Eleven

n December an epidemic of Spanish influenza broke out in Honolulu as it already had worldwide, going on to claim eighty-one lives in the islands in January alone. Hawai'i, of course, had a long and fatal history of Western plagues devastating the native population, and the ensuing panic drove people off the streets and into the presumed safety of their own homes. Churches suspended services out of fear of spreading the disease; movie theaters shut their doors indefinitely. Queen's Hospital was quickly overwhelmed with cases of influenza and emergency hospitals were established at Quarantine island and, uncomfortably close to us, Palama Settlement.

By this time I was also three months pregnant with our second child. Not wishing to expose Grace Eun or our unborn child to unnecessary risk, Jaesun and I agreed that I would give up my job at the tailor shop, though I still took in some piecework I could do at home. We may not have made as much money, but neither did we want for anything of substance, and were even still able to donate our five dollars a month to the Korean Independence Fund.

So it came as something of a surprise when one morning my husband held up that day's edition of Dr. Rhee's Korean-language newspaper, the Korean Pacific Weekly, and said, "Here now, Grace Eun's mother, do you see this?" He tapped the front page with his finger. "This is opportunity. Go on, read it."

He handed me the paper, pointing out a story about the recent strike action taken by Japanese and Filipino laborers against O'ahu's sugar plantations. The workers were seeking an increase in wages-from a base pay of seventy-seven cents a day to a dollar and twenty-five cents-as well as changes to the inequitable "bonus" system. I remembered the back-breaking toil at Waialua and could scarcely blame the strikers.

"The plantation owners need new workers to replace them," Jae-sun said excitedly, "and are willing to pay up to three and a half dollars a day, plus bonuses!"

This seemed a huge sum and I was frankly skeptical. "Why would they pay someone three dollars a day when the strikers are only asking for a third of that? "

"As a wedge to use against the union. The planters would lose much more money in the long run if they give in to the demands. But in the short run, there is opportunity for much money to be made by someone like myself."

I was dismayed to hear this. "You wish to go back to the plantation?"

"Only for as long as the strike goes on. Even if it lasts only two more months, why, at three and a half dollars a day, I could earn nearly two hundred dollars in that time! Think of what we could do with such money! We could buy a home of our own. Or a boardinghouse! Perhaps even-open a restaurant."

This last he spoke casually, almost diffidently, but I did not underestimate its importance to him. Still . . . "It does not seem right," I said, "taking someone else's job. Even a Japanese."

"They have taken our country from us," Jae-sun replied coldly, predictably. "I won't shed any tears over taking one of their jobs! In fact, I will do it with pride, and as a spit in the face of the Japanese Empire."

Seeing my hesitation, he softened this a bit. "No one will lose their jobs permanently,yobo. The strike will last a month or two, the laborers will eventually return to the plantation, and you and I will have some extra money in our pocket-that's all."

Jae-sun earned barely two hundred dollars for an entire year's work at the cannery; to make such a sum in only two months' time did seem miraculous. "So," I said resignedly, "you have accepted a job, then?"

He looked surprised. "No, of course not. I merely wish to know what you think of the idea. Though I hope you will agree that this is an opportunity that does not come often in a man's life."

It wasn't the wistfulness in his eyes when he spoke of opening a restaurant that swayed me. Nor was it the money, though I did consider what it might mean for my children's future, as well as Blossom's. No, in the end what persuaded me was simply ... that he had asked me. My father would have made such a decision on his own and only informed my mother after the fact. That Jae-sun sought my opinion-my consent-meant more to me than I could say. And because of that, I could not gainsay him this job.

"I see the wisdom in what you suggest. It is a great opportunity." I was not nearly as confident as I sounded, but the gladness in his face almost convinced me. "How soon would we leave?"

Startled, he said, "No, you misunderstand. I would go to the plantation, you and Grace would remain here, in Honolulu."

Had I heard him correctly? "You would go there-alone?"

"It will be better that way. You would not have to move, and I can always come into the city on Sundays to visit."

"But-my place is with you," I protested. "Our place-Grace's, too."

I had not expected the sudden panic I saw in his eyes. "No!" he blurted out. "You mustn't bring the children!"

His voice was raised not in anger but in alarm. Now I understood.

"Husband," I said, gently, "no harm will come to them. Or to me."

"You don't know that! A plantation is a dangerous place to raise a child."

I took his hand in mine and felt it tremble like a sparrow's wing.

"Yobo, no harm will come to us. I promise that I will not work in the fields if you do not wish me to. I will not bring Grace or our unborn child into the fields. And consider this: Given the spread of influenza here in Honolulu, it might even be safer for them there, away from the city."

He thought about that a long moment.

"You will go nowhere near the fields," he finally said-not a command but a restatement. I nodded.

"I lost a child on the plantation, too," I reminded him. "I promise you, I will not lose another."

ae-sun had no trouble securing a job at the O'ahu Sugar Company in Waipahu, just outside Honolulu, and it took less than a week to pack up our belongings and arrange for transportation. Before we left, I stopped and said goodbye, for the moment, to the Kahahawais. The past year had seen Joseph Sr. remarry to a pretty eighteen-year-old Hawaiian woman named Hannah Pipi, with whom he soon had a young son named Arthurthe first of four boys and two daughters. Esther, in order to make ends meet, had taken a job sewing burlap bags at the Hawaiian Fertilizer Company in Iwilei, where she met and began seeing a fellow employee, an easygoing Portuguese named Pascual Anito. With typical Hawaiian tolerance and aloha, all parties seemed to accept and embrace this extended 'ohana. Joey-now, at the mature age of eleven, preferring to be called Joe, like his fatherseemed happy to have a younger brother.

He even seemed to have gained something of an older brother in the form of a family friend named William Kama, who worked with Joe Sr. as a streetcar conductor, and who was visiting when I dropped by. Bill was a serious young man in his mid-twenties, of medium height and build, but he might have been ten feet tall for the way Joe Jr. looked up to him. A graduate of the prestigious Kamehameha School, Bill hoped to become a police officer.

"Joe's a good kid," he told me. "He just needs somebody to remind him of it." Bill promised me he'd do his best to keep him from playing hooky with Mack and Shorty, and "out of pilikia."

On Friday morning my family and I boarded a train bound for Waipahu, a few miles north of Pearl Harbor. Grace cried at first at the clamor of the locomotive as it clattered out of the station, but quieted when I held her up to the window to watch the landscape rolling past. It was a short trip to Waipahu-only nine stops, less than forty minutes-which helped reassure me that I was not leaving too far behind us the life we had begun building for ourselves in Honolulu.

We were not the only strikebreakers arriving that day, but were among a group of about thirty laborers-Chinese, Hawaiian, Korean, Portuguesewho disembarked at Waipahu. None of us, however, had expected to be escorted onto the plantation by a contingent of fifteen local police officers, who formed a buffer between us and a small number of Japanese gathered along Waipahu Depot Road. Some were local shopkeepers, but many were laborers who had been forcibly evicted from their plantation homes after the strike was called. They had taken refuge in nearby schools and temples and now looked upon us, their replacements, with understandable discontent. Once on the plantation grounds we even passed through what had been the Japanese camp-silent as a town full of obake, ghosts, the houses hauntingly empty, their doors and windows actually nailed shut.

In contrast to the white sands and crashing surf at Waialua, there was a lonely monotony about the landscape here. Waipahu was a flat, landlocked plain-acre upon acre of sugar cane and rice paddies-with only the stooped shoulders of low hills in the distance. When we reached the Korean camp we found that it stood within sight of the gracious homes of the plantation managers, but our own housing was so far removed from this it might have been on the other side of the world. We were to live in what amounted to a long barracks, four families to a building, each so-called "apartment" separated by freestanding walls that stopped well short of the roof. We had no privacy to speak of and were never free from the chatter of neighbors or the crying of their children. We also shared the housing with other, unwanted residents: cockroaches, centipedes, even scorpions, which stubbornly held their ground until repulsed by torches made of old newspaper.

The latrines were long sheds containing wooden benches with appropriate holes cut in them, situated above a trench of running water. There was also a copy of last year's Sears, Roebuck catalog, the pages of which were apparently used to cleanse oneself. It made the lavatories at Kauluwela look like a king's bath!

As I made my inaugural visit to these facilities-relieving myself of a stream of water into even fouler waters below-the last thing I expected was to hear a familiar voice:

"Did I not predict that this would be a great adventure?"

Glancing to my left I was startled to see-seated on the next bench, with her skirt hiked up to her waist-the diminutive figure of Wise Pearl.

We laughed and (taking time to adjust our skirts) embraced.

"It is good to see you again," she said warmly. "How is Mr. Noh?"

"It is good to see you as well. But I am no longer married to Mr. Noh. It is a long story, and as bad as much of it is, not one I wish to relate in an outhouse."

She laughed at this and we relocated outside, to more pleasant surroundings along the banks of Waikele Stream. I told her of my circumstances these past few years, the good and the bad, and asked for her discretion in regards to my divorce. I was a bit apprehensive about her reaction, but to my great relief it seemed not to trouble her at all.

"And have you and Mr. Kam been here at Waipahu all this time?" I asked.

"No, my husband was at 'Ewa Plantation when we married," she explained. "We spent three years there, where I gave birth to two healthy sons. But Mr. Kam speaks very good English as well as Japanese and Korean, and I encouraged him to apply for a job as a translator here at Waipahu ... though at the moment, I'm afraid, there is precious little to translate."

