I’m afraid. He’s going to hit me. Beat me. Hurt me. I squeeze my eyes shut, fists clenched tight by my sides. There’s a hot stream running down my legs. Shame. I am a fourteen year old who pees her pants. Moepi.
I’m waiting, steeling myself for the blow that doesn’t come.
“No!” Mother is up off her seat and by my side. Her fingers dig into my shoulders as she pushes me half-behind her. “Don’t. Please.”
She motions to the open windows. The breeze that carries every word, every sound to every curious cousin making the saka in the cookhouse, and every faikala neighbour who looks to the faifeau’s house for Jesus’ example. A hissed reminder, “What will people say?”
Father shakes his head as the fury seeps out of him.
I am something he’s never seen before. Something he can’t bear to be in the same room with. He goes back to sit behind the desk. There’s no more emotion as he explains why the police came to see him.
It’s about the house that mother took me to. With the three-legged dog outside. The house where I learned there’s something that hurts more than what Uncle Solomona shoved inside me all those many times.
The police found the house with the three-legged dog. They arrested the musu face woman with the gentle hands.
“There was a notebook,” says Father. “She kept a record of all her clients. That’s how they knew to come here.”
The police are not after us though. It’s been decided not to prosecute the women who visited the house, as long as they help with the case. Father spits that out.
Is he sorry we haven’t been marched out in handcuffs?
They are gathering evidence. Witnesses who can testify at the abortionist’s trial.
I taste vomit at the back of my throat. A trial? Where everyone will look at me and know?
Mother says, panicked. “No. We can’t do that. What will people say?”
Father says we don’t have a choice. Be a part of the prosecution’s case, or else we could end up going to prison ourselves. “You took a life,” he reminds us. “You killed an innocent unborn child.”
He gazes out the window for a long while. Maybe God’s out there? A deep breath. “Let us pray.”
I auto sit and bow my head when what I really want to do is go change my pants. The pee smell stains the air yellow.
Father prays a long prayer. Exhorts God for His wisdom, justice and patience as he faces these trials and tribulations that his family have brought upon him.
“Can the blood of the Lamb wash us clean, oh Lord? How can it cleanse an evil such as this?” he intones.
Mother says a loud AMENE when he’s done.
Father makes an announcement. “I must resign from my position. God has spoken it.”
Mother makes a whimpering cry, Oi Aue! and begins sobbing loudly. She is distraught at this decision. But she doesn’t question it. God has spoken. (We should probably be thankful God’s still deigning to speak to us at all by this point.)
“I don’t wish to speak of this again,” says Father. He tells mother to ‘sort this matter out’ with her sister who’s the Attorney General. And cautions, “You will need to seek your own path back to the Lord. I cannot help you.”
More wailing from mother. Father is putting up a wall between her and God’s grace. A wall that all the sewing of sheets for Mapuifagalele resthome, and the making of glorious floral arrangements for the church, cannot hope to scale.
He doesn’t address me at all. I’m in outer darkness. Not even within sight of a wall to pray at.
“Leave me now. I must work on my resignation sermon.”
Mother doesn’t tell him what happened to me after the abortion. The infection that raged like fire. The ice cold cloths Aunty Filomena bathed me with as she wept, as she pleaded with mother to take me to the hospital. The sickness that devoured my insides, a shark eating all the babies that would never be, the emergency operation that left me empty but alive. I want Father to know. If he knows, maybe there will be kindness in his eyes, pity. Something, anything.
Father doesn’t ask who was the father of my ma’i. I want him to ask. I’m determined to speak the words, if he asks. If he knows, than maybe he can forgive me? If he knows, maybe he can mediate with God for me?
Mother tugs at my arm and I stumble out of Father’s office.
I look back at him, already hard at work writing and weighing words, and for the first time I question.
Maybe God doesn’t see everything?
That evening, Father has his first stroke.
Mother finds him. When she goes to take his dinner on a tray. A scream that brings the household running. All of us crowding into the office, peering around each other. Father lies on the ground, eyes wide open, a slight twitch shuddering through him. Globs of spit on his chin. Naomi wails loudly and pulls at my hand, under the mistaken idea that her Big Sister can fix this. Tamarina just stares. Eyes wide and solemn as always, a slight frown on her face.
