Hawaii (175 page)

"Yes," Mrs. Choy laughed gaily. "My name is Carry-the-Mail. You see, Father won a lot of money on that horse."

"I know! My grandmother found out that my father had bet a lot of money on Carry-the-Mail, and she gave him hell, but the horse

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won. So my father and your father probably got drunk together, Mrs. Choy," Hong Kong said easily, and the women kughed.

"This is my daughter Judy, the musician. She has a job at the conservatory."

"How wonderful!" Malama cried, shoving a ukulele at the lovely Chinese girl, who slipped easily and without embarrassment into the great frieze of Hawaiian ladies who lined the wall of the chandeliered room. "You won't know the words, but you can hum." And the six women began an old Hawaiian song from the days when royalty lived at Lahaina, on Maui. It was true that Judy Kee knew none of the words, but she harmonized well, and once the others stopped singing while she vocalized a verse, and Mrs. Choy cried, "If we could do something about those slant-eyes, we could make her into a good Hawaiian."

The crowd laughed and Hong Kong asked easily, "What I'd like to find out, Malama, is what are the opinions of a Hawaiian who is placed on a spendthrift trust?" It was like asking the Pope his impressions of Martin Luther, but Hong Kong's blunt approach often proved best, and this was an occasion when it did, for all the Hawaiian ladies were interested in this question, which affected many of their friends.

'TU tell you, Hong Kong," Malama confessed, as she asked Judy to help her serve tea. "I graduated from Vassar with very good grades, and I was shocked when the court said, 'You are not competent to handle your own affairs. We will pay three white men huge salaries to do it for you.' This was insulting, and I tried to fight back, but then I remembered what the sweet haole teachers had taught us at Hewlett Hall. I was Hawaiian. I was different. I was supposed to be incompetent, so I relaxed and found no shame in being judged a spendthrift. I love my friends, I love a guitar well played, I love the Swamp, so I have rather succumbed to the passing of the days. A little friendship, the birds in the Swamp . . . until I die. I am a spendthrift, so I suppose I deserve to be disciplined by a spendthrift trust."

Mrs. Fukuda said, "What always infuriates white men, and frugal Japanese like my husband, is the way a woman like Malama gives things to her friends. This they cannot understand. In their pinched and miserable hearts they can't understand it."

"What's money?" Malama asked.

"How much does the spendthrift trust allow you?" Hong Kong asked.

"I don't blame the trustees," Malama evaded. "When the courts stepped in I'd worked things around so that I owed the federal government $350,000 in back taxes. Somebody had to do something. So now all I get is $22,000 a year for myself."

"And all her friends," Mrs. Mendonca said. "After all, she is an alii nui and she does have some obligations."

"How do you like the system?" Hong Kong repeated.

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"I neither understand it nor like it," Malama replied.

"Malama," Hong Kong said bluntly. "I'm going to make some radical investments for you. You'll have two very lean years, and you're going to make some kind of deal with the federal government, but if you behave, in three years you'll be off the spendthrift trust."

The faces of the five Hawaiian women bloomed like flowers after a providential rain, and Hong Kong could see them envisaging endless parties, good food, new automobiles and trips to Europe, like in the old days, but Hong Kong warned bleakly, "And when you're off the spendthrift trust, you'll be under my supervision, and you know a Chinese is ten times tougher than a haole judge."

The Hawaiians laughed, for this was the truth, and Malama cried, "I hope we can do it, Hong Kong." She kissed him on both cheeks as she placed over his head the lei he had previously given her. "I am not joking when I say that Hawaiians and Chinese have always been good for one another."

She was about to cite examples when she was interrupted by the screen door's banging open suddenly, then slamming shut as someone retreated down the porch. "Kellyl" Malama cried. Come on in. It's only Hong Kong."

The tall beachboy shuffled into the room, barefoot, in his tight knee-length pants and waiter's jacket that failed to cover his rugged chest. He wore a yachting cap far back on his head, and his black hair was uncombed. "Aptemoon, Hong Kong," he grunted.

"We've been talking about plans for the trust," Malama said graciously as she handed her son a cup of tea. He brushed it aside and plucked a few notes on his mother's ukulele.

"You da new trustee da Jdne?" Kelly said.