I told her of our fellow picture brides, now both living in Honolulu. "It would be a fine thing to see them again," she said. "Perhaps we may take the train into town together sometime."

"I'm sure they would like that as well."

I was happy to find a friend here, much less an old friend; and pleased that it felt as if not a day had passed between us since our dockside weddings, almost six years before.

had promised Jae-sun I would not work in the fields, but there was still much for me to do at Waipahu: cooking, cleaning house, and the inevitable laundering of work clothes caked in mud or blackened by soot from the sugar mill. It was familiar drudgery, made more challenging by the presence of a toddler who seemed unsettled by her new surroundings and clung anxiously to my skirt. My pregnancy often amplified my weariness, sapping me of strength and stamina when I needed them most. Thank Heaven for Wise Pearl, who was always there to lend a hand. She never seemed to lack for energy or good cheer, a useful corrective to my own moodiness-not just my hormones but the depressing return to plantation life, living by the shriek of the steam whistle sunup to sundown, and the unfortunate memories this evoked.

But the workers' community here was as welcoming as it was at Waialua, and I soon made many friends among the Spanish, Chinese, and Puerto Rican wives. Their children, and Wise Pearl's two sons, tried to befriend Grace, but she was painfully shy-as I had been at her age-and despite coaxing she usually retreated into the nearest corner to play with her doll.

My husband was not as young as when he last did field work; most days he came stumbling home bone-weary and sore, wolfing down dinner before collapsing into bed. I massaged his aching back and shoulders and rubbed ointment into sprained muscles. But he never complained or lost sight of why he was suffering this: Every payday he would proudly show me his wages and talk about the future this money would secure for us. Even after buying groceries I was able to deposit more than half of his salary in the bank; at his weariest, Jaesun was buoyed by our little account book and what it represented.

I did most of our shopping at the plantation store, but there were certain items they did not carry, and though I shared Jae-sun's aversion to patronizing Japanese merchants, my family's needs came first. So without telling my husband I would sneak off to shop at the well-stocked Arakawa's Store on Depot Road. Mr. Arakawa was always cordial enough, but on the street I felt the eyes of the Japanese strikers on me and I shrank from the anger and contempt in their faces, lowering my eyes as I hurried back to the safety of the Korean camp.

When I next needed provisions I could not obtain at the plantation store, I decided to purchase them at Mr. Yi's general store in Honolulu, where I could also say hello to Beauty. With Wise Pearl minding Grace Eun, I boarded the 8:35 train, arriving in Iwilei at 9:15 A.M. But I scarcely expected the sight that greeted me as I left the train depot.

Refugee camps overflowing with hundreds of displaced workers from the plantations had sprung up like weeds all around the train station. I was stunned to see entire families living in canvas tents, cooking their meals over open fires, washing their clothes in metal buckets and drying them on lines strung between campsites. Instead of the scent of orchids or Chinese jasmine, the trade winds carried the rank smell of human waste from holes dug along the perimeter of the camp. In the midst of this squalor and desolation, keiki laughed and played as keiki did anywhere, but somehow that made the sight even harder for me to bear.

I hurried across King Street into Palama, but if there was no refuge for these people, there was none for me from them. I saw dozens squeezed into a single shrine or temple, or camped in once-vacant lots between buildings. Some were Filipino, but most were Japanese-women in kimonos feeding their children meager rations of rice or miso soup as their frustrated and helpless husbands sat by, smoking cigarettes. Others lay blanketed on bedding inside their tents, even though it was mid-morning.

All at once our rude lodgings in Waipahu seemed positively palatial in comparison. And I wondered, with a queasy feeling, whether our current housing had perhaps been home to one of these families, who were now living in such squalid conditions.

I headed north on Liliha Street, where still more families squatted in abandoned stores and factories, each person staking out a cold sliver of concrete floor. Many lay on tatami mats, coughing or shivering as if feverish. With a sudden fright I realized how foolish I had been to come to Honolulu-these crowded, unsanitary encampments were obviously rife with influenza. Cursing myself for my stupidity, I quickened my pace, intending to briskly make my purchases at Yi's store, then board the very next train for Waipahu.

But a few blocks up the street, in another formerly empty lot, a baby was wailing-and that sound will always make a woman's head turn, if only for a moment. I looked and saw a Japanese woman sitting cross-legged on a mat, two drowsy toddlers leaning up against her with eyes closed as she cradled a baby, rocking it asleep with a Japanese lullaby I had heard in the sugar fields:

The guarded mountain, Mountain of the sacred groveAlong the foot Ashibi are floweringWhat a lovely mountain is The mountain guarded like a crying child.

But it was not the woman's song that had drawn my attention. I knew her.

It was the young Japanese woman from the Nippon Maru-the one who'd sat down beside me on the deck one chilly night, and whose friendly overtures I had just as coldly rebuffed. That young woman's face had been smiling, open, and cheerful, but this woman's was pale as chalk, her eyes beset with worry. She looked like a wraith cradling the spirit of a stolen child.

I knew I should not get any closer for fear of influenza, yet I still took a step toward her.

"Excuse me," I said, "but ... did you travel here aboard the Nippon Mara?"

She looked at me and blinked, as if wondering why anyone would ask her this. Finally she replied, "A long time ago ... yes."

Fool that I was, I took another step forward.

"I believe we met one night, on deck. I was ... quite rude to you."

She looked more closely at me; a pale crescent of a smile appeared on her face. "Ah ... yes," she said slowly. "So you were."

"Is-is your baby hungry?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, just colicky. I have milk enough for her. But alas, these two"-she glanced at her two older boys-"are too old to suckle at their mother's breast."

"Does no one provide for you here?"

She made a little shrug at that.

"The union does what it can," she said, "but there are many mouths to feed-over six thousand of us, we are told, on O'ahu. The men go fishing or catch crabs at the waterfront ... that is where my husband is now. We get by.

"The plantation owners just ... threw you out of your home?" I said in disbelief. "With your keiki?"

"Oh, yes. Even the sick and infirm. It made no difference to them."

I felt my face grow flush with shame and told her, "I will come back with food."

She smiled faintly. "It is kind of you to offer. But you weren't that rude."

"I will be back," I promised, and hurried to the nearest grocery store. There I purchased a five-pound bag of rice, a dozen eggs, a pound of dried bonito, two quarts of milk, soy sauce, miso, two pounds of soba noodles, a can of red a~uki beans, and some crackseed-all of which cost about five dollars. We were making enough money at Waipahu that we could afford to be charitable, and since I managed our household budget, Jae-sun need never know of it. I carried the groceries back to the camp and humbly presented them to the woman.

"Please accept this paltry gift from an unworthy source," I said.

She hesitated to take them. "No, I could never repay this kindness."

"I am not asking you to repay it. Just take it-please." Wryly I added, "My husband hates miso and can't digest milk. What will I do with it all?"

She laughed at that, and finally accepted the gift.

"Thank you," she said, bowing, "for your kampana. " This was a Buddhist term that spoke of when "good people's hearts are moved" to do a compassionate act. "May I ask the name of our benefactor?"

"I am called Jin."

"Thank you, Jin-san. I am Tamiko. This is my firstborn son, Hiroshi, and my second-born, Jiro. The little one is Sugi."

"Konichi wa, " I said, then gave the boys the crackseed I had purchased. This was a sweet-salty confection popular in the islands; they snapped it up, thanked me, and happily began chewing the licorice-flavored candy.

I asked, "Which plantation did you come from?"-though I dreaded the answer.

"'Aiea." It was just a few train stops away from Waipahu. "At first we were housed in a church on King Street, but there were so many sick people there my husband thought it safer for us to be out in the open." With equal parts amazement and horror she added, "Have you heard? Even the shicho- oh, what is the word-the mayor of Honolulu, Mayor Fern, has died of the influenza!"

I had not heard. "Aigo. "

"Hawai'i is not what we imagined, back on the Nippon Mara, is it? Yet it's a lovely place, and so warm-the winters in Kumamoto were terrible, I could never go back to them. Do you live here in Honolulu?"

"No, I am just-visiting." It was nearly true. "And I must be getting home. But before I go . . ." I reached into my purse, took out several dollar bills, and started to hand them to her.

"No, no-you have done enough!"

"Call it a loan. You will repay me when you are rich, and I am poor." I bowed. "Good luck to you. Perhaps we will meet again."

"Yes, under kinder circumstances. Thank you, Jin-san."

I left and continued on to the Yi store, where I purchased the items I had come for and chatted briefly with Beauty. When I told her about Tamiko she said she would look in on the family next week and if there was anything they might need, she would supply it. Beauty truly had the good heart of which the Buddhist masters wrote; my kampana was compromised by shame and guilt. I thanked her and hurried back to the railroad depot. I remember thinking as I arrived that the encampment of tents and people looked like a war-weary army in a military campaign, stoically awaiting the next battle. And I feared I was on the wrong side.

ently, I tried to suggest as much to Jae-sun, telling him what I had seen in Honolulu (though omitting any mention of my act of charity). But he simply said, "They chose to go out on strike. They can come back at any time of their choosing." Indeed, the Filipinos' labor union had already capitulated and called their members back to work.

