Island Of Sweet Pies And Soldiers: A powerful story of loss and love
“Now?”
If there was one thing in the world she wanted, it was for Ella to come alive again. “I need to ask.” After all, why not Japanese school? It couldn’t hurt to have Ella learning Japanese customs and language, especially living in a blended town like theirs.
Jean gave her one of her teacher looks, and planted her hands on her hips. “Wait until tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon.”
She sneaked around back and padded down the pathway, following a thin trail of moonlight. Voices floated in and out from darkened windows along the way, and radios sent their noise into the black air. Everything seemed so desperately regular, except for the fact that she had to sneak to her friend’s house in the cover of night. There would be no sleeping until she talked to Takeo.
From the road up to the school, the hum of an engine grew louder. Why hadn’t she accounted for headlights in planning her route? A beam of brilliant light shot across her path as a truck came over the hill. She pressed herself behind a tree, cursing her hips for not being slimmer. But the truck continued on toward the gym. A few minutes passed without another truck.
Outside the house, she hesitated. A knock at the door might cause alarm, but it was too late now. A radio played in the kitchen, and she tapped on the door, while at the same time whispering through the screen. “Setsuko, it’s Violet.”
The radio turned down and feet shuffled. Silence filled the house.
“It’s Violet,” she said again, this time louder.
The door opened and she was pulled into the dark living room by strong hands. “What are you doing here?” Setsuko asked. She wore a rice-bag kimono. Her hair, which usually coiled on her shoulders in permed waves, was now pinned up. Violet smelled seaweed on her breath.
Takeo stood behind Setsuko and nodded to the kitchen. A hint of light seeped out from under the door.
She had to work up the nerve for her request. “Did you sell a lot of sweet potato in Waimea?”
Takeo squinted his already narrow eyes. He knew her too well. “Is that what you came here for, Violet? To ask me that?”
Not much taller than she was, he was strong enough to carry a whole bushel of cane on his back. As a Nisei, he had both feet planted firmly in Hawaii. What Violet loved about him was that he spent more time listening than talking.
“I have a favor to ask of you,” she said.
“Go.”
“Ella wants to come to Japanese school.”
For a moment, everything in the room seemed to be listening. The crickets outside quieted and the wind hushed. Setsuko coughed.
“I don’t understand,” he said, throwing a hard glance at his wife.
“My daughter wants to attend your school. As a student.”
His eyebrows lifted and he stood there barefoot and unsmiling.
“Please, Takeo. I need this favor.” An uneasy feeling welled up in her stomach. She worried he would say no. Ella rarely asked for much, and Violet wanted to give her this.
“Bring her by day after tomorrow.”
* * *
In the morning, Violet sat at the bureau, readying for school and applying cover-up to her lower lids. The blue of her once-bright eyes had rubbed off sometime in the past year. She only hoped her pink lipstick made up for the lost color. Worse than that, the waves in her latest permanent were falling out and her honey-colored hair now stood stiff like straw.
Last night after talking with Setsuko, she had tried counting convoy trucks to help her fall asleep. That hadn’t worked. Jean said maybe it was the grape juice cans rolled in her hair that caused the insomnia, but Violet suspected it was more likely from thinking about things over and over. And over. There were so many layers to her grief. While Ella had a perpetual stomachache, Violet was prone to a perpetual heartache.
Jean was already in the kitchen banging pots around when Violet walked in. “Bad sleep?” she asked.
Violet nodded. Jean always looked fresh from the beauty parlor, not one hair out of place and as though someone had smoothed coconut oil over each strand. Even first thing in the morning. When they had first moved in together, Violet was unsure how two strong-willed women would get along under the same roof. It hadn’t taken long for her to realize that having Jean around was like having her very own wife. On some mornings, coffee was already made, banana pancakes already piled high on a plate, still steaming. And Jean knew how to scour a kitchen clean.
When Ella joined them at the table, dark smudges under her eyes were visible. Though she never complained about being tired, surely the nightmares had taken their toll. “Where’s Snowflake?” she asked.
“She must be outside hunting for mice,” Violet said.
Ella left her bowl of cornflakes and walked to the front door.
