Etsuko said, “It is Hawaiian for ‘adopted by family’—and I think it is a fine idea, Ralph.”
“Then it’s official,” Ralph declared. “Rachel, you are now my hānai mother. This entitles you to worry about whether I’m eating right, do I have enough money, and ask me twice a week when my girlfriend Carol and I are going to get married. Welcome to the 'ohana.”
“I’m honored, Ralph,” Rachel said, genuinely touched. But she couldn’t resist adding, “And when do you and Carol plan on getting married?”
Everyone laughed, no one harder than Ralph.
Rachel later told Ruth it had been one of the grandest days of her life.
On the day of Rachel’s departure, Ruth helped her makuahine aboard the S.S. Lurline, tipping the porters and making sure Rachel was properly settled in her tiny cabin. They walked the length of the ship together, Hawaiian music playing over the loudspeaker system, until fifteen minutes before the scheduled departure time of four o’clock, when the ship’s horn sounded two blasts—final call for all visitors. Ruth hugged Rachel, kissed her, and said, “Thank you. For giving me life, and health, and freedom.”
“Thank you. Meeting you has been a gift I could never have imagined five years ago.”
“Neither could I. Well, I did think about it when I was fourteen.”
“You did?”
Ruth grinned. “I used to fantasize about meeting you and demanding to know, Why did you have to make me so damn tall?”
They shared a laugh, but Ruth added soberly, “But now I know why.”
“Yes? And why is that?”
Ruth said, “Because I had some pretty tall shoes to fill.”
Speechless, Rachel could only smile happily as Ruth kissed her again, then turned and walked down the gangway to the pier. Rachel watched her go and silently gave thanks—to God, to her 'aumākua, to whoever had allowed her to live long enough to be in this place today. Even if she never saw Ruth again, she could someday tell Kenji that his little akachan had grown up to be a woman to make them both proud.
Chapter 16
1951
As the twin-engine Beechcraft C-45 approached the eighteen-hundred-foot airstrip on the tip of the Kalaupapa peninsula, the pilot, Happy Cockett, turned to his only passenger, Rachel Utagawa, and advised, “Might be a little bumpy on landing. Slight crosswind, and this strip is still sod on sand. The territory keeps saying they’ll pave it someday, but for now, hang on to your teeth.”
“It’s not my teeth I’m worried about,” Rachel joked. This was her first trip back to Kalaupapa since her “parole” four years ago. The chartered Cessna that had taken off from this same airport, bound for her new life in Honolulu, had been smooth and exhilarating; today she watched as the grassy airstrip loomed larger in the cockpit window while also appearing alarmingly short. Crosswinds buffeted the plane like a Hawaiian musician pounding an ipu drum, but the landing gear touched down with only a small bounce.
Happy helped Rachel out onto the low-set wing of the aircraft, steadying her as she walked nervously across the wing and onto a stepstool that deposited her on familiar ground. “I hope your friend feels better,” he said, returning to the plane to gather his main cargo: one of two daily airmail deliveries to Kalaupapa that had been inaugurated the previous year.
Rachel felt the sea spray on her face as the surf crashed against the rocky coastline, and like that, she was a child again, body-surfing the swells rolling into the white sands of Papaloa Beach; then a teenager, standing strong on a surfboard riding the surging crest of a wave; and years later, sitting on the sand with Kenji, his arm around her, as they watched Hōku and Setsu playfully dart in between fingers of foam lapping up the beach.
“Mrs. Utagawa? I’m Dr. Kam, we spoke on the phone?”
She turned to face the settlement’s young, sober-looking resident physician. “Yes, of course, mahalo for calling me. How is she?”
“Not well. I’m afraid her condition continues to deteriorate.”
They walked toward a makeshift parking lot. In the distance, white-tailed tropicbirds soared high atop the pali, their cries lost to the wind.
“You said on the phone she fell about six weeks ago?” Rachel asked as they got into a car.
“Coming down the front steps of the convent. Fractured her left hip. That limp of hers didn’t help. How did she get it?”
“It was … an accident,” Rachel said. “A long time ago.”
They drove onto the narrow road that followed the coastline into town. “When I examined Sister Catherine after her fall,” Dr. Kam said, “I suspected that she had a fairly advanced case of osteoporosis. I prescribed three to four months’ bed rest, to allow the hip to heal.”
“I don’t think Catherine has had more than three days’ rest since she arrived at Kalaupapa,” Rachel said.
“She’s not the most docile patient in the world. After one month she tried to get out of bed when no one was looking. She fell again, worsening the fracture. She’s been on a slow decline ever since.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“At seventy-nine, her body doesn’t have the reserves of strength to cope with two traumatic injuries. She picked up an infection, and her immune system is so weak that even penicillin hasn’t been able to knock it out.”
Rachel felt herself trembling. Quietly she asked, “Is she dying?”
Dr. Kam hesitated before replying, “I’m sorry, but yes.”
“How much longer?”
“Not that long.”
Rachel blinked back tears. “Is she awake? Lucid?”
“Both, on and off. I wouldn’t have arranged for the air transport if I didn’t think there was some purpose in your coming.” He glanced at Rachel. “The other sisters say you two were very close when you were here.”
“She’s … my best friend,” Rachel said, and her voice broke as she steeled herself for what lay ahead.
* * *
Sister Catherine lay in bed, eyes shut, the pain in her hip having abated for the moment—she had received a morphine shot that morning. She had resisted taking the morphine at first, a reflexive reaction borne out of her mother’s addiction to the opioid laudanum. But then her years of nursing told her that her sisters would not be offering her morphine unless her prognosis was terminal—and with that, a weight was lifted from her. She finally allowed herself to think of her own pain first, because there was no longer anything she could do to ease anyone else’s.
But letting go of life was not the same as embracing death. Though she still wondered what might be awaiting her on the other side, she told herself that whatever fate God had chosen for her would be her just due.
“Catherine?”
Catherine opened her eyes. She knew that voice as well as her own.
Rachel was standing next to her bed, and suddenly all of Catherine’s fatigue, the drowsiness from the morphine, faded in a rush of joy.
“Oh, Rachel!” She reached out her hands to clasp her friend’s.
Rachel took them, trying to hide her shock at how thin Catherine had become. Once her arms had lifted children and scrubbed floors at the Bishop Home for Girls, where Rachel had spent her childhood; now they felt as light, as fragile, as crepe paper stretched over bone. But the sister’s eyes were bright and happy.
“It’s good to see you, Catherine.”
“I’m so glad you’re here, Rachel. And I can’t thank you enough for sending me those photographs of Ruth and her family, all so happy and healthy. I remember my last night with her at Kapi'olani Home—I wanted that night to never end, but I knew it had to, because the next day was the start of Ruth’s life of freedom.”