Moloka'i (19 page)

Chapter 9

I

t was now painfully evident that Sister Victor’s “moods” seemed to have an almost gravitational pull on Catherine, who felt the currents of her own thoughts drawn in a dark tide toward Victor’s depression and instability. Hers was a soul in torment and Catherine could not abandon her—but the next time she sought a drinking companion Catherine declined, urging her friend to join her in prayer instead. On that occasion and a few others they knelt together in the chapel, in private or shared devotions; but as far as Catherine could see, to no visible effect.

Catherine’s first confession after her latenight swim brought a stunned silence from Father Wendelin, followed by a soft chuckle. “Ah, Sister,” he said, “it’s the sweet wines one has to be wary of.” He recommended zinfandel: “It has a bit of an edge to it.” Father Wendelin shared Catherine’s concern for Sister Victor, but as often as he extended a hand to the troubled sister it was rejected. And there was only so far Catherine could go without herself falling into the abyss.

Of more immediate concern to Catherine was the problem now facing Mother Marianne: whether Haleola, not a blood relative and a living embodiment of Hawai'i’s pagan past, should be permitted to continue visiting Rachel at Bishop Home. It deeply disturbed Mother that such a woman should have any influence over one of her charges, but Catherine knew how much Haleola cared for Rachel and argued that her occasional presence might discourage the girl from running away again. “And if we are to bar all remnants of paganism from the Home,” she went on, emboldened, “then I assume we shall not be putting up a Christmas tree this year.”

“Christmas trees,” Mother replied evenly, “do not spout heathen nonsense.” She was adamant: Haleola Nua was not to be allowed back onto the convent grounds.

Catherine could not disobey her Mother Superior, and Haleola was henceforth barred from Bishop Home.

But the Reverend Mother had said nothing about Rachel meeting Haleola
outside
convent grounds, and thereafter, by an odd coincidence, whenever Catherine took a group of girls to the beach, or to the
pali,
or exploring tide pools, Haleola just happened to be there, doing those very things.

On one such excursion—to a spooky sea cave along the shore—Rachel told her friends about the giant eel, Keko'ona, and his battle with brave Ku'ula. She quickly became a rollicking success as a teller of tales on black stormy nights. For Rachel, Haleola’s tales of the goddess Pele and the demigod M
ui spoke of another world—a large, exciting, colorful world both far away and all around them. The bright pagodas of Japan, the Great Barrier Reef, China and San Francisco, all seemed impossibly remote now—
kapu,
forbidden. But these giants of Hawai'i’s past, straddling mountains and snaring the sun with rope, took the place of the
kapu
lands in Rachel’s imagination.

Josephina, the little girl who slept all day, confounded all expectations by making a complete recovery and was back playing tops and marbles with the other girls by spring; while another girl, Mary, who had seemed the picture of health, suddenly came down with pleurisy and was gone within a week. A rumor spread that her ghost was haunting the dispensary, and for a week and a half the younger girls scuttled past the building amid a flurry of whispers and a tingle of chicken skin. Then, having held on to Mary for just a little while longer, the girls quietly put the rumor to rest, and Mary with it.

Summer brought the arrival of Rachel’s old crony from Kalihi, Francine, who smuggled in candy and chewing gum the like of which could not be found at the Kalaupapa Store. With summer also came more and longer trips to the beach and a lassitude that seemed to infect everyone when it came to chores, even the sisters. On one such lazy day Mother Marianne personally led an expedition into one of the lush little valleys tucked into the
pali,
where the girls cooled off in the spray of a waterfall and picked newly ripened breadfruit, which the convent’s cook made into a fine
poi
.

Not long after, Rachel received a parcel mailed all the way from Buenos Aires, inside which was a beautiful sienna-skinned doll in a bright yellow flamenco costume. The accompanying letter from Papa was short but welcome; he would always recite a new chantey he’d heard, or describe a port he had just visited, and a month did not go by without at least a postcard from some exotic corner of the earth.

But letters from Mama were becoming far less frequent. At first Rachel got something from home nearly every week, and that same day Rachel would sit down to compose a reply:

Dear Mama,

Today we went to the beach and I swam and saw lots of fish and the biggest turtle ever. I swallowed a lot of water and got sick. Sister Catherine says it’s O.K. to throw up if you really have to. Do you think so?

But gradually Mama’s letters went from once a week to one every two weeks to once a month, and then . . . once in a while. When two months went by without any letter from Mama, Rachel dropped her a note on the pretext of telling her about the girls’ trip to the sea cave; but no reply came on the next steamer, or the one after that. Rachel wrote again, a bit more plaintively this time.

A week later, Rachel’s neatly lettered envelope came back to her with a red, rubber-stamped frown across its face:
MOVED, NO FORWARDING ADDRESS
.

Rachel must have stared at it for ten whole minutes. She convinced herself it was just a mistake and prepared a new envelope, making absolutely sure she had copied the address correctly, then re-mailed the letter.

A week later, it too bounced back like a boomerang, an ink smudge obliterating Rachel’s old address in Honolulu.

Was it true? Had her family moved out of their little house two blocks from Queen Emma Street? She waited for a letter from Mama that would explain everything, give her their new address, tell her about their new home.