“Pumpkin, you need to eat before Hiro and Umi come for you.”
Ella’s voice cut through the morning stillness. “Snowflake!”
Snowflake didn’t show up, but two other striped cats arrived on the porch and rubbed up against Ella’s legs. She sat to pet them, leaving her breakfast unattended. Cats were more important than food and water, and Violet prayed that Snowflake really was out hunting for mice.
“Your cereal is getting soggy. Come on up and eat.” Violet looked at the clock. The Hamasu kids were never late and she wondered what was keeping them. The twins were Ella’s only friends these days, and the more she was around them, the better.
Ella remained in a fur huddle and acted like she didn’t hear. Violet stuffed an extra ball of rice into Ella’s lunch tin, then pulled her daughter along. “Come on. You’ll have to eat when you get there.”
Honoka’a School was the largest high school on the island, with almost one thousand students coming from as far as Paauilo to the east and Waimea to the west. The way the buildings stood on the hillside over town looking out on the Pacific reminded Violet of an exclusive manor. When the skies were clear, she sometimes imagined being able to see all the way to Alaska. On the way to her classroom, she poked her head into Setsuko’s room and waved.
“We missed Umi and Hiro this morning,” Violet said.
Setsuko met her at the door. “They’re with their father, harvesting sweet potato. His worker fell ill.”
Nowadays, when people weren’t where they were supposed to be, Violet’s whole body filled with unease. Only natural after what she’d been through, but there was always something to worry about, between Ella and the war. There was also the matter of all her Japanese friends and their livelihoods. Everyone said it would only be a matter of time before they closed the Japanese school. When your country was at war with Japan, but the Japanese made up almost half of your population, life turned complicated.
* * *
Toward the end of fifth period, the bell hadn’t even rung when Mr. Nakata showed up outside her classroom. He stood to the side and nodded, but didn’t enter. The look on his face was familiar, one part pity and one part annoyance at having to trudge over here. Even though it had been more than a year since he took over for Herman, in her mind Nakata would always be the new principal. No one could replace her husband.
When she acknowledged him back, all her students turned their heads in unison toward the door. “Keep practicing your lines, class. I’ll be right outside. And I expect that you will have no errors.”
The typewriters clicked away.
“I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s been a small incident with Ella,” Nakata said.
Her throat tightened. “Well, I am alarmed. Is she all right?”
He moved in closer and dropped his voice. Wafts of pomade rose from his slick hair. “She’s fine, but she wet her pants during the air-raid drill and Mr. Hodges sent her to the infirmary. I’ll watch your class until the bell.”
The school nurse should have a change of clothes for Ella, but it never got easier. Violet turned and ran.
“Violet, don’t you want to put some shoes on?” She ran back in, switched out her Japanese slippers for her flats and sped across the field to the infirmary. The campus was calm-before-the-storm kind of empty, minutes before school got out. She reached the infirmary, a converted old classroom, in one minute flat.
“Hello, Mrs. Baker. Where’s Ella?”
Mrs. Baker wore her whites crisp and clean, even though she had outgrown them several years ago. Nevertheless, her overabundant body made for good comforting to sick children. Or scared children, which had become more common these days with air-raid drills and gas-mask practice.
“She’s in the back. I got her changed but she refused to go back to class,” Mrs. Baker said.
Ella didn’t look up when Violet walked into the room. In the oversize PE uniform, her arms looked like small wires sticking out from the sleeves. Red spots patterned her arm, one trickling blood, which meant she was picking at herself again. If Ella noticed her arrival, she didn’t let on. She was drawing. Violet sat down on the worn-out carpet next to her.
“That’s a lovely cat, honey.” Nothing but silence. “Want to tell me what happened?”
Ella shook her head and filled in the wings of a giant bird hovering overhead. The bird appeared to be ready to snatch the cat away in its claws. “You worried about Snowflake? She’ll be there when we get home. She always is.” It better be the case. “Come on. We can bring that.”
Ella remained rooted. “Where are Umi and Hiro?”
“They had to help their father today, selling sweet potato.”
The distance between them narrowed when Ella’s focus shifted from the drawing up to Violet. Her brown eyes were still too big for her face. “I don’t like it here without them.”
