Honolulu (32 page)

Harold looked at it and asked, “Can’t we have one with walls?”

I laughed. “Oh, and I suppose you’ll want a roof, too.”

Charlie shook his head, vigorously opposed to the idea, but Harold just nodded meekly.

“If you insist,” I said agreeably, “but it would be cheaper without the roof.”

Harry’s eyes didn’t leave the shell of that half-finished house until it was lost from view as the streetcar made its way down the long hill toward Honolulu.

The trip to Kaimuki exhausted both keiki and they were happy to take naps when we reached home. Jae-sun was not yet back from his morning circuit of the fish and meat markets in search of the choicest cuts for the evening’s menu, and I decided to go down and wash the breakfast dishes I hadn’t gotten to this morning.

But at the bottom of the steps, as I turned the corner of the staircase, I was jolted by the sight of a man rushing toward me with an outstretched arm.

Before I had time to scream he had grabbed me by the throat and driven me back into the wall with bone-rattling impact.

Only now, as I stood pinned like a butterfly to the wall, did I fully recognize the man as Mr. Noh.

His face was not the chastened, humbled countenance he had presented months before, but one transfigured by anger and alcohol. I could barely breathe, but what air I could take in reeked of whisky. There was a wild, familiar fury in his eyes, but something else, too: something I would never have expected to see. Tears brimmed in his eyes, even as his mouth was contorted in a sneer. Half his face was rage; the other half, grief.

“This should have been mine, ” he cried out, “rightfully mine!”

Oh Heaven, I thought; not him, not again! I gasped for breath and he loosened his grip a little-just enough to let me breathe, but not cry out.

“I could have led this life,” he railed through tears. “This could have been my business! Those could have been my sons upstairs!”

At the mention of my children I felt a blind panic, like a bird trapped in a closet, banging helplessly from wall to wall.

Then, unexpectedly, his hand yanked me away from the wall. Without letting go his grip on my throat, he dragged me into the middle of the kitchen and began forcing me down onto my knees.

“If I cannot have this,” he said coldly, “I will at least have you.”

He kicked my legs out from under me, let go of my throat, and I fell to the floor, dazed. He dropped his full weight on top of me, knocking the breath from me, pinning my body to the floor. He squirmed out of his pants, then grabbed my arms in each of his calloused hands.

I felt another touch as hard, against my belly.

But instead of fueling my fear, this only fed my own anger, my rage at this man who refused to leave my life, who was now threatening not just me but my sons.

I shook off my pain and screamed at the top of my voice, forcing him to clap one hand against my mouth.

I brought my free arm down in a fist and pounded at his head, again and again. The blows distracted him from what he was trying to do to me and he had to let go of my mouth as he tried to seize my arm.

But rather than bring my arm down on his head again as he expected, I slipped it under him and grabbed the very thing he sought to shame me with-and with all the strength I could summon, I wrenched it first to one side, then the other.

He howled and let go of me, recoiling in an agony he richly deserved.

I scrambled to my feet, slipping once as I raced to the nearest counter, where I scooped up the first thing I saw: a fork. Mr. Noh came at me again; I threw the fork at him like a spear. He ducked to avoid it. I ran to the sink, where there were dishes soaking from breakfast. I threw a heavy plate at him, which missed its target, then another, which only clipped the side of his head. But this bought me the time I needed to get where I needed to go: the butcher’s block.

I snapped up a carving knife, spun around, and as Mr. Noh lunged forward, enraged, I plunged the five-inch blade into his stomach.

I was surprised how easily it slipped through both cloth and flesh, as if I’d plunged the blade into soft butter. Mr. Noh let out a harrowing scream.

Then I pulled out the knife, and he screamed even louder.

He looked down in shock, his hand going to his side in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood leaking out between his fingers.

I brandished the knife at him and yelled, “Get out! Leave me alone! Or I swear to Heaven, I will kill you as you killed our daughter!”

He saw the hatred and the fury in my face, looked again at the blood gushing from the torn seam in his flesh, and realized that even this brutal act of vengeance would not be his, either.

Still holding his side, he turned and ran out the same back door he had come in by, trailing blood like a wounded animal.

