Hawaii - James Michener [615]
"It's a new day in Hawaii, Malama," he replied. "And is this your lovely daughter?" Malama asked, and when Hong Kong said that it was, she laughed and said, "In the old days I could never tell, when I saw a rich Chinese with a young girl, whether she was his daughter or his number four wife."
"I feel the same way when I go to a night club in New York," Hong Kong replied happily, "and see the haole bankers and their companions. We poor Chinese aren't allowed to get away with plural marriages any longer . . . only the haoles."
"I want you to meet my friends," Malama chuckled. "We gather now and then for some Hawaiian music. This is Mrs. Choy, Mrs. Fukuda, Mrs. Mendonca and Mrs. Rodriques."
Hong Kong bowed to each of the huge ladies and then returned to Mrs. Choy. "You the pretty girl named after the race horse?"
"Yes," Mrs. Choy laughed gaily. "My name is Carry-the-Mail. You see, Father won a lot of money on that horse."
"I know! My grandmother found out that my father had bet a lot of money on Carry-the-Mail, and she gave him hell, but the horse won. So my father and your father probably got drunk together, Mrs. Choy," Hong Kong said easily, and the women laughed.
"This is my daughter Judy, the musician. She has a job at the conservatory."
"How wonderful!" Malama cried, shoving a ukulele at the lovely Chinese girl, who slipped easily and without embarrassment into the great frieze of Hawaiian ladies who lined the wall of the chandeliered room. "You won't know the words, but you can hum." And the six women began an old Hawaiian song from the days when royalty lived at Lahaina, on Maui. It was true that Judy Kee knew none of the words, but she harmonized well, and once the others stopped singing while she vocalized a verse, and Mrs. Choy cried, "If we could do something about those slant-eyes, we could make her into a good Hawaiian."
The crowd laughed and Hong Kong asked easily, "What I'd like to find out, Malama, is what are the opinions of a Hawaiian who is placed on a spendthrift trust?" It was like asking the Pope his impressions of Martin Luther, but Hong Kong's blunt approach often proved best, and this was an occasion when it did, for all the Hawaiian ladies were interested in this question, which affected many of their friends.
“I’ll tell you, Hong Kong," Malama confessed, as she asked Judy to help her serve tea. "I graduated from Vassar with very good grades, and I was shocked when the court said, 'You are not competent to handle your own affairs. We will pay three white men huge salaries to do it for you.' This was insulting, and I tried to fight back, but then I remembered what the sweet haole teachers had taught us at Hewlett Hall. I was Hawaiian. I was different. I was supposed to be incompetent, so I relaxed and found no shame in being judged a spendthrift. I love my friends, I love a guitar well played, I love the Swamp, so I have rather succumbed to the passing of the days. A little friendship, the birds in the Swamp . . . until I die. I am a spendthrift, so I suppose I deserve to be disciplined by a spendthrift trust."
Mrs. Fukuda said, "What always infuriates white men, and frugal Japanese like my husband, is the way a woman like Malama gives things to her friends. This they cannot understand. In their pinched and miserable hearts they can't understand it."
"What's money?" Malama asked.
"How much does the spendthrift trust allow you?" Hong Kong asked.
"I don't blame the trustees," Malama evaded. "When the courts stepped in I'd worked things around so that I owed the federal government $350,000 in back taxes. Somebody had to do something. So now all I get is $22,000 a year for myself."
"And all her friends," Mrs. Mendonca said. "After all, she is an alii nui and she does have some obligations."
"How do you like the system?" Hong Kong