Violet fought to keep her expression in order. Watching Ella suffer was the worst part of this whole war. “They’ll be back tomorrow. Plus, you know how close my room is.”
Luther Hodges, the shop teacher and Herman’s friend, popped his head in. “Everything okay here?”
“Just having a rough day. We’re fine.”
Ella began picking the scab on her arm vigorously. She wouldn’t look up.
“The sirens seem to set her off. I’ll keep an extra eye on her,” he said.
Ella seemed much more comfortable around the women teachers and women in general, but any help would be welcome. “Thank you.”
To Ella she said, “Did you hear that? You can always seek out Mr. Hodges if you are feeling scared.”
Ella began quivering and Violet pulled her in for a hug. “What is it, honey?”
“The air-raid drills scare me.”
“They’re just practice. Nothing is going to happen to us, especially with half the marines in America just up the street.”
There was some measure of comfort having so many armed men around. Soldiers with enough heavy artillery to sink the island and fancy new amphibious landing boats. A small piece of her wondered, though, if that also made the Big Island more of a target.
Chapter Three
Ella
I was already awake and still wrapped in my horse blankets when Mama came in this morning wearing slippers. Being from Minnesota, Mama doesn’t understand walking barefoot. Even in the house. She wears socks when it’s cold and Japanese slippers when it’s hot, the kind with velvet straps and woven straw where your foot goes. I’m her little native, she says, because I hate wearing shoes. A lot of the Japanese kids from the plantation don’t even get to choose because they’re so poor. For them, an umbrella is more important. It’s one or the other. Rain comes down in buckets here, so the umbrella wins out.
I pretended I was still sleeping because I worried there might be another air-raid drill at school. The noise sets something off inside me. We always have them on Tuesdays. So even if there was a surprise one yesterday, it could happen again. Half the time, I wet my pants. I guess I forgot to mention that earlier. Talk about embarrassing. It smells up the room and everyone turns to me. Sally Botello and Gina Chang pinch up their noses and fan their faces like they’re dying. Even Mrs. Hicks looks at me with such pity I want to ask her to please leave the classroom and head over to detention. Teachers should know better. At least the Japanese kids ignore it.
From halfway across the floor, Mama smelled like cinnamon and morning sun. When she shook me, I acted groggy, but she was wearing a huge smile as she sat on the edge of my bed. Snowflake, who showed up last night wet but alive, turned on her purr even louder. It’s almost like someone put a little motor inside her throat. I call it a purr-box.
Mama smoothed down my hair. “Good morning, sun blossom.”
She calls me weird names. Jean started it. And in case you’re wondering, I call Jean Jean, not Aunt Jean or Miss Quinlan. She said if we’re going to live together, I might as well save my breath. Which was smart, because I have less breath than other people. But I do also call her Honey Jean, mainly because honey is her favorite word. I called her it once and the name stuck.
“I have good news,” Mama said.
“School is canceled?”
She laughed. “Something even better.”
Nothing would have been better. My eyes stung with the coming of tears. I cry a lot for no reason. But the doctor says this is normal behavior for someone who has been through a difficult situation. Which I have.
“What?”
“Takeo said you could start Japanese school today! You’ll be the first non-Japanese in the school.”
Now, this was news. If I could have picked one thing to do in life, it was go to Japanese school, especially now that it was just fun stuff. Before Pearl Harbor, they taught them to write and talk Japanese. Not anymore. No one wants the kids to be spies.
Somehow, being white made me feel like an outsider, like the only piece of corn in a barrel of rice. Mama said we’re corn people, being from Minnesota. But I consider myself Hawaiian, or even partly Japanese. If you spend even five minutes around them, you will know that Japanese people are smarter, neater and more interesting than us. They also don’t talk as much, and are probably good at keeping secrets. Sometimes I wonder if I should tell Umi what I know. About my dad.
“For real?” I asked.
Mama pulled out a small wooden box and handed it to me. “You’ll need this, to write with.”
I sat up and opened the box. Thin bamboo brushes and bottles of ink were neatly packed in on top of white see-through-looking paper. I held it up to my nose and sniffed. It smelled of tree bark mixed with some kind of chemical.
