Honolulu (8 page)

“You see difference?” she asked.

“I see,” I told her. “Thank you.”

“No mention,” she said with a smile. “You like flan?”

“What is that?”

“It’s ono, you like. I bring.” Minutes later she carried over a bowl of delicious custard unlike any I had tasted in Korea. I thanked her again, then spent the next several hours scrubbing, pounding, and wringing my husband’s work clothes until the last drops of red were squeezed from them and I was able to string them out on the clothesline to dry.

In the midst of this I heard the piercing blast of a steam whistle, but thought nothing of it; I merely assumed a train was passing by and continued with my washing. Not long afterward, my husband returned from the fields. I quickly learned that the workday ended at four-thirty in the afternoon and, rather than complimenting me on the fine job I’d done on his clothes, Mr. Noh glared at me and demanded to know why dinner wasn’t ready. I scrambled to throw something together from what little I found in the kitchen, cooking a pot of rice on the kerosene stove and throwing in some wine to flavor it. When the rice was ready, I served it along with some of the kimchi and the sardines. Mr. Noh looked at his plate as if at some abomination of nature, but he did eat it, in much the same way I once ate a bug on a dare from my brothers.

At eight o’clock the steam whistle sounded again, this time signaling it was time for “lights out” in half an hour. In bed I lay beside my husband, only to have him grope me tiredly, then doze off. I turned over on my side and closed my eyes. I did not cry myself to sleep this night; I was too numb with exhaustion.

The whistle blew again at four-thirty the next morning, waking me from a deep sleep into a recurring nightmare. Mr. Noh was furious that I was not already up and preparing his breakfast: “How is a man sup posed to work in the fields all day without a proper meal to begin it!” he raged. He snapped up the hand-wound alarm clock beside our bed-again, something I had never seen before, much less known what to do with-and threw it in my direction. I jumped as the clock flew past me and into a wall, where it expired with a jangled ring. I rushed to fix a hurried breakfast of leftover rice and kimchi. My husband ate it silently, then on his way out barked, “For God’s sake get some decent grub in here!”

I watched him leave camp with the other men, marching to the fields like a ragtag army uniformed in denim pants, checkered shirts, and boots. Most wore a variety of straw hats; a few were bare-headed. To my surprise, I saw several women-bundled up in long-sleeved blouses and gathered skirts, heads covered by bonnets or wide-brimmed hats-heading into the fields as well.

Even a foolish girl from a far land could intuit the meaning of “grub,” so I wasted no time in getting to the plantation store. I was disappointed to find that they didn’t carry much in the way of fresh produce, but I used a large portion of my remaining money to purchase more rice, soy sauce, some tinned beef, honey and sesame oil to make rice cakes, and a fresh loin of pork that I decided to make for dinner that night. The store owner, Mr. Fujioka, asked me if I wanted to “charge” them on my “bango, “but since I hadn’t the faintest idea what either word meant I just shook my head and handed him the cash.

On my way back I was heartened to see children running and playing through the camps, which made them seem more like a place where people lived and not merely labored. Passing through the Japanese camp, I encountered a peddler selling fresh vegetables and I eagerly bought a head of cabbage, green onion, garlic, ginger, and red peppers to make fresh kimchi. This left me with less than a dollar in cash, but at least we would have food on the table.

After I stocked our pantry, I was feeling lonely and sought out jade Moon-as inappropriate as she may have been as a potential source of comfort. But when I knocked on the door of her bungalow there was no answer, and I saw no sign of her in her yard. Had she run away, as I wished I could?

I went home, pressed Mr. Noh’s clothes, and washed my own laundry after nine days at sea. After that I began preparing dinner, determined to make up for the pathetic meal I had served last night. I made bulgogi”fire beef,” though pork worked just as well. I cut the pork loin into thin slices and steeped them in soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, chili pepper, and red pepper paste. As the meat marinated I cooked a pot of rice, another pot of bean-curd soup, and prepared kimchi for fermenting. The minute the four-thirty whistle blew I began grilling the marinated pork slices.

