Jewel of the Pacific (20 page)

Eden shook her head. “She’s decided I won’t have it until she’s gone. I’ve given up asking her to let me see it.”

“It’s undoubtedly at the convent, in the hand of Sister Marianne. I wouldn’t worry too much. Rebecca must feel it’s safe there. You’ll receive it at the proper time.”

“Marianne holds great respect for the memory of Priest Damien. Brother Dutton, too,” Eden said.

“I, too, hold them in regard where their sacrifice and good deeds are concerned. Priest Damien was a commendable man of selflessness. However he made some statements that trouble me deeply.” Ambrose shook his head. “The most critical spiritual issue for mankind is how a sinner is made acceptable to the one true God who is perfectly holy. The Scripture is clear. Christ’s work on the cross is the only deed ever done that can atone for our sins. No man’s own deeds of sacrifice and humility are adequate to earn him righteousness or prepare him for eternity. Good works are commendable when done faithfully
for
Christ’s glory—such deeds God promises to reward. However, the concept of
earning
forgiveness of sins, or working for God’s acceptance, is false teaching. It is a danger. If that were even possible we would never know when we have done enough. Instead we must place our confidence in Christ who certainly has done enough. ‘It is finished,’ He said from the cross. The work of redeeming sinners was accomplished and paid for
in full.”

Ambrose drew his brows together, concern willing his rugged features. “Here is the danger. When a believer does not know the Bible he is wide open to false teaching.”

“Did you know the first Christian minister to help Kalawao was Minister Forbes?” she commented. “He was a visiting pastor who came with two photographers. They took pictures of the lepers to put in the Honolulu papers to sound the alarm. And the first school on Kalawao was set up through John and Caroline Walsh. The Board of Health hired the couple to build and staff a small hospital, and start a boys’ and girls’ school.”

“Yes. If I remember rightly, both hospital and schools were enlarged, but remained in need. I remember seeing those photographs Pastor Forbes put in the papers. Unfortunately, ministers like Forbes or the Walshes have been bypassed for the glorification of certain others who receive all the publicity. Sometimes history can lose the truth through repetition.” She nodded. “I’ve also heard disturbing talk recently from Aunt Lana about ‘witchcraft’ here at Kalaupapa,” she said.

“True, enough. The sorcerers, or witch doctors, whatever people call them, have a following here. They’re called the
kahuna anaana.
There is much superstition. Some satanic power is behind it. The devil is a deceiver. Satan comes disguised as an ‘angel of light.’ He doesn’t necessarily show up with horns, a pitchfork, and hooves—but he probably would if he thought it would snare more frightened souls into following his rebellion.”

The next morning Ambrose boarded the steamer and returned to Honolulu.

The days rolled along. Without Ambrose and Keno and his cheerful cousins, Eden noticed the evenings were especially quiet. She missed their smiles and laughter.

Dr. Jerome withdrew into the isolated world of his work, and Aunt Lana was busy helping Dr. Bolton. When the candles were extinguished and Kalawao was asleep, the night was as black as coal. Misty clouds blanketed the sky. The sound of the wind and waves wrapped about her, sighing, calling.

Finally one morning when daylight dawned, word came from Bishop Home that Rebecca had died during the night.

At first Dr. Jerome refused to believe the news that the rest of them had expected for two months. When he did accept reality he retired to his bungalow, sobbing. Eden covered her face with her hands.

Suddenly, realizing the stressful situation her father was struggling with, she remembered that he might need help with his heart medication. She hurried inside his bungalow and saw him sitting at his desk with his head on his arms. She searched diligently for his nitroglycerine tablets.

Dr. Bolton came to the open door and entered, going straight to Jerome. He had his bag with him, reached in for his stethoscope, and swiftly listened to Jerome’s heartbeat.

“Here’s his heart medicine,” Eden said.

“Hand it to me.”

Bolton bent over Jerome who had slumped in the chair. He placed a tablet under Jerome’s tongue and worked on him efficiently. Eden was as grieved watching Dr. Clifford Bolton as she was about her father. It struck her that here was an extremely gifted man who, within a year or maybe two, would be unable to perform his work. Work so much in demand and so necessary.

Aunt Lana arrived breathing hard.

“Anything I can do?” she whispered to her husband.

“I believe he’s just had a serious heart attack.”

Eden stood, her emotions in limbo, as if she stood on the outside of a window looking in, unable to hear what was being said but watching people moving about urgently.

She stirred, then went to her father’s bed and pulled back the blanket.

“Help me get him to the bed,” Bolton said to Lana. Eden fell back upon her skills as a nurse. She had thought herself prepared for her father’s emotional breakdown, but she hadn’t considered it being initiated with a heart attack.

After they’d gotten him into bed, Dr. Bolton continued watching over him.

While Dr. Bolton cared for Jerome, Lana held Eden, whose face was wet with tears. Lana took her to the cottage, and told her to lie down.

