“You watched one mother die a slow, terrible death,” she said gently. “I won’t let you watch another one die the same way.”
Ruth protested, “But it’s not about me, I—I want to take care of you!”
“It is about you. For me it is.”
Ruth’s anger was spent, but her need was still great.
“Mother, let me do something for you,” Ruth implored. “Please.”
Rachel understood. She had felt the same way after Haleola’s death. She had anticipated that her daughter, so much like her in many ways, might feel the same need. “There is something you can do for me, Ruth.”
“What is it? Anything.”
In her bedroom, Rachel opened her purse, took out an envelope, and handed it to Ruth.
“If you feel comfortable doing it,” Rachel said, “I would be honored to have you speak the same words for me that I said for Haleola at her funeral.”
Ruth tried not to start crying again. “The—honor would be mine.”
“Thank you. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth sooner.”
When Frank awoke from his nap, Rachel also told him; she was moved by the tears it brought to his eyes.
Now that there was no longer any need for Rachel to hide her condition, Ruth saw its effects up close. She had never seen her makuahine looking so frail, so vulnerable, but as she had been for her okāsan, Ruth was there for Rachel: she kept her company through sleepless nights, massaged the cramps in her legs, and helped her to the bathroom when she got nauseous. There was a tenderness of spirit between them now, a new appreciation of the quickening moments they shared, that drew them closer than ever before. Ruth would cherish that closeness for the rest of her life.
Frank called Don and Peggy, suggesting they come say goodbye to their tūtū for the last time. Don, who had flown back to San Diego after Christmas, flew right back to San Jose. Peggy drove down from Modesto. Rachel was happy to spend just a little more time with them.
And while they were visiting with their Grandma Rachel—reminiscing about the games she had played with them when they were little, their trips to Hawai'i, Christmases past—Ruth slipped quietly out of the house to make a special request at Onishi’s Florist Shop.
In the airport, on the day of Rachel’s return flight to Hawai'i, the whole family was at the gate to see her off. After Don, Peggy, and Frank had each embraced Rachel in turn, Ruth surprised her mother by reaching into her tote bag and pulling out a pink carnation lei that she now draped around her mother’s neck.
“These last twenty-three years have been a miracle for me too,” she told her. “ā hui hou aku, Makuahine.”
Until we meet again.
Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. “ā hui hou aku—akachan.”
The mix of Hawaiian and Japanese pleased Ruth, made her smile. She gave her mother one last hug—and then she had to let her go.
* * *
Rachel returned to Maui and to the house without Sarah, not having told the full truth to her daughter. She had not told her that her doctor had advised her against making this trip, fearing it might be too much of a strain on her already weakened immune system. Nor had she told Ruth that her doctor had also advised, six months ago, that Rachel stop taking the sulfa drugs to reduce the damage they were doing to her kidneys—but Rachel had refused, not willing to take the slightest risk of infecting her family, most especially the great-grandson she was determined to see.
Now Rachel was ready to pay her debt. Her body was leaden with fatigue and she spent many of her days too weak to get out of bed. Ellie stocked her refrigerator with prepared meals, but it was a struggle just to get up and eat them. Her face and legs grew more swollen with edema; a bloated imposter seemed to be staring at her out of her mirror. One day she began to have difficulty breathing and had to call for an ambulance to take her to Maui Memorial Hospital in Kahului, where they drained the fluid that had also been building up in her lungs.
On that day she knew she could no longer care for herself. So as she had always planned, she called Kalaupapa and told them she was coming home.
Ellie came over to pack up Rachel’s belongings for her, arranging to send them on to Moloka'i by freight, then drove her auntie to the airport. “Tell your mother,” Rachel said to Ellie, “that someone will always love her.”
“I will, Auntie,” she said. “I love you. Godspeed.”
A charter flight took Rachel to Kalaupapa, where she was promptly admitted to the hospital. The resident physician, Dr. Sylvia Haven, prescribed her a sedative that gave Rachel her first good night’s sleep in months.
Her old friend Hokea came by the next day to visit and reminisce; it was good to see him again, he always made her laugh. She barely noticed the ravages that Hansen’s had wrought on his face. “Rachel, you remember what I used to say about Father Damien’s church at Kalawao?”
“I remember you did about a million paintings of it, all beautiful.”
Hokea chuckled. “Maybe million and a half. But you remember what I used to say about it? How it had strength and maluhia?”
Serenity. Rachel nodded.
“Well, so do you.”
Their hands were similarly deformed, but Rachel now rested hers atop his, like two gnarled branches entwined by time and fate.
“Thank you, old friend,” she said. “I do feel at peace here.”
“No more kapu here either. Everybody’s free to come and go as they please.” He grinned. “So, you like go Vegas and try our luck at keno?”
He always made her laugh.
Rachel spoke by phone with Ruth often in subsequent weeks, but the calendar soon became a jumble of meaningless numbers; the morphine Rachel was prescribed for her worsening pain made the days pass in a painless dream, hazy as a morning mist.
Early on, Hokea had brought over some belongings that Rachel wanted by her bedside, and he agreed to keep the rest in his house. On a shelf above her nightstand—like the old orange-crate shelf in her bedroom as a child—was part of her doll collection, which had mushroomed over the years. From her bed she could see the little cloth wahine in her kapa skirt that her father had made for her when she was first sent to Kalaupapa, the cherry doll he had brought her from Japan, and the rag baby from San Francisco. Joining these were some from Rachel’s own travels: a stuffed koala bear from Australia; a Brazilian bahia doll; and a little dancing boy in a kiri'au skirt, from Rarotonga.
She smiled. They reminded her that she had, after all, visited those places she had dreamed of seeing as a child, the far-flung ports of her father’s sea tales. And more: She had known the love of the best man she had ever met, and would soon return to him. She had been sent to Kalaupapa by people who had expected her to die, and die quickly. But she had lived a long, rich life … and would leave it with nothing left unsaid, nothing left undone.
A breeze toyed with the curtains of an open window. She smelled the sweet fragrance of the red lehua flowers that grew on the nearby pali. She closed her eyes. Soon she would embark on her greatest journey, across an ocean of night to another far port, where her father had already dropped anchor—and where Kenji was waiting for her.
* * *
Whenever the phone rang that day, Ruth had answered it with dread calm, knowing of her mother’s worsening condition. When it rang late that evening, as Ruth and Frank were drifting off to sleep, Ruth knew: she just knew. It was, as expected, Dr. Haven at Kalaupapa, gently informing her that Rachel had just passed away, peacefully, in her sleep. Ruth told her, with as much composure as she could summon, that she would be on Moloka'i as soon as she could book a flight. She hung up the phone, her hands trembling.
Frank said, “I really wish I could go with you.”
“I know. But you can’t risk flying so soon after your ear surgery. And Don is in the Maldives, he’ll be sick that he couldn’t go.”
“Call Peggy.”
She did, and Peggy immediately agreed to accompany her mother to Kalaupapa.
“Thank you,” Ruth said. “It means a lot to me.”