Hawaii - James Michener [369]
These were exciting years in the Kee house. The original grass shack had been replaced by one of the ugliest buildings in Honolulu: an unadorned two-story bleak wooden house, to which had been appended as afterthoughts a collection of lean-to sheds. A mango tree and a coconut palm gave some shade, but there was no lawn nor any flowers. Pigs were kept in the yard and chickens in the kitchen, but the dominant occupants were enormous Kimo, who did all the cooking for the family, and sprawling Apikela, who did the washing and made the poi. There was a running battle between Nyuk Tsin on the one hand and everyone else on the other: she liked rice and Chinese food; they insisted upon poi and American-style food. When, at the end of a long day's work she begged for rice, big Kimo at the stove shrugged his shoulders and the boys yelled, "Oh, Auntie! Who wants rice?" If she did, she had to cook it herself because Kimo refused to bother.
Her two married sons lived with her, of course, one family to a room, and Apikela took care of the babies that began to arrive regularly. What with the pigs and the chickens and the babies it was a noisy, happy island home. There were many like it, for Chinese and Hawaiians lived together easily. At the poolroom one day Kimo came upon a new importation from Portugal, a ukulele, and like a boy he badgered Nyuk Tsin until she bought him one. Then Apikela demanded one, and Europe's wife, and songs from the Chinese house filled the valley.
In the middle of 1886, when Africa Kee was eighteen, it was announced that early next year he would marry the wealthy Hakka girl, Ching Siu Kim. He started looking about the city to see who she was, and one day he saw her walking in Aula Park, but he could not be sure that she was the girl picked out for him, and he thought: "It would be pleasant if she were a girl like that one."
The wedding was an impressive affair, with many guests, for the Chings were important, and before Africa Kee finally climbed aboard the ship to go to Michigan, he was already the father of three children. Dutifully he took the family genealogical book and the poem to the scholar in the Punti store, and there the man gave his sons their names. The poem showed that the name of this fourth generation must be Koon, Earth, and accordingly the two boys' names were Koon Chuk, the Center of the Earth, and Koon Yuen, the Essence of the Earth Which Produces All, but their parents called them simply Sam and Harvey. The Chinese names were duly forwarded to the Low Village, so that when twenty-one-year-old Africa finally enrolled at Michigan he was not only head of a burgeoning family left behind in Honolulu, but also the member of a powerful clan whose existence had continued in the Low Village for thousands of years, but the memory which recurred most often to Africa as he studied law in Michigan concerned an event which took place on his last morning in Honolulu.
Nyuk Tsin assembled her five sons and led them to the letter-writer at the Punti store. There she delivered fifty dollars that the family in Honolulu desperately needed for its various ventures. Asia and Europe gasped to see this amount of money being stolen from the Kees, and certainly Africa could have used it in Michigan, but Nyuk Tsin said, "Your mother in China may need this money. It may be a bad year for the crops. It is your duty above everything else to pay respect to your mother." If, at Michigan, Africa Kee excelled at law it was partly because he understood the fundamental fact that law directs the ongoing of society. It is rooted in the past, determines the present, and protects the future. Better