Honolulu (30 page)

Fortunately, the receipts of the Liliha Cafe continued to grow as word of mouth drew customers from surrounding neighborhoods like Kalihi, Chinatown, ‘A’ala, and even Kaka’ako. We were also popular with local police officers walking their beat, whose meals were often given to them on the house in the interest of building goodwill. Chang Apana dropped by now and then, either with police colleagues or with his family, but would never let us pay for his meals. He seemed pleased that I had done well for myself, and I wondered how much of a hand he had taken in popularizing the cafe among his fellow officers.

We were soon able to hire a kitchen boy named Liho to assist Jae-sun with such things as peeling potatoes, deboning fish, and other odious tasks, and a part-time waitress, Rose, to help ease the burden on me.

On one particularly hot evening that summer, I had just taken a short break from my hostess duties to look in on our keiki, who were asleep in the apartment upstairs. I came down to find a man with his head bowed, standing by the door, who I assumed to be a customer waiting for a table. I had crossed half the length of the restaurant before I recognized him-and I came to an abrupt stop.

It was Mr. Noh.

I was shocked not just by his presence but by his appearance. He seemed much older than the five years that had passed since I had last seen him-not counting the glimpse I thought I’d gotten of him months before. He had dark bags under his eyes, he was unshaven, and he wore a rumpled palaka shirt and a pair of faded dungarees. He looked like a ghost of himself.

Even so, I felt a rush of fear. I glanced in the direction of the kitchen, comforted by the knowledge that Jae-sun was not far away-and slowly I found the nerve to walk up to my former husband, my heart racing the whole time. I stopped about three feet away from him and managed to ask, as calmly as I could, “What is it you want here?”

But there was none of his usual bravado in his reply. “I am hungry,” he said in an equally low tone, “and I have no money for food. I know I do not merit your charity, but even so … could you grant me the favor of a meal?”

This was the last thing I had expected him to say, and I did not believe him.

“Get out of here. You’re drunk.”

He let out an unhappy laugh.

“No, this is a rare moment that I am not. You may smell my breath if you wish.” He took a step toward me.

I shrank back. It was true, he did not reek of alcohol, but neither was his smell pleasant: I doubted that he had taken a bath in at least a week. “What has happened to you?” I asked, despite myself. “Are you not working at Waialua?”

“That was a long time ago,” he said ruefully, “or so it seems.”

A part of me, I admit, was not distraught to see my nemesis in this pathetic state, and relished the opportunity to scorn him and send him back, still hungry, onto the street. But then I felt ashamed for the thought, and I told myself that if I truly considered myself an individual capable of kampana, it should apply not just to those I had wronged, like Tamiko, but to those who had wronged me as well.

He saw my hesitation and said, “But I understand-I ask too much of you,” and turned to go.

I found myself saying, “Wait. All you want from me is something to eat?”

He nodded.

“And then you will go and not come back?”

“If that is what you wish.”

I should have been terrified to have him here, just one floor below my home, where my children lay sleeping even now. But despite all he had done in the past, I did not feel-surrounded as I was by customers, and on seeing the spent shell he had become-as though I or my family were in any imminent danger.

“All right,” I told him. “One meal. Come with me.”

He bowed his head in gratitude.

I picked up a menu from the pile up front and, as if I were welcoming any random customer who had entered, took him to a small table in a corner of the cafe. I tried to hand him the menu, but he shook his head and told me, “I will take whatever you choose to offer me. Beggars cannot be choosers.”

All at once I recalled the first time I had heard that phrase: also from Mr. Noh’s mouth, on our wedding day, referring to his unlucky choice of bride.

And later: “She is lucky that anyone chose her at all. ”

My anger roiled again inside me, but I did not show it. I merely nodded and told him I would be back with something for him to eat.

I went into the kitchen, where Jae-sun was contentedly juggling at least ten different dinner orders-completely in his element, whistling as he went from basting bulgogi to stirring a pot of Portuguese bean soup to filleting a three-pound tuna. I smiled as I watched him. I was lucky, though not in the way Mr. Noh had meant that day in court.