I began to follow the progress of the strike more closely in the Englishlanguage papers and was shocked by their editorials, which claimed the strike was not economically motivated but a sinister attempt by Japan to wrest control of the sugar industry in Hawai'i-if not all of Hawai'i itself. They called it "the Japanese conspiracy." I read Jae-sun some of this virulently racist commentary and pointed out how the sugar industry sought to pit one racial group against another, as they did on the plantation by paying different salaries to different nationalities. "Next time it will be Japanese breaking a Korean strike, and who will benefit then?"

He grudgingly admitted that what I said made sense-and I believe I was beginning to sway his thinking when one afternoon he came limping home after a day in the fields, in a condition that made me cry out in shock and distress.

"Oh my Heaven! Yobo, what happened?"

His left eye was blackened; blood dripped from his nose; his right cheek was swollen purple-blue as a plum. I immediately ran and got ice from the plantation store, wrapped it in a towel, and placed it against his swollen eye. I swabbed his bruises and lacerations with iodine, which made him flinch. Finally I asked him, "Who did this to you?"

"I had an accident in the fields."

"Why did no one take you to the hospital?"

"It was on the way back from the fields," he amended.

"Husband," I asked again, "who did this?"

He sighed, knowing I would not let the matter rest.

"A few of us were on our way back from the north cane fields," he admitted, "when some of the strikers who had taken refuge in Hongwanji Temple approached us. They called us `planter's dogs'-and a few other things I cannot quote. One word led to another, and here I am." He pointed to his discolored eye. "I believe the haoles call this `a shiner,' " he said proudly.

"Oh,yobo, please. Let's go back to Honolulu."

"Never! I will be damned if I will run away with my tail between my legs, like the dog they say I am."

"Then report them to the manager, at least."

But to my surprise, he shook his head at this, too.

"They were angry, and thinking of their families' welfare," he said. "I will not report a man for that-not even a Japanese."

He stood, thanked me for my attentions, and staggered into bed, bruised and exhausted. And the next morning went back to work in the fields.

We did not leave Waipahu.

Much of that year's sugar crop withered on the stalk for lack of sufficient manpower to harvest it, but by summer it was clear that the strike had taken a greater toll on the laborers than the planters. And by mid-year the influenza epidemic had claimed more than twelve hundred deaths in Hawai'i, a hundred and fifty of them displaced plantation workers.

Against all common sense I made occasional trips into Honolulu to aid Tamiko and her family, and thankfully I did not become sick, even though we often sat side by side and discussed our lives. Tamiko was also a picture bride, but in Japan such brides were actually married beforehand, in ceremonies in their home villages, to their absent grooms. She, too, had been disappointed at first by her husband's age and poverty, though she said she had come to care for him very much. I never dreamed that I would find I had so much in common with a Japanese person, even if my honesty with her could only go so far-a fact that weighed heavily on me as time went by.

In July the Japanese strikers' union sadly capitulated without receiving any concessions from the planters' association. The laborers went back to work, to all appearances defeated. But within four months the planters quietly raised the workers' basic wages from seventy-seven cents a day to a dollar fifteen, and revised the inequitable bonus system as well.

That system, however, had been good to our family: In four months at Waipahu we had managed to save over three hundred dollars-a small fortune by the standards of the time and the place. But I took no joy in it, only shame.

The day we returned to Honolulu was also the day Tamiko and her family left for 'Aiea. While Jae-sun haggled over new lodgings, I took Grace Eun to Liliha Street, where the vacant lot was beginning to look vacant again-half of the squatting families having already left for their old homes at Kahuku, Waialua, Waimanalo, and other plantations. Tamiko and her two sons were gathering up their belongings as her husband was off buying tickets for the 4 P.M. train. She was happy to see me, but I was dreading this meeting.

"Tamiko-san," I said, "I've come to tell you something."

She didn't seem to be listening. "Oh, you," she scolded little Sugi, who had just soiled her diaper, "as though I didn't have enough to do."

"Tamiko-san, I must tell you-"

She turned and silenced me with a glance.

"There is nothing you need to tell me, Jin-san. I am not naive."

The knowing look in her eyes shamed me, as if she were staring through me, straight down to the bone.

Flustered, I said, "You don't understand." But somehow I knew she did. "I ... I have not been honest with you."

"No, perhaps not," Tamiko said gently. "But you have been kind, and generous, and a good friend. It matters little to me what you did, or where you were, when you were not being my friend."

I was shocked and embarrassed-had she known all along?

"Not from the first," she admitted, "but things add up. Even in Japan, two plus two is still four." She smiled. "Honesty did not fill my children's stomachs, Jin-san-your kampana did. That is all that concerns me."

"But it was not true kampana," I protested. "It was tainted by guilt."

She laughed away my protestation.

"Not everyone who feels guilt does the kind or honorable thing. That is kampana. Now, that's enough said of the matter, but for this: Thank you."

And we spoke not another word about it, even to this day.

After they left for the train station, I visited the Yi store to purchase some household goods for our new rooms: laundry detergent, Borax cleanser, linoleum oil, among other items. I could not at first identify it, but it felt as though something was missing from the store. Beauty was there, folding a pile of work shirts, but she seemed distracted, even melancholy, and uncharacteristically disinterested in chatting. I went about my shopping, and Mr. Yi's son Jung-su had to go into the stockroom to get me a bolt of cloth for my sewing. When he returned, I realized what was missing and asked him where Frank Ahn, the stock clerk, was. "He didn't come down with influenza, did he?"

"No. He's gone," Jung-su said coldly. "His parents sent him to school in California. That will be five dollars and twenty-three cents."

I glanced over at Beauty, quietly folding shirts, and realized that she was doing her level best not to cry.

n October I gave birth to a fine baby boy we named Harold Eun Choi-"Eun" now becoming a "generational" name, shared by brothers and sisters alike-and not long afterward, my husband and I birthed a different sort of joint enterprise. With our savings from Waipahu we were able to lease a small storefront on Buckle Lane in Liliha District, a neighborhood in which many Korean families and businesses were settling. It was a dusty little shop half a block from a stable-at quiet moments you could almost hear the flick of the horses' tails as they swatted away flies, and when the wind was right you could definitely sniff their neighborly presence. The crime rate here was high but the rent was low, and there was a large kitchen on the ground floor; and so we set about transforming this nondescript space into a restaurant. I scrubbed the grimy front windows and mopped the knotty pine floor. We purchased cookware, silverware, dishes, utensils, and a dozen sets of tables and chairs, as I fashioned tablecloths and napkins from inexpensive linen purchased at Yi's store. We spent more time debating what to christen this new offspring than we had choosing our children's names-finally deciding on Cafe Korea, which I carefully stenciled onto the front window, and below that: J. S. CHOI, PROPRIETOR. I have never seen my husband's face glow quite so brightly as when he first gazed upon that sign.

Like most businesses in the neighborhood, ours also served as a family home. The kitchen on the ground floor accommodated not only the restaurant but our own daily use as well. A stairway in the rear ascended to personal quarters above the cafe, a single large room with windows overlooking the busy street. Here was the bed Jae-sun and I shared, another for Grace, and a crib that used to be hers, now occupied by little Harry. In this one room we slept, dressed, played games, read newspapers, cut the children's hair, ironed sheets and clothes-in sum, lived our lives. There was a bathroom near the stairs and a long lanai off the main living area, where we often slept on hot summer nights. Sleeping was not easy even in cool weather, as throughout the night we could hear the rattle of streetcars and the blare of phonograph music from nearby saloons, though in time we grew used to the noise. Meals were taken downstairs at a little table in the kitchen alongside the chopping blocks and cutlery, the five-gallon stockpots and twelve-quart boilers of our new trade.

Here we would also celebrate the lunar new year, the Year of the Rooster, as we would other Korean holidays. Though our children were American by birth, we wanted them to have at least a foot in the land of their ancestors, and so they would learn to speak both Korean and English in our household.

Because there were no other Korean eateries in Honolulu at the time, we set our cafe's prices comparable to similar items at Chinese restaurants: a large bowl of rice sold for a dime, a small bowl for a nickel; noodle dishes were twenty cents a plate; fire beef, pork, or chicken was available at upwards of forty cents per serving; and desserts like pastry, honey rice, and candied date balls sold for a quarter apiece. We thought it a reasonably priced menu.

But as restaurateurs we were babes in the woods. Uncertain how many customers we might expect at first, our first grocery order took home enough rice, noodles, red beans, soybean paste, eggs, and meat to feed a small army. When a small army failed to show up on our doorstep, we scaled back our expectations and our purchases-and though much of our initial order could keep till the following week, many other items were perishables that we were forced to hastily cook and consume ourselves.

Jae-sun was, of course, chef, and I served as hostess, waitress, and supplementary chef when required. Because my husband was not as fluent in English as I was-he once admitted to me that he understood at best half of any English conversation-I also handled most of our business dealings with non-Korean suppliers. That first week saw many of our friends from church come for dinner, as well as the newly married Esther and Pascual Anito (Esther had moved into Pascual's house on Kamakela Lane, not far from us). We averaged three or four customers each evening for dinner, most of them Korean, all fulsome in their praise for the food. A typical meal-a bowl of rice, a noodle or meat dish, dessert-averaged around fifty cents a person. A dollar and a half to two dollars a night barely covered our rent, let alone the cost of food and preparation. But many of our patrons returned on subsequent evenings, and so, confident in the quality of our product, we waited patiently for our business to burgeon in the coming weeks.

