Chapter Seven
The Split
Who split the moon in half?
Half printed on the lone pillow case
Half shining on the miles of roadway
The future came but was not what they could foresee in their wildest imagination.
“You come with me and close this account.”
Mai Lan’s mind went blank. How in the world did he find out?
“I just wanted to set aside a bit of my earnings to help my family. You know, not anything big, but my folks are still struggling, most of my siblings are still in school. You know that most of my salary goes into our account, don’t you?”
“Your folks have been here for a while already. We cannot continue to support them, don’t you know that?”
So the account was closed.
Since the beginning of their life together, Minh had always been the one balancing the checkbook and controlling their finances. Mai Lan felt smothered by this marital life. Day in and day out she couldn’t breathe, feeling as if an elephant was sitting permanently on her chest. She tried to take deep breaths when she felt particularly choked, especially at night, only to have the weight descend on her again.
Life became a routine of work and domestic chores. Her nursing job did not provide for much flexibility, so Minh picked up the kids after school and took them to their grandparents. They doted on them. Mother even thanked Mai Lan for bearing grandchildren for her. Mai Lan missed the irony of it until she finally realized many years later that she was considered a childbearing machine whose role was to continue the lineage.
Minh’s work with his company and the community did not leave him any time to spare. Behind the scene, mother wielded her magic wand to gather her son to herself, so more and more, he spent time at her place with the two kids.
As to Mai Lan, she hung on to her friends for comfort.
“Mai Lan, we are glad your sister-in-law is getting married.”
“What are you saying?”
“Don’t you know? It’s all over Chinatown that she is getting married to this guy fresh from Viet Nam.”
Mai Lan stopped eating. Mai Lan and her friends were around a table at Pho 77 in Chinatown. Her friends all knew things were not going very well between Mai Lan and her in-laws, but this looked to be beyond repair.
“What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? My life is hell now. What do you think I should do?”
No one around the table ventured any suggestion.
“I certainly will not attend the wedding. I am not informed nor am I invited. I am through with this family. Mother-in-law has her son but I don’t have a husband.”
So, since Minh buried himself in his work and spent his spare time with his family, she might as well find solace in hers.
Palolo Valley Homes is the home for a sprawling community of immigrants on the island of Oahu. The Vietnamese were the latest group to join a bustling assortment of Samoan families. Laotians, and Hmongs, also joined the community.
Palolo Valley is one of many such valleys on the island of Oahu that begin deep on the flank of the Koolau mountains and run to the ocean. While other valleys may be settled by the wealthier class of Honolulu, Palolo is not. Here one is greeted with a Hawaii of yesteryear, when people still lived close to the earth.
The buildings, which stand in the middle of the valley, are almost uniform in their air of neglect. Instead of looking at them, Mai Lan concentrated on the space between them. Various trees and shrubs seemed to sing of the joy of creation. From what grew in front of the dwelling units, one could tell for sure where the people inside came from. Ti plants mixed with heliconia, and bird of paradise, nestled under banana and breadfruit trees: the residents were most certainly Hawaiians or Samoans. Shrubs of Thai basil and crawling mint along with red pepper and sugar cane: the residents were Vietnamese or Laotians or Hmongs.
Mai Lan took care of the elderly men and women suffering from an assortment of ailments, as well as young families brimming with toddlers and babies. She loved the people here in this valley.
One of the nurses in her office had the habit of writing an inspiring thought on the office board every morning when the staff started their day. Many of these were taken from the Bible. Mai Lan often drew strength from them.
This morning, the words on the board did not make much sense.
“I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.” I Corinthians 3:2
“Talofa, Mrs. Manayan!”
“Oh, it’s you. Come on in.”
Mrs. Manayan’s living room was a bare space with a mat covering the entire floor. To Mai Lan’s amazement, the mat made of woven lauhala looked exactly like the ones she sat on when she visited relatives back in her native land. It was the only furniture in the room, if you could call a mat furniture. There was nothing else. Mai Lan had visions of bedbugs crawling underneath the mat. Nevertheless, she sat down on the floor. There may not be any bedbug at all. Anyway, she was here to work on lice, not bedbugs.
“Tina, bring the milk.”
Mrs. Manayan’s daughter walked across the room delicately balancing the full glass of milk on her hand. After childhood, Mai Lan had never gulped down a full glass of milk.
“Nurse, please, this for you.” Mrs. Manayan was a Samoan woman married to a Filipino man. Her pidgin English and Mai Lan’s imitation of it were enough for them to negotiate a mutual understanding. Looking at the glass of milk, Mai Lan remembered the Bible verse from the morning.
“I fed you with milk, not solid food.”
Mai Lan couldn’t very well refuse since this was her very first encounter with the lady. Her head swam after she gulped the milk. Enough of her thinking was left though for her to go over the reason for her visit. After listening to Mai Lan, Mrs. Manayan looked shocked.