When my husband came home to a house filled with the smells of cooking pork and rice, his after-work sullenness evaporated like water on a skillet. He sat down to dinner and, as was customary, I humbly belittled the meal I had spent so much time preparing: “Please forgive me, as I am not a very good cook. I hope you will not be too disappointed.” I doubted he would be, but just to be safe, I poured him a bowl of rice wine, which he quickly drained.

After a few bites of meat he looked up and declared, “This is excellent.” He took another bite and actually smiled. “I have not had bulgogi this good since I left Pyongyang.” I stood basking in his praise, then he noticed that I had not set a place for myself. “Come. Sit. Eat.”

I must have betrayed my surprise at the invitation. My husband sighed and said, a bit reprovingly, “We are not in Korea any longer. In America, men and women sit at the same table and eat together. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing-it just is. Please. Sit down.”

I got myself a plate, spoon, and chopsticks, and sat down at the same table as my husband. Tentatively I helped myself to some rice and a slice of pork-but this all felt so strange. What were men and women supposed to do under these circumstances? Nervously I broke the customary silence by asking, “You are from Pyongyang?” This was in the north, a world away from Pojogae.

He poured himself another bowl of rice wine and nodded. “I left there in the Year of the Snake-1905. I was a soldier, but those were bad times for the army. We never had enough to eat and were reduced to foraging off the land. One day I saw a notice that said workers were needed at sugar plantations in a place called Hawai’i. I deserted the army as it had deserted me, made my way to the nearest port, and shipped out on the next boat to Honolulu.”

I didn’t know whether it was the food or wine or both that was making him so suddenly voluble, but I found that the more he talked the more I liked him. “So you have been at Waialua for ten years?”

“No, no. I started at ‘Ewa Plantation, near Honolulu. It was a terrible place. The head Luna was a despot of a Frenchman. He would curse at us, and if we weren’t working fast enough for him, he would sit smugly on his horse and snap a whip at us. As if we were slaves, or bridled horses.”

`Aigo, “I said.

“When my contract at ‘Ewa expired, I went to the island of Kaua’i and worked at Makaweli Plantation. It was even worse. At least at ‘Ewa if you worked, you got paid. At Makaweli they had thepoho system.”

“The what?”

“If the Luna didn’t like the way you were cutting the cane, or if you left a small piece on the ground, he’d say, `You poho’-Hawaiian for `out of luck.’ He’d take money out of your wages. Fifty cents, five dollars, as much as he liked. And that money went straight into his back pocket. Here we were, making eighteen dollars a month, and he had to steal from us?” He shook his head in disgust.

“After that I worked for a while at Pu’unene Plantation on Maui. At Pu’unene I heard that Waialua was a good place to work, so I came back to O’ahu. They do treat you well here, and the housing is better than most. But the pay is still a joke. Ten years later and I still only make twenty dollars a month, including bonuses. Nobody gets rich here except the bosses.” He downed the rest of the wine, then smiled unhappily. “Guess I’m just poho, eh?”

Twenty dollars a month sounded like a lot to me, but clearly he didn’t agree. Still, after ten years, I assumed he must have saved up a fair amount … perhaps even enough for me to go to school, though I was not about to broach that subject yet.

He yawned and pushed away from the table. “A fine meal,” he said, “but I’m very tired.” He went straight to bed and was dead asleep in minutes. With two hours until lights out, I opened my luggage and took out my copy of Diary of a Sightseeing Tour of Kwanbuk. As Mr. Noh snored away in the bedroom, I sat in the living room and, by the sallow light of the kerosene lamp, reread portions of LadyUiyudang’s travels. It cheered me; in a way I felt as though I were following in her adventurous footsteps. I thought of Evening Rose, wondering where my friend was this night, praying she was safe. I wondered what Blossom and Mother were doing. I took out my writing paper and pen and began composing a letter to Joyful Day, careful to paint as rosy a picture of my circumstances as possible:

Honorable Elder Brother,

It is with great pleasure that I can inform you I am arrived safely in Hawaii. The journey here was a pleasant one. My husband and I were married in a ceremony beside the ocean and have moved into our lovely new home, which is situated amid much natural splendor. Hawaii is truly as beautiful a place as I had been told, and my life here is [here I paused in thought, at last continuing:] like nothing I could have imagined in Korea …

As I wrote I saw my family’s faces so clearly, and missed them all the more keenly. I felt somewhat guilty for the flagrant exaggerations, if not outright lies, I was telling them; but at the end I was able to append at least one honest line:

Tell little sister-in-law that there is no tropical bud here more beautiful than my Blossom.

