Short Stories
high-heeled slippers! He wanted her. It seemed it was written
that she should be joint ancestor with him of the line that
would continue the ownership and management through the
generations, of Ah Kim Company, General Merchandise.
"I will have no half paké daughter-in-law," his mother of-
ten reiterated to Ah Kim, paké being the Hawaiian word for
Chinese. "All paké must my daughter-in-law be, even as you,
my son, and as I, your mother. And she must wear trousers,
my son, as all the women of our family before her. No woman,
in she-devil skirts and corsets, can pay due reverence to our
ancestors. Corsets and reverence do not go together. Such a
one is this shameless Li Faa. She is impudent and independ-
ent, and will be neither obedient to her husband nor her hus-
band's mother. This brazen-faced Li Faa would believe herself
the source of life and the first ancestor, recognizing no ances-
tors before her. She laughs at our joss- sticks, and paper pray-
ers, and family gods, as I have been well told—"
"Mrs. Chang Lucy," Ah Kim groaned.
"Not alone Mrs. Chang Lucy, O son. I have inquired. At least
a dozen have heard her say of our joss house that it is all mon-
key foolishness. The words are hers—she, who eats raw fish, raw
squid, and baked dog. Ours is the foolishness of monkeys. Yet
would she marry you, a monkey, because of your store that is a
palace and of the wealth that makes you a great man. And she
would put shame on me, and on your father before you long
honourably dead."
And there was no discussing the matter. As things were, Ah
Kim knew his mother was right. Not for nothing had Li Faa been
born forty years before of a Chinese father, renegade to all tradi-
tion, and of a kanaka mother whose immediate forebears had
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