"Yes," Hong Kong said with obvious distaste for the pidgin.

"I speak true. You akamai dis trust, you fix heem up, you one damn good pella." He banged the ukulele and pointed at his mother, adding, "Because dis wahine spend, spend." He motioned with his uke to Mrs. Fukuda, who began strumming hers, and soon the women were singing, but as they entered into one of their most loved songs Kelly was aware of a Chinese voice, high and lyrical, and while he continued plunking his ukulele, he studied with approval the relaxed manner in which Hong Kong's daughter sang. Then he paid no more attention to her, but at the end of the song he grabbed a guitar and began a throbbing slack-key solo, to which the other instruments gradually joined in subdued harmonies. Finally, when the slack-key had ended, with its intricate fingerings echoing in the air, Kelly plucked the first few chords of the "Hawaiian Wedding Song," then threw the guitar to Mrs. Fukuda and rose to begin the majestic male solo. When it came time for the soprano to enter, he pushed his mother into the background, and with his right hand imperiously grabbed Judy and brought her to her feet. At the appropriate moment, he pointed at her, and for the first time in Hawaii an impressed audience heard the Chinese girl soar into the upper reaches of this passionate evocation of the islands. Her voice

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was like a clear bell in some island church where a true wedding was being performed, and when it came time for Kelly to join her, he did not fool around with falsettos or effects; he projected his handsome baritone until it filled the old room and caused the chandelier to sway. In the final passages Malama and the four big Hawaiian women hummed softly, so that Hong Kong remained the only listener. Against his will, for he did not like his daughter singing Hawaiian songs, he had to applaud, and the four visiting women cheered and Kelly leaped into the other room and returned with a length of tapa, which he twisted about Judy's waist. He stuck three flowers into her braids and used his right forefinger as if it were a make-up pencil, dabbing it about her eyes.

"She gonna look more Hawaiian than I do," he cried. Then he pointed in turn at each of his mother's guests. "Choyl" he cried. "Fukuda, Mendonca, Rodriques, and you, Malama!" He stood back to survey them. "Tomorrow night. Your hair long. Old muumuus. Flowers. Three ukuleles, two guitars. Da Lagoon gonna hear Hawaiian music Uke nevah bifore." He bowed to Judy and asked, "Seestah, you sing wit' me?"

"I will," she said simply.

Malama was an unusually outspoken woman, for a Hawaiian, and she asked, "Will it be taken with grace if a Chinese girl sings that particular song? It's so especially Hawaiian."

"Da kine people better get accustomed," Kelly snapped, "because dis wahine ... a true meadowlark."

"What do you think, Hong Kong?" Malama asked.

It was apparent from his scowl that he was going to reserve his negative judgment until he got Judy alone, but his daughter said for him, "He'll be there, and so will I."

Back in the Buick, Hong Kong stormed: "I don't want my daughter singing in a night dub!"

"But I want to sing," Judy said firmly.

"People will laugh, Judy. My daughter, singing in a club. You, a Chinese making believe you're Hawaiian."

"Dad, for a long time I've wanted to sing . . ."

"But Kelly Kanaka! A no-good, broken-down Hawaiian!"

"What's wrong with a Hawaiian?" Judy snapped.

"I didn't raise a respectable Chinese girl to be messing around with a Hawaiian!"

"You're messing around, as you call it, with Malama."

"That's business, Judy. You're asking for trouble, girl."

"You be there tomorrow night, Dad. I want to see at least one friendly face."

The team of Kelly and Judy created a sensation in more ways than one. To the mainland tourists they were the first pair in the islands who showed any real sense of professional savoir-faire, and the five powerful gray-haired women who accompanied them on that first night were remarkable, for they set off the frail beauty of the girl

and the lithe young masculinity of the baritone, so that if only the tourists had to be considered, the team was both an artistic and a financial success. But to the residents of Hawaii it was shocking on two counts. To the Chinese community it was inconceivable that oni the very day that Hong Kong's appointment to the Malama Kanakoa Trust was announced, confirming as it were his respectability ini the community, his well-trained daughter should appear in a public night club, her navel showing, singing and doing the hula with a man like Kelly Kanakoa. At least four major Chinese families whose sons had been thinking of marrying the delectable music teacher said flatly, "We will never accept her as a daughter-in-law." But to the Hawaiian community it was an affront past understanding that an alii family like the Kanakoas would choose as Kelly"s singing partner a pure Chinese girl, and for her to presume to dress like an honest Hawaiian and thus palm herself off to the public was morally outrageous.

