The Shores of Paradise

By Shirley Streshinsky

In a narrative spanning the final decades of the 1800s, the end of the Hawaiian monarchy, annexation by the Unites States, and World War I, the lives of four starkly different headstrong individuals are inextricably woven.
    True Lindstrom was brought to the orphanage at Waikiki as a young girl. As bold as she is fair, True harbors a tragic childhood secret—as well as a fierce love for Evan Coulter, which she will defy fate and circumstance to fulfill. Twelve years older than True, handsome Evan is an accomplished rider with an abiding love for the land and its people. His political future now seems limitless—until his passion for True jeopardizes his marriage and forces a decision that could alter Hawaiian history. Princess Kaiulani, a delicate child who traces her ancestry to Scottish landowners on her father’s side and centuries of Hawaiian royalty on her mother’s, is heiress apparent to the Hawaiian throne. The last hope of the Hawaiian monarchy, she is all too aware of the enormous responsibility places on her frail shoulders and understands that she will either grow up to rule the islands—or die a martyr to them.
    These dynamic lives are woven into a tale by Martha Moon, the gentle teacher who casts herself in the ancient Hawaiian role of storyteller. It is through her eyes that we witness four lifetimes of adversity, sorrow, joy, and ultimate triumph.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Aug 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781620455180

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PROLOGUE

Sunday, August 7, 1898

TRUE WAS MARRIED yesterday, in a bower by the beach at Ainahau. She said her vows in a strong, clear voice, never once hesitating or faltering; her face glowed with purpose. The trade winds stirred the warm air. Chinese jasmine and tuberoses and plumeria—all the thick, sweet, sad scents of the Islands—filled the big house and the gardens. The ceremony was at sunset, when the breakers were tinged with pink as the waves washed ashore; at dusk, lanterns were lit all about the grassy lawns and the peacocks shrieked and the Royal Hawaiian Band played and there was much singing and celebrating. I went through the motions, as I had promised I would. When the newlyweds left, the Queen sang Aloha Oe. That was when I lost my courage and began to weep. Tears come easily to the Hawaiians, so I hid in their midst and hoped that True wouldn't notice.

This room which True and I shared for many years, which has always seemed small, now seems big and empty and still in the afternoon heat. Even with the shutters open to catch the sea breeze, the air is heavy with the perfume of my fading ginger lei and her absence. A frayed green ribbon lies, dusty and discarded, on her writing table. The quilt is gone from her bed, and the mosquito netting lies folded on the mattress, along with the box this journal came in. I don't know why these leftover bits should make me feel so forlorn, but at this moment I doubt I'll ever be able to take a full, deep breath again.

     I wish old Auntie Momi hadn't come to see True married. That is a shameful thing to say, because Auntie has loved me for so long, and she is so old, to walk all those miles. We sat together, looking out to the ocean, and when she started talking her voice was so thin and cracked that it sounded like the whisper of the palm fronds brushing against each other. Then I heard her say what I had been afraid to tell myself: The path True has chosen to take up the mountain is a hard path, filled with brambles, not well trod and with no clear view of the top.

     True made me promise not to fret. She said if I was to start feeling seedy, I should ride the grey pony down the road to Ainahau and coax Vicky into going sea bathing with me. And she left me this journal, with a smooth cover of koa wood and Florentine marbled endpapers and thick cream pages, things she knows I set store by. Her note said, "It is time to put Auntie Momi's talk stories on paper, as you always said you would. And while you're about it, storyteller, talk our story. Write it all down, from that first day—do you remember? You stared at me so, I thought you were the most curious, big-eyed little thing I'd ever seen! Tell it outright and honest. I'll expect to read some in the spring, when we come back. Aloha nui loa."

     This is just True's way of keeping me busy. Aloha nui loa. I love you very much. True does everything nui loa. I never knew anyone like her, for saying what she means or for plunging headlong into things. When I said that to Vicky, she only laughed and in that proper English accent she's acquired said she'd never known anyone the slightest bit like True, either, and wasn't that a joy?

     Old Auntie's talk stories I will write, for they are Hawaii's and deserve to be remembered. That I should talk True's story, our story—well, that will require a certain consideration, especially if it is to be outright and honest. Sometimes I think True should learn to hold back, but that's like telling the waves not to wash in or the sun not to shine. I swear she only knows how to walk into the wind, that fine white hair of hers flying. My legs are shorter, I can never keep up, and she never waits so I have had to learn to run fast.

     Our story. How shall I begin?

     Martha Moon is what I am called, but it is not my name. Only Sister Catherine Joseph knows what that is and she won't tell. This much I know: When I was too small to remember, a woman brought me to the Convent of the Holy Names in Honolulu and gave me to Sister Catherine Joseph. Auntie Momi, who was old even then and had raised many children, cared for me. The sisters called me Martha; Auntie added Moon because she said the night I was given to her care had been bright with moonlight.

