Part 7 (1/2)
Kimi looked at her mother. ”Now that he's gone, what will Papa's spoiled pet do now?”
Mariko ignored her but Kazuko narrowed her eyes. ”Kimi, you shame me.” But Kimi had already walked away with her friends.
Mariko began rocking again. Tears rolled down her cheek.
Her older brother Takeo walked up to her with swollen eyes. ”Don't cry Mari. Father's spirit's still wandering. The forty-eight hours are not up yet. He might see you and be too sad to go to the next world.”
”I don't want him to leave.”
”A spirit left to wander is never happy,” Kazuko knelt before her daughter.
”But I don't want him to be dead!” Mariko stopped rocking.
Kazuko held Mariko's face in her hands. ”You must accept it. I'm sorry your father and you children had to suffer my bachi.”
”Kazuko san.”
She stood up slowly, like an old woman, and turned to the small, bowing gentleman behind her. It was the undertaker.
”About the arrangements for the cremation tomorrow, there is the matter of the urn.”
”Yes.” Kazuko squeezed Mariko's shoulder before leading the undertaker to a quiet back room. She felt the weight of the world on her shoulders.
That night, Kazuko lay on her futon and tried to sleep. As usual, memories of j.a.pan swirled around her. With her eyes closed, she saw Tetsuo in her father's garden. She could almost feel the smooth pale blue silk of her favorite kimono, emblazoned with flowers from the hem to just below her obi. She remembered watching Tetsuo through a crack in the shoji doors. ”Tetsuo, I love you,” she whispered.
He turned, his dark eyes sparkling.
Kazuko opened her eyes to stop the memory. Because the entire family slept in the same room on futons, she could hear Mariko's quiet sobbing. Turning her head to the window, she spied a full moon behind the mango trees in the yard and whispered to it, ”Forgive me, Tetsuo for making you leave the life you were fated to live in j.a.pan. If I did not do so, you would still be alive.”
THE SECOND GENERATION.
1935-1960.
The Kamaainas ”To be born too beautiful is a curse.”
Old j.a.panese Proverb
Chapter Ten.
”I can't help being born poor, but I refuse to die poor,” Sean told his uncle Patrick.
Patrick puffed on his pipe and studied his nephew before speaking. ”Just don't make it your G.o.d or forget you're from good Irish stock.”
Sean shrugged. Patrick's advice wasn't important to him.
His uncle sent him to the most exclusive and prestigious high school in Honolulu, Oahu College. Situated in a beautiful tract of land known as Ka Punahou, it was given to the first Christian missionary to Hawaii, Rev. Hiram Bingham by Governor Boki and his wife, Liliha. Tucked in Manoa Valley, the school grounds and main buildings had the same look of quiet elegance and substance of the nearby Makiki Heights mansions. It was considered the ”only” school to attend by the kamaaina haoles. What his uncle couldn't have foreseen was that the sons of Hawaii's upper cla.s.s would teach Sean his ”place.” He was an outsider. He didn't have their bloodlines or their breeding. Yet Sean never doubted someday he would shove their arrogance in their faces.
”Your uncle is a manager from Kohala?” One of the spoiled kids had snickered in the boy's locker room.
”He still talks funny. And is that manure I smell?” Brendan Chambers, scion of the pineapple king of Hawaii, laughed.
All the boys gathered around Sean laughing and holding their noses. ”Irish tras.h.!.+ He smells like cow dung! He smells like cow dung!”
Sean stood silent, his face hot. Life was a bowl of cherries in Kohala, but at Oahu College, he learned to spit out the pits.
Before graduation, Sean met the dean of students, Mr. McInerny, in his office. Even though Sean was third in his cla.s.s, the dean ignored his accomplishments. Peering through his thick spectacles, he leaned back in his chair and eyed Sean like he didn't think much of him. Then Mr. McInerny put his elbows on his desk and remarked, ”It's nice to see you've managed to improve your wardrobe over the last three years.” That was the last thing he said to Sean after four years of exceptional grades at Oahu College.
He never told his uncle. Instead, he kept Uncle Patrick entertained with humorous tales and gossip.
Four years ago, Sean entered Stanford where he graduated with honors. He had wanted to attend Harvard but Harvard was too close to Boston. He wanted to be as far away from Boston as possible.
Now Sean stood just outside the entrance to the living room watching his uncle nod off in his beloved rocking chair in front of the lava-rock fireplace. Sean thought of how funny it was things and people got smaller the older he got. When he first arrived in Kohala, he thought this house was as big as a castle. Uncle Patrick seemed enormous. Now Sean was twenty-one, things had slipped into perspective. The years had been hard on Patrick; they had left him shrunken and small.
”It's all that hard drinking and hard living,” Patrick told him before he left for California. ”But I lived me life the way I wanted, so I guess I'll be having no complaints now that I be near the grave.”
Sean now approached his uncle slowly. ”Uncle?”
Patrick turned slowly and grinned. ”Sean, me boy, come and give the old man some company. It's missing you I am, all them years at Oahu College, I guess they call it Punahou now, and away at school on the mainland. Tell the old man more stories. Aye, it warms me old heart, it does, to have you here.”
Sean sat across from Patrick in an overstuffed paisley chair. Through the years, Sean had learned to mimic the elegant manners and speech patterns of the born-rich. Despite his impeccable imitation, he was told by the women he charmed that he still had his roguish Irish charisma and a feral way about him. No matter, he simply enjoyed the fact women flocked to him.
”And what would you be doing with your life now you're twenty-one and a man?” Patrick asked. ”Is it joining me you are, seeing I'm old and ready to retire?”
Sean cleared his throat. ”You've given me more than I ever dreamed of. You opened my eyes to another world and its incredible possibilities.”
Patrick tapped the side of his nose. ”Aye, but the world has not changed much. Names and places are different, but feelings remain the same. Don't reach too high, me boy, and risk disappointment. 'Tis a miracle I have what I has. 'Tis a better life than a poor Irish boy like me could ever have hoped for. Do not scoff at the gift of such a life.”
Sean spread his hands, wondering how he could ask for more than what Patrick had already generously provided for him. ”I know. I'm not ungrateful. You've given me so much.”
”Is it the grand mansion in Makiki Heights with a girl like Meg you be wanting?” Patrick said. ”I saw it in your eyes. Dreams are fine things, me boy. But they are only dreams, nothing more. The Megs of the world belong to the gentry, not to the likes of us.” Patrick leaned toward him. ”You're like my own boy, so I'm telling you true. I don't want your dreams to destroy you.”
Sean clasped and unclasped his hands. It was true he had never forgotten Meg or the house in Makiki Heights. Although he had only seen her once, her image remained stamped in his mind. She symbolized everything he wanted. ”Uncle Patrick, did you ever imagine yourself to be living such a fine life as this when you were a lad in Ireland?”
Patrick shook his head, his mouth chewing on the tip of his pipe, ”Never thought it possible.”
”You achieved the impossible. So then why not me? This is America, after all.”
”Aye, it is, but you be wrong if you're thinking America is so different. There are no t.i.tled lords and ladies, to be sure. But the cla.s.ses are divided just the same. And I be warning you, it's reaching too high, you are. I don't want to see you hurt. Our sweet Jesus said, 'tis harder for a rich man to get to heaven than for a camel to go through a needle's eye. The rich have their own pain. 'Tis the price they pay.” Patrick told him.