Rachel looked up at the windows. “Hard to tell in this light.”
Etsuko went around the corner of the building and into the alleyway behind it. Here their furo bath had stood awaiting Taizo at the end of a long workday; now there were clotheslines strung across the alley, adorned with shirts, trousers, dresses, and a pair of white underwear flapping like a surrender flag in the breeze. “It would appear, Goldilocks,” Etsuko joked, “that the three bears are at home.”
Then Etsuko’s gaze fell onto something else—something that astonished and delighted her.
“Oh, Dai. Look,” she said.
Standing next to the rear entrance to the shop was a five-foot-high plumeria tree whose branches brimmed with star-shaped yellow blossoms.
Etsuko went to the tree, cupped a cluster of flowers in her hands as if she were holding faerie dust, and breathed in their rich perfume.
“I planted this when we first moved here,” Etsuko said proudly. “It was just a cutting, but look at it now!”
“Do you want to knock on the door?” Ruth asked. “See if we can go inside and take a look?”
Etsuko considered for a moment, then shook her head and smiled.
“No, I don’t wish to impose. We enjoyed many happy years here; I hope the present tenants shall as well. It is enough for me to know that I left something of beauty behind and that it has thrived. I am content.”
* * *
After Chinatown, Ruth, Rachel, and Etsuko shopped for clothes in local stores like Take’s at Waikīkī and Gem’s of Honolulu, and in a souvenir shop Ruth bought a bottle of the coconut syrup that Peggy liked so much.
The next day they drove to Hanauma Bay, an extinct volcanic crater whose south wall had been eroded by ocean waves, creating an underwater refuge teeming with exotic marine life. Rachel would have dearly loved to join Ruth, Frank, and the kids in the water, but though she wore a bathing suit, she just sat on the sand with her feet covered, keeping Etsuko company.
After an hour, Donnie emerged from the water, suitably impressed. “This place is incredible! The coral comes in so many different shapes—some look like trees, some like flowers, some like human brains—and in so many colors! And I didn’t touch a single one, tūtū, just like you said.”
Rachel smiled. “Your ancestors would be proud. There’s an old Hawaiian saying: ‘The land is the chief, man is its servant.’”
Donnie considered that. “Does that include the ocean?”
“Yes. Haleola told me that to ancient Hawaiians, the 'āina—the land, sea, and air—were all interconnected. The 'āina provided all the basics of life, and so they respected and cared for it.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go in the water?” Peggy asked Rachel.
“I wish I could, but it’s hard to swim with my feet like this.”
“Then use my fins.” Peggy held out her mask, snorkel, and swim fins. “And they’ll cover your feet.”
Rachel tried to recall the last time she’d been in the ocean. Years ago …
“C’mon, tūtū,” Donnie said. “You know you want to.”
Rachel took the snorkeling gear from Peggy and grinned.
“Anything for my mo'opuna.” But as she took off her sandals she felt a thrill that had nothing to do with her grandchildren.
Gingerly Rachel walked down the sand and into the water, and when it was waist-high she put on the swim fins with her good hand. Then she leaned back and let herself float, kicking a little to propel herself backward. Like most Hawaiian children she had learned to swim before she could walk, and now the waters washed over her like the welcome embrace of an old friend.
On shore, Etsuko and the keiki cheered as Rachel waved to them.
Rachel turned over in the water and reentered a glorious kingdom of color, life, motion, sensation. A school of yellow tangs swam swiftly past her, as if late for an appointment. Blue-and-black striped butterflyfishes nibbled on plankton on the rocky bottom, as an electric-blue unicornfish munched on a strand of seaweed. Rachel gently kicked herself forward to take in the brilliantly hued array of coral below her. Haleola once told her the names of all of these and she was pleased to find she still remembered: huge mounds of yellow lobe coral, pāhauku puna; a beautiful purple-blue mushroom coral, ko'a kohe; treelike branches of black coral, ēkaha kū moana. It all came back to her, the feel of being gently rocked by the waves, the weightless delight of flying above mountain ranges of coral. She took a deep breath and, as she had done so often in her youth, jackknifed her body, and dove to the bottom. The fins propelled her down as if her feet had no infirmity at all. She hovered above the elegant black coral and saw, wedged between its branches, a speckled orange scorpionfish sleeping the day away. She looked around her, at the breathtaking topography of this magical realm beneath the waves. She felt wonderful. She felt at home. She felt young.
* * *
The next day, at breakfast, Donnie and Peggy were still talking about Hanauma Bay and asking their tūtū about all she saw. Finally, after the keiki left for the beach, Rachel leaned in to Ruth and said, “I have a surprise for you today. Somebody wants to meet you.”
“Here? Who?”
“Someone who knew you a long, long time ago. Her name is Sister Mary Louisa Hughes.”
This was a surprise. “She’s the nun who helped you find me?”
Rachel nodded. “She worked at Kapi'olani Home, and you were her favorite. When I told her you were coming to Honolulu, she mentioned she would dearly love to see you again. Do you mind?”
“No, not at all,” Ruth said. “I don’t remember her, but then, I didn’t remember what Papa’s store looked like until I saw it again.”
Soon Ruth was driving up twisting roads to the lush Mānoa Valley, where green mountain slopes sheltered residential homes as well as many private and public schools. It was one of these, St. Francis School on Pāmoa Street, that they sought. Ruth drove onto the grounds, away from the girls’ school and toward St. Francis Convent.
“She’s in Room 117,” Rachel said as they made their way down the carpeted corridor, a younger nun passing by with a nod and a smile. Rachel knocked twice; Ruth felt unaccountably anxious. The door was opened by a short, stocky woman in her seventies, her broad, open face cowled by the white veil of her vocation. It took her only a moment to recognize who was on her doorstep.
“Oh my heavens,” she said. “Rachel! And … Ruth?”
Reflexively, Sister Louisa stepped forward and embraced Ruth, who tried not to betray her discomfiture.
“Oh, Ruth,” the sister said happily, “it’s so good to see you again!”
Ruth was chagrined to discover that nothing about this woman—her face, her voice, even her touch—seemed at all familiar.
Louisa put some coffee on to brew and produced teacups from a cabinet. “I was so sorry,” she told Rachel, “to hear about Sister Catherine. I can’t remember where I put my shoes some mornings, but I still vividly remember the night she came to Kapi'olani Home with Ruth. She said to me, ‘Sister, I would count it a great favor if you would do something for me.’ I said of course, what? She said, ‘Take care of her?’ And her voice broke as she said it, broke with love and with the heartbreak of having to give you up, Ruth.”
Ruth could hardly fail to be moved by this. “I wish I had met her—well, I did meet her, but I was a little too young to remember.”
“Of course. Do you remember the Home? Do you remember the cow?”
“The cow?” Ruth said blankly.
“We had a cow from a nearby pasture that regularly came by to graze on our lawn, and one day you went out to greet her. ‘Hi, cow!’ you said.”
Ruth laughed. That sounded like something she would have done, but she didn’t feel it the way she had felt the memory of Papa’s store or the aroma of plumeria; it was just a story being told to her by a nice old woman she couldn’t recall to save her life.