Moloka'i (6 page)

Henry was stunned, as much by her use of the word for a woman’s private parts as by her accusation.

“That’s got nothing to do with anything,” he said. “Eight, nine months I’m away from home, maybe once or twice I get lonely, it doesn’t mean anything!”

“I see you get the
pala
,” and here she used the Hawaiian word for gonorrhea, “but it goes away and I think, ‘It doesn’t matter. Forget about it.’ Reverend Waiamau, he’s right, we look away when we shouldn’t.”

“You think I’m a leper?” Angrily he stripped off his shirt, threw it aside. “You know my body—you seen any sores?” He yanked off his pants, one leg at a time, stood naked before her. “You see any now?”

“Like you say,” she replied, unimpressed. “It hides in the body.”

They looked at each other, and there seemed to be nothing more to say. Henry pulled on his pants, stalked out of the bedroom and curled up on the mat on the living room floor. But he couldn’t sleep, and after an hour he slipped quietly into his daughters’ room and stood by Rachel’s bed, watching her sleep. Moonlight, through lace curtains, fell in bright freckles across his daughter’s face, as though prefiguring what was to come for her. Henry’s eyes brimmed with tears. He dropped to his knees, knelt beside Rachel, and prayed as he scarcely ever had before. Dear Jesus, he said, please spare her, spare my daughter. If I’ve sinned, punish me, give me the leprosy, not her. It’s not fair!

But as with the handful of other times he’d spoken to God, he could not tell whether anyone had heard. He knelt at Rachel’s side a long while, pleading for mercy, trying to will the sickness from her body into his; and when he finally grew sleepy he went back to the bed he shared with Dorothy and he touched her on the hip, that tender graze that always meant
I’m sorry
. But if Dorothy felt it she didn’t show it; and Henry knew then that this trouble would not pass as others had before.

T

wo weeks later, the truce between Sarah and Rachel came to an abrupt end, and over nothing in particular; it was a conflict born of no true anger, ending only in grief.

Rachel’s classmates continued to taunt her about her fancy shoes. “Going to the
opera
house?” they’d say, giving limp-wristed “society” waves. Or, “Every day Sunday for you, eh Rachel?” And then they’d curtsey and dissolve into gales of laughter. Each day another barb, a different quip, until Rachel was tempted to cast off one of the hated shoes and toss it at the next person who crossed her.

One day at recess, Rachel was running across the schoolyard when Sarah, passing by, said mildly, “Hey. Your laces untied, Miss Shoe.”

Rachel came to a skidding halt, glaring at her sister. “Don’t
you
call me that, too!”

With sudden inspiration Sarah said, “If the shoe fits . . .” And she giggled mightily at her joke.

“Stop it!” Rachel cried out. “Don’t
call
me that!”

“Call you what, Miss Shoe?”

Rachel, furious, made a headlong dash at her sister and gave her a push. “
Stop
it!”

“Hey!” Sarah nearly lost her balance. “
You
stop it!” And she pushed Rachel back. Their classmates gathered round: this looked promising.

“Then
you
stop calling me that!” Rachel warned, and gave her sister another shove.

“I’ll call you whatever I want!” Sarah yelled, and reciprocated.

“I hate these shoes! I hate
you!”
With one furious lunge, Rachel sent Sarah hurtling backwards into the trunk of a tall monkeypod tree. Sarah yelped in pain, then angrily leaped forward and gave Rachel an equally rough shove, yelling,
“Leave me alone, you dirty leper!”

The words had barely escaped her when Sarah knew she’d made a horrible mistake. No one had ever spoken the word at home, but by its very absence Sarah had known what must be wrong with Rachel. And as she stood there looking at her sister, she felt as someone might after they’d accidentally cut themselves with a knife, or worse, cut someone else: that certain knowledge that they’d done something terribly wrong, and could not take it back.

Rachel was also hearing the word, in connection with herself, for the first time; and all the silences, all the sad looks, all the tension and whispered prayers were suddenly encapsulated in that one dreadful word:
leper
. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I’m not,” she said softly. “I’m
not.”

Now Sarah began to cry as well. Unable to look her sister in the eye, she bolted away—out of the schoolyard, down Fort Street, out of Rachel’s sight.

