Horror in Paradise (2 page)

University of Hawaii

Marjorie Sinclair

Marjorie Sinclair is the author of two important novels:
Kona
(1947) and
The Wild Wind
(1950). These reflect life in Hawaii just before and after Pearl Harbor. She has also published poetry, biography and translations of poetry from China, Japan, and Polynesia.

Mrs. Sinclair, educated at Mills College, first came to Hawaii in 1935. She married the late Gregg M. Sinclair, president of the University. After his death in 1976 she married Leon Edel, author and educator. In the islands she is well known for her “ghost stories,” of which “The Girl in the Red Gauze Blouse” is an outstanding example.

The lives of children are

Dangerous to their parents . . .

Louis Simpson

ON Tuesdays and Saturdays I always go to visit Tommy, my small son. He lives in a special school where children with his kinds of problems are trained. It is six blocks from our house. I always walk, even in the driving wind and rain. I really prefer to walk in wind and rain. They prepare me.

When I went this morning, I noticed a girl ahead of me. I don’t often pay particular attention to casual persons—especially on the way to Tommy’s. This girl, however, walked with a kind of arrogance which was almost a stately dance. Her brown hair fell to the waist; straight and shin
ing, rippling slightly as she moved. She wore tight blue jeans and a red gauze blouse which was torn over one shoulder. On her feet were rubber zori. Her heels were cracked and dirty. Her appearance was quite typical of many girls in Honolulu, but her manner marked her. It was the swagger—with a touch of anger. She might indeed, three or four generations ago, have been a young chiefess, used to having her wishes granted immediately.

When the girl reached Tommy’s school, she paused at the walk leading to the front door. I waited. I did not want to have to face her. I never wanted to see anybody before going to Tommy. Besides, my feelings for some unexplained reason ran strong. It was as if she had said something rude or had done something which inflamed me. My attitude was quite senseless and a little frightening. I had never even seen her before! And to have it happen before visiting Tommy—just seeing him was enough disturbance for any day.

I was relieved when she started on her way again. I turned up the walk to the thick glass doors of the school. At the entrance I looked back to see where she had gone. She was nowhere in sight. It was a quite sudden disappearance, especially as I could see a good two or three blocks down the street. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

Tommy stood, as usual, in a corner of his airy bedroom. His arms, tightly held to his side, seemed thinner than I remembered. His small face was pale, his eyes and mouth pulled in like an old woman’s. He looked shriveled and unwell. He had never been a rosy, plump child; he was thin from babyhood, and his skin had a dry-leaf pallor. I sat on the floor in front of him and spoke his name quietly over and over again. Occasionally when I did this, his lips would tremble or his fingers reach very slightly in my direction. Out of some dark place inside came a vague impulse to touch someone—his mother, if he understood I was his mother. Or what a mother was. At least he had an impulse—I had touched something in him. You may imagine how I waited for these moments.

Today, however, he remained impassive. He looked at me for three or four minutes. He looked—but it was more as if I wasn’t there. Finally he turned to the window. I could see only his back. Above him tinkled the wind chimes I had bought for his birthday. I asked him to listen to the music. His back stiffened. I stood up and went to his small rocking chair. He loved the chair and would rock for hours on end, so they told me. I began to rock. It was comforting. Just the movement soothed fear and anxiety. Finally I tiptoed from the room. His teacher always laughed at me for tiptoeing. But I had no desire to disturb Tommy—wherever he was in his dark place.

In the hall the teacher was waiting for me. She said he had spoken some words during the week. His appetite was not good, but he hadn’t lost weight. “He’s coming along nicely” were always her parting words.

I left the school in my usual devastated condition. Inevitably I went home from these meetings to prepare a miserable dinner for Tom and myself and to spend the evening drinking wine in front of the TV. Tom almost never asked about Tommy. I imagine my mood told him all he could bear. He seldom went to see the little boy; and he would never go with me. We had not yet been able to talk in any direct way about our child, to ask why we should have had such a little boy—to discuss the meaning of Tommy in our lives. The doctors and teachers tried to encourage us about him. But whenever we attempted to talk, we both became angry. It had been this way for almost three years—Tommy would soon be five.