So the Chinese boycotted Judy and the Hawaiians boycotted Kelly, but Manny Fineberg of Clarity Records heard them on the second night and signed them up to a profitable contract, but he did stipulate, "On the cover of the album, we got to have a pure Hawaiian girl. Judy can sing like an angel, but she can't get over them slant-eyes." As the young singers were driving home that night Judy said, "Kelly, I think that for our next album we ought to form our own company, right here in Hawaii." And that was the start of Island Records, which Judy Kee ran with an iron hand, seeking out fresh talent to sing famous old songs, so that before long, half the Hawaiian, melodies played in America were produced by this clever Chinese girl.

She also devised the costume by which Kelly became famous in the island night clubs. She had a tailor make him skin-tight pants, one leg blue, the other red, with frayed ends reaching below the knee. For a top she found a subdued tapalike fabric from Java and had it made into a tight jacket with long ends that tied at the waist. His hat continued to be a yachting cap, worn on the back of his head, but his shoes were heavy leather sandals which she designed and which he could kick off when he wished to dance. "You must become a visual symbol," she insisted, and she did the same, with her exotic face framed in flowers and her two braids showing over an island sarong. But the thing that tourists remembered longest was the curious whale's tooth that Kelly wore on a silver chain about his neck. It became his trade-mark.

Judy made other changes in Kelly. When he spoke to her, he had to speak English, but when he was on the stage she encouraged him to use a wild pidgin, as when in the middle of a performance he would suddenly halt Florsheim's guitar solo and cry, "Eh you, Florsheim blalah. Las' night I t'ink. More'n hunnerd years ago de missionary come dis rock and find my gradfadder you gradfadder wearin' nuttin', doin* nuttin', sleepin' under de palm tree, drinkin' okolehau, dey raise hell. Bimeby hunnerd years later you me kanaka

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we doin' all de work while de missionary kids sleepin' under de palm tree, drinkin' gin, wearin' almos' nuttin', and doin' nuttin'. Florsheim blalah, wha' in hell hoppen?"

It was Judy who insisted that Florsheim learn to play the steel guitar with an electronic booster, and she also encouraged the big slob to dress in disreputable costumes so as to set off Kelly's grandeur, but there were two problems concerning the huge Hawaiian that not even Judy could solve. If he was a member of a group, everyone unconsciously spoke pidgin, even Judy; and no one could keep the big man's girls straightened out. After a while Judy stopped trying, but one change she did make. She insisted that when Kelly got cables from divorcees on the mainland, he ignore them.

"You're an important artist, Kelly!" she hammered day after day. "You don't have to peddle yourself to every neurotic dame who sends you a distress signal."

"They're friends of my friends," he explained.

"Were they good for you, Kelly?" she asked bluntly.

"No," he said.

"Then cut it out," she said simply, and in time she even got Florsheim to stop running in breathlessly with the news: "Kelly blalah, I got dem two da kine wahine, one got convertible. Kelly blalah, you help me out, huh?"

There was one point on which Judy Kee never deceived herself. It was true that the financial success of her trio stemmed from her managerial ability, but its artistic reception derived solely from the infectious Polynesian charm of her two companions. When tourists saw handsome Kelly and ponderous Florsheim, they instinctively loved them, for the Hawaiians reminded them of an age when life was simpler, when laughter was easier, and when there was music in the air. No stranger to Hawaii ever loved the islands because Judy Kee and her astute father Hong Kong were making profound changes in the social structure; people loved Hawaii because of the Polynesians. All Judy did was make it possible for her two beachboys to live, for under her guidance they earned about $70,000 a year, with time off to go swimming almost every afternoon.

Two older people followed the regeneration of Kelly and Florsheim with interest. To Malama the arrival of the strong-minded Chinese girl was a blessing from the old gods who had looked after Hawaiians. She told her tea-party friends, "I tried to make him grow up and failed. But this little Pake says jump, and he jumps. Always in the right direction!."