“Do you have a picture?”
Rachel took a snapshot from her purse, handed it to her, and Ruth saw her “natural” father for the first time: a handsome, smiling Nisei in his mid-thirties. In his face Ruth saw traces of her own—the same cheekbones; an echo of a smile—and in his eyes she unexpectedly saw something of Frank.
“He loved you so much, Ruth. He called you his baby, his akachan. The day you left Moloka'i he told you, ‘Papa loves you. He’ll always love you, and he’ll always be your papa.’” Her voice broke like glass on the last word.
Ruth’s tone was tender. “He looks … very kind.”
“He was. A very kind, sweet man.”
Ruth glanced up. “So he’s not—”
Rachel shook her head. “No. He was killed five years ago, in a fight with another resident named Crossen. A bigoted haole—white man—who hated Kenji because he was Japanese. Hated everyone and everything, really. Kenji tried to intervene when Crossen was beating his girlfriend, and died in the attempt.”
“I—I’m so sorry,” Ruth said. “That makes two fathers I lost to the war.”
“What do you mean?”
“My papa died at Tule Lake.” When she saw the blank look on Rachel’s face, Ruth elaborated, “The relocation camp.”
“Relocation?” Rachel repeated, as if not comprehending.
Ruth stared at her incredulously. “You don’t know? Where have you—” She stopped short, realizing too well where Rachel had been. “But—you had them too, didn’t you?”
Rachel, looking truly abashed, meekly shook her head.
“I don’t think so. Not in Hawai'i,” she said. “I … believe the Japanese made up too large a part of the workforce.”
Ruth said bitterly, “That sure didn’t stop them here! All those farms, no one to work them—”
“You went too?”
Ruth’s temper flared at what seemed an annoyingly dense question.
“Of course I went!” It was louder than she intended. At adjacent tables heads turned, diners glared. Ruth flushed in embarrassment or anger or both.
“We all went,” she said, lowering her voice. “The signs went up on May 23, and we were evacuated by May 30.”
“One week? They gave you one week?”
This was the last thing Ruth wanted to talk about, but she clearly couldn’t avoid it. She told Rachel about her family’s dispossession, about their months at Tanforan and years at Manzanar. She tried to keep a calm tone, but as she recounted the details, the fury in her heart reignited and the wound of her father’s death bled as if freshly cut. Rachel stared in disbelief, then horror. Ruth looked down to avoid meeting Rachel’s eyes.
As if reliving it all again, she explained about the loyalty questionnaire, her father’s transfer to Tule Lake, and his death there from pneumonia. Finally Ruth looked up—and was shocked to see that Rachel was weeping.
Ruth instantly regretted discussing this. Instinctively she took Rachel’s hand—her right hand, folded in on itself—and tried to stem her tears.
“I’m sorry,” Ruth said, “I shouldn’t have told you all this—it’s okay, we’re okay, really—”
“It’s not right. It’s not fair.”
“It wasn’t right. But it’s over.”
Rachel shook her head. “No. No.” There was torment in her eyes.
“You were supposed to be free,” Rachel said in a whisper. “You were never supposed to know what it was like to be taken from your home—separated from your family—to be shunned and feared.” Then, so softly Ruth could barely hear: “That was all I had to give you.”
The desolation in her voice felt like the sere emptiness of the high desert, where the keening wind echoed human despair.
Ruth got up without hesitation and folded her arms around Rachel, tenderly holding her as she would a frightened child and, in soft, consoling tones, told her, “It’s all right. Everything’s all right. It’s all over. I’m free. You’re free. It’s all”—and she said the word she knew she had to say, even if she didn’t feel it, not yet—“It’s all right, Mother. Everything’s all right…”
* * *
As Ruth escorted Rachel back to her room, her mind was a jumble of conflicting emotions: she felt profound pity for this woman’s tragic life, reluctant pleasure at the mystery of her hapa half at last revealed—and guilt that any emotional bond she might be forming with Rachel was a betrayal of the parents who had raised her. Unable to reconcile her love for them with her growing, traitorous affection for this woman, Ruth panicked. After returning Rachel to her room and making sure she would be all right, she invented somewhere she had to be, started to say her goodbyes …
“Wait,” Rachel interrupted, a bit desperately, “just a minute. Please. I … have something for you.”
With her left hand she removed a large suitcase from the closet, hefted it one-handed onto the bed, and asked Ruth to open it.
With some trepidation—as if she were opening an inverted Pandora’s box that might suck her love for her parents forever inside—Ruth opened it.
Whatever she was expecting to see, this wasn’t it.
The suitcase was packed with gift boxes—dozens of them, in every shape and color. There was one the size of a pillbox, wrapped in pink and crowned by a bright red bow almost bigger than the box itself; another wrapped in lavender, ornamented with a yellow ribbon teased and curled into something resembling a flower; and a large box covered by light blue foil that shimmered like the sky on a hot August day. Too many to take in all at once. Christmas had never been celebrated in her parents’ home, but Ruth imagined this is what it would have felt like—sneaking downstairs on Christmas morning, overwhelmed by a glittering pile of gifts under the tree.
Rachel seemed to take great pleasure in saying, “Happy birthday,” and when Ruth stammered a reply, Rachel prompted, “Open them, if you like.”
One by one Ruth opened them. Each gift was modest yet chosen with impeccable taste: a baby’s rattle that might have captivated her attention as an infant; a Raggedy Ann doll she would surely have loved when she was three; an elegant fashion doll that six-year-old Ruth might have proudly shown off to her friends; a set of combs and hair brushes for a thirteen-year-old’s vanity table; and many more. Thirty-two years, thirty-two presents.
Ruth unwrapped the last one—a copy of Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener—and held it in hands that were suddenly trembling.
Her family had always celebrated birthdays on New Year’s Day, but on her actual birthday Ruth sometimes found herself wondering whether there was someone, somewhere, thinking of her. Now she was presented with proof that there had been, and she was speechless with emotion.
“My God,” she said. “You did this every year? For me?”
“We did,” Rachel said. “Kenji and I.”
Ruth cleared a spot on the now-crowded bed and sat.
“Tell me about him,” Ruth said. “Kenji. My … father.”
Ruth did not leave for home. She listened to a life’s story that was, she discovered, richer than it was sad. She learned about Kenji, who on his first day of work at a Honolulu bank was arrested for being a leper, his career gone in an instant; her grandfather, Henry, a merchant seaman who brought Rachel dolls he found on his travels and inspired her own thirst to see the world; her brother Kimo, who also contracted leprosy; and her grandmother, Dorothy, who hid her son in Kula, in the wilds of upcountry Maui, and tenderly cared for him for the rest of his short life. She learned of Rachel’s hānai auntie, Haleola, a Native Hawaiian healer who opened up for Rachel a world of magic and myth out of Hawai'i’s past; her friends Leilani and Sister Catherine and Francine, Rachel’s cherished 'ohana at Kalaupapa, all but Catherine now gone. She learned what 'ohana truly meant, and that she was a part of it. She began to understand that none of this could replace or usurp the family she had always known, but only enriched what she already possessed. With wonder and a growing absence of fear she realized: I am more than I was an hour ago.
* * *