he was feeling some solace today that there was, at least, one young Korean girl in Honolulu whose life he had been able to save.

A week later I was on the “line,” trimming pineapples, when I looked up to see a familiar face making an equally familiar hand signal over the din. This time I knew what it meant: “Will you have lunch with me?”

I felt a surge of joy, smiling and nodding my assent to Jae-sun, then counted the minutes until lunch hour.

We did not sit out in public on the lawn, but alone in one of the storage rooms, where we could speak privately. As we ate the delicacies Jae-sun had brought in his lunch basket, I told him about my divorce hearing and how, in less than a month’s time, I would no longer be married to Mr. Noh. He merely nodded at this. I told him of my husband’s most recent attempt at assaulting me and he seemed both shocked and relieved for Detective Apana’s intervention. Finally he said, “I have been thinking a great deal in the time since we last spoke.”

Like most Korean men, he was reluctant to speak of things he felt deeply about; but unlike most Korean men, he overcame his inhibitions.

“After my wife and child died at Waimanalo,” he said, “I wondered why I was being punished so, why such a terrible thing should have happened. A woman on the plantation who claimed to have been a mudang”-one of the female fortune-tellers common in every Korean city-“said I was troubled by ghosts, which seemed self-evident to me. She told me I could free myself from their grip by worshipping and serving my ancestral spirits. So I made an ancestral altar out of a wooden crate, carried out the appropriate rituals and prayers to my ancestors … but it still brought me no peace of mind.

“Finally, in desperation, I went to the Christian church, where I was told that I was a sinner and needed to repent. I thought, if I had not been a good enough man in the eyes of God, perhaps that was why I was being punished. So I prayed for the souls of my wife and my son, for their eternal bliss, and I repented my sins in hopes of becoming a better man.

“And once I began to feel that perhaps I had-I found you.” He smiled a tender smile. “I thought you were my reward.”

Tears welled up in my eyes at this.

“But then,” he said, “to find out that I’d sinned again-even unknowinglyI did not know what to think any longer.”

“But how can it be a sin,” I asked, “if you did not know you were sinning?”

He sighed and shook his head, clearly at a loss for an answer.

“I do not know. I have struggled with the morality of it. I have read my Bible. I’ve prayed to God for guidance. And at the end of it, all I know is this:

“You may not be my reward … but to lose you would be a punishment I could not bear.”

For the first time, then, he kissed me.

The truth was: He was my reward.

The next weekend, I thanked May for giving me the courage to change my situation. Perhaps my actions emboldened her as well, because a few weeks later, in early June, she again showed up on my doorstep carrying her old gramophone with its metal trumpet flower, announcing that she had booked passage to San Francisco aboard the SS Maui-and that she and Little Bastard would be leaving within the week.

“What? Why?” I asked, surprised and dismayed.

She placed the phonograph on my table and shrugged. “I need a change of scenery. Fewer palm trees.” She tried to let it go at that, then took one look at my crestfallen expression and sighed. “Aw, hell, what’s the use? You might as well know all of it. You got any hooch?”

“I have a little rice wine that Jae-sun and I did not finish.” She pulled up a chair and I brought over the half-full bottle. I knew better than to bring a glass. May swigged the rice wine, and then, properly anesthetized, went on:

“So down in Pago Pago, I had kind of a … lousy moment at the docks. I was standing there watching everybody else board the schooner for Apia, and me, I’m about to get my ass kicked back to Hawai’i. Feeling sorry for myself, I guess. The schooner leaves, I go back to my room and start to pack … and that’s when it hit me: My entire life fit inside two crummy suitcases. Two suitcases. Jesus Christ!” She shook her head and drained the last of the wine from the bottle. “Gotta be something wrong with that.”

“Yes, I see your point. But … could you not simply purchase a few more suitcases … and stay here in Honolulu?” I asked hopefully.

“I can’t stay here, hon,” she said, in as weary and honest a tone as I had ever heard from her. “I just gotta get the hell out of paradise.”

I heard the pain in her voice and I nodded. “Will you be … staying in San Francisco, then?”

She shrugged again. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll go back to Nebraska for a while. I’ll know when I get there, right? Anyway, I wanted to give you a wedding present before I left, and … I thought you might like to have this.” She presented me with the trumpet-flower gramophone, which I was honored to accept.

“Thank you,” I said. “It will remind me of you, and Iwilei.”