With everyone in the yard staring at her, Rachel ran to the nearest refuge, an outhouse—ran in and stayed there, sobbing, until recess was over. She forced herself to march back into the classroom and sit calmly down at her desk. For the next three hours she sat staring straight ahead at the chalkboard, her skin crawling as she felt the eyes of her classmates upon her, seeing her in a different way than they had just an hour before, and when the school day was over she ran outside and threw off her accursed shoes and ran, and in the running felt a kind of release. She didn’t go home at first but used her only nickel to ride the trolley from one end of King Street to the other and back again, as if she might never see this street, these horses, these wonderful cars again; and when at last she did go home, she found Health Inspector Wyckoff waiting for her.

M

ama was with him, and Sarah, both weeping. Sarah kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t
mean
it,” seeking an absolution she knew she could never accept. Papa was there too, and the minute Rachel rushed in he scooped her up in his arms and held her tight, kissed her and said, “It’s all right, baby. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Inspector Wyckoff had the decency not to say anything as first Henry, then Dorothy, embraced their little girl; and when they were finished Wyckoff looked at Rachel and said with a sigh, “Come along, child.”

Rachel fought back tears. “Where?”

“To take some tests. To see how sick you are. And if you’re not, why you’ll come right back here, I promise.”

“I’ll go with her,” Henry said. Wyckoff started to object, then thought better of it and just nodded.

Mama and Sarah followed them outside, Papa lifting Rachel up onto the seat of Mr. Wyckoff’s carriage before sliding in beside her. Neighbors drifted out of their houses to watch in nervous silence. Dorothy gave her daughter a last kiss: “We’ll come visit soon as we can, okay, baby?” Rachel nodded, trying to be brave; Papa put his arm around her as Wyckoff snapped the reins.

Dorothy and Sarah, still weeping, watched the carriage go; when it was lost from view Dorothy glanced up and for the first time noticed her neighbors gathered in knots on their doorsteps. Their eyes looked away as they quickly retreated into the safety of their homes; and Dorothy, hot with shame, knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

It seemed a long carriage ride down past the harbor to Kalihi, a marshy triangle of land jutting into the sea west of the harbor. A thick grove of algaroba trees obscured the Receiving Station from the sight of both tourists and residents who didn’t wish to be reminded of its presence. But even without the trees it would scarcely have attracted much attention: it was nothing more sinister than a neatly landscaped complex of dormitories, cottages, schoolhouse, hospital, and an infirmary, encircled by a tall wire fence.

The iron gates swung open to admit them and Henry struggled to maintain his composure as the carriage, coming to a halt, was quickly surrounded by curious patients. Most appeared normal, a few merely tattooed with florid spots on faces or arms, but some . . . some of the faces were pocked with ugly sores, some were as bulbous and knobby as a coral bed, while others were mercifully bandaged like mummies.

“Papa,”
Rachel cried, clinging to his shirt, “don’t leave me here, don’t make me stay!”

“It’s okay, baby, Papa’s here.” He lifted her up, cradled her in his arms and carried her through the crowd. Rachel buried her face in her father’s chest to blot out the monstrous faces all around her.

Wyckoff led them to the infirmary, where he was presented with the ten dollar fee the government paid him for each leprosy suspect he apprehended—and where Henry was required to leave his daughter in the care of a smiling nurse. “You come with me now, Rachel, all right?” the nurse said soothingly. “Your daddy can see you after you’ve taken your test.”

“Papa, don’t go.” She wouldn’t let loose of his hand.

“It’s all right, baby. You go with the lady, okay? I’ll be right here, I’m not going anywhere.”

Reluctantly Rachel let go of her father and followed the nurse down a long corridor and into a small room. “I need you to take off your clothes now, Rachel.” Rachel did as she was told and the woman helped her into a white hospital smock, a bit large for the six-year-old. Rachel hardly noticed as the nurse dumped the old clothes into a waste basket.

The door to the room opened and a
haole
doctor entered, barely acknowledging Rachel’s presence before he took a scalpel to the red-ringed sore on her thigh. He punctured the insensate skin and scooped out a bit of fluid, which he placed on a glass slide, then scraped a shaving from the rose-colored patch on Rachel’s foot.

“Can I go home now?” Rachel asked the nurse hopefully.