I had not found the courage to tell Tom what I now recognized as a truth—that Tommy would never be more than he was. It is a truth of the kind that one is horrified to reveal—one runs away from it. At times now, the child no longer seemed pathetic to me. He was simply a sad grotesque little human being, a creature which shouldn’t have been born. At moments I hated him. I hated him because I had created him—I had given birth to a distorted, unnatural creature. The child’s existence both accused and imprisoned me. One has a right, I said defiantly to myself, to hate one’s own creation, especially when it is unnatural and so frighteningly sad. Furthermore, the hate filled me with guilt. I told myself over and over that I was a mother without feeling to hate a damaged little boy who was flesh of my flesh. Flesh of my flesh, those ancient words appalled me . . . How much Tom and I had wanted to have little Tommy!

A few days after I saw the girl in the red gauze blouse—her image remained in my mind—I had a dream about Tommy. One of the strangest and most frightening dreams I ever had. He was a Hawaiian child. Of course in actuality he was part Hawaiian—from Tom. And I had much wanted a Hawaiian child. In the dream he was a brown-skinned little boy whose head had grown to a monstrous size. He had to hold it up with his small hands. Like an overripe melon. Tommy lived on a sandy beach where low-growing trees shaded him from the hot sun. Naupaka and other shrubs grew lushly along the edge of the sand. Tides pushed up, leaving ragged lines of coral rubble from the sea. This little landscape was very sharp and clear like a miniature painting. Between the shrubs and the coral rubble Tommy had a very small spot to sleep, but it was hard for him to find a place for his monstrous head. In the shifting fashion of dreams, we were suddenly high on the lava slope of the mountain behind the beach. There were scrubby trees, and many people were milling about. Tommy was walking among them when suddenly he cried out. I rushed to him. His great head had broken like an egg, and the blood drifted out like a piece of red gauze. I screamed and woke up. I couldn’t stop trembling, and Tom shook me gently. I told him I had a dream but couldn’t talk about it. He put his arms around me and pulled my head onto his shoulders . . . He let me cry there softly and stroked my hair. I kissed his cheek in relief and gratitude.

For a while after this dream I could not bring myself to see Tommy. The large head of the dream reminded me by contrast of his babyhood, when everyone had admired the shape of his head and the beautiful proportion of his little body, the long slenderness of his fingers. This was before we knew about his trouble. I remembered the feel of that little head in my hand and how deeply and tenderly I loved him. I loved him even more because he seemed so frail.

There was another reason I loved him in this special way. He had something I didn’t, I couldn’t have. Something I wanted more than anything. He had a share of his father’s Hawaiian blood. I was one of those persons who romantically yearn for the purity and directness of a people close to the grass and earth, to the sea and mountain. I had grown up in miles of pavement and apartments. And I came to Hawaii to escape from those drab stretches of cement, steel, glass. I longed for mountain areas where I could be lost in the foliage of forests, hearing only the birds, the wind, and the water. It was, I thought, almost magic that I should meet Tom and marry him. He had a big sprawling family which welcomed me. I felt at home in a world which had always been, I thought, beyond my reach. Then came the baby. The baby established me, I was part of this world I wanted. I had given my flesh to it.

My flesh—in horrible distortion. The dream of the monstrous head lingered. I relived it every day; I saw the head break, I saw red float out. And I wondered why the dream had in this oblique fashion connected Tommy with that handsome girl in the red gauze blouse.

Gary, a friend of Tom’s, invited us one Sunday to go out on his catamaran. I packed a lunch and we sailed out of the yacht harbor on a blue-green sea. I settled myself comfortably on the trampoline and let the men handle the boat. Gary sailed expertly through the reef channel and out into the open choppy water. The men talked. I watched the vaporous clouds and the green mountains. The wind stroked my arms and legs. I was sleepy and closed my eyes.

