Sisterchicks Do the Hula (18 page)

“So you’ve said.”

“And so I’ll probably keep on saying, so prepare yourself.”

Laurie linked her arm in mine, and as we started walking, she said, “Thanks for the warning.”

I was more determined than ever to snatch the rolls of film from Laurie’s bag and find a place that would develop them quickly. If we could look at them together, she would see the difference between the photos I took and the ones she took. She would see that she needed to pursue this talent.

I eyed her bag, swinging over her other shoulder. While she was in the shower, I’d remove the film and put it in my purse. Then first chance I had, I would find a place to have them developed.

Meanwhile, we amiably settled into a relaxing afternoon and evening that included simultaneous cell phone conversations with our husbands while we strolled along the beach walkway on Kalakaua Avenue. Then we took in two fun movies on the hotel television and an entire box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts.

I forgot about the photos until we were about to go to bed. Laurie was on the phone, reserving a rental car for us and pulled out the film pouch while digging for her wallet. I hoped she would leave the pouch on the desk, but she was too organized. With Laurie, everything had a place, and the pouch went back into its designated corner of the straw bag.

Tomorrow. In the morning. While she’s in the bathroom
.

But again, I forgot. Instead, we concentrated on packing up everything we thought we would need for a full day away from the hotel. We had arranged to have the rental car delivered to us at the hotel so we could go directly to the morning service at the coral-block Kawaiaha’o Church, across the street from the Mission Houses Museum.

The elevator had just deposited us in the lobby when Laurie said, “Did you grab the tour book?”

I checked my bulging bag. “No, it must still be on the desk.”

“I’ll get it.” Laurie fumbled for her room key.

“Leave all your stuff here,” I suggested.

She left with only the room key, and I suddenly realized I had all the film. This was my chance, and I had to take it quickly.

“Excuse me,” I asked the concierge, lugging our gear over to the desk. “Can you tell me how I can get some film developed quickly?”

“The corner market has a one-hour developing service. Would you like us to take it there for you?”

I remembered how selective Laurie was about where she took her film at home.

“Do you know of any professional film services on the island that could develop it in a day or two?”

“Yes, we have several we work with regularly. We can help you with that.”

“Good. Then let me leave this film with you. I need to get it back by Tuesday, and the price doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you take it to the company that will do the best job.”

I handed over the rolls of film and felt like a terrible sneak as I filled out the paperwork for the concierge.

Laurie returned with the guidebook, and we took off in our rental car, rolling along at a nice, respectful pace through town. I wondered how long she would be able to drive so sedately. You see, she had rented a convertible. A red Mustang convertible.

The darling was just screaming to be let loose.

However, the streets of Waikiki didn’t provide such an opportunity. And the streets of neighboring Honolulu around the Kawaiaha’o Church didn’t offer a lot of parking.

“I can let you out here,” Laurie suggested. We were stopped behind another car on a narrow road that divided the Mission Houses Museum and the back side of the church. “I’ll
find a parking spot and then meet you inside.”

“Okay.” I started to climb out of the car, but my lei got caught on the headrest. It wasn’t the lei Laurie had made for me but rather the purple orchid birthday lei she had bought me the first night at the gift shop. The flowers had stayed fresh in our room refrigerator, and I wanted to wear the lei to church this morning. Laurie had hung hers over a lamp shade in our room because she wanted to dry it out before taking it home.

Untangling my lei from the headrest, I gave Laurie a wave and stepped into the beautiful garden area behind the large church. To my left was a wrought iron gate that opened to a cemetery. Two aged plumeria trees towered on either side of the gate. I stopped to look at the trees. They held no fragrant white blossoms on this January morning, yet I still had to stare at their beauty.

Obviously they had been planted here long ago. Every one of their many slender, curved branches seemed to reach heavenward with an air of graceful elegance. I tried to imagine the magnificent canopy these trees made when they were in full bloom. I stood amazed at how two simple trees could perform such an act of silent praise by just
being
.

Since we were early for the service, I wandered into the small graveyard. My eye caught on a short, block-shaped gravestone a few feet away. Across the top, in raised letters, was the word
MOTHER
. Taking a few steps closer to the gravestone, I ran my fingers across the raised letters carved into the thick, white marble block. It reminded me of last week when I
had my hormone meltdown and how I told Darren I was a Mother with a capital
M
. Whoever was buried in this grave was apparently a mother with
all capital letters
.

I bent to read the name on the front of the simple grave marker.

“Juliette,” I whispered. “My little missionary woman!”

I stepped back and started to cry. I’d never cried at a cemetery. Especially not in front of a grave of someone I’d never met.

But then, I felt as if I had met Juliette. I’d visited her house. I’d stood in her kitchen and heard about how she used forty eggs to make nice tea cakes for the Hawaiian kings. I’d turned into a bobbing Bettie in the same ocean into which she had “sallied forth” more than a 150 years earlier.

And here she was, marked for all time as a mother with capital M-O-T-H-E-R.

The tall grave marker to the left of Juliette’s was that of her husband, Amos, who had passed away twenty-five years before her. That meant Juliette spent a quarter of a century as a widow. Instead of returning to New England, she had stayed here on Oahu.

This really was your home, wasn’t it? These were your people. You lived your life, all the blissful parts and all the painful parts, on this island
.

Gathering my composure, I touched the word
MOTHER
again, and then, with one gliding motion, I lifted the purple orchid lei from around my neck and placed it lovingly across the marble grave marker.

“A garland of hosannas,” I whispered. “Wear it well, dear Juliette. I give it to you with my aloha.”