“What have you made too much of tonight?” I asked. It was inevitable that we would prepare a certain number of dishes in advance, in anticipation of a demand that did not materialize that evening. Usually we wound up eating these ourselves as a late-night supper.

“Um, probably the bulgogi,” he said.

“Then give me an order of that, with rice and kimchi.”

I decided not to tell Jae-sun of my former husband’s presence unless I absolutely needed to. I took the food to Mr. Noh’s table and placed it in front of him. He thanked me, picked up his chopsticks, and quickly took a big bite of kimchi, then an even bigger bite of fire beef. He barely chewed before he swallowed. Truly, he ate like a starving man, and I wondered what could have brought him so low.

“Ah,” he said around a mouthful of beef, “your bulgogi is as delicious as ever.

“It is not mine. It is my husband’s,” I said pointedly.

If he was stung by that he did not show it.

“So you are … no longer employed at Waialua?” I asked him.

He shook his head as he ate. “I returned there after our-divorce. But then I began drinking too much-missing too much work-and they let me go. I went back to ‘Ewa, but got into a fight with the head luna … broke his jaw.” Each sentence was punctuated by a swallow of food. “After that, no plantation on O’ahu would hire me, so I went again to Maui, but … that did not end well, either.

“Finally I came to Honolulu, where I have been doing odd jobs here and there-enough to pay for a room, at least.” He shrugged. “What did I tell you? I’m just poho.”

“I think we make our own luck,” I said impulsively.

He only nodded. “Perhaps so. You and your-husband-have certainly made your luck.” His slight hesitation in saying “husband” did not escape my notice, and I admit I took some slight pleasure in it.

I excused myself to show some arriving customers to a table, and when I returned to Mr. Noh’s table he had wolfed down almost all of his dinner. “You have shown me great kindness tonight,” he said. “Certainly I do not warrant it. I behaved abominably to you. But when the drink is in me, it poisons everything. It’s poisoned everything I might have been.”

I could not let that pass without comment. “You were not drunk when you threatened me at the courthouse, or when you beat me for working in the fields.”

His eyes clouded at this, but once again he merely nodded. “No, you are right, I was not,” he allowed. “I was angry. Anger is its own poison, I suppose.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, `Mianhamnida the word that means both “Thank you” and “I am sorry for the trouble I have caused you.”

I found myself unexpectedly moved by his use of this term.

“This was delicious; I shall not go to bed hungry tonight.” He stood.

Softening, I asked, “Wouldn’t you like some dessert?”

“No, you’ve been generous enough.” He looked at me again, and this time he did not seem to be gazing into the past, but actually looking at me. “I did not mean what I said in court,” he said. “I did it to hurt you and to keep you, if that makes any sense. You were a far better wife than I deserved.”

He bowed, turned, and left with as proud a bearing as he could muster.

I never dreamed I would ever feel sorry for this man, but I did that night.

I could even, in my own way, understand the disappointment he felt from life. Though I was grateful beyond words for Jae-sun, our family, and our success, I still longed for one thing which I knew could never be mine: the dream of education that brought me to America, and which I had been forced to forfeit. But almost as satisfying to me was that September day in 1923 when I brought Grace Eun-now five years old-for her first day of kindergarten at Kauluwela Grammar School. She was terrified to enter the school, stubbornly holding on to my hand as we stood on the threshold. Plaintively she asked me why she had to go, why she couldn’t stay at home with me. I stooped down beside her and said, “You know, when I was your age, I would have given anything to be able to go to school. I still would.” “Why can’t you?”

“Because I’m too old. But you can go in my place, and learn all the things I cannot. And then you can tell me all about what you’ve learned, and that would be almost as good as if I went myself. Would you do that for me?”

She glanced uncertainly up at the imposing brick building-weighing the apprehension it caused her against her desire to help me-then turned back and, trying to be brave, said, “Okay, Mama, I will.”

“Good girl,” I said. “Who knows? You might even enjoy it.” She gave me a look that suggested there was as much chance of this as there was of icecream pies falling from the sky, and then I led her up the front steps and into the school.

