Part 4 (1/2)
Kohala: 1922 Chaul Roong watched Dok Ja from the top of a hill adjacent to the sugar mill as she waited with a group of women for the carts carrying kookai ko, the sugar cane wastes from the mills, to appear. She was seven months pregnant and moved slowly.
Dok Ja was nineteen when Chaul Roong ran away. By the time she joined him, she was thirty-six and he was forty-one. The years hadn't been kind to Dok Ja. Her once firm b.r.e.a.s.t.s sagged and her belly was flabby. Wrinkles of disappointment sprouted around her eyes and mouth. It was his fault her youth had been wasted. He wished he could love her the way he loved Tae Ja. He owed her that much.
The carts began to dump the kookai ko in dark heaps. Dok Ja darted forward to collect the damp, warm mud presses. Unaware of Chaul Roong's eyes on her, she set them down in her designated row. Chaul Roong sighed. Although she was a good wife, she was definitely not an obedient one. Time and time again he asked her not to embarra.s.s him by gathering kookai ko with the rest of the plantation women. She refused to listen and sneaked back here to turn the presses over to dry. But she couldn't hide her red fingers, the result of centipedes nesting in the presses crawling out and biting her fingers. Seeing her fingers enraged him and they always ended up arguing. She insisted it was foolish to pay ten cents a press for the kookai ko she used as fuel to warm the neck-deep tubs of water in her bathhouses.
”You don't have to work so hard,” he told her. ”I am boss luna. We have enough money.”
Dok Ja snapped, ”One never has enough money.”
She continued to run the bathhouses for the bachelors. Next to the hot tubs were cold steeping tubs. The men paid fifty cents per month, deducted from the pay envelopes, for use of the public baths, or jjimjilbang, often referred to as the easier to p.r.o.nounce j.a.panese word-furos. They washed on the bare boards of the slightly raised floor before soaking their sore muscles in first the hot tub, then the cold.
Dok Ja brought in a good income to the family. Besides her bath houses, she kept boarders and fed them and the other bachelors in the camp. She raised chickens. She hatched their eggs on the warm ashes of her oven and insulated the chicks with cotton to keep them alive. Chaul Roong knew she missed their daughter's help but he had insisted Soon-yi go to school in Honolulu to learn English. Dok Ja thought girls going to school was a stupid waste of time and money.
Chaul Roong watched as she ma.s.saged her lower back with her fist. She was hunched over from the exertion. He wondered if she were satisfied with their life together. When he made love to her, he pretended it was Tae Ja.
Life was about duty, not happiness.
As Chaul Roong turned his horse away to return to the cane fields, he decided Dok Ja needed to get used to taking orders from a husband again and he had to find a way to forget Tae Ja.
Han Chaul Roong strolled up to the plantation manager's house one Sunday afternoon. Vanda orchids were in full bloom, turning one section of the yard into a lush riot of delicate violet flowers growing wild among the hau posts. On the ocean side were exotic birds of paradise, their orange wings rising triumphantly through thick, waxy green leaves. Rarer still were the giant white birds off to the distance, rising in heights of six feet or more. Closer in, hapu ferns spread their lacy fronds beneath a giant monkey-pod tree that dominated the front yard and kept the hapu in constant shade.
Chaul Roong spied Patrick O'Malley sitting in his favorite koa rocker, his legs thrown up against the gingerbread railing of the lanai, surveying his gardens, as he sipped iced tea brandished with pineapple.
As Chaul Roong approached the house on the hill, he could smell roast leg of lamb mingled with the scent of gardenias, crocuses, and fresh-cut gra.s.s. Patrick's German shepherd ran to greet him. He rubbed his fingers on the dog's head affectionately.
”Is it Han I see?” Patrick called out. ”Have a seat. How goes the okelehao business these days?” Patrick gestured to a pitcher of tea and an empty gla.s.s on a table beside an empty chair. ”Have some iced tea.”