Alas, this burgeoning never came. After six weeks of operating at a loss we tried opening for lunch as well; this brought in perhaps another dollar a day, barely worth the extra time and expense, and we abandoned it soon after.

One morning I took Harold and Grace downtown to watch the show put on by Patrolman Pete Hose, the "Hula Cop," as he directed traffic at the corner of Merchant and Fort Streets. Pete was one of the few Negro officers on the Honolulu police force and had even performed his "traffic hula" for Charlie Chaplin when he visited the islands in 1917. My children seemed to enjoy it as much as the Little Tramp had, and afterward we took a stroll along the waterfront, where I noticed a food vendor with a pushcart, selling a curious bill of fare.

Onto a paper plate this vendor would ladle two scoops of rice, a slab of meat or fish, and another scoop of some sort of noodle dish called "macaroni salad." This culinary hodgepodge reminded me of kaukau time on the plantation and it was certainly popular with the stevedores, who lined up to purchase a plate for breakfast-and lunch and dinner, too-all for the price of a dime.

Intrigued, I asked the vendor, "What do you call this?"

He dug an ice-cream scoop into a vat of steamed rice, deposited two scoops onto a paper plate, and said with a shrug, "Kine mixed plate, I guess."

Later that day, the image of those customers queuing up for their "mixed plate" preoccupied me as I sat at a window table in our own becalmed cafe, with little to do other than watch the pedestrians pass by. I began to suspect that we had made a serious miscalculation. We had counted on the fact that Koreans were moving into this neighborhood, but the people I saw on the street were not just Korean-they were also Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, and Filipino. Koreans were still a small minority here, not yet present in sufficient numbers to support a restaurant that served only Korean cuisine. Nor was there one central Korean community in Honolulu; some lived in the upper Nu'uanu Valley, some in outlying Kaimuki, and many, increasingly, in Wahiawa, even farther away-too far to travel for the kind of meal that could as easily be cooked at home.

I told Jae-sun about the vendors at the docks and tactfully suggested that we consider expanding our menu to appeal to more than just Korean tastes. I expected him to be resistant to the idea, but he thought about it a moment and said glumly, "Perhaps you're right." I proposed adding a few recipes I had acquired on the plantation: Chinese eggplant in garlic, Hawaiian haupia pudding, Portuguese sweet bread. Jae-sun even grudgingly agreed to saimin noodles and miso soup.

We also sampled more American fare at other cafes around town, such as Harte's Good Eats, where Jae-sun stared in stupefaction at the salad of lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots the waiter placed before him. "Did they neglect to cook this?" he asked me in a low voice. "Should I send it back?"

"No, I believe it's customary to eat the vegetables raw."

He blanched. "Straight out of the ground?" I nodded. "God have mercy on their souls," he said, refusing to touch the salad.

I ordered a hamburger steak sandwich, something I knew was popular with haoles, and took a bite. I rather enjoyed it, as did my husband, though he found it lacking in sophistication: "This is all? Just a piece of meat between two slices of bread? Where is the poetry in that?"

"Not every dish need be poetic," I pointed out.

Even more disappointing to him was the "hot dog," which, alas, contained no dog meat and looked rather obscene in the bargain. We decided to add hamburgers to our menu but no frankfurters.

At an establishment calling itself the Palace of Sweets we tasted a dessert that was currently all the rage on the U.S. mainland-"apple pandowdy" as well as various flavors of ice cream. "Much too sweet," Jae-sun said after a bite or two of vanilla. "There is enough sugar in this to stop one's heart."

"But might it not make a nice complement to mochi?"

He shrugged. "I suppose." He took a bite of the chocolate ice cream, then allowed, "This is not altogether detestable." He would later use it in preparing pat bing su, a traditional summertime treat.

It was on our way back from a diner on Hotel Street that I was startled to hear a woman's voice calling, "Jin-san! Hey! Jin-san!"

I half-expected to see Tamiko when I turned, but it was another young Japanese woman who stood smiling at me from the doorway of a barber shop. "It's me, Jin-san. Don't you remember Shizu? From Iwilei?"

By heaven, it was Shizu-but she looked considerably different than she had on that long-ago day when she'd helped me with my kisaeng hair styling. She was wearing a white barber's frock, with her hair pulled back in a conservative bun and with less makeup on her face, but still looking lovely.

"Of course I remember!" We met on the sidewalk in front of the shop and embraced. "But you are a barber now?"

It was not unusual-actually quite commonplace-to find a Japanese girl working as a men's barber in Honolulu. In fact, by the 1920s, it had come to be regarded as primarily a woman's profession. But I was surprised to find Shizu engaged as one, considering her last profession.

"Oh, well, after Mrs. Miyake get deported"-she lowered her voice discreetly-"I decide, eh, maybe time change career. I knew the owner here, Mrs. Origawa-she trained me as apprentice. Someday, who knows, maybe I open my own shop." Her eyes twinkled with mischief. "And what of you, Jin-san? Did you not become a kisaeng?"

I blushed and nervously glanced at my husband to see his reaction. It was only then I noticed how coldly he was staring at Shizu. When I introduced them he nodded politely at her, but the chill did not leave his eyes. Shizu asked whether I had heard from May, and I told her that she had returned to San Francisco; we parted with promises to stay in touch, and Shizu returned to the barbershop.

Once we had traveled out of earshot Jae-sun said bluntly, "I do not approve of your choice in friends."

Stung, I pointed out, "You like Beauty and Jade Moon and Wise Pearl well enough. And the Anitos."

"They are not part of a race who oppress our people."

"Shizu oppresses no one. She is a barber." I did not mention that she was also a former prostitute since this was unlikely to raise his estimation of her. "And if you are reluctant to have dealings with Japanese people, you are in the wrong city and the wrong line of work." I was too angry to hold my tongue and barely realized what I had said until after I had blurted it out.

Jae-sun considered this, then made a little grunt of acknowledgment.

"I will serve them and take their money," he said, "but I will not socialize with them. You are free to do whatever you wish on your own."

I was extremely glad I had not told him about Tamiko and her family.

The following week we introduced a number of new items, attractively priced we hoped, to our menu. In addition to my "plantation-style" dishes, we added a twenty-five-cent hamburger; a ham and egg sandwich for a nickel less than that; a sirloin steak for eighty cents; and various salads, which I prepared owing to my husband's distaste for the entire concept, at fifteen cents apiece.

And in an effort to make a fresh start, we rechristened ourselves the Liliha Cafe.

Slowly, business began to improve. Our Korean customers continued to patronize us, but now their ranks were joined by Chinese families ordering gon to mein, Hawaiians sampling our haupia, and-though Jae-sun loathed cooking it-Japanese feasting on saimin and fried tofu. The hamburger sandwiches proved especially popular with keiki of all races. Within six months we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves breaking even, and in less than a year we had even begun to turn a small profit.

This was provident, as that summer of 1921 I gave birth to our second son and third child, Charles Eun. Children born in the Year of the Dog are known for their good humor, and Charlie was a prankster from the start: he arrived a month early, the first of many surprises that he would present to us.

Grace, now three years old, seemed to find the appearance of this tiny infant in our home somewhat unsettling. "Why is he so small?" she wanted to know.

"He hasn't had time to grow, like you have," I told her.

She looked at him suspiciously and asked, "When will he be finished?"

I laughed. "Not for a while. You're a long way from finished yourself."

But Grace continued to regard him with uncertainty and anxiety, as indeed she did most things, despite all the love and attention I gave her.

It was not long after Charlie's birth-on a busy Saturday evening with the restaurant almost as full as my hands as I waited on tables-that I noticed someone standing outside on the street, peering through the window into the cafe. Thinking it might be a prospective customer I turned and looked-just in time to see a man turn and hurry away down the street. I caught only the briefest glimpse of his face, but the cut of his hair, the line of his jaw, the way he held himself, was enough to send a moment's shudder through me.

But then he was gone, and I told myself no, it could not be Mr. Noh, and did my best to banish the disturbing notion from my thoughts.

n a beautiful summer's afternoon in July, at the well-appointed Yi home on Morris Lane, four expatriate women from Kyongsang Province, far from home, gathered as a group for the first time in six years. Beauty had prepared hot rice water and Korean pastries for the occasion; I brought some homemade chestnut-cinnamon candies; and Wise Pearl came with a bouquet of fresh plumeria to commemorate our reunion, as our children played together in a living room that was larger than the entirety of my family's apartment above the cafe. Harold and Charlie played with Wise Pearl's two sons; Grace, for once, seemed relaxed, charmed by Beauty's daughter, Mary, who offered to share her dolls with her. Soon the house was filled with the laughter of keiki and the chiming musical tones of Kyongsang accents.

Jade Moon was the last to arrive, staggering through the front door under the weight of her third pregnancy, with toddlers Woodrow and Alma in tow. "Forgive this bloated apparition you see before you," she said, trying to catch her breath as she deposited her children alongside ours. "By God, how can something so small as a baby cause one to swell up to such grotesque proportions?"

"Nonsense, you look beautiful," I assured her.

She dropped into a chair and sighed in discomfort.