A thin smile crept onto my face. The first one in a while. After the incident with Papa disappearing, it took about a hundred years before I smiled again. At least it seemed that way. Mama, too. Neither of us had anything to smile about, and I think we were both afraid to let ourselves have any kind of happiness. Then, about seven months later, I heard laughing in the kitchen. When I cracked open the door, I heard Jean telling jokes. I don’t know where she gets them, but she always has new ones.
“What’s the difference between an orange and a matter baby?” she asked.
Mama sat at the table with Betty Crocker opened in front of her. “What’s a matter baby?”
“Nothing, honey,” Jean said, in a sweet syrupy voice.
A laugh came out of Mama, and from then on, I knew laughing was allowed. We were moving on. But that was a lot easier said than done.
Chapter Four
Violet
In the months after Herman’s disappearance, Violet had dragged Ella to one form of specialist after another. They began with the plantation doctor, who prescribed small pink pills that caused Ella to walk around in a fugue state, bumping into walls and drooling. After a week, Violet flushed the pills down the toilet.
The psychiatrist turned out to be even worse. On the day they made the three-hour drive to Hilo, an angry rain forced its way in through the window cracks and drenched them before they had even arrived. Then they dashed through ankle-deep puddles only to find that the doctor would have to reschedule; he had gone to Kona. On their next visit, Dr. Stern spent a full hour interrogating Ella behind a closed red door. Violet knocked several times throughout and poked her head in. Ella never raised her gaze.
After the session, he invited Violet in. Looking over his wire spectacles, past a razorback nose, he said, “Mrs. Iverson, I’m afraid that shock therapy is the only thing that might bring your daughter around.”
No expert in medicine, she knew enough to take Ella by the hand and walk out the door.
When it came to Reverend Dunn, his answer was much the same, only in this case it wasn’t shock but prayer that would be her only salvation.
In desperation, Violet decided to enlist the help of a Hawaiian named Henry Aulani. He lived in a modest house at the bottom of the road down to Haina. More prison guard in appearance than healer, his mellifluous voice and coffee-colored eyes told a different story. Kids played in the yard and dogs wandered in and out the open back door. He brought them into the high-ceilinged kitchen, where dried plants hung from the rafters, filling the room with sharp and sweet scents of mint and forest.
“Please, sit.” He motioned to the table.
Violet felt her throat constricting at the thought of explaining Ella’s condition to yet another person. But he didn’t ask her anything about Ella.
“Tell me about your home,” he said.
“What do you want to know about my home?”
“Whatever you want to tell me,” he said.
Violet thought it a strange question. Weren’t they here about Ella? “Well, to start with, it’s bright yellow...”
She continued on. Ella remained mute until a few minutes later, when a black cat with yellow eyes jumped onto the bench and climbed into her lap. “What’s his name?” she asked Henry.
“Her name is Pele. And you must be special, because this cat doesn’t do that with most people,” he said.
“She purrs real loud,” Ella said.
On more than one occasion, Ella had asked Violet why humans don’t purr and if there was any way possible to learn how. “We purr. You just can’t hear it,” Violet had said.
If at all possible, the air in the kitchen now seemed easier to breathe. Whether it was the cat or Henry pulling Violet out of her own mind full of hidden fears, she couldn’t be sure.
Henry took both Violet’s hands. The warmth in his palms made her own tingle. “Now, tell me what happened.”
The date was forever etched in her mind. Friday, September 10, 1943. Violet had been with the sewing circle in the small blue-and-white church below town, assembling cardboard slippers for the wounded men still in the hospital at Tripler, in Honolulu. The group met every week. The horrors of Pearl Harbor were fresh in everyone’s mind, even though it had been over a year ago. As usual, Ella stayed next door with Mrs. Cody, who had most of the neighborhood playing in her yard.
When Violet returned to the Codys’ cottage, Ella was nowhere to be found.
“What do you mean, she’s not here?”
“Maybe she doesn’t know that hide-and-seek is over,” Mrs. Cody said.
A brief search found Ella two houses up at the Hamasus’. Violet had to steady herself when she saw her daughter. Ella lay on the living room pune’e with blankets piled up around her and a warm cloth on her forehead.