“Now some other doctors want to see you.” Rachel’s gown nearly slipped off as the nurse prodded her out of the room; the woman laced it up tighter in back, then led Rachel down another corridor to a windowless room bright with white tile and the harsh glare of electric lights. The nurse led Rachel to a small platform in the center of the room where a triumvirate of doctors stood before her, making barely a glimmer of eye contact.

One of the doctors nodded to the nurse, who undid the back of Rachel’s gown and allowed it to drop to the floor. Rachel stood naked as the doctors made a slow circuit around her, pointing out the ridged sore on her thigh, the beginnings of another on her foot. They poked at her body with metal instruments, seeming to see her not as a six-year-old girl but as a teeming culture of
bacillus laprae
in the shape of a six-year-old girl. Rachel stood there for twenty long minutes, burning with embarrassment, until at last the examining doctors were satisfied and left, and the nurse slipped Rachel’s gown back on. “There. That wasn’t so bad,” she declared.

She smiled, opened the door, and Rachel shot like a bullet down the hall.

She heard the nurse behind her calling her name, which only spurred Rachel on. Tears obscured her vision; she barely saw where she was going but didn’t care. She knocked over a cart, saw glass bottles go smashing to the floor, but kept on running. Around a corner, down another hall, weaving between two doctors staring at her in confusion, then another corner and straight into the path of a woman in a hospital gown. Through her tears Rachel saw the woman’s face, cratered and oozing pus, and Rachel screamed. In her frantic rush away from the woman she collided with a young girl no older than herself, and she too had a face like a raw wound, and Rachel’s shrieks now seemed to fill the building.

Then the nurse was suddenly grabbing her and Rachel was fighting with all her strength, pummeling at the woman with her tiny fists, when she heard a cry.
“Rachel!”

Papa came running up. The nurse released Rachel and Henry gathered her up in his arms. “Papa’s here, Papa’s here,” he said, holding her tight, and Rachel’s screams turned to sobs; it broke Henry’s heart to feel her body quake and tremble with such fear. He glared at the nurse. “What the hell’d you do to her?”

“Nothing! The doctors examined her, that’s all—”

“I want to go home,” Rachel begged, “please Papa, take me
home
—”

“Rachel,” he said softly. “Rachel, listen to me, listen to Papa.” He took her by the shoulders, made her look into his eyes, and Rachel quieted. “You’re a sick girl, baby. We want you to get better. And the only way you’re gonna get better is to stay here.”

“I want to go home!”

“I know you do. And—” He told himself that it was possible, that it
might
happen. “You will. When you’re better. But right now, you gotta be brave and stay here a while, you understand? Your Mama and me, we come visit you every day, I promise. Okay?”

Rachel, calmed as always by his presence, slowly nodded. Henry smiled. “Good girl! Now you go with this lady, and Papa’ll see you tomorrow, all right?”

He gave her a hug, and Rachel was taken to a room in the isolation ward where, she was told, she would be spending the night. She was relieved that she had the room to herself, no monsters anywhere in sight. She gratefully donned pajamas and crawled into bed, trying to find the most comfortable spot on the lumpy straw mattress. The nurse left and Rachel was alone—the first time she had ever been truly alone in her life. She didn’t much like it.

Later another nurse brought her dinner: some dry fish, rice with gravy, and
poi
, with chocolate cake for dessert. Rachel ate the cake first, then the
poi
, the rice, and the fish; and as the sun set outside her room she took refuge in sleep, transported in her dreams not to China or India or far Ceylon, but to her own room in her own house in a time before all of this.

T

he next morning, after breakfast, another nurse appeared in the doorway and announced, “Time for your first treatment.” She gave Rachel a pill to take, then off came the pajamas, on went the hospital gown, and Rachel was again taken down a long hallway to another tiled room. But instead of a panel of prying doctors inside there was what looked like an enormous bathtub. The water was hot and had a nice smell, which the nurse said came from “mineral salts and herbs.” It was called “the Goto treatment,” she explained, named after a Japanese doctor who was trying to find a cure for leprosy, and Rachel would have to soak in this tub twice a day for half an hour. She splashed around happily for the first ten minutes; after that the novelty wore off and she was sweaty, wrinkly, and bored.