“Of course.”
Louisa led them outside, where they hurried through the downpour to the modest cottage that served as a convent. The other Sisters of St. Francis were all asleep but for the Home’s matron, Sister Helena Haas; a sliver of light peeked out from under her door as she worked into the night. Louisa found Catherine a fresh habit, then brought her to a small, spartan room at the end of the corridor.
“Sleep well, Sister. Mass begins at six, if you care to join us.”
“Thank you, I will.”
Louisa left. Catherine sighed and walked to the room’s single window. Out there, across the water, behind a wall of storm clouds, Ruth’s parents on Moloka'i were mourning the loss of their daughter, hoping she would find a good home. Catherine felt something of the same emotions. She took off the girl’s dress, slipped on her tiny pajamas, then climbed into bed beside her. She gave her a tender kiss on the head and said softly, “I love you, sweet baby. May God protect you.” This was far from the first child Catherine had held and comforted in her twenty-four years at Kalaupapa—but Ruth was the one most dear to her. She was the daughter of a lonely child who had grown into a strong woman and a dear friend; she bore the same name Catherine had been christened with; and, most important, of all those girls Catherine had cared for, Ruth was the first one who would know what it was like to be free.
Chapter 1
1919
The sky above Diamond Head was a spray of gold as the sun seemed to rise up out of the crater itself. From atop its windy hill in Kalihiuka—“inland Kalihi”—Kapi'olani Home took in the sweeping view, from the grassy caldera of Diamond Head to the concrete craters of the new dry docks at Pearl Harbor. On a clear day, even the neighbor islands of Lāna'i and Moloka'i could be seen straddling the horizon. The big, two-story plantation-style house on thirteen acres of trim lawn stood alongside the sisters’ convent and chapel. The Kalihi Valley was largely agricultural, and the Home was surrounded by acres of sprawling cow pastures, hog breeders, and backyard poultry farms whose hens nested in old orange crates and whose roosters announced Morning Mass as well as any church bell. On the other side of Kamehameha IV Road there were groves of big-leafed banana plants, tall and thick as trees, prodigal with hanging clusters of green and yellow fruit; taro patches filled with heart-shaped leaves like fields of valentines; and terraced rice paddies glistening in the morning sun.
As in most Catholic orphanages and schools, the Sisters of St. Francis required that the corridors remain quiet, orderly—places of silent contemplation, not to be desecrated with idle conversation. Other than this, there were only three major rules at Kapi'olani Home:
1.??After breakfast no standing around talking but do your work quickly and well.
2.??Do not throw your clothes on the floor nor rubbish in the yard.
3.??Line up and march orderly.
Morning call sent the girls springing out of bed, into washrooms to scrub faces and comb hair, then dress. Filing quietly down corridors and into the dining hall, they went to their tables—ten girls at each one—and stood behind their chairs, joining with Sister Bonaventure in reciting the blessing:
Thank you for the world so sweet,
Thank you for the food we eat.
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you, God, for everything. Amen.
This was followed by the scraping of sixty chairs on the floor as the girls seated themselves and ate a breakfast of poi, rice, eggs, and sausages. It was near the end of breakfast that a three-year-old girl—standing on tiptoes and peering out the dining room windows—made an exciting announcement:
“Cow!”
As she ran delightedly out of the dining room, the other girls flocked to the windows. Yet another of Mr. Mendonca’s cows, having decided that the grass was, in fact, greener on the other side the fence, was grazing contentedly on their front lawn.
“Wow, look at the size of its whatzit!” said one girl.
“I believe she needs to be milked,” Sister Bonaventure noted calmly. “Now, girls, let’s all get back to our—”
Too late. What moments before had been a docile group of girls eating breakfast became a stampede out of the dining hall.
On the second floor, Sister Louisa, hearing the drumbeat of footfalls below, raced down the staircase to find a raging river of girls surging past her.
And far ahead of them all was a three-year-old with amber skin and almond eyes, crying out, “Cow! Cow! Big brown cow!” at the top of her voice.
“Ruth!” Louisa immediately broke into a run herself. “Come back!”
Ruth burst out the front door, down the porch steps, and went straight to the grazing heifer, which was completely oblivious to the fuss it had stirred up.
“Hi, cow!” Ruth welcomed it. “Hi!”
Ruth stood about three feet tall; the cow, perhaps a foot taller. Ruth reached up and gently stroked the side of its neck as it chewed. “Good cow,” she said, smiling. “You’re a good cow.”
As Sister Louisa rushed outside, she saw the child she had promised to protect petting an eight-hundred-pound Guernsey, whose right hoof, with one step, could have easily crushed the girl’s small foot.
“Ruth! Please! Step back!”
But Ruth’s attention was drawn to the cow’s swollen udder. And what were those things sticking out of it like big fat fingers?
Intrigued, Ruth reached up and took one of the cow’s teats in her hand—examining it, pulling it, squeezing it.
A stream of raw milk squirted out and into Ruth’s face.
The other girls exploded into laughter. Sister Louisa pulled Ruth away from the animal. Either due to the warm, yellowish milk on her face or the mocking peal of the girls’ laughter, Ruth began to cry.
“It’s all right, little one,” Louisa said, leading her away. “Let’s go inside and wash that off your face.”
The other girls clustered around the cow as the elderly Sister Helena arrived, frowning. “I do wish,” she said, “that Mr. Mendonca would keep his livestock away from our live girls.”
Eddie Kaohi, the Home’s young groundskeeper, ran up, rope in hand. “I’ll take her back where she belongs,” he said, lassoing the cow’s neck.
“Mahalo, Mr. Kaohi,” said Sister Helena. Then, with a sigh: “Girls, really. You’d think none of you had ever seen a cow before.”
“She’s cute,” said ten-year-old Addie as she swatted a fly away from the cow’s face. “She has the prettiest eyes!”
Sister Helena gazed into the heifer’s soulful brown eyes, her stern face softening. “Yes,” she allowed, “I suppose she does.”
* * *
In the bathroom Sister Louisa scrubbed Ruth’s face with soap and water and asked her, “So what have you learned today, Ruth?”
“Cows shoot milk.”
Louisa stifled a laugh. “That’s why only dairy farmers should touch a cow’s udder, not little girls who could get hurt.”
“They laughed at me,” Ruth said in a small voice. “Again.”
“Again? When have the girls laughed at you before?”
“When I showed ’em my gecko.”
Ah yes, the gecko. “Only because the gecko decided to run down the front of your dress.”
“Ran away. I loved it and it ran away!”
“I know.” Ruth loved every animal she had ever met. On a trip to the Honolulu Zoo, Ruth was enchanted by the monkeys, lions, swans, and Daisy, the African elephant. Sometimes Louisa thought the child would embrace a boa constrictor but for the welcome fact that there were no snakes in Hawai'i.
“An’ they yelled at Ollie,” Ruth lamented, “an’ scared him away too!”
“Ollie was the mouse?”
Ruth nodded.
“Some of the younger girls were scared of Ollie,” Louisa explained gently. “That’s why they were yelling and—well, screaming.”
“He was so cute!”
“I thought so too.”
“They hate me,” Ruth declared.
“No, they don’t. They just don’t love animals the way you do.”
Ruth’s face flushed with shame. “One girl called me a bad name.”
Louisa straightened, concerned. “Who did?”