Hawaii - James Michener [371]
"At the house things go well. Kimo and Apikela look after things for us all, and they are precious people. The fields yield as before, and pineapples continue to sell well. Ah Chow has a fine restaurant that is always busy and Au Chow has a good vegetable business.
"But the good news, Wu Chow's Father, is that your son Fei Chow is already on a ship going to Michigan to study to be a lawyer. When I put him aboard the vessel I could see you and Palani in our little house down there, dreaming of going around the world and seeing strange places.
"Think! Think! Our son, our own child, is going to be a scholar!"
In gratitude for this great boon Nyuk Tsin fell silent and tears trembled on her lids, and the sun rose higher in the heavens, and she stayed by the grave. At eleven she asked, "Is it not hot on those rocks? You really ought to have a tree, Wu Chow's Father." And in the later afternoon she left the grave and the meal she had set for the ghost.
On her walk back toward Kalaupapa she passed the old graveyard and saw a new stone, larger than the others, and she wondered who of her friends lay buried there, so she waited until a Hawaiian leper came by with hardly any face, and she asked him, "Who lies in that grave?" And the man said, "Father Damien. He died one of us."
When she reached Kalaupapa she found that while she was talking with her husband the settlement had discovered who she was, and she returned to see many people waiting for her. "Pake Kokua!" they called, and many came to greet her who had known her in the evil days. Some she recognized, for the disease had been kind to them, but others no eyes but God's could see as human beings. "Pake Kokua!" they all cried. "It's good to have you back."
She sat down on a rock, a little Chinese woman with a sunburned face, and they gathered around. A priest came up and asked in Hawaiian, "Are you the one they call the Pake Kokua?" She said that she was, and he said, "You are remembered in this place." She asked if it was true that Father Damien had died of leprosy, and the priest said, "Only last spring." "Did he suffer?" Nyuk Tsin asked, and the priest replied, "Here everyone suffers." She said, "Kalaupapa is better than Kalawao used to be," and the young man said, "When the people in Honolulu wakened to their responsibility, it had to become better." She asked, "Have you found any drug that cures?" And he replied, "The infinite mercy of God has not yet shown us the way, but He will not permit a thing like leprosy to continue without a cure. Meanwhile, we pray."
In late 1889 Nyuk Tsin spent most of her spare time arguing with the Ching family about terms on which their youngest daughter, Ching Siu Han, might be given to her youngest son Australia. She told Mrs. Ching frankly, "The boy is very good at school, and I don't worry about him in that regard, but having grown up with Hawaiians he is more like them than a Chinese. He's got to marry a Chinese girl. Otherwise he will be lost to us."
Mrs. Ching pointed out: "You allowed Au Chow and Mei Chow to marry Hawaiian girls."
Nyuk Tsin argued: "Those girls brought much land with them, and the marriages were good for the boys. But Oh Chow's problem is different. He doesn't require land. He requires a strong-minded Chinese wife." But her antagonist felt that Siu Han, being rather prettier than average, ought to be saved for a better prospect than Australia.
At this time Siu Han, who was now a sparkling Chinese girl of fifteen, had begun to show her headstrong nature and had broken away from the severe old Chinese custom which required girls to hide at home. While her sister, Africa's wife, tended her three babies, Siu Han liked to walk up and down Hotel Street, and because she was unusually attractive this caused much comment in the Chinese community. On one such trip she met Nyuk Tsin, who said to