She ate a little more than usual at breakfast, slept through lunch, but woke in midafternoon and was surprisingly chatty, telling Ruth stories she had never heard before—of childhood neighbors in Hōfuna, of her voyage to Honolulu to join Taizo. She was livelier than Ruth had seen her in months. After dinner she tired and was asleep by seven, though not before she told Ruth, “Tomorrow morning I would like to go out and see the flower again.”
“That can be arranged,” Ruth agreed with a smile.
“Good night, butterfly. I love you.”
Ruth kissed her on the cheek. “I love you, Okāsan.”
Etsuko was asleep within minutes.
The next morning Ruth woke around dawn, and as a red-gold light filtered through the bedroom blinds, she immediately sensed a stillness to the room.
Her mother was no longer breathing.
She went to her, touched her hand. It was cold as a night at Manzanar.
Ruth looked at her mother through a veil of tears, but she knew what had to be done next. She went into the bathroom, ran some water into a cup, and returned to her mother’s bedside. Ruth dipped two fingers into the water, then touched them to Etsuko’s lips, moistening them one last time in a ceremony called matsugo-no-mizu, “water of the last moment”—done in hopes of reviving the deceased.
If only it could.
Ruth bent down, tenderly kissed her okāsan’s forehead, then went to Frank and the two of them cried together. When she was ready, she picked up the phone and called Horace.
* * *
According to tradition, funeral arrangements were to be made by the eldest son—and since Horace was Buddhist and Ruth was not, it was he who scheduled the funeral with Reverend Hojo and arranged for Etsuko’s body to be laid out, in a simple white kimono, for the tsuya, “the passing of the night.” Stanley’s family flew in from Portland, and Don and Peggy arrived that evening. The all-night vigil was long and arduous for Ruth, but even more painful was what followed the next day. Tradition decreed that at the crematorium the family witnessed the sliding of the deceased’s body into the cremation chamber, ate a meal while the ashes cooled, and then used chopsticks to pick the bones of the deceased out of the ashes and place them in an urn. Ruth could barely keep her lunch down during this ceremony, but steadied herself with the knowledge that this was what her mother would have wanted.
Later, after the ashes were interred, everyone went to the Harada home to eat, drink, and remember Etsuko. But after the hours spent at the crematorium, Ruth desperately needed fresh air; she went into the backyard, followed shortly after by Ralph, who was carrying two glasses of sake. He handed her one. “You looked like you needed this.”
Then his attention was caught by the bird of paradise.
“So that’s what that looks like?” he asked. “Like one of the paper cranes we had to burn after Pearl Harbor.” He took a step closer. “That fiery orange blossom—damned if it doesn’t look like a phoenix rising from the ashes.”
Ruth understood, at last, what the crane flower had represented to her mother. It wasn’t Hawai'i, as much as she had loved Hawai'i. It wasn’t good fortune; and it wasn’t longevity. No, not even that.
It was rebirth.
Chapter 20
1965
Ruth took a breath of the moist tropic air, fragrant with plumeria and jasmine; it was like breathing in tranquility itself. She loved making this drive. The Haradas had been to Maui once before, two years ago, to visit Rachel and Sarah, but already the island felt like a second home. She drove south down the Honoapi'ilani Highway; the windward face of the West Maui Mountains, misted blue in the morning light, wore a turban of white clouds. They passed fields of waist-high sugarcane bowing in the wind; brown columns of burning cane smoke, sweetly pungent, flavored the air. At the island’s isthmus they turned up what was once called the Pali Road. The coastal drive presented one awe-inspiring view after another: the lighthouse at McGregor Point, steadfast as crashing waves battered the headlands below it; Pāpalaua Beach, where tangled kiawe trees hunched over a narrow strip of pristine white sand; Olowalu Tunnel, which looked as if it had been punched out of the mountainside by the demigod Māui himself; and acres of green, terraced farm fields draping the leeward slopes of the mountains.
When they reached the sugarcane fields above Lahaina, Ruth turned left on Prison Street, then right on Waine'e Street. A block down she could see the familiar white bungalow beneath the green umbrella of a banyan tree, its garden ablaze with orange helliconia, anthuriums, and birds of paradise. Ruth felt a sting of remembered pain but reminded herself that Etsuko would have wanted her to feel happy upon seeing these beautiful flowers.
Rachel and her sister, Sarah, emerged from the little house. Rachel, now seventy-nine, still had a youthful air of enthusiasm; Sarah, only two years her senior, somehow looked much older. Both were smiling at their guests.
“Aloha,” Rachel greeted Ruth, then gave her a hug. Ruth hugged Sarah as Frank embraced Rachel. But when Don, now twenty-eight, approached Sarah, she just looked at him blankly: “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“Sarah, for heaven’s sake, it’s Don,” Rachel said, “my grandson.”
“Oh! Yes, of course, Donnie. I’m sorry, what was I thinking?”
The worry that flickered across Rachel’s face did not escape Ruth.
The house was decorated with rattan chairs and burnished wooden tables hand-carved by Sarah’s late husband. The Haradas took their bags into the bedrooms once occupied by Sarah’s four children, now grown.
At lunch—including a delicious salad of Kula lettuce and fresh tomatoes from Sarah’s garden—Rachel wanted to know all about Peggy’s new job at a veterinary clinic in Modesto as well as Don’s work as a staff oceanographer at Scripps. They were both happy in their work and their parents were obviously very proud of them.
Later, when they were alone, Ruth asked Rachel, “Is there something wrong with Sarah?”
“She’s getting a little senile,” Rachel admitted. “Forgetful, has trouble staying focused … and she gets flustered while driving. Luckily I can walk to Nagasako’s Supermarket to do our grocery shopping. But when either of us needs to see a doctor in Kahului, I grit my teeth and pray when she gets behind the wheel.”
“Do her children know about this?”
Rachel nodded. “Ellie is the only one who still lives on Maui, upcountry in Makawao. So far I can take care of Sarah on my own, but if there comes a point when I can’t, I’m not sure what we’re going to do.”
“I’m sorry.”
“With my brother Ben gone”—Rachel’s eyes clouded over—“Sarah is the last of my family. She still recognizes me, but I dread the day she doesn’t.”
That evening the whole family had dinner at the Lahaina Broiler, through whose windows they could see the islands of Moloka'i and Lāna'i, swaddled in clouds on the horizon. “When are we going to take a trip to Moloka'i,” Ruth asked Rachel, “so I can see where I was born?”
Rachel seemed uneasy. “There are more pleasant places we can visit.”
“But you speak with such love of the people there—your ‘Kalaupapa family.’ I’d like to meet them.”
“I do love them,” Rachel said. “But look at this way: How enthusiastic would you be about taking us on a sightseeing trip to Manzanar?”
Ruth saw her point. “Not very, I suppose.”
“Don’t worry,” Rachel said, “you’ll get to see Moloka'i—eventually.”
Ruth chose not to ask her mother what she meant by this.
* * *