“Rest, dear, there’s nothing more you can do now,” she said, as she left the room to go help Dr. Bolton with Jerome.

In the following days Eden’s father remained bedridden and under Dr. Bolton’s care. “If only I had access to the facilities at Kalihi,” he said to Brother Ira Dutton who’d come by to see if there was anything he could do.

“The schooner will arrive in two weeks,” Dutton said.

“I fear we couldn’t move him now anyway.”

Eden had written Ambrose with not just the news of Rebecca’s death, but now Dr. Jerome’s illness. The delayed communication with Honolulu was such a trial. It took weeks to send a letter and weeks to get a return message, all depending on the dates the steamer came and went. She was accustomed to writing a note and sending a boy to deliver it within the hour. Now she must wait for weeks to send for Ambrose. As Brother Dutton had said, the schooner wouldn’t arrive anytime soon.

She gave the letter to Dutton who handled the mail. He always picked the postal bag up from the general store and brought it down to the beach on the day when the Board of Health steamer arrived.

Aunt Lana was the one who handled her older sister, Rebecca’s, funeral. She had the Bible instructor from the small Protestant church meeting lead in prayer and read about the resurrection of Christians from 1 Corinthians 15, followed by the children’s choir.

On the morning after Rebecca’s funeral, Eden opened her door to step out and found a selection of flowers and ferns in a little woven basket. A piece of paper had ink printing from the press and a drawing of a gate opening toward a rainbow with hovering doves. A bluebird was flying away toward the open gate. “Free at last,” was printed below the bird as well as a verse from Scripture: “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.”

The paper was signed simply
Also waiting, David, 2 Corinthians 5:8
.

A week after Rebecca died, the
kokua
, Lotus, came down from Bishop House to Eden’s bungalow. The girl carried something in her arms wrapped protectively with a blue scarf.

“This is yours, Miss Derrington. Mother Marianne gave it to me this morning to bring to you. She says, may you have peace and the good will of God all your days.”

Eden knew it must be the journal Rebecca had told her about. She took it carefully, and thanked her. “And may both of you know the joy and peace that only Jesus can bring.”

“Aloha,” the girl murmured and turned away.

“Before you go, Lotus, I wanted to tell you that a gift will come to you from Honolulu after I’ve returned to my grandfather’s plantation. The gift is for your kindness to my mother and for your faithful service to her.”

Lotus smiled, her eyes shining, and murmured her gratitude. Eden looked after the girl. She had plans for Lotus. Some pretty clothes, some shiny costume jewelry, and enough money to live on comfortably while she waited out her days at Bishop House.

The parcel in her hands shone in the sunlight. The journal, she knew, would reveal pathos and bring more tears. Clasping it, she went back inside her bungalow.

She could begin reading it that afternoon, or perhaps during the evening. She might even wait until she returned to Honolulu. At the moment the larger details of her mother’s sojourn on the isle of exiles could wait for a less climactic time.

But there was one piece of information she wanted to know before leaving Kalawao—whose child was Kip? Was there another name for the baby boy Rafe had rescued from the incoming tide that day on the beach?

The journal and its telling content could wait for a sunnier day when her heart was less heavy and willing to be buffeted by its contents. Now, with all that had happened, and her father bedridden, tomorrow’s uncertainties were enough without delving into the past.

A
s the days turned to weeks, Kalawao’s weather worsened. Sometimes the sunshine was absent for days, and the ocean waves were ruthless.

Eden read Rebecca’s journal from the beginning to the end. The saga told in descriptive form the numbing isolation of her early arrival at the camp and of her eventual acceptance of “these light afflictions, which are but for a moment.”

Then came the shocking mention of a baby boy. When Eden looked at the date, it lined up with Kip’s age. Rebecca told of her first
kokua
being violated by a haole visitor on Molokai, resulting in the birth of a baby boy. “He was drinking, and when he drinks he is unreasonable and cruel. Had I not been so far along in the dread disease he would have violated me. But he feared to touch me. He held no fear, however, of a sin against God! Leah was always an attractive woman and she told me later that she’d known him in Honolulu.”

So Kip is not Rebecca’s child
, she thought, feeling neither relief nor disappointment. She’d been ready to accept the truth, regardless. After meeting with Rebecca and seeing how far her mother had deteriorated, Eden had already begun to have doubts before reading the diary. Kip could not be much older than three years old, and conception would have occurred four years ago. Even then, Rebecca would have been into the later stages of leprosy.

Eden read on: “So Leah had the baby,” Rebecca wrote. “The man responsible, whose name is well known in Honolulu, came here on a trip with the Board of Health.”

Eden gasped and gripped the journal. “What?” she breathed. “Oh no! Oh what can this mean?”

Her eyes rushed through the words to find the name of Kip’s father, but she could not find it. Oh! She took in a deep breath to calm herself. Then she went back and read from the beginning again. The name must be there—