“You mean the ukus all over the floor? The pillows, the beds, everywhere? You mean I have to shampoo them all one time? And wash everything? You crazy or what?”
Crazy or not, Mai Lan’s mission was to convince Mrs. Manayan that indeed her kids couldn’t return to school unless they were free of lice.
Mrs. Manayan looked at Mai Lan with round incredulous eyes. Mai Lan looked into her wide-open pupils and felt like she had to stay in the home and do the work herself.
“Mrs. Manayan, I know it’s impossible work to do, but you get Tina to help, get your husband to help too.“
Visions of dancing ukus crept into Mai Lan’s head. “Can you take the mats outside and brush them with soap and water and let the sun dry them? And put all the beddings and clothes through the washer and dryer? And make the water as hot as you can, also the dryer as hot as you can?”
Mrs. Manayan’s eyes softened somewhat but she still remained speechless.
“Here, I give you these bottles of shampoo and fine- tooth combs. You shampoo everybody’s head all onetime same day, then comb out all the uku eggs.”
Mrs. Manayan held her hands out, grabbed the bottles, then looked at them, turned them round and round while Mai Lan spelled out instructions how to use them. The look of disgust on her face remained all throughout Mai Lan’s talk.
“Mrs. Manayan, I come back next week to see how else I can help you. Thank you for being so nice to me.”
The week after, Mai Lan decided to take Malia with her for visits to two families in the Valley, in addition to checking on Mrs. Manayan. Mai Lan thought it should be interesting for her daughter to witness some of her work and, she hoped, to see the beauty of it. Malia undoubtedly only saw one aspect of life when she followed her father to his office or mingled with her friends in private school. This experience of seeing how people live at the edge should hopefully stir some compassion in her.
Say waited for them in front of the apartment.
“Say, my daughter, Malia.”
Say lifted her head and squinted her unseeing eyes towards Mai Lan’s voice. Mai Lan put Malia’s hand in Say’s.
“Say, my daughter Malia. She come for visit.”
“Hi, Malia.”
“Hi, Say.”
“How’s school, Say? Someone help you get your food at lunch?”
“Oh yes, nurse, my friends help me.”
“Who taking you to Dr. Mark for checkups?”
“My dad.”
“Where’s dad? He in the house?”
“No. He working.”
“I give you this paper. You give dad. It has dates for shots to keep you well. You ask him take you to clinic, OK?”
Mai Lan watched her daughter and Say holding hands. Malia had a nice smile on her lips, so did Say. Mai Lan will ask daughter for her impressions of Palolo Valley Homes on their way home.
They headed towards the next housing unit. No one waited for them here. The apartment occupant’s barely audible voice greeted them when they pushed open the front door. The lights were not on despite the darkness inside. The old lady was in bed. Empty liquor bottles littered the floor. Malia stayed quietly by the door. Mai Lan started checking her patient’s pulse and got her blood-pressure apparatus out. The woman’s pulse was regular and strong. Mai Lan hoped her blood pressure would be within normal limits.
Wham! The front door opened violently. Minh appeared, grabbed Malia’s arm, and pulled her out in a hurry. “Come home, what are you doing here!”
Mai Lan stared in disbelief. She started shaking but steadied herself.
Oh God, what’s happening? What do I do now? How can he do such a thing? He’s been following me?
“She is just tagging along so she can see what I do as a nurse. Is there something wrong with that?”
“This is no place for her to be.”
Then they left.
Sometime after that event, Minh asked her to help one acquaintance of his in the community who was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown due to worries about her family in Viet Nam. Mai Lan could hear the young girl sobbing in the background. Her turn to retaliate.
“No, no help from me, dear husband. You can go to hell with your friend.”
Bewildered, Malia got quieter as time went by. Many times, Mai Lan found her sitting on the high shelf of the closet in her bedroom, talking to her imaginary friends. Mike was in his early teenage years and hung around his friends after school. He practically disappeared from her life. One day, she came home from work and found both kids in front of the house, playing with matches and lighting fires inside several empty cans.
Other than that, life continued with the usual routines.
Linda Liem is a retired registered nurse educated at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She immigrated from Viet Nam during the Viet Nam War, got married at the Honpa Hongwanji temple, and has two children. She had the privilege to practice nursing at various hospitals, also visited homes on the island to provide care for the people of Hawaii of many ethnicities. Her last work before she retired was with the developmentally disabled. She participated in receiving refugees from Viet Nam in 1975 after the war. Chapter 7 is taken from a book that she wrote about her cultural experiences navigating the transition from an old millennial culture to a vibrant multi-ethnic environment, with tones of mental illness and the extraordinary encounters with the beyond, resulting in deep faith in God and Jesus Christ.