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anyone else here feel that there is something unsaid? Something to do with Rachel, that needs to be set right?”
    Silently the adults searched for an answer in each other’s faces, until one of them finally spoke up.
    “I do,” said Henry.
    His father nodded his approval. “Go on.”
    After a moment’s hesitation Henry said, “Before Rachel was born, I had a dream.” That piqued everyone’s curiosity: dreams were often as significant as the waking life. “I dreamt Dorothy and me were on a mountaintop. Lying on our backs, looking up into the sky, me stroking Dorothy’s stomach, feeling our little girl kicking inside.” He smiled; Dorothy looked surprised and touched. “It was a bright, clear day. The sky above us was blue and forever, and I looked up at it and thought: Aouli . ‘Blue vault of heaven.’ Just came into my head: Aouli.”
    There were murmurs from the other adults, confused glances among Rachel and her siblings. Grandpa Maka just nodded. “An inoa p ,” he said. To the puzzled children he explained, “A ‘night name’—a name found in a dream. It comes from the next world, and once the name is spoken, it must be bestowed on the child.”
    He turned again to Henry. “You knew that, didn’t you? That the name must be given, or the child will sicken, perhaps even die?”
    Rachel felt suddenly afraid. Was she going to die? Was that what this was about?
    “Yes,” Henry said. “I knew.”
    “But you kept the dream to yourself.”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    Henry looked down. “Because I knew how my wife felt about such things,” he said, startling Dorothy. “The old ways, the old language . . . She wanted all our children to have Christian names, to celebrate Jehovah.”
    Dorothy pointed out, defensively, “It’s the law. The king decreed it, that every child have a Christian name!”
    “Is Kimo not Kimo despite what is written on his birth record?” Maka turned to Henry. “This is why Rachel is sick. Because you heard her night name and you ignored it. If she is to be well, she must be given her inoa p .”

    T
    hat night some roasted pork, coconut pudding, baked fish and a little poi was burned in a fire in the Kalamas’ back yard—a sacrificial offering, given up to God or gods, as the family prayed. At the feast that followed, Grandpa Maka spoke aloud his granddaughter’s new name for the first time: “May the Lord God and our ancestors be pleased. Let us eat, drink and celebrate the health and long life of this girl, Rachel Aouli Kalama!”
    The family applauded and cheered; and Rachel basked in the love and concern she felt from all around her, even Sarah. Though she only vaguely understood what had happened here today, she knew that all these people had come here to help her, and that pleased her. She turned the new name over in her mind: Aouli . She didn’t feel like an Aouli, she felt like Rachel. But why couldn’t she be both? She smiled to herself, starting to like the sound of it, and she thought, Everything will be all right. Her left foot was starting to itch and she reached down to scratch at it, but she knew in her heart that all would be well; that with so many people around her, loving and praying for her, everything would turn out just fine.

Chapter 3

    O
    ur Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done—”
    Along with the rest of her class, Rachel spoke the prayer as automatically as she could count to ten, but her mind was elsewhere—mostly on the various indignities she had lately been forced to suffer. It was bad enough that Mama refused to remove the bandage on her thigh, long after the cut had healed; bad enough that she also made Rachel wear frocks with long frilly skirts; but now, the supreme embarrassment, her mother actually insisted that Rachel wear shoes to school. She tried to tell Mama it wasn’t necessary, that the itching she’d felt in her left foot had gone away—she no longer felt anything in that