     Auntie and I shared the room behind the kitchen, which was set apart from the convent. When I grew old enough, I began to ask Sister Catherine Joseph to tell me the name of the woman who had brought me. She would not; she said she could not.

     I spent long hours studying my face: coarse dark hair, black eyes, full lips, a nose that is small and straight. Little Sister Maria Therese liked to say that I had an aristocratic nose and elegant wrists, but even then I knew she meant only to comfort me for my plainness. My body was small and my skin dark, but not so dark as Auntie's or any of the native girls. I was hapa Hawaiian, certainly, and hapa haole, half white, and you would think that two halves would make a whole, but I didn't feel whole because I knew nothing of either half.

     I'm certain I have a mother somewhere, I would say to Sister. I must have a father. Perhaps I have sisters, brothers, an 'ohana—a family. Say if they exist, only tell me that much, I would plead.

     Sister grew ever more silent, until she would scarcely speak to me at all. When I was not receiving instruction in the school or in church, I was left to the keeping of Auntie Momi. She cleaned and swept and cared for me and comforted me and told me the old stories, in a voice so lulling and low that for a time I could escape the fears that came of not knowing where I had come from or who on this green earth belonged to me.

     In the end, it was one of Auntie's stories, shamefully embellished for my own purposes, that caused me to be sent away. On the thirteenth anniversary of the day I had arrived at the mission, I arose at five, pulled on my dress, and ran across the courtyard, so full of excitement that I did not feel the sharp rocks that cut into my feet. I knew Sister would be at matins; I slipped quietly into the church as she made the sign of the cross and rose, her lips moving silently. I was at the door when she stepped out.

     I have prayed to our Sweet Savior that you will speak to me, I said, piously, as I had practised.

     Martha . . . she began, wary.

     I cannot go on without some notion of who I am, I said, too loud.

     Her face closed, her eyes blinked slowly, like an old sea turtle's, and when she looked at me again it was with reptilian indifference.

     Then you must pray to Almighty God to sustain you, she finished coldly. I suppose that was what set me off.

     I have prayed to God, I answered, the words spitting out of me, aimed straight for the cold heart buried in the black habit, and He has answered me in my dreams. An angel hovered over my bed last night, an angel with a dog's face, and it told me I am an abomination, an evil thing that was never meant to see the light and that you took me into the convent against the will of God.

     The muscles around her mouth began to twitch; I saw but I could not stop myself. My voice began to rise and tremble:

     The angel said I was the child of King Kamehameha the third and his sister, Nahienaena, a Christian. The missionaries taught her that her soul would burn in hell for her sin. The angel said that I died at birth but that my spirit has lived on, wandering in the Pali, and that you sent someone to find me and bring me to you, so that you could punish me for my mother's terrible sin.

     Sister's face grew red and her hands began to shake. Holding to the wall, she staggered away, letting out short whoofing sounds, like a cat trying to clear its throat of a hairball. I remember standing there, wondering what awful thing I had done, and how I should be punished.

     I had not long to wait.

     That same morning one of the young sisters came to my room with a basket and a new missal with a sealed envelope tucked into it, addressed to Mr. and Miss Wright. I was told to pack my Sunday dress and my shoes in the basket and wait in front of the church. Within the hour the old Chinese who made deliveries for the church arrived with his mule and cart. Sister Maria Therese came running out as if to say something to me, but then she pulled back into the shadows and only lifted her hand, in some lost motion of remembrance. Auntie was away visiting one of her daughters; I didn't know how she would ever find me.

     The old wagon creaked and rumbled through the streets of the city, down Beretania and onto the District Road, on and on into the country, past duck ponds and banana groves and taro patches, always within sound of the sea. Great palm trees lined the dusty road; still we drove on, into the afternoon. I felt neither hunger nor thirst. The sun was full up and I had no hat, but I scarcely noticed. We passed small farms and houses and, now and then, a farmer or a fisherman. Finally, when we had gone so far down the beach road that the thick green leaves of tropical plants were brushing against us on either side, the old Chinese signaled his mule to stop and, turning to me, pointed toward the sea. I sat, stunned. He made a sharp, angry sound then and took my basket and threw it by the side of the road. I climbed out and watched as he turned the old wagon in the narrow roadway and drove off. Then I sat down next to my basket to wait.

     After a time I moved into the deep shade of a hau tree. I think perhaps I drifted into sleep, because when I opened my eyes I found myself looking up into the branches and saw, perched high in the tree, a small person with a large head and very short legs staring down at me.

     Aloha, he said and dropped to the ground in front of me. Had he not been so small and had he not been wearing such a goosey smile, I might have been afraid. Have you come to stay? he asked.