Chaul Roong sat down and poured himself iced tea. All the haoles called him ”Han” because it was easier. At least they didn't butcher his name or make him change it. But he liked Mr. O'Malley. He was a different kind of haole, one who treated him with respect. ”Okelehao no hurt n.o.body. Men like drink, stupid law.”
Patrick roared with laughter, his eyes twinkling. ”You're not having to tell the likes of me, a drinking Irishman, that! It's sorry I am our country took it into their heads to listen to a few mealy-mouthed Prohibitionists. It's too bad okelehao tastes so bad. It's hard to get good Irish whiskey out here. Hear a few boys got caught, eh?”
”Nah. Everybody know okelehao in pork barrels in cane fields. Make it hard to find. Police go into houses and say, 'Ey, brudda, you when go sell okelehao?' They find few bottles in houses where people sell by the cup. Police say, 'Okay, you fine two dolla.' Pay police, then give police some to drink. Everybody friends. Got to pay fines sometimes. Stupid law.”
”You getting rich over this stupid law?” Patrick asked.
”I only drink stuff. Wife, she like sell-had to pay fine last week. I tell her, I no like her make okelehao, but she do what she like.” Han shrugged.
”And how would your wife be, Han?”
”Wife plenty big. Have one more baby soon.”
”Well,” Patrick chuckled. ”You don't waste time, eh? Is it a boy you're wanting?”
”Boys, mo' betta.” Han nodded his head and sipped his iced tea. ”I like ask something.”
”Sure.”
”Filipino men like c.o.c.kfights on day off. If okay with you, I make Sunday c.o.c.kfights.”
Patrick raised his eyebrows. ”I heard it's a b.l.o.o.d.y sport.”
”c.o.c.kfights all the time in Philippines. Men happy, work betta.”
”Gambling?”
”Where there is c.o.c.kfights, there is gambling.” Han replied.
”And where there is gambling, there is fighting.”
”No worry. Han take care everything, make sure no fighting.”
Patrick smiled. ”If you promise me no trouble, you can have your c.o.c.kfights. But,” Patrick leaned forward and pointed a finger at Han, ”first time fight, no more c.o.c.kfights. Okay?”
”Okay, boss,” Han nodded. ”You going see. Me make c.o.c.kfights, n.o.body fight.”
”Han, I've been meaning to tell you. There's going to be some changes around here in the big house.”
”Boss man get married?”
Patrick slapped his thigh and roared with laughter. ”Me? Marry? Mother of G.o.d! I'm too set in my ways to take on a woman and too lazy to change. No, it's not a wife but a nephew.”
Patrick's eyes turned to the sea. ”My sister says he's bright and much too good to be buried in the dirty factories back East.” He sipped his pineapple tea. ”His father's dead and my sister sees him going the way of his older brother, joining the gangs.” He sighed, ”His brother's in jail. My sister wants him to come live with me. I can't say no.”
Han smiled, but he couldn't imagine his boss with a child.
Dok Ja gave him their first son.
One night after the children were in bed, she prevailed upon her husband to buy a house.
”Why?” his eyes never left the newspaper he was reading. ”We have a fine company house.”
”There's good farm land available near the fields. We can build our own home.”
”It's a waste of money,” Chaul Roong turned a page.
She made a wide, sweeping gesture and let her hand fall into her lap. ”But this does not belong to us. I want our own land, our own house. Something no one can take away from us. Land is everything.”
Chaul Roong looked up at her with added respect. She made sense. But he hated to see his money disappear; it made him feel secure. But then he would have land like the haoles, something he could pa.s.s on to his sons. He thought of Bong Sik, and a familiar pain stabbed through his heart. His eyes returned to the newspaper. ”I'll think about it.”
”But someone else might buy it!” Dok Ja jumped up.
”I said I would think about it.” Chaul Roong turned another page.
”What did you do with your money all these years? Did you throw it away on a woman?” Dok Ja's voice sounded shrill. ”The women say you had a woman and a child here. Did you give all your money to the wh.o.r.e?”