It never came. Rachel breathed in its absence and felt increasingly anxious, restless, afraid. Week after week her only letters came from Papa; but where once she thrilled to see the colorful stamps of Argentina or New Zealand or Hong Kong, now she wanted nothing so desperately as a Honolulu postmark and one of the familiar brown portraits of King Kal
kaua, or the violet likeness of Queen Liliu'oklani (now branded with the words PROVISIONAL GOVT).

But the only such stamps she saw were on letters received by other girls, and when yet another Steamer Day passed with nothing for Rachel—and she noticed, on Hazel’s bed, an envelope with a return address on O'ahu—Rachel waited until no one was looking, and stole it. She read it over twice, pretending it had been written to her, then hid it under the mattress of her bed.

She was found out quickly enough and sent to bed without supper. Soon she was stealing other things: one of Emily’s dolls, a family photograph from another girl’s bedstead. Each time the theft was discovered and the culprit obvious; Rachel regularly felt the sting of Sister Albina’s ruler across her knuckles.

She and Francine resumed their truant ways, playing hooky to body-surf at Papaloa as they had once cooled off in Kalihi Bay. After three or four whacks of the ruler, Francine was deterred from further truancy, but not Rachel.

Sister Catherine was baffled by her behavior. “Rachel, what on earth has gotten into you?” she asked, but Rachel would just shrug and say, “Nothing”—or angrily declare it was none of her business, and to leave her alone!

Concerned, Catherine wrote to Rachel’s mother, asking if there had been any bad news from home that might have disturbed Rachel. It went out on Thursday’s steamer, and Catherine was startled to see it come right back the following week, stamped with lettering as red as leprous sores:
MOVED, NO FORWARDING ADDRESS
.

The words cut Catherine nearly as deeply as they had Rachel.

While Rachel was in school she peeked inside the old cigar box of Pono’s in which Rachel kept her letters from home. The peek sadly confirmed Catherine’s suspicions.

The next day, during chores, Catherine took Rachel aside and led her, quite to Rachel’s astonishment, to a back door at St. Elizabeth’s Convent. Rachel hesitated on the threshold. “I—I’m not supposed to go in there.”

“I know,” Catherine said, and opened the door for her.

Ushering Rachel into her spartan quarters, Catherine confided, “I’m quite sure Mother would punish me for this.” A smile passed between them at this flaunted
kapu
. Catherine sat on her bed, motioning Rachel to join her.

“It’s good sometimes, isn’t it,” Catherine said, “being punished? When you think you’ve done something wrong. Maybe when you don’t know
what
you’ve done wrong.”

Rachel stared at her blankly. Catherine reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out the envelope she had mailed to Dorothy Kalama, now defaced by mocking words, and let it drop like a leaf onto the bed.

Rachel saw what it was. Tears blinded her. All at once her shoulders hunched, her body quaked with grief. Catherine took her in her arms and held her close, a shudder of loss and shame passing from Rachel’s body into Catherine’s, becoming Catherine’s loss too, Catherine’s shame. She stroked Rachel’s hair and told her it was all right, told her it wasn’t her fault. Rachel buried her face in the sister’s robe, breathed in the laundered scent of the wool, felt the beating of their shared heart, and wanted never to let go.

O

n a gloomy, windy morning in October, Rachel, woolgathering as she gazed out the schoolhouse window, was startled and chagrined to hear her name called aloud. With not the faintest idea what was being discussed, she straightened in her seat, hoping to make up for in posture what she lacked in particulars. Sister Leopoldina stood in the rectangle of the doorway. “Rachel, you’re excused for the day,” the teacher announced. “Please go with the sister and mind her as you would me.” Confused, Rachel followed Leopoldina out of the schoolroom. Was she being punished? For what? She hadn’t stolen anything lately—well, nothing important, just a pencil, from . . .

Oh
no,
she remembered. A week ago, when Mother had scolded her for truancy, Rachel had snatched a pencil, a nice red one, off the nun’s desk when her back was turned. Had Mother discovered it missing? Had she known all along?

“It’s a lovely day for a walk, don’t you think?” Leopoldina asked, leading Rachel off the convent grounds. They strolled past the Protestant church and the Kalaupapa Store toward the wharf where a small crowd had gathered to meet rowboats off the steamer
Lehua
, and now Rachel realized what was happening. She was being sent away again! As punishment, like at Kalihi. But to where? It wasn’t fair, she had friends here, and an aunt—she wouldn’t go! She thought suddenly of her dolls, and was about to run back to Bishop Home to get them—they couldn’t begrudge her that, could they?—when she saw a stocky figure walking toward her, a broad grin on his tanned face, and all of Rachel’s fears dissolved in an instant, like salt in water.

“Papa!” she cried at the top of her voice, racing frantically down the wharf to Leopoldina’s great amusement.

“ ’Ey, little girl. Catch!” He feigned throwing his duffel bag to her, she laughed, and then she was in his arms, feeling the comforting bulk of him for the first time in two years. And if this was in violation of settlement regulations, Ambrose Hutchison, standing nearby, was perhaps too distracted by his duties to raise an objection.

They laughed and cried and held one another, and finally Henry found his voice again. “I missed you so much, baby girl,” he said softly.

“I missed you, too, Papa. I saved all your letters.” She looked around, looked back at the launch bobbing near the pier. “Where’s Mama? Is she still on the boat?”

Henry’s smiled dimmed a little. “Mama couldn’t make it, baby. But she sends all her love.”