I looked at the bloodstained knife in my hand-felt bile rising in my throat-and lurched over to the sink, where I vomited onto the breakfast dishes.

When I had finished, my legs gave out and I slid into a sitting position on the floor, and I either wept or laughed, I am not certain which.

Jae-sun arrived home not long after to find me upstairs, sitting beside our still-sleeping sons, my dress spattered with what looked at first to him like a child’s red water paint. I was no longer hysterical with fear, but I welcomed his strong and gentle arms around me as I related to him the horrors of the past hour. At the end of my story he was so furious that he wanted to go in search of Mr. Noh himself, and had he done so, I am sure that my former husband would not have survived the encounter. Instead we merely reported the incident to the police, who assured us that my attacker would have to seek medical help somewhere, and this would inevitably lead to his capture.

They were correct. My former husband was arrested at Queen’s Hospital after receiving six stitches in his lower abdomen. The blade of my knife had not found any vital organs, for which I suppose I was grateful. In his second brush with the American legal system, Mr. Noh fared no better than in his first: though this time he was wisely represented by counsel, he was convicted on two counts of “assault and attempt to ravish.” In lieu of jail time, his attorney petitioned the court to merely deport him to Korea, an idea which I, for one, could wholeheartedly endorse. A week and a half later, Jaesun and I stood on Pier 12, watching as my former husband was escorted aboard the SS Tenyo Mara, bound for Yokohama, Japan. We lost sight of him amid the music and merriment accorded a departing vessel, but I did not take my eyes off the gangway until it was pulled back into the ship’s bulwark, and I would not leave the dock until the great ocean liner was far enough away that it appeared to be just another whitecap cresting the peaks of distant waves. Then it vanished like so much foam melting back into the waters, and as it disappeared below the horizon I finally turned, took Jaesun’s hand in mine, and we walked away from the harbor.

Mr. Noh was out of my life-forever. I would neither see nor hear from him again. And now, for the first time since I had fled Waialua for Honoluluindeed, since I had arrived in Hawai’i-I felt as though I could truly live without fear, and begin to enjoy the fruits of my new home.

Today the 1920s are often referred to as Hawai’i’s “glamour days,” though they were considerably less glamorous for those who struggled under the crushing poverty of Kauluwela, Green Block, or Hell’s Half Acre. But for our family, as for many other Korean households in Hawai’i, the twenties were a time of rising prosperity. There were now perhaps a hundred or so Korean families living in Buckle Lane and adjacent Akepo Lanemost of them having fled the plantations for the canneries, even as others abandoned the canneries to become tailors, launderers, shoemakers, or grocers. The twenties were also kind to my Sisters of Kyongsang. As Wise Pearl’s carnation farm flourished, she and Mr. Kam invested more of its profits in additional acres on which they raised barley, to be made into a kind of Korean taffy called yot. Shizu and Beauty’s barbershop, on the corner of Merchant and Bishop Streets, was perhaps not quite as successful, but business was good enough so that Beauty was able to move out of our home and rent for herself and Mary a small one-room walk-up on River Street. Jade Moon collected some modest interest on her investment in the shop, and with that and the two hundred dollars from the kye, she and Mr. Ha were able to purchase another rooming house, smaller than the one in Makiki, this one in Palama.

But even for the poorest of residents, there was still glamour to be had living in Honolulu-not the least of these being Boat Day.

Many “mainlanders” do not realize that Hawai’i is the most isolated group of islands on earth. In the days before air travel, the arrival and departure of ocean liners like our namesake, the SS City of Honolulu, was more than just a welcome novelty-it was a cause for celebration. As one of the great ships approached from around Diamond Head, it would announce itself with three piercing blasts of its whistle; by the time it steamed into the harbor hundreds of Honoluluans had flocked to the foot of Maunakea Street to greet it, whether or not they knew anyone aboard. There were so many men wearing pale linen suits and Panama hats, and women in white dresses and matching parasols, that the wharves looked whiter than the sands of Waikiki. My children and I called it “Hawaiian snow.” Scattered across these snowdrifts were summery eruptions of color: Japanese and Hawaiian women selling leis of red ginger, yellow orchids, green maile, pink plumeria, and golden ‘ilima blossoms. Each lei seller had dozens of stringed flowers draped like a hanging garden over her arm. Hula girls swayed to the music of the Royal Hawaiian Band, which serenaded the arriving passengers with “Hawai’i Pono’i.” It was always pleasing to see the smiles of the visitors as they took their first breaths of tropic air and bowed their heads to accept the fragrant, welcoming leis. “This is indeed a special place we live in,” I would tell my keiki, “that people travel from so far to visit us.”