"I am a Zeppelin. A baby factory. No sooner has one rolled out than another is on its way." She took in the profusion of keiki running, tottering, or crawling around the room, then glanced at Beauty. "And how many of these heaven-sent darlings are yours?"

Beauty said, a little self-consciously, "Just this one." She gave Mary a gentle squeeze and smiled. "But a dozen more could not be more dear to me.

"Only one? And a lovely house like this, too? I hate you. I always have." Jade Moon popped a pastry into her mouth, which momentarily silenced her.

"It is good to see us all gathered in one place again," I said. "Who could have imagined, that night we first met in Yokohama, where we would find ourselves on this day, six years later?"

We caught each other up on our lives, and Wise Pearl proudly announced that she and her husband were leaving Waipahu Plantation. "We've purchased a carnation farm just outside Honolulu, in an area called Wilhelmina Rise."

"That's wonderful," Beauty said. "I love carnations."

"What are they good for?" Jade Moon asked skeptically.

"Oh, many things. They can be used in leis, and they are in great demand as a funeral flower."

Jade Moon nodded. "Death is always a good investment."

I told Wise Pearl that I had been under the impression that Asians were prohibited from owning property-as we were prohibited from becoming American citizens.

"Yes, but there are ways around that. The deed was entered into in the name of our eldest son who, having been born here, is a citizen. Even so, no bank would give us a loan; we had to save enough money to buy the land outright. It will be hard work, but no harder than working on the plantation, and at least now we will be laboring for ourselves."

Jade Moon's polite smile was more akin to a grimace. I could hardly blame her for being envious, spending her days as she did washing other people's laundry. I said, "Success will come to each of us, in turn, we sisters of Kyongsang." Then I added, "Though perhaps we might help one another to achieve this success."

My friends looked puzzled.

"We could form a kye," I suggested.

A kye is a kind of rotating credit cooperative, common in Korea. The members each contribute a fixed amount each month to a fund of cash that becomes available to each member in turn. In rural areas the money is often used to pay for things like road repairs, which are beyond the means of any one person, or to aid in marriage or funeral expenses. But many kye are formed purely for purposes of investment.

"Wise Pearl has noted the difficulty of obtaining bank loans without the necessary credit," I went on. "If we each contributed a certain sum at the outset, then more on a monthly basis, we could create enough capital to use in establishing a business, or expanding an existing business."

"That is an excellent idea," Wise Pearl agreed.

"How much would we have to contribute?" Jade Moon inquired warily.

"As much as we could afford, no more. Could you manage, say, ten dollars at the start, then five dollars a month thereafter?" I addressed jade Moon specifically, for she was the one I hoped would benefit first from the fund.

"That sounds reasonable," she said after a moment's thought.

Wise Pearl thought so too, but said she would have to consult with her husband-as would I, though I did not imagine he would object. Beauty, however, said that ten dollars was well within her household budget and wrote a check for her share on the spot, which impressed us all.

"So the kye will have an initial balance of forty dollars," I said. "And after six months, if we are diligent, it will hold four times that much."

Jade Moon asked, "How would we determine in what order each of us would draw from it?"

"I believe it's usually done by bidding," Wise Pearl said. "Each bid represents a sum that will be paid to the other members as interest on the loan. The highest bidder takes home the money."

What she did not say was that those who need the money most will bid the highest. The only one among us who truly needed the money at the moment was jade Moon, and thus I hoped that she would be the first beneficiary of the kye.

"Speak to Mr. Ha about it," I told jade Moon, "and if he agrees, we will meet again and open a bank account."

Jade Moon laughed and opened her purse. "Mr. Ha," she said, taking out two wrinkled five-dollar bills, "thinks it is a splendid idea."

She added her cash to the fund, then looked around the table as if daring the rest of us to do the same.

Not to be outdone, Wise Pearl opened her own purse and deposited ten dollars in bills and coins onto the table.

I smiled and "anted up" my ten dollars, then raised my cup of rice water in a toast. "To success."

"Happiness, at least," Beauty added.

"Happiness be damned," Jade Moon said. "I will settle for success."

e agreed to meet for lunch on the first day of each month to administer the kye, though at first we chose not to bid on it since the fund was still amassing enough capital to be useful. At the end of six months' time our fund held a hundred and sixty dollars-a considerable amount by the standards of the day. Jade Moon and her husband began to consider the possibility of purchasing a small rooming house, against the day the kye would have enough money in it.

But this was much more than just a business connection: the four of us were bound together not merely by finances but by affection and kinship. Our common roots were in Kyongsang-do, but we had all been transplanted to the strange soil of Hawai'i, where we were growing in ways we could never have dreamed of in Korea.

Wise Pearl's carnation farm bloomed financially, and soon she and Mr. Kam were considering expanding it. "We have an opportunity to purchase another ten acres," she told us at a meeting, "but it would mean spending the modest profit we are now making, and then some."

"Do it!" Jade Moon advised her. "You will never be sorry to own land. How much is `then some'?"

"We need another seventy-five dollars for the purchase."

"Is there enough in the kye?" Jade Moon asked me.

"Yes, more than double that," I confirmed.

"Let us bid, then."

In short order Wise Pearl had her money, and when the transaction was complete we all looked at each other with a kind of giggly wonderment. Four girls who a short time ago could not even leave home without an escort, now were starting businesses and buying property on an almost equal footing with men. It was exhilarating and, at times, a little frightening-nothing our mothers ever taught us could have prepared us for our lives here. We understood this, understood one another, as no one else could. Each meeting was an opportunity to exchange confidences as well as commerce; to seek coun sel, to offer advice, or simply to trade gossip, swap recipes, or assist one another with babysitting.

Yes, Korea seemed very far away-but news from home, disseminated at church services, brought a few encouraging signs. In the wake of the March First Movement, the Japanese authorities had adopted a new approach to governing Korea, one of "cultural accommodation." They were allowing more freedom of education and expression, and undertaking many public works projects-such as the building of roads, bridges, and damsdesigned to demonstrate that they were the friend of the Korean people and not their enemy.

A letter from my elder brother confirmed this, though he remained profoundly skeptical of the government's good intentions. He also delivered the dismaying news that Blossom-now fourteen years old, on the brink of marriageable age-had attempted to run away in an effort to find her birth family. Walking for miles on foot, she reached the next village before my father and brothers found her and brought her home. I winced to hear that Father beat her for her presumption. I remembered the frightened little girl who had climbed atop the inner wall, searching for some sign that her father was coming back for her, and I ached to think of her so unhappy. But I was helpless to do anything about it, until I could somehow convince my clan to allow her to emigrate to Hawai'i.

I now had to wonder: If Blossom was so intent on finding her own family, would she even desire to come to Hawai'i any longer? This was hardly a question I could ask my brother to put to her, however, and since Blossom could neither read nor write, she was mute to me, only a haunting silence between us. All I could do was try and put away-in addition to our monthly contributions to the kye and the Korean Independence Fund-an extra dollar or two for Blossom, and hope that when the time came, she would want to make the journey.

ortunately, the receipts of the Liliha Cafe continued to grow as word of mouth drew customers from surrounding neighborhoods like Kalihi, Chinatown, 'A'ala, and even Kaka'ako. We were also popular with local police officers walking their beat, whose meals were often given to them on the house in the interest of building goodwill. Chang Apana dropped by now and then, either with police colleagues or with his family, but would never let us pay for his meals. He seemed pleased that I had done well for myself, and I wondered how much of a hand he had taken in popularizing the cafe among his fellow officers.

We were soon able to hire a kitchen boy named Liho to assist Jae-sun with such things as peeling potatoes, deboning fish, and other odious tasks, and a part-time waitress, Rose, to help ease the burden on me.

On one particularly hot evening that summer, I had just taken a short break from my hostess duties to look in on our keiki, who were asleep in the apartment upstairs. I came down to find a man with his head bowed, standing by the door, who I assumed to be a customer waiting for a table. I had crossed half the length of the restaurant before I recognized him-and I came to an abrupt stop.

It was Mr. Noh.

I was shocked not just by his presence but by his appearance. He seemed much older than the five years that had passed since I had last seen him-not counting the glimpse I thought I'd gotten of him months before. He had dark bags under his eyes, he was unshaven, and he wore a rumpled palaka shirt and a pair of faded dungarees. He looked like a ghost of himself.

Even so, I felt a rush of fear. I glanced in the direction of the kitchen, comforted by the knowledge that Jae-sun was not far away-and slowly I found the nerve to walk up to my former husband, my heart racing the whole time. I stopped about three feet away from him and managed to ask, as calmly as I could, "What is it you want here?"

But there was none of his usual bravado in his reply. "I am hungry," he said in an equally low tone, "and I have no money for food. I know I do not merit your charity, but even so ... could you grant me the favor of a meal?"

This was the last thing I had expected him to say, and I did not believe him.

"Get out of here. You're drunk."

He let out an unhappy laugh.

"No, this is a rare moment that I am not. You may smell my breath if you wish." He took a step toward me.

I shrank back. It was true, he did not reek of alcohol, but neither was his smell pleasant: I doubted that he had taken a bath in at least a week. "What has happened to you?" I asked, despite myself. "Are you not working at Waialua?"

"That was a long time ago," he said ruefully, "or so it seems."