The corridors were filled with children of all ages, as well as parents like me searching for their children’s classrooms. At the door to Grace’s room I gave her a kiss on the cheek and handed her a lunch bag: “Learn something for me today, Grace.” I watched her go in and nervously take a seat. The classroom smelled of chalk and ink and books; it smelled of learning. I never wanted to leave, but I did. My longing to trade places with Grace was equaled only by my joy and pride in knowing that my daughter-that all my children-would have the education I had been denied. That would have to be enough.

That September saw an academic achievement for someone else as well, and I was almost as proud of him as I was of Grace. Joe Kahahawai, now grown into a tall, strapping fourteen-year-old, had secured through his father’s efforts an athletic scholarship to a very reputable parochial school called St. Louis College, which despite its name was really a secondary school. There he quickly excelled in sports, especially football, and my family and I were pleased to attend our first Sunday game in which Joe-now standing nearly six feet in a blue-and-red uniform emblazoned with the number 38-functioned as something called a “lineman,” and a good one, too, judging by the cheers of the crowd. I gathered that the object of the game was to kick, throw, or carry the oddly shaped ball from one end of the playing field to the other, but the rules mystified me and I soon ceased to wonder why everyone would stop when whistles were blown, then wander about and reassemble like actors in a play who had forgotten their lines and decided to start all over again. I could appreciate how Joe seemed to literally explode out of his Kabuki-like stance-squatting with one hand ritualistically touching the ground-as if shot out of a cannon, but I was a bit taken aback the first time he tackled an opposing player to the ground.

“Was that absolutely necessary?” I asked Esther.

“Oh, but Jin, that’s part of the game.”

“To knock each other down?”

“Yes.”

“But it seems so rude,” I said.

After the St. Louis “Saints” won the game over McKinley High School’s “Micks,” we joined Joe and the Anitos in a celebration at Kamakela Lane that included Joseph Sr. and his wife Hannah, Joe’s cousin Eddie Uli’i, and Bill Kama, who was now an officer with the Honolulu Police Department. “You’re gettin’ too big for me to box your ears,” Bill kidded Joe, “so next time you get out of line-”

He grinned and playfully twirled a set of handcuffs. Joe laughed, turned around, and crossed his wrists behind his back. “Take me in, officer,” he joked. “For my own protection.” We all laughed.

More sadly, that same autumn Beauty’s husband Mr. Yi fell ill, and at the age of seventy-nine any illness is a serious one. Pneumonia claimed him two weeks later, and he ended a long life in the comfort of his own bed, having overcome great obstacles to progress from plantation laborer to a wealthy and respected businessman. Our family attended his funeral service at the Korean Christian Church and then his burial at Puea Cemetery. Jade Moon and Wise Pearl also paid their respects, the latter bringing a lovely wreath of carnations. Beauty was saddened, of course, and even if she thought of Mr. Yi as more of a father than a husband, losing a kindly father is still a sorrowful event.

As we left the cemetery, Jade Moon took me aside and declared, with excitement unseemly to the occasion, “I’ve found a rooming house to buy!”

“Lower your voice,” I said, “and at least pretend that you are bereaved.”

“Oh, he was a thousand years old, we should all live as long. Would you come see the property with me tomorrow and tell me what you think?”

I sighed and said that I would.

The following day we took the streetcar to a neighborhood called Makiki, on the windward side of Punchbowl. It seemed a great distance away, though in truth it was closer than Wise Pearl’s farm in Kaimuki. We entered a two-story clapboard rooming house in slightly better repair than the tenement I had lived in in Kauluwela. “The manager’s rooms, where we would live, are on the ground floor,” Jade Moon said as we entered the vestibule. “There are fifteen other rooms, most already occupied, each bringing in twelve dollars a month in rent. That is almost two hundred dollars a month in rental income!”

We ascended creaking stairs to the second story. “And what about expenses?” I asked. “Water, electricity, repairs?”

“Negligible, I’m told. Twenty or thirty dollars a month.”

“Our water bill at the cafe is hardly negligible,” I noted. “And these stairs could use some fixing.”

“Mr. Ha is good with his hands. Whatever repairs need done, we will do them ourselves. It is a great opportunity.”