Along with Boat Days, another source of free recreation for our family was the occasional Sunday spent at the beach.

For decades, the district of Waikiki had been merely a patchwork of rice paddies and taro patches, foul-smelling duck ponds and mosquito-ridden marshes, prone to flooding during heavy rains. It might have stayed that way forever but for the dazzling jewel of a beach that graced its south shore, like a diamond necklace hung around the neck of a plow horse. But there was money to be made from that necklace, and in 1921, dredging began on a canal to divert the three ancient streams emptying into the floodplain. The result was a new, dry Waikiki, where homes both large and small, garden apartments, hotels, and a variety of concessions-even an amusement park-now replaced the old farms and marshes.

Back then there were still only a handful of hotels on the sand, the largest being the Moana Hotel. At the height of the tourist season-winter and summer-Waikiki Beach was crowded with visitors, but during the offseason there was more room for families like ours, from less affluent parts of the city, and my family and I would often enjoy the beach in the company of my Korean “sisters” and their families. In the fashion (and law) of the day, the men wore one-piece gray woolen swimsuits and the women were even more ensheathed, in knee-length bloomers and blouses with absurdly long sleeves. But we had no idea at the time how ridiculous we looked, and spent the day swimming and picnicking, listening to the soft, low beat of Korean hourglass drums played by Mr. Ha, or singing along to the sweet, melancholy melody of our nation’s most beloved folk song:

Arirang, Arirang
Walking over the peak at Arirang,
The sorrows in my heart as many as the stars in the sky.

Yet there was no real sorrow in us as we sang it, only a wistful nostalgia for a homeland that was slowly being supplanted by our new life in Hawai’i.

By this time Wise Pearl’s keiki numbered four, while jade Moon struggled to keep her brood of five out of trouble on the beach. The widowed Beauty still had only Mary, who was fast growing into a lovely girl with a heart-shaped face and sparkling brown eyes.

Harold, now three and a half years old, loved the water and couldn’t spend enough time swimming in the surf, but Grace, almost six, was mortally afraid of the ocean and recoiled from the foaming waves lapping up the beach as if from the spittle of a rabid dog. Little Charlie was indifferent to the water, more interested in building sand castles, which he then would demolish with the zeal of a wrecking crew. “Boom! Boom! Boom!” he declared as his fist shattered a cylindrical tower the same shape as his sand pail. “No roof! No roof!”

Harry, meanwhile, had become captivated by the distant figures-out beyond the first shore break-who seemed to be standing atop the billowing waves, riding them in to shore: “Mama, how are those men doing that? ”

“They call that `surfing.’ Look closely and you can see the men standing on long boards, like those over there.” I pointed to the towering fifteen-foot surf boards propped up against the wall of the Moana Hotel, down the beach.

Mesmerized, Harry gazed out at the surfers and declared, “I want to do that.”

“Perhaps when you are older,” I said.

“I want to learn now!”

“You are too small. A wave like that would toss you so high into the air you’d never come down!”

Harry regarded me skeptically. “No, I wouldn’t. Would I?”

“Well … maybe not never.”

He looked smug. “Didn’t think so.”

“You might come down after six or seven days. But you know, there’s nothing to eat or drink up there. You’d come back pretty hungry and thirsty.”

That seemed to sober him and, chastened, he went back to playing in the placid waters closer to shore.

I tried to coax Grace into the water but she would venture no farther than ankle-deep. In truth, despite all the love Jae-sun and I had lavished on her, Grace seemed to suffer from many of the same insecurities I had been plagued with as a child. Even after a year in school, her teachers said she was anxious and “lacked confidence.” Perhaps it was an inherited characteristic. But as I had succeeded in overcoming my fears, I was determined to help Grace do the same.