A part of me, I admit, was not distraught to see my nemesis in this pathetic state, and relished the opportunity to scorn him and send him back, still hungry, onto the street. But then I felt ashamed for the thought, and I told myself that if I truly considered myself an individual capable of kampana, it should apply not just to those I had wronged, like Tamiko, but to those who had wronged me as well.

He saw my hesitation and said, "But I understand-I ask too much of you," and turned to go.

I found myself saying, "Wait. All you want from me is something to eat?"

He nodded.

"And then you will go and not come back?"

"If that is what you wish."

I should have been terrified to have him here, just one floor below my home, where my children lay sleeping even now. But despite all he had done in the past, I did not feel-surrounded as I was by customers, and on seeing the spent shell he had become-as though I or my family were in any imminent danger.

"All right," I told him. "One meal. Come with me."

He bowed his head in gratitude.

I picked up a menu from the pile up front and, as if I were welcoming any random customer who had entered, took him to a small table in a corner of the cafe. I tried to hand him the menu, but he shook his head and told me, "I will take whatever you choose to offer me. Beggars cannot be choosers."

All at once I recalled the first time I had heard that phrase: also from Mr. Noh's mouth, on our wedding day, referring to his unlucky choice of bride.

And later: "She is lucky that anyone chose her at all. "

My anger roiled again inside me, but I did not show it. I merely nodded and told him I would be back with something for him to eat.

I went into the kitchen, where Jae-sun was contentedly juggling at least ten different dinner orders-completely in his element, whistling as he went from basting bulgogi to stirring a pot of Portuguese bean soup to filleting a three-pound tuna. I smiled as I watched him. I was lucky, though not in the way Mr. Noh had meant that day in court.

"What have you made too much of tonight?" I asked. It was inevitable that we would prepare a certain number of dishes in advance, in anticipation of a demand that did not materialize that evening. Usually we wound up eating these ourselves as a late-night supper.

"Um, probably the bulgogi," he said.

"Then give me an order of that, with rice and kimchi."

I decided not to tell Jae-sun of my former husband's presence unless I absolutely needed to. I took the food to Mr. Noh's table and placed it in front of him. He thanked me, picked up his chopsticks, and quickly took a big bite of kimchi, then an even bigger bite of fire beef. He barely chewed before he swallowed. Truly, he ate like a starving man, and I wondered what could have brought him so low.

"Ah," he said around a mouthful of beef, "your bulgogi is as delicious as ever.

"It is not mine. It is my husband's," I said pointedly.

If he was stung by that he did not show it.

"So you are ... no longer employed at Waialua?" I asked him.

He shook his head as he ate. "I returned there after our-divorce. But then I began drinking too much-missing too much work-and they let me go. I went back to 'Ewa, but got into a fight with the head luna ... broke his jaw." Each sentence was punctuated by a swallow of food. "After that, no plantation on O'ahu would hire me, so I went again to Maui, but ... that did not end well, either.

"Finally I came to Honolulu, where I have been doing odd jobs here and there-enough to pay for a room, at least." He shrugged. "What did I tell you? I'm just poho."

"I think we make our own luck," I said impulsively.

He only nodded. "Perhaps so. You and your-husband-have certainly made your luck." His slight hesitation in saying "husband" did not escape my notice, and I admit I took some slight pleasure in it.

I excused myself to show some arriving customers to a table, and when I returned to Mr. Noh's table he had wolfed down almost all of his dinner. "You have shown me great kindness tonight," he said. "Certainly I do not warrant it. I behaved abominably to you. But when the drink is in me, it poisons everything. It's poisoned everything I might have been."

I could not let that pass without comment. "You were not drunk when you threatened me at the courthouse, or when you beat me for working in the fields."

His eyes clouded at this, but once again he merely nodded. "No, you are right, I was not," he allowed. "I was angry. Anger is its own poison, I suppose." He wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, `Mianhamnida the word that means both "Thank you" and "I am sorry for the trouble I have caused you."

I found myself unexpectedly moved by his use of this term.

"This was delicious; I shall not go to bed hungry tonight." He stood.

Softening, I asked, "Wouldn't you like some dessert?"

"No, you've been generous enough." He looked at me again, and this time he did not seem to be gazing into the past, but actually looking at me. "I did not mean what I said in court," he said. "I did it to hurt you and to keep you, if that makes any sense. You were a far better wife than I deserved."

He bowed, turned, and left with as proud a bearing as he could muster.

I never dreamed I would ever feel sorry for this man, but I did that night.

could even, in my own way, understand the disappointment he felt from life. Though I was grateful beyond words for Jae-sun, our family, and our success, I still longed for one thing which I knew could never be mine: the dream of education that brought me to America, and which I had been forced to forfeit. But almost as satisfying to me was that September day in 1923 when I brought Grace Eun-now five years old-for her first day of kindergarten at Kauluwela Grammar School. She was terrified to enter the school, stubbornly holding on to my hand as we stood on the threshold. Plaintively she asked me why she had to go, why she couldn't stay at home with me. I stooped down beside her and said, "You know, when I was your age, I would have given anything to be able to go to school. I still would." "Why can't you?"

"Because I'm too old. But you can go in my place, and learn all the things I cannot. And then you can tell me all about what you've learned, and that would be almost as good as if I went myself. Would you do that for me?"

She glanced uncertainly up at the imposing brick building-weighing the apprehension it caused her against her desire to help me-then turned back and, trying to be brave, said, "Okay, Mama, I will."

"Good girl," I said. "Who knows? You might even enjoy it." She gave me a look that suggested there was as much chance of this as there was of icecream pies falling from the sky, and then I led her up the front steps and into the school.

The corridors were filled with children of all ages, as well as parents like me searching for their children's classrooms. At the door to Grace's room I gave her a kiss on the cheek and handed her a lunch bag: "Learn something for me today, Grace." I watched her go in and nervously take a seat. The classroom smelled of chalk and ink and books; it smelled of learning. I never wanted to leave, but I did. My longing to trade places with Grace was equaled only by my joy and pride in knowing that my daughter-that all my children-would have the education I had been denied. That would have to be enough.

hat September saw an academic achievement for someone else as well, and I was almost as proud of him as I was of Grace. Joe Kahahawai, now grown into a tall, strapping fourteen-year-old, had secured through his father's efforts an athletic scholarship to a very reputable parochial school called St. Louis College, which despite its name was really a secondary school. There he quickly excelled in sports, especially football, and my family and I were pleased to attend our first Sunday game in which Joe-now standing nearly six feet in a blue-and-red uniform emblazoned with the number 38-functioned as something called a "lineman," and a good one, too, judging by the cheers of the crowd. I gathered that the object of the game was to kick, throw, or carry the oddly shaped ball from one end of the playing field to the other, but the rules mystified me and I soon ceased to wonder why everyone would stop when whistles were blown, then wander about and reassemble like actors in a play who had forgotten their lines and decided to start all over again. I could appreciate how Joe seemed to literally explode out of his Kabuki-like stance-squatting with one hand ritualistically touching the ground-as if shot out of a cannon, but I was a bit taken aback the first time he tackled an opposing player to the ground.

"Was that absolutely necessary?" I asked Esther.

"Oh, but Jin, that's part of the game."

"To knock each other down?"

"Yes."

"But it seems so rude," I said.

After the St. Louis "Saints" won the game over McKinley High School's "Micks," we joined Joe and the Anitos in a celebration at Kamakela Lane that included Joseph Sr. and his wife Hannah, Joe's cousin Eddie Uli'i, and Bill Kama, who was now an officer with the Honolulu Police Department. "You're gettin' too big for me to box your ears," Bill kidded Joe, "so next time you get out of line-"

He grinned and playfully twirled a set of handcuffs. Joe laughed, turned around, and crossed his wrists behind his back. "Take me in, officer," he joked. "For my own protection." We all laughed.

More sadly, that same autumn Beauty's husband Mr. Yi fell ill, and at the age of seventy-nine any illness is a serious one. Pneumonia claimed him two weeks later, and he ended a long life in the comfort of his own bed, having overcome great obstacles to progress from plantation laborer to a wealthy and respected businessman. Our family attended his funeral service at the Korean Christian Church and then his burial at Puea Cemetery. Jade Moon and Wise Pearl also paid their respects, the latter bringing a lovely wreath of carnations. Beauty was saddened, of course, and even if she thought of Mr. Yi as more of a father than a husband, losing a kindly father is still a sorrowful event.

As we left the cemetery, Jade Moon took me aside and declared, with excitement unseemly to the occasion, "I've found a rooming house to buy!"

"Lower your voice," I said, "and at least pretend that you are bereaved."

"Oh, he was a thousand years old, we should all live as long. Would you come see the property with me tomorrow and tell me what you think?"

I sighed and said that I would.

The following day we took the streetcar to a neighborhood called Makiki, on the windward side of Punchbowl. It seemed a great distance away, though in truth it was closer than Wise Pearl's farm in Kaimuki. We entered a two-story clapboard rooming house in slightly better repair than the tenement I had lived in in Kauluwela. "The manager's rooms, where we would live, are on the ground floor," Jade Moon said as we entered the vestibule. "There are fifteen other rooms, most already occupied, each bringing in twelve dollars a month in rent. That is almost two hundred dollars a month in rental income!"

We ascended creaking stairs to the second story. "And what about expenses?" I asked. "Water, electricity, repairs?"

"Negligible, I'm told. Twenty or thirty dollars a month."