When I awoke I saw the girl leaning against the mast, her long hair moving in the wind like seaweed in the water. I wondered if I had somehow missed the fact the Gary had brought a friend. The girl was handsome—a straight nose, full lips, and fine tan skin. Her eyes, a dark brown, bulged slightly and seemed fixed on a far-off place. Then I saw her blouse. It was red gauze. I told myself in panic that I must still be asleep. Yet I saw her very clearly, and I could hear Gary and Tom talking and the water rushing along the side of the boat. I could even feel the warmth of the sun on my body. Suddenly the men swung the boom to change tack.

The movement did not disturb the girl—the boom seemed to pass right through her. Her gauze blouse hovered like a brilliant flame. I pounded my hand lightly on the trampoline to make sure I felt the rough texture of the fabric. I pressed my cheeks and forehead. I was awake and everything was real. She remained there against the mast, motionless, her eyes fixed. I got up on my knees and started to move toward her. Gary saw me and shouted, “What about lunch?”

Mechanically I reached for the lunch basket and opened it. When I looked again at the mast, the girl was gone. A moment of anxiety struck me—was she a warning? Was Tommy ill? Then I scolded myself. I didn’t believe in such things; I didn’t believe in apparitions or omens. Tom shouted, “What are you waiting for?” I unpacked the sushi and barbecued chicken. The men moved toward me on the trampoline. Tom looked at my face. “Something wrong?”

“Yes,” I said and tried to smile. “I saw a ghost.”

“That’s possible,” Gary said. “You’re not the first one. This boat has its own ghost—it was here when I bought it”

“What kind of ghost?” My breath faltered.

“I’m not sure. I never saw it. Somebody said a girl. There was some kind of accident with the first owner.”

I forced myself to pass the chicken around and to pour the wine in paper cups. I told myself to be calm. But the rest of the trip was agony—a kind of nightmare in broad daylight and on the blue of the sea.

The next day Tommy’s teacher called. She told me he wouldn’t eat. The doctor had said that they might have to force-feed him. “But we don’t know if he will stand it. He is quite rigid and unyielding, yet at the same time passive.” I told his teacher I would come.

He was lying on his bed. His pale face made his eyes and hair seem even darker. He was utterly listless and took no notice of my presence. There was not even the usual stiffening. I touched his hand. He seemed to have traveled beyond human hope into a hibernating animal world. Perhaps it was a relief to him. I wished suddenly—with horror—that he could die. My mouth went dry and chalky. It was the first time I had admitted the idea of his death. But I knew it had lain dormant in a recess of my brain. Death would be release. For the child—for Tom, for me. But death cannot be made to come. His little heart was young and strong. He might try to starve himself. But medicine would cope with this small organism. I shocked myself—Tommy an organism. I trembled and tears flooded my eyes. The teacher patted me on the shoulder. “They go through all kinds of stages.”

I knelt by the bed and stroked his forehead. It seemed cold. He looked at me—his eyes were empty, almost like eyes which are all pupil, a dark hole.

The teacher said, “We have recently found him curled up under his bed or in a closet, like a little animal in a lair.”

“I don’t want him to go to a hospital,” I said. “I hope you can take care of him here.”

“He’s no care. He just lies here and submits to anything we do for him—except eating. Most of his stiffness and stubbornness have gone.”

“Maybe he is wiser than we are.”

The teacher was puzzled and faintly shocked at something she didn’t want to grasp in my words.

I walked from the school into the hot July sun. I felt all shriveled up. It was as if my body had never carried the child lying on that bed. As if I were an aged woman carrying only death in me. I had given birth to death. If only he could die. And then, intruding on my despair, coming down the street, I saw the girl in the red gauze blouse. She was walking with a boyfriend and they held hands.

I watched as she went alone into Tommy’s school. The friend waited near the front steps. In about five minutes she returned. She was smiling. Her smile seemed to me strange and somehow sinister. He took her arm. I followed them.