Smiling, I folded the letter and slipped it into an envelope, which I then addressed. For the first time since coming to Hawai’i, I began to hope that perhaps things were going to work out after all.

Life on the plantation was hard, but once I settled into a routine it became tolerable. I accustomed myself to rising at three in the morning, ironing my husband’s clothes, then preparing his breakfast in time for the 4:30 A.M. whistle, as well as his lunch to take with him into the fields. I would then clean the house, attack the laundry (a pair of trousers could be worn no more than twice before it mummified), or tend the vegetable garden I started in our yard-I planted seeds for red peppers, carrots, lettuce, cabbage, and garlic.

But there were things I could get only at the plantation store, and all I had left was fifty cents. I told my husband I needed to buy more groceries, but instead of giving me cash he said, “Just charge it to my bango.” Again this mystifying phrase. “I am woefully ignorant of this word,” I admitted. He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a small brass medallion that hung like a necklace around his neck. “My worker number,” he said, showing me where the medallion was stamped with the numerals 2989. “You can buy food and the cost will be deducted from my wages.” I thanked him and committed the number to memory.

That day I went to the store and gathered an armful of canned goods and raw beef, but when I gave Mr. Fujioka my husband’s number, he frowned: “Is that Noh’s bango?”

“Yes.”

“You are Mrs. Noh?”

This brought me up short for a moment. Korean women retain their family names even after marriage, though one cannot call them “maiden” names as they are called in America: in Korea I would be known as “Mrs. Pak,” wife of Mr. Noh.

So I simply replied, “I am Mr. Noh’s wife.”

“He owes me ten dollars he hasn’t made good on. When he pays up, then you can buy more. Not until then.” He snapped up the items I had set aside and began reshelving them.

Embarrassed, I didn’t know what to say, so I just left.

When my husband came home from work and I told him what happened, he grimaced and said, “That damned Jap! He likes to give Koreans a bad time, that’s all. Just make do until payday,” he directed, and sat down for supper.

I scrimped as best I could, stretching out our dwindling supply of rice, and with my few remaining coins I bought the cheapest items I could find at the plantation store: sardines were only five cents a tin, bread a penny a loaf, and aku, a tasty local fish, was available at three to five cents per pound. Marisol also kindly gave me some eggs from their chicken coop and cabbage from her garden.

But the larder was looking bare indeed when one Saturday morning before work Mr. Noh announced, “Payday today. I’ll be home a little latersix, maybe seven o’clock.” I assumed it took that long to disburse wages to the thousands of the plantation’s laborers. Relieved, I scraped together a meager dinner of bean paste, kimchi, and rice that could simmer in its pot until Mr. Noh came home.

The four-thirty whistle blew and soon the other men in our camp came home with smiles on their faces and gold coins jingling in their pockets. My husband was not among them, but I didn’t worry since he had told me he would be late.

I waited for him on the porch, watching the dusty parade of workers straggling home, and took note of one of the women among them. Her face shaded by the wide brim of a straw hat, her eyes downcast, she plodded along with the same bone-weary posture as the men. She had almost shuffled past me when I recognized the long face and sharp features, nearly masked by a veil of red dust. It was jade Moon.

So startled was I that I called out her name, a terrible breach of etiquette. She looked up, dismayed and embarrassed that I had seen her.

She stopped, the other laborers continuing on around her like the waters of a river flowing around a mired tree branch. With a mirthless smile on her face, she held up a benro bag in a hand covered with a kind of work mitten. “An amusing sight, eh?” she called to me. “How elegant is the city girl from Seoul! How fashionably she dresses.” She lifted a leg to show the calf-high boots hiding under her skirt. “The latest in ladies’ footwear! Are you not envious?”

I hurried down the porch steps and to her side. “I looked for you at your house, but it never occurred to me you were working in the fields!”

“It would not have occurred to me, either,” she said with a sigh, “three days ago.”