"Our water bill at the cafe is hardly negligible," I noted. "And these stairs could use some fixing."

"Mr. Ha is good with his hands. Whatever repairs need done, we will do them ourselves. It is a great opportunity."

The last time I heard that, I had found myself urinating into a trench at Waipahu. But I held my tongue.

Walking down the hallway, we passed open doors and windows through which trade winds passed sluggishly. Inside the tiny flats there were large families, mostly Hawaiian, Chinese, and a handful of Koreans. "The owner is moving to the mainland and wishes to divest himself of his properties here. He's asking only twelve hundred dollars for the building, and for a thirty percent down payment he will carry the rest of the loan himself! What do you think?"

"It seems like a good investment."

"We'll need three hundred and sixty dollars for the down payment. Is there enough in the kye?"

I nodded. "And a little more."

"I told the owner I could have the money for him on the first of next month, and he said that was acceptable to him." She beamed as she took in the faded walls around us, which to me seemed in dire need of replastering and a fresh coat of paint; but to her they obviously represented something else: "Just think ... to own land again, as my parents did, and their parents before them!"

To Jade Moon, this aging and dilapidated boardinghouse meant more than just a comfortable income: it meant being ayangban again. Seeing the proud smile on her face, I could not help but be pleased for her, and gratified that we could help her realize her dream.

"It is perfect," she declared happily.

Given her name, she might have remembered the old Korean adage, "Even jade has flaws." Or, in other words: Nothing in life is ever perfect.

he next day, as we were preparing to open the cafe for dinner, there commenced a pounding on our door so loud, so frantic, that I hurried to the front to see what the commotion could be. There was a pane of glass in the door, an interior shade rolled down over it; around the edges I caught glimpses of a woman's white dress and a child's braided hair. "Grace Eun's Mother! Grace Eun's Mother!" came a voice from outside, and as I hurriedly opened the door I was startled to see a tearful Beauty standing on our doorstep, her face flush, tightly gripping the hand of her daughter, Mary.

"Oh, my dear friend," she said plaintively as she entered, "forgive me! I didn't know where else to go, I don't know what to do!"

"What is it? What's wrong?"

She collapsed into a dining chair and began wailing:

"Oh God, what have I done? What have I done?"

I'd heard her utter these same words at the immigration station the day we first laid eyes on our husbands-to-be, but her tone now was even more desperate.

Whatever was wrong, the child should not have been seeing her mother in such a state. I took Mary by the hand and hurried her upstairs to play dolls with Grace. Before I left, Mary asked me, "Why is Mama so sad?"

"I don't know, little one," I told her, "but we'll make everything all right." I gave her a smile and went back downstairs to her still-weeping mother. "What on earth has happened?" I asked.

"I am lost-lost," she said. "And it is all my own fault."

"What is?"

"I have been an unworthy wife, and ungrateful. I admit it. But my child should not have to suffer for my mistakes!"

"For God's sake, what are you talking about?"

She made an effort to stop crying and in a shaky tone told me of how Mr. Yi's attorney had come to read his will earlier that day. It was only then that she learned that she had been completely disinherited from it.

"That cannot be right. You must have misunderstood."

"No, it was made quite clear to me," she said bitterly. "Mr. Yi left the entire estate to his sons. The store, his savings ... even the house. Jung-su and Bae-su informed me they and their families would be moving into the house, and I need to be vacated by the end of the month."

I was dumbstruck at first, then managed to ask, "But why?"

She flinched from my gaze.

"Because I was weak, and foolish," she said, "and wished to laugh and talk with someone my own age. To feel a young man's skin against mine, and not the wrinkled touch of an old grandfather! Because I wanted to feel something for a man-what a woman is supposed to feel for a man. Oh, what a fool I was!"

"Are you talking about Frank Ahn?"

She looked even more mortified. "You knew?"

"I suspected as much." I sighed and took her hand in mine. "You are not the first woman to feel such things, or to be so foolish. But even if Mr. Yi was angry at you for your infidelity, surely he made provisions for his own daughter?"

"He did not believe her to be his daughter. Neither do his sons."

I confess, this thought had never crossed my mind. "Is she?"

"I ... do not know," she admitted. "Jung-su said he and his wife were willing to adopt her, and raise her as their own. But"-her eyes flashed with anger-"she is my daughter! I may not know who her father is, but I know I am her mother! I can't give her up. I won't."

She collapsed again into sobs. "Gem, my dear friend, what am I to do? Tell me. What am Ito do now?"

I wrapped my arms around her as I would an injured fawn. "You will not have to give up your daughter. As for the rest of it ... we will find a way."

"I'm sorry. I know I've sinned. I know I don't deserve your friendship."

Before I could reply, someone did it for me:

"That is untrue."

I turned to see Jae-sun standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

"I am sorry. I could not help overhearing," he said, embarrassed.

Beauty smiled an unhappy smile. "It is I who should apologize. Please forgive my shameful display of emotion."

"You have understandable cause." There was neither accusation nor recrimination in his voice. "What you did outside your marriage was wrong ... but what your husband has done is also wrong. He professed to be a good Christian; he should have forgiven you."

"I can understand him for not forgiving me," Beauty said. "But Mary. .

"Forgiveness can be difficult," Jae-sun told her. "I know this firsthand. But you and Mary have a place with us for as long as you need one. Don't trouble yourself over material losses. Make your peace with God. He will forgive you, even if Mr. Yi could not. You may be sure of that."

He discreetly returned to the kitchen, and I was never prouder to be his wife.

"I did care for him," Beauty said softly, "as a father." But the word was swallowed up in a sob, and I pulled her to me and held her as she wept.

eauty and Mary moved in with us that day, and if it was a bit crowded in that one large room above the cafe, you could not tell it by the children. They played together in what we charitably referred to as the "backyard"-a rectangular courtyard between our building and the next, paved in concrete and filled with empty crates, which Harold, Charlie, Grace, and Mary overturned and imagined to be houses, boats, battlements, or warring airplanes. Above them flew flags of drying laundry from a cat's cradle of clotheslines strung between apartments.

Beauty was ashamed of the actions that had brought her to such reduced circumstances and asked that I not tell either jade Moon or Wise Pearl what had happened. She was eager to help pay her way and offered to wait tables at the cafe-a well-intentioned gesture but a disastrous one. She spoke imperfect English and, never having worked on a plantation, little pidgin; taking meal orders for anything other than Korean dishes was a challenge for her, and trying to decipher what she had written down on the order ticket was equally challenging for me. I once stood for several minutes, puzzling over what "air pie" could possibly mean, until the Spanish couple at table three told me that they had ordered paella-phonetically, pie ay-a. Beauty assumed the second syllable was a modifier, hence "air pie." Another time I struggled to make sense of a dessert order that read, "horse, paid for," and only when I translated this back into Korean-mal, horse, and sada, to pay for-did I realize that the man at table five wanted malassada, a Portuguese sweet doughnut.

But Beauty was also quick to help out around the house-laundering, ironing, sweeping the rug, cutting the children's hair and even Jae-sun's. As my husband sat there in a straight-backed chair, a towel draped across his shoulders, with Beauty deftly wielding a pair of scissors, inspiration struck me and I asked her, "You seem to have a talent for this. Might you consider doing it for a living?"

"I suppose I could. But I have no experience, who would hire me?"

The next day I took her to Hotel Street and the shop where Shizu worked as a barber. Shizu was candid about the requirements of the job: "We work twelve, fifteen hours a day-afternoons, evenings, sometimes till nine, ten o'clock at night." Beauty had nothing against hard work and long hours, and so Shizu approached the shop owner, Mrs. Origawa, about taking on another apprentice.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Origawa was not interested in hiring another barber at that time. Shizu took us aside and told Beauty, "I'm sorry there is nothing for you here. But if ever I open my own shop ..."

"Are you planning to open one?" Beauty asked hopefully.

"Someday, when I save enough money."

"How much do you need?"

Aigo, I thought, afraid of where this was leading.

"I have fifty dollars saved," Shizu told her, "but for rent, equipment, furniture-another hundred, at least."

Beauty looked at me excitedly. "There's that much in the kye, is there not?"

What could I say? "Yes, I believe so."

The entire situation had spun rather quickly out of my control. Soon, Shizu and Beauty were scouting commercial space in downtown Honolulu, where the majority of Japanese barber girls worked their trade, and pricing the cost of barber chairs, mirrors, lotions, razors, combs, scissors, and brushes. They decided the minimum expenditure they needed to set up shop was a hundred and eighty dollars. Shizu had fifty, so they would need at least another hundred and thirty.

There was four hundred and twenty dollars in our kye. But Jade Moon needed three hundred and sixty for her rooming house, and there was not sufficient funds for both her and Beauty. The thought of one of my friends having to lose out on the loan caused me great pain. But what could I do? I could not ask either one to give up their ambitions. I had to let things take their natural course.

At the next month's meeting-held in Wise Pearl's tiny farmhouse amid acres of red carnations spilling down the hillslope like lava flows-I settled Charlie and Harold in the living room to play with Mary and the other keiki. I continued to fret as we prepared to bid on the kye. Each member was to submit a written offer of how much they would pay in interest for the privilege of borrowing the cash in the fund-say, twenty dollars on a loan of two hundred. Whoever won would then distribute five dollars to each member of the kye as an interest payment, and they would be left with a hundred and eighty dollars of working capital.