Mother catches sight of us at the door. “You!” She comes at me, pushing past the assorted boy cousins who have brought the umukuka smoke smell with them. They part like the Red Sea before her. “See what you did to your father?” she screeches.
Her hand draws back and then she hits me across the face. It’s the blow Father didn’t strike. Before the shock of the pain even registers, she hits me again. It hurts. There’s a rushing roaring sound in my ears and the room looks fuzzy. Then Mother is shaking me. Like when our dog Rocky caught the neighbor’s cat in his mouth. Shaking it until it was a broken bloody mess.
“Pa’umuku! Your filthy ways have done this to your father,” she screams. “All your fault. You should never have been born. Maimau lo’u alofa. My love has been wasted on you.”
The words come at me from a faraway place. I try to drop to my knees, to hide, to get away from the blows, away from everyone, but mother’s grip doesn’t let me.
Then it stops. The cousins are pulling Mother away and Aunty Filomena is there, shushing the tempest and ushering me out of the room.
Talofa e,” she says. “Everything will be alright. Be a good girl Scar, be strong. Be a good girl.”
I don’t cry. I hold tight to the knowledge that Aunty Filomena loves me. That she will always love me. Even though it’s too late for me to be a good girl.
Be a good girl. Be strong.
It’s what Aunty tells me before I meet with the Judge. My nightmares of standing in a crowded courtroom being forced to recite my sins while people throw stones at me didn’t eventuate. Instead the Judge meets with me in her office, because I’m underage. Mother comes too. I’m ready with the plastic lie for when the Judge asks me where my ma’i came from, but she never asks that. She only wants to know about the musu face woman with the bony hands. What did she do. What did she say. That’s all.
Be a good girl. Be strong.
It’s what Aunty tells me when the story comes in the newspaper and sets everyone’s tongues on fire. My name isn’t in there so I should be happy. But this is Samoa. We only keep some things secret, like when uncles rape their nieces. That’s a secret nobody wants to hear. But a cheeky girl who gets pregnant and then kills her baby? Now that’s a secret worth sharing.
I go to school and there are whispers and dirty looks. My friend Lisa is angry at me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demands.
“Tell you what?”
“That you had a boyfriend?”
I go to the toilet and someone has scrawled on the wall with magic marker.
Scarlet pa’umuku. Whore.
The Principal calls for a meeting with Mother but she is busy with Father at the hospital, so Aunty Filomena comes to school in a taxi. I wait outside the office and try not to scuff my seevae kosokoso, a nervous habit that always gets me a vicious pinch from Mother when we’re in church.
When Aunty comes out of the meeting, her face is angry, her mouth a thin line. She grabs my hand. “Come Scar, we go. Bring your bag.”
Aunty is never angry at us. But could it be she is angry at me today? We get in the taxi and she snaps at the driver. When he drives carelessly through a jerky pothole, Aunty swears at him which tells me she’s very angry because Aunty never curses anyone in front of us.
Auntie’s constancy was the rock that we three girls walked on. No matter what happened, no matter what we did or said, we knew Auntie would always love us, fight for us and try to soothe our hurts with koko alaiasa and pani popo.
But here now, with the school growing smaller in the distance, it seems I may finally have reached the end of Auntie’s love.
I’m crying.
I feel Auntie’s anger and I cry. There can be no hope for my redemption if Aunty has given up on me.
We get to the house and Aunty only pays the driver half the fare. They argue. It’s a battle I know he will lose. Aunty ignores his words and pulls me out of the car.
“Come Scar. We go.”
The taxi driver swears at us as he drives off. “Aikae!”
Aunty picks up a handful of stones and throws them after his cab, a shower of missiles that lands with a jarring rattle. The driver gives Aunty the finger and she screams more swear words and curses.
She is ferocious, A force I haven’t witnessed before. We go in the house where she dishes me a bowl of vaisalo. Only then does she see my tears. She hugs me tight. An embrace of talcum powdered sweat and hands smelling of the lemons she squeezed for the morning’s vai tipolo.