Setsuko sat with her. “She wandered in only ten minutes ago. Something’s not right.”
Ella’s skin was the color of cooked rice and her eyes were shut tightly. Right at that exact moment, a feeling of cold ran through Violet, turning her blood to stone.
“You should have told me you weren’t feeling well, honey,” she said.
Ella didn’t answer. It was only the beginning.
* * *
Back at the house, darkness set in and Herman still had not returned. She assumed he was on a patrol, though he hadn’t mentioned he would be out that night. Soon after the bombing, Herman and half the plantation workers formed a group they called the Hawaii Rifles. The members would ride around on horseback, keeping an eye on anything out of order. None of the men had any experience, but that didn’t stop them. People wanted to feel like they were doing something.
With the onset of the war, predictability had become a thing of the past, but his absence seemed wrong in a way she couldn’t explain. Call it a hunch. She fixed a pot of sweet potato soup up for Ella, who refused even one spoonful. Her forehead felt clammy and her little body shook in small fits.
“That settles it. I’m taking you to the doctor in the morning,” Violet said.
A few minutes after midnight, Sheriff Souza knocked on the door. Standing on the porch, he was a mere shadow with a hat, and Violet invited him into the kitchen, where she turned on the light. Instinctively, she hugged herself. His hands were plastered in his pockets. “Mrs. Iverson, I don’t want to alarm you, but do you have any knowledge of your husband’s whereabouts? His car is down at the lookout below Kukuihaile.”
The old Ford. Why on earth would he be down there at this hour? Her mind raced to imagine the possibilities. Submarine spotting. Airplane spotting. Aside from those, there was no reasonable explanation. Not for Herman.
“I don’t, Sheriff. Maybe he was on watch duty?”
Souza’s expression looked wooden and unreadable. “I yelled around. Did he mention he would be going anywhere?”
She shook her head. “I was at the sewing circle and he usually works at school until dark.”
“I’ll be honest with you—this seems fishy. With curfew and all.”
More than fishy. Herman was the kind of man who never missed an appointment, showed up on the dot. He was reliable to a fault. If he’d had duty tonight, he would have told her.
“Maybe he said something to Luther?” she said.
Souza seemed relieved to have somewhere else to go. “I’ll have a word with him. You stay here in case Herman shows up.”
As she waited, minutes expanded to hours and Violet was no longer sure if she was awake or dreaming. She closed her eyes and willed herself to wake up, only to understand that she already was. Rain began to bucket down, pelting the windows with tadpole-size drops.
Before long, Souza returned. “Ma’am, Luther didn’t know a thing. But he was pretty liquored up. I’ll talk to him more tomorrow.”
“If anyone, he would know.”
“Try to get some rest. I’ll put a call out, see if anyone knows anything. And send a car out first thing in the morning. Meantime, stay here. I’m sure there’s an explanation.”
They were the most feeble words she’d ever heard him speak.
* * *
In the kitchen, where Violet waited, the rickety icebox kick-started into high gear every once in a while, startling her with its hum. The wetness of the air caused her hair to stand on end. She felt torn in half.
Sheriff Souza called at eight o’clock with no real news. Mr. Fujimoto had been sweeping the sidewalk in front of his store when he thought he had seen Herman driving north toward Waipio, but that was all. Friday afternoons in town were usually crawling with people, now that the evenings were off-limits. No one would have been paying attention.
“I’m going to head back to the car right now with a few of my men, search the area for any signs. I’ll get back to you just as soon as I can,” he said.
She hated to think of what that implied. As of now, she was suffering from a trembling in her gut that would not stop. Scenarios played out in her head. Herman meeting up with Japanese soldiers who had crept ashore and scaled the cliffs. Or slipping and falling from those same cliffs. It was simply impossible that her husband would not be found alive and in one piece with a perfectly rational explanation.
Ella slept uneasily through most of the morning, thrashing about in her bed and tangling herself in the blankets. Violet felt her forehead, which had cooled but was still clammy against the back of her hand. Low clouds blocked the sun, allowing only gray light in through the windows. In despair, she called Setsuko, careful not to say much on the line.