For the hundred and thirty Beauty needed I had urged her to tender a bid of at least twenty dollars. But when the bids were all in and the numbers disclosed, it turned out jade Moon had offered a bid of thirty, and therefore won the kye.

Beauty promptly burst into tears.

Jade Moon was understandably taken aback. "What? What's wrong?"

Beauty's resolve to keep silent about her situation blew away like an old dandelion puff. The truth spilled out, much to the dismay of her picturebride sisters.

"Why didn't you tell us before?" Wise Pearl asked. "We could've helped."

"I was ashamed. I am still ashamed."

"Well, this changes everything," Jade Moon acknowledged. "I therefore wish to forfeit the kye to the next highest bidder"-which was, of course, Beauty.

"No, no! You won the money fairly-"

"Take it," Jade Moon said impatiently. "Are you a fool?"

I cleared my throat, and jade Moon softened her advice: "I have a husband, a job, a home to live in. If Mr. Ha and I do not become landlords this year, we will not go hungry or homeless."

Beauty stubbornly held on to her pride. "I don't want to win out of pity."

"Then stop being so pitiful!" Jade Moon snapped, exasperated.

"You won fairly. I should have bid more. The money is yours."

Jade Moon gave her a smoldering look and I prepared for the bombast that would surely follow. But to my surprise she merely said, "Very well then. I win."

She reached into the strongbox, took out three hundred and sixty dollars in cash, then counted off thirty dollars-the price of her bid-and distributed ten dollars apiece to the rest of us. "Here is your interest on the loan. "Now"-she turned to Beauty-"how much did you need for that barbershop?"

Beauty was confused, but I began to see jade Moon's reasoning and answered for her, "A hundred and thirty dollars."

Jade Moon counted off that precise sum and dropped it in front of Beauty.

"What's this?"

"A loan. To open your shop. We are now partners."

Beauty's eyes widened with disbelief and denial. "No, I can't accept-"

"It is not a gift, it is a loan. Give me back five dollars in interest. Go on, do it!"

Beauty meekly handed her a five-dollar bill.

"So now, on the first of each month you will pay me five percent of the shop's profits, until the whole amount of the loan is paid off."

"But there may not be any profits for a long while."

"I can wait. And in the meantime"-Jade Moon folded the remaining two hundred dollars and tucked it safely in her purse-"I will put this to work earning interest in the bank until I have enough to buy property. You see? We all profit from this."

"Thank you," Beauty said. There were tears in her eyes; she got up hurriedly and excused herself to go into the bathroom.

When she was gone Jade Moon sighed, "Good God! I thought we would never get her to take the damned money!"

"Woodrow's Mother, that was very kind of you," Wise Pearl said, in a tone reserved for miracles.

"She has been humbled," Jade Moon said with a shrug. "Who among us cannot understand that?"

After the meeting, Beauty headed straight to Shizu's shop with their newfound capital. Surprised and pleased at how the conflict had been so profitably resolved, I hoisted Charlie into my arms and shepherded him and Harold onto the streetcar at the top of Wai'alae Avenue. The car passed lot after lot of once-empty land here in Kaimuki on which the frames of new houses were sprouting like bamboo shoots. "Someday," I promised Harry and Charlie, pointing to one of the wooden skeletons, "we will live in a house like that."

Harold looked at it and asked, "Can't we have one with walls?"

I laughed. "Oh, and I suppose you'll want a roof, too."

Charlie shook his head, vigorously opposed to the idea, but Harold just nodded meekly.

"If you insist," I said agreeably, "but it would be cheaper without the roof."

Harry's eyes didn't leave the shell of that half-finished house until it was lost from view as the streetcar made its way down the long hill toward Honolulu.

The trip to Kaimuki exhausted both keiki and they were happy to take naps when we reached home. Jae-sun was not yet back from his morning circuit of the fish and meat markets in search of the choicest cuts for the evening's menu, and I decided to go down and wash the breakfast dishes I hadn't gotten to this morning.

But at the bottom of the steps, as I turned the corner of the staircase, I was jolted by the sight of a man rushing toward me with an outstretched arm.

efore I had time to scream he had grabbed me by the throat and driven me back into the wall with bone-rattling impact.

Only now, as I stood pinned like a butterfly to the wall, did I fully recognize the man as Mr. Noh.

His face was not the chastened, humbled countenance he had presented months before, but one transfigured by anger and alcohol. I could barely breathe, but what air I could take in reeked of whisky. There was a wild, familiar fury in his eyes, but something else, too: something I would never have expected to see. Tears brimmed in his eyes, even as his mouth was contorted in a sneer. Half his face was rage; the other half, grief.

"This should have been mine, " he cried out, "rightfully mine!"

Oh Heaven, I thought; not him, not again! I gasped for breath and he loosened his grip a little-just enough to let me breathe, but not cry out.

"I could have led this life," he railed through tears. "This could have been my business! Those could have been my sons upstairs!"

At the mention of my children I felt a blind panic, like a bird trapped in a closet, banging helplessly from wall to wall.

Then, unexpectedly, his hand yanked me away from the wall. Without letting go his grip on my throat, he dragged me into the middle of the kitchen and began forcing me down onto my knees.

"If I cannot have this," he said coldly, "I will at least have you."

He kicked my legs out from under me, let go of my throat, and I fell to the floor, dazed. He dropped his full weight on top of me, knocking the breath from me, pinning my body to the floor. He squirmed out of his pants, then grabbed my arms in each of his calloused hands.

I felt another touch as hard, against my belly.

But instead of fueling my fear, this only fed my own anger, my rage at this man who refused to leave my life, who was now threatening not just me but my sons.

I shook off my pain and screamed at the top of my voice, forcing him to clap one hand against my mouth.

I brought my free arm down in a fist and pounded at his head, again and again. The blows distracted him from what he was trying to do to me and he had to let go of my mouth as he tried to seize my arm.

But rather than bring my arm down on his head again as he expected, I slipped it under him and grabbed the very thing he sought to shame me with-and with all the strength I could summon, I wrenched it first to one side, then the other.

He howled and let go of me, recoiling in an agony he richly deserved.

I scrambled to my feet, slipping once as I raced to the nearest counter, where I scooped up the first thing I saw: a fork. Mr. Noh came at me again; I threw the fork at him like a spear. He ducked to avoid it. I ran to the sink, where there were dishes soaking from breakfast. I threw a heavy plate at him, which missed its target, then another, which only clipped the side of his head. But this bought me the time I needed to get where I needed to go: the butcher's block.

I snapped up a carving knife, spun around, and as Mr. Noh lunged forward, enraged, I plunged the five-inch blade into his stomach.

I was surprised how easily it slipped through both cloth and flesh, as if I'd plunged the blade into soft butter. Mr. Noh let out a harrowing scream.

Then I pulled out the knife, and he screamed even louder.

He looked down in shock, his hand going to his side in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood leaking out between his fingers.

I brandished the knife at him and yelled, "Get out! Leave me alone! Or I swear to Heaven, I will kill you as you killed our daughter!"

He saw the hatred and the fury in my face, looked again at the blood gushing from the torn seam in his flesh, and realized that even this brutal act of vengeance would not be his, either.

Still holding his side, he turned and ran out the same back door he had come in by, trailing blood like a wounded animal.

I looked at the bloodstained knife in my hand-felt bile rising in my throat-and lurched over to the sink, where I vomited onto the breakfast dishes.

When I had finished, my legs gave out and I slid into a sitting position on the floor, and I either wept or laughed, I am not certain which.

ae-sun arrived home not long after to find me upstairs, sitting beside our still-sleeping sons, my dress spattered with what looked at first to him like a child's red water paint. I was no longer hysterical with fear, but I welcomed his strong and gentle arms around me as I related to him the horrors of the past hour. At the end of my story he was so furious that he wanted to go in search of Mr. Noh himself, and had he done so, I am sure that my former husband would not have survived the encounter. Instead we merely reported the incident to the police, who assured us that my attacker would have to seek medical help somewhere, and this would inevitably lead to his capture.

They were correct. My former husband was arrested at Queen's Hospital after receiving six stitches in his lower abdomen. The blade of my knife had not found any vital organs, for which I suppose I was grateful. In his second brush with the American legal system, Mr. Noh fared no better than in his first: though this time he was wisely represented by counsel, he was convicted on two counts of "assault and attempt to ravish." In lieu of jail time, his attorney petitioned the court to merely deport him to Korea, an idea which I, for one, could wholeheartedly endorse. A week and a half later, Jaesun and I stood on Pier 12, watching as my former husband was escorted aboard the SS Tenyo Mara, bound for Yokohama, Japan. We lost sight of him amid the music and merriment accorded a departing vessel, but I did not take my eyes off the gangway until it was pulled back into the ship's bulwark, and I would not leave the dock until the great ocean liner was far enough away that it appeared to be just another whitecap cresting the peaks of distant waves. Then it vanished like so much foam melting back into the waters, and as it disappeared below the horizon I finally turned, took Jaesun's hand in mine, and we walked away from the harbor.

Mr. Noh was out of my life-forever. I would neither see nor hear from him again. And now, for the first time since I had fled Waialua for Honoluluindeed, since I had arrived in Hawai'i-I felt as though I could truly live without fear, and begin to enjoy the fruits of my new home.