     I could not find words, but he seemed not to notice. My name is Liko. Come, he directed, swinging my basket over his shoulder and starting off down a path, his stout little legs churning in the sand.

     Soon we stepped into a wide clearing marked by tall coconut palms, a profusion of flowers and, scattered about, several small cottages in the plantation style, with thatched roofs and wide verandahs. Three children ran up to us, but Liko waved them away importantly.

     Uncle, he called as we approached the bungalow nearest the beach. A tall, big-nosed white woman came out, flapping her apron in annoyance. Shush, child, she said in a loud whisper. Uncle is working . . . Then she saw me and said, Oh my, and shouted out Brother! as she might have called Fire!

     A small man, slight and balding, emerged. I stood, face burning, as the two haoles asked me questions I could not seem to answer.

     I had clutched the missal so tightly that my fingers left wet marks on the black cover. I looked at it and handed it to the man Liko called Uncle. He found the envelope.

     This is addressed to my sister and myself, he told me courteously, peering over his spectacles, his bushy eyebrows raised in question. He read the letter and handed it over to his sister.

     Oh my, she said as she read, her eyes fluttering wildly.

     Do you know where you are, child? the man asked, and the kindness in his voice made me suddenly thirsty and hungry and aching with woe. Tears flooded my eyes and slipped down my face. I shook my head furiously and began to hiccough.

     You are at Hale Mana'olana—it means House of Hope, he said. It is a home and a school for any child who needs them. I am Jameson Wright and my sister is Miss Winona Wright. The children call us Aunt and Uncle. We hope you will want to stay here and be part of our family.

     I closed my eyes and bit my lip. Hale Mana'olana—at the convent they called it House of No Hope. The children no one else wanted came here—the cripples and the outcasts, the unwanted and unloved. Misery washed over me.

     Would you say that Sister Catherine Joseph is well versed on the subject of blasphemy? he asked me.

     I looked at my feet.

     Well, I'd have to say I agree with you, he went on, his voice coaxing me to look at him. When I did I was confused to see that he was smiling. He went on: I for one am most happy to be getting a student with such an advanced imagination. I can see that our writing classes are going to be much livelier, don't you agree, Winona?

     His sister gave me a cup of water and steadied my hand when I couldn't hold it. She said she had to admit that she couldn't see the humor in my getting myself banished from the Catholic Mission and the sight of Sister Catherine Joseph.

     In a weary voice, drained of the laughter that had been there a few moments before, he told her he felt it was kinder to look for humor in another's righteous indignation than to admit to the cruelty that was at the heart of it, and that in his view it should not be a sin to want to know who your people are.

     Winona Wright's face filled with contrition. I thought then, and I think now, that I've never known a person more intent on pleasing another as Winona Wright is in pleasing her brother. She touched me kindly on the shoulder, murmuring all the while that of course he was right, when you look at it that way, but it certainly was a wild story, that was all. She began to talk as if she had been wound up and had to wear down, about how not everybody in the world understood children the way he did, and I believe she would have gone on all afternoon if he hadn't held up his hand, palm out, a signal that cut her off mid-sentence.

     It took Auntie Momi four days to find me. Jameson Wright brought her to the bungalow in which I had been assigned a room. After that she stayed nearby, doing small jobs, cleaning the school rooms. In the afternoons she would sit with Uncle Jameson on the lanai looking out to the ocean, and I could hear her familiar voice—flat and even, talking, talking. Her presence steadied me.

     The Wrights were as peculiar as people said they were. Uncle Jameson didn't hold with organized religion or with what he called Protestant progress. He favored the Hawaiians over the haoles, and made it plain that he did not approve of the Hawaiian Islands being annexed by anybody, not even his own countrymen. It was not the first time he had taken such an unpopular stand—the brother and sister had come out from Georgia after the war. It was said they opposed slavery, which made them misfits in their home state.

     When I came to Hale Mana'olana, there were only four girls and six boys, none save Liko more than ten years of age. All had some mark—a small boy with tiny stick legs, a girl often with a face so pocked she tried to hide it with her hair. Liko, who is near to my own age, is a dwarf with the constitution of a small bull. The one tall, muscled Hawaiian boy who looked to be perfect could neither hear nor speak.

     We were, all of us, in some way damaged. That was how we happened to find ourselves on this wide stretch of Waikiki far out from the city, past the taro patches and fish ponds and all the summer places of the Hawaiian royalty. Separated and protected from the world on this island within an island, we were young outcasts governed by old ones.

