Sujata Massey - Shimura Trouble

“What do you mean about Charisse?”

“She’s a great kid, but a chatterbox! She’ll talk to anybody, go with anyone. Even a creep.”

If Jiro was getting around as much as he did, he sounded as if he was doing pretty well. I said, “So you’re telling me that Mitsuo Kikuchi is making sure his son gets good care within the grounds of a beautiful place, and he doesn’t want people to know his son doesn’t have a job? That doesn’t sound so terrible, especially if you look at the norms of Japanese behavior.”

“Well, to build this pretty holding place for his son, he screwed everybody,” Kainoa said fiercely. “There was a local community there, about sixty or seventy homes. I grew up in that place.”

“Is leasehold like renting?”

“Not exactly. It was something the kamaaina landowners use to profit from selling their land repeatedly.”

Kamaaina, I recalled, meant child of the land. It generally meant local and Hawaiian, with the exception of the Hawaii-born descendents of the British and American missionaries, many of whom mixed their bloodlines with daughters of the Hawaiian chief class: strategic marriages that resulted in the acquisition of more land.

“Our parents and grandparents helped each other buy homes as early as they could, and in those days they only had the right to be on the land for a period of time. Usually, the leasehold had a time period that sounded long-sometimes fifty, eighty years, like that.” Kainoa looked down for a minute. “When my daddy turned seventy, he had twenty years left to live on the property. He was anxious about whether anyone would want to buy the place, with twenty years or less left on the lease before re-negotiation. He’d have to sell for almost nothing, to get someone to take it.”

“That’s awful!”

“Yeah. So here comes Kikuchi, and he offers everyone on-the-spot money for their homes, but that’s if they all agree to leave. And at the same time, Pierce Holdings leaks the information that they may be shortening the lifespan of the leaseholds.”

“But how could they back out on a lease, legally?”

“Pierce Holdings is the second largest landholder on the Leeward Side. Its CEO can force the state government to cooperate with them because if they don’t cooperate, the company won’t build a school, or a police station, or a road.”

“You mean the Pierces actually pay for government buildings?”

“Sure. For the tax credit, and the power it gives them. If the government here wants to add a road they have to get permission from the big landholders or the military, who own the land where the road would pass.”

“How did you become owner of this coffee shop, since all the surrounding land belongs to the Pierces?” I asked.

Kainoa gazed around with an almost wistful expression. “I took over this building after my father died. He bought it from the Pierces back when Ewa Sugar shut down. The sale was a kind of favor, because my grandfather ran the general store for over forty years, which is why my family would look like stink at me if I sold it.”

Again, a kind of paternalism from the Pierces, but at least the store had stayed in working people’s hands. I said, “Your store is the last living part of the old plantation village. I understand why you wouldn’t want to sell off part of our heritage.”

“Our heritage? I thought you were a malihini from the mainland.”

Malihini was a pretty-sounding word, but I knew it meant newcomer, which wasn’t the best thing to be in Hawaii. I said, “Actually, my great-great-aunt came here in the twenties.”

“For real? Shimura’s not a common name on this island,” Kainoa said. “The only one I know of is one lolo dude who couldn’t possibly be related to you.”

“I think you’re talking about my cousin Edwin-but what does lolo mean?”

“Crazy. And hey, I’m sorry. But he’s full of it, when he talks about discrimination against the Japanese. After the war, they took over politics, law, and real estate. The real Hawaiians are the only ones with a right to complain about losing land.”

“So, may I ask if you’re a real Hawaiian?”

“A quarter, which was good enough for the Kamehamema Schools. The rest of me is Samoan and Filipino.”

So I’d been right about the Samoan part, although I didn’t yet understand Kainoa’s inner self. I didn’t care for his playful, insulting behavior, a technique that big, good-looking men like him employed a bit too often.

As if sensing my thoughts, Kainoa smiled, his teeth sharp and white. “I’d like to shoot the breeze all morning with you, Rei, but I gotta convince Charisse to stop yapping and make more coffee. You try come back here?”

“Probably,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at the counter. There was indeed a long line, but Charisse seemed oblivious, lost in yet another conversation.

“Well, next time you try a cuppa green tea. You might like it better.”

I MADE IT back across the Pierce fields unmolested except for by a few knobby passion fruits, which dropped from an old, twisted tree on my head and on the path in front of me. When I entered the townhouse, however, carrying two handfuls of tiny fruit, trouble was waiting.

My father, Tom and Uncle Hiroshi were all seated at the dining table, with full glasses of water. There were empty plates, and knives and forks and spoons all laid in the proper places. They looked as if they were waiting for someone to serve them. But what? I knew there was nothing in the fridge except for ketchup and sugar left by the previous renters.

Trying to ignore the accusatory expressions, I put the fruit on the table, and then stooped to unlace my shoes. “Good morning, everyone, I’ve brought you some passion fruits-which I believe are called lilikoi here.”

“Where were you, Rei?” my father asked sternly.

“I went for a run, got a coffee, and came back.”

“You went to drink coffee by yourself? I’d been hoping you’d gone to shop for food for our breakfast,” my father said.

I glanced at my watch; it was eight o’clock. “I imagine the stores are opening right now. Dad, did you take your pills? There’s that one you need to take on an empty stomach, remember?”

“Safeway in Kapolei opened at seven,” Tom said. “We wanted to go, but we didn’t want to leave without you, because of course you’d want to choose what you need for cooking.”

I felt that sinking feeling again, now certain that I was expected to cook and clean for them. If I didn’t want to wind up like an overworked picture bride, I would have to subtly resist. I smiled and said, “Yes, I’d like to help you go shopping,” before disappearing into my bathroom to shower off all the red field dust. After that, I hustled past them with the towel wrapped around me, into my room, where I unpacked khaki shorts, a black tank top, and sandals. I went out with wet hair, because the warm Hawaiian air would probably give me a natural blow-dry within a half-hour.

Tom took the wheel, in order to practice driving on the right side of the road, and I navigated. Safeway was easy to find, smack in the middle of a strip mall anchored by two mainland chains: Blockbuster Video and RadioShack. Inside Safeway, however, I was pleased to find two long aisles devoted exclusively to Asian foods, ranging from umpteen kinds of sweet bean cakes to sembei crackers and dozens of different instant noodle brands with instructions only in Japanese, Chinese and Tagalog.

Local pineapple and papaya was plentiful, but it was harder to find locally grown vegetables. I did the best I could, searching out island-hatched eggs and local lettuce and tomatoes, and then dealing with my father’s shock at the prices when it was time to pay.