Remembering the description of aloha that the artist at the flea market had explained, I smiled and thought,
I can’t exactly go forehead to forehead and breathe out my aloha on you now, Juliette. Maybe in heaven. Watch for me, okay? I don’t suppose there will be any tea parties I can help you prepare, but maybe you and I can sally forth to the shore along the river of life. You bring your little Clarence, and I’ll bring my Emilee Rose
.

I realized I was conjuring up a dream that was outside my short life. I was dreaming about eternity. If anyone had heard me, they would surely have thought I was crazy to be standing here, making plans with a dead woman.

But if all God’s promises were true, and I wholeheartedly believed they were, then there was nothing crazy about dreaming of heaven. I had every reason to believe that, just as God had written my name in His Book of Life, He would take me into His home when I left this earth. And what endless possibilities awaited His children in His house. The stories have not yet been told. The leis have not yet been strung.

Filled, filled, filled with tingles of wonder, I stepped softly across the green tufts of thick tropical grass and closed the gate, leaving the sacred graveyard. Now I knew why the two plumeria trees guarding the gate couldn’t help but lift their slender branches upward, toward the heavens.

Taking the coral steps up to the front of the church, I watched for Laurie but didn’t see her. Inside the large sanctuary were dozens of long, straight-backed pews made of a rich, shiny, dark wood. I guessed it was the same koa wood used in the small mirror I’d bought at the Mission Houses gift shop. The contrast of the nearly black wood against the simple, whitewashed coral-block walls was striking, especially with the arched, deep-set glass windows. This was a hallowed meeting place filled with much love.

Aloha nui loa. Isn’t that what the kapuna said? Much love
.

It struck me that the aloha, the breath, was literal here, in that the cool air flowed freely through the slatted windows and prepared the sanctuary for worship by bringing the first fruit of fragrance to the altar.

I was invited to take a seat and made my way halfway to the front and sat on the left side, in about the same area our family sat in our church at home. Settling in quietly and feeling the breeze across my neck, I kept watching for Laurie and wondered where Juliette used to sit when she came to services here. Did her family have a select row, the way many New England churches had plaques embedded in their pews for the established families in the community?

I noticed the mix of parishioners seated around me. It seemed as if nearly every ethnic group was represented. Most of the older women were dressed in flowing mu’umu’us. They greeted each other warmly with kisses on the cheek.

The service began with a prayer in Hawaiian. My head was bowed, but my ears were standing at full attention so as not to miss a single syllable.

I checked again for Laurie and rose with the rest of the congregation to sing the first hymn. I was thrilled to see that the words were in Hawaiian. Even though I’m not much of a singer, I opened my mouth wide, as if I could somehow catch the words and music flowing around me and persuade them to go inside.

Laurie quietly slipped in beside me on the last stanza and held the hymnbook with me. We were seated while the announcements were made and the offering collected. Laurie had been flipping through the hymnal and tapped me, pointing to a small paragraph printed at the bottom of page159:

“Isn’t this Juliette the one you’ve been talking about?”

I nodded.

The congregation stood again for the next hymn, Beethoven’s “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” I sang my little heart out, half listening for Juliette’s voice of “singular power and clearness” to soar above all the others.

When we reached the third verse with the words, “Flowery meadow, flashing sea, chanting bird and flowing fountain, call us to rejoice in Thee,” everything within me yearned to raise my lanky limbs like the plumeria trees and offer my meager praise all the way up to heaven.

However, once again, my conservative upbringing and New England nurturing held fast. I stood staunch, barely moving, despite the holiness of the moment. I felt caught in a struggle over wanting to be one who moved with grace—with aloha—and yet finding myself stuck in a self-conscious bog.
Haole. No breath. I have much to learn about living the unforced rhythm of grace
.

When the service ended, Laurie said, “What happened to your lei?”

I told Laurie about the graveyard and how I found Juliette’s grave marker and left my lei there.

“I brought my camera with me,” Laurie said. “We could take some pictures, if that doesn’t sound too strange.”

I was all for it but hoped we weren’t overstepping our boundaries or appearing too much like tourists.

No one was around when Laurie snapped pictures at the
gate into the graveyard. I was glad she was taking some shots of the plumeria trees.

“Gabe would love this place,” she murmured. “It’s such a peaceful hideaway.”

I stood beside Juliette’s grave marker, my hand resting on the lei as Laurie moved around looking for the best angle. She took several shots, and I told her I definitely wanted copies. Then I felt convicted.

“Laurie, I have a confession to make.”

She lowered the camera and looked at me, surprised, as if I should have done all my confessing while I was inside the church.

“I sent your film out to be developed because I didn’t want to have to wait until we got home to see all the pictures.”

“Where did you send it?” The look on her face was not one I had hoped to ever see again. It was the same look she gave me our freshman year, when I confessed that I’d tossed her white silk blouse into the wash with my undies and a stray red sock. She forgave me admirably that time because it was a genuine accident. This time it was premeditated.

“I asked the concierge to send it to a reliable place.”

“A reliable place?”

“A professional film developing service.”

Laurie pulled out her cell phone and tapped in some numbers. “Why didn’t you ask me?” She still looked relatively calm.

“It was supposed to be a surprise. But I didn’t think it
through all the way. I should have talked with you about it. It is your film.”

“Hello, I’d like the concierge, please.”

I walked over to a bench by the front gate and sat down while Laurie asked about her film.

“It all started with that rainbow coming out of her nose,” I muttered with a sigh.

Laurie walked toward me while she listened to the concierge. She appeared satisfied with the information she was getting and said, “Thanks” before closing her phone.