     We children were expected to spend our mornings in the schoolroom, our middays splashing in the ocean or playing, and late afternoons doing our chores. Liko, more fish than boy, coaxed me into the sea and showed me how to float, then how to turn my head this way and that to catch little breaths, and finally how to swim far out and let the waves lift and carry me back to the beach. Aunt and Uncle remained on the periphery of our existence. Their rules were few, but, we soon enough discovered, inviolate. We were never to do anything that would endanger ourselves or others, or do damage to the school. When the boy named Moku, who could not speak or hear, set fire to Uncle's cabin, we all worked furiously to save as many of the precious books as we could. Moku ran away, but came back the next morning, his sooty face streaked with tears, his eyes filled with remorse and misery. The Wrights sent him to the boys' reformatory.

     I was able to help in the classroom by teaching the younger children their letters. Uncle began to select books for me to read. The days were never long enough; there was so much to do.

     After a time I began to forget what the pattern of my days at the convent had been. No longer did I wake so often in the night with the questions sending sharp pains through my head. One afternoon I came out of the ocean to find Old Auntie waiting.

     I go now, she told me, touching her wrinkled old face to mine. I traced the tears that flooded her cheeks and kissed her good-bye; when she left, I found I felt sad but not afraid.

Write it all down, from that first day—do you remember?

     I remember.

I thought you were the most curious, big-eyed little thing I'd ever seen . . .

     And I thought she was from another world, with skin so pale and luminous you could see into it, a faint sprinkling of freckles scattered just beneath the surface, and eyes of such a strange, warm green that once you had looked into them, it was hard to look away. And the hair, the spun-white hair hanging long down her back so that she looked like the princess in Uncle's book of fairy tales, the one kept locked away in the tower.

     The day Uncle came riding in with True, Aunt Winona came out to meet them, slowly and without saying a word. I remember thinking it strange that she should be speechless. The little children gathered around staring, then Liko charged in, hands on his squat hips, challenging the strange girl to say who she was and if she planned to stay. True stared back, and ignoring Auntie's outstretched hands, jumped off by herself, tumbling and falling at my feet.

     She looked up at me with a terrible wild anger in her eyes. I wanted to look away, to run away, but I could not. If you come with me, I said so softly I could scarcely hear myself, being careful not to touch her, I will show you where you will sleep.

     She was to share my room, but for three days and three nights she did not stay there, nor did she speak to any of us. Early on the morning of the fourth day, I opened my eyes to find her sitting on her bed, watching me.

     This is where we are to live, she said. I couldn't be sure if it was a question.

     Yes, I answered, carefully.

     She looked around the room, scanned the rafters lined in tapa, and the shutters that opened out to catch the sea breeze, and studied the titles of the books on my writing table. Her eyes returned to mine. I do not believe in God, she told me.

     I blinked and, not knowing what to say, said nothing.

     I thought you should know that, if we are to share a room.

     I blasphemed, I croaked, the words crumpling as they came out of me.

     She stared at me with her steady green eyes, and then she said, Perhaps we could collect some seashells. Seeing my confusion, she explained, To hang on the walls for decoration.

     Six months later our walls were covered with seashells, each carefully named and labeled, and I had found—in this girl who was unlike me in every way—my much-needed friend.

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BOOK ONE

Waikiki

1887-1899

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THREE

AS I THINK of it now, that summer was the last of our childhood, days and weeks of sunlight and laughter bubbling up out of us for the sweet joy of being together, the warm air and soft rhythms of living. We would run barefoot through the hot sand to fling ourselves into the surf, or gallop the ponies full-out along the edge of the water or run until our sides ached and we could run no more, so we would drop in the shade of a coconut grove, sprawled out, and when we had caught our breath either Vicky or True or Liko would ask me to talk one of Auntie's old stories.

     Without her specs, Vicky could not see well at all. Sometimes we managed to outrun the retainer that followed Kaiulani, but we always watched over her, so she was safe. Sometimes when I was telling a story the heavy lids of her eyes would half close, and I would wonder how much she heard. When the time came that I had talked all the stories and had to start over again, I would discover that she remembered well enough to correct me.

     True says I have a talent for mimicry; I know that when I talk Auntie's stories I take on her tone—low but not melodic, rather the opposite. If I close my eyes even now, I can hear Auntie's voice—steady and droning and as inexorable as the wind blowing down from the Pali.

     Vicky's favorites were the stories about Kaahumanu, the queen who had most influenced her own fate. Though Kaahumanu is dead now these fifty-five years, there are those still living who knew her, whose old eyes glow bright when they speak of her, as if they cannot believe it still, all that she was, all that she meant to the people of Hawaii. Old Auntie Momi is one such; Auntie's mother was a member of Kaahumanu's court, a favored friend, a keeper of her secrets in the fearful days at the end of the Great King's life and the months following, when life in these islands was changed forever because of the strong heart, the courage and the ambition, of this one great woman.

She lay on her stomach in the warm sand, the first of the Kaahumanu stories begins, wishing the slow ache at the pit of her belly would go away, wanting the time of the blood weeping to end so that she could return to her father's house. She was lonely for her