Mauna Loa
November 21, 1935
1
Mangoes
The sky threatened rain as Koji Sanada approached the green bungalow where the pungent scent of rotting mangoes mingled with a hint of smoke, the bitter remnants of the preharvest cane burning that drifted down from the surrounding plantations. He knew it all too well. Sugarcane had been his life since his family first arrived in Hilo, Hawai’i, by way of Osaka, Japan, in 1895, along with all the other immigrant workers who had flocked to jobs on the island’s sugar and pineapple plantations. Koji had been ten years old, the older of two children and the only son. He had immediately embraced the wildness of the island as his own, so different from his traditional Japanese upbringing. Along the way, the three years his parents had been contracted to stay before returning to Japan had turned into a lifetime.
Koji walked up the dirt path to the house he knew so well. It was here on the Big Island near the growing community of Hilo that he found a new home at the Puli Plantation, along with years of backbreaking work, toiling under the hot sun, the wind and rain, the tremors and quakes, and it was here on this island of five volcanoes that he’d also found Mariko Abe.
He paused to look around Mariko’s yard now and felt a dull ache at having let her down. The garden, always her pride, was wild and overgrown without her. He meant to come pick the mangoes and take them to Nori at the Okawa Fish Market, but once again time had gotten away from him. He continued up the path to see her beloved mango tree, planted by her grandfather but now empty of fruit. It had been wet and muggy all week, and the moist ground was heavily blanketed with leaves and rotted fruit, only the dark seeds of a few fist-size mangoes still recognizable. It always amazed Koji how quickly the earth could reclaim its own.
Close your eyes. He thought he heard Mariko’s voice again. Now, what do you smell? When they were young, she’d taught him the mangoes were ready to pick when you could smell their fragrant melon pineapple aroma, while they were still firm to the touch. Her tree always yielded the sweetest mangoes in Hilo town. Koji smiled to think Mariko knew mangoes the way he knew sugarcane, and he felt a sudden sharp longing that was just another form of grief. She had died two years ago and it still felt like yesterday.
Another tremor underfoot shook Koji from his thoughts. The island had been restless with waves of slight tremors for the past two months, and he worried that they foreshadowed something bigger and stronger. So far, nothing had come of them, but the island’s history said otherwise.
“It’s just the island hiccuping,” his mother used to say, to coax the fear out of his younger sister. Koji hoped it was nothing more now that Mariko’s son Daniel was finally coming home from the mainland after more than ten years of study. The last time Koji had seen him was during his mother’s final months. Since her death, time had played tricks on him, moving both too fast and too slow without her. He couldn’t help but feel as if part of Mariko was returning to him with her son, reawakening long-buried memories. Koji walked to the woodshed where Mariko kept her gardening tools. He quickly cleaned around the tree before going up to the house, where he was certain to find Nori making sure everything was ready for Daniel’s return.
The steps up to the front porch creaked underfoot. Koji was back at the house for the first time in two years, heat and moisture leaving slivers of cracked paint peeling from the trim and railing. Mariko’s chair, where she had often sat and sewed, looked weathered and forlorn. Koji slipped off his shoes, pulled open the screen door, and stood at the threshold looking in. The package he came to deliver was in his pocket. He swallowed and felt another tremor. Go on, he told himself. He heard movement coming from the kitchen and choked back the familiarity. It wasn’t her, he reminded himself; it was Nori. He took a deep breath and stepped into the house.
2
Watching Over Him
Nori Okawa stood in the kitchen of Daniel’s childhood home—the faded, weather-beaten green bungalow that had been left to Mariko by her mother and now belonged to Daniel. The house had been one of Mariko’s most cherished possessions, built by her grandfather after he had emigrated from Japan. “It holds our family spirits,” she always said, “keeps them alive.” And it was within walking distance of downtown and the Okawa Fish Market. Nori’s ongoing care of the house was evident in the thriving orchids, in the spotless kitchen, in the clean bedsheets and dusted shelves of his room. For the past few weeks, word had spread through the community about the welcome home party for Daniel at the Okawa Fish Market. Everything was ready for his return.
Nori and the Hilo Aunties had been excited all week. Daniel’s letter said he would arrive back in Hilo on the steamer Lanai that evening from Oahu. Nori knew how proud Mariko would have been. Her son had left the island at eighteen for a mainland education, and was returning a full-fledged doctor. Daniel was one of the first Japanese in his medical school and the first Hilo boy to become a doctor. The entire community knew how hard he had studied to be accepted into a mainland university. Along the way, his triumph had also become theirs. There’d been so many obstacles—from cost to the distance—but Daniel did well on his exams, and his high school teachers had written him glowing letters of recommendation. Along with the scholarships he received, it felt destined to be.
Nori smiled. Daniel was returning a big-shot doctor now, who hadn’t been seduced away by Chicago and all the big-city temptations. Even when Daniel was a boy, Nori knew he would succeed and make them all proud—he was driven in that way, a good student who cared for every stray dog or hurt animal, even before he realized he wanted to be a doctor. Along with her two boys, Wilson and Mano, who had followed their father into the Okawa family fishing business, she always considered Daniel to be her third son, more so after Mariko had passed away from cancer. She knew it would have to be his own decision, but Nori had selfishly hoped that he would return to Hilo town. So many other young people who left for Oahu, or the mainland, had forgotten their Hilo roots only to return as strangers, or not at all.
Nori felt another tremor just as she leaned over to put the last plate into the icebox. She had filled it with a few dishes Daniel liked—chicken and taro, lomi-lomi salmon, and coconut haupia, the sweet gelatin he loved as a kid, just in case he was hungry during the night. She didn’t dare to make his favorite, Portuguese chicken, which no one in Hilo made as well as his mother. Nori straightened and suddenly felt Mariko’s presence right there in the kitchen with her. She was still everywhere—in her stained teacup in the cupboard; in the empty chair against the chipped Formica table; in her faded, flowered apron that still hung inside the pantry door. They had shared so many important moments right there in the small, warm room ever since they were young girls. Nori wiped her hands on a dish towel and once again heard the echo of their voices circle around her.
The kitchen was always the heart of Mariko’s house. It was where she had first told Nori she was pregnant with Daniel. She appeared pale and tense that morning, so afraid her husband, Franklin, wouldn’t be ready, that he’d be angry with her. But he surprised them all, and was happy when he returned from a job on Maui and found out about the baby. “A boy,” he’d said, “I can feel it.” At about the same time Nori had discovered that she was pregnant with Mano. “We’re having twins,” Mariko was the first to say. Nori had never seen her so content, ever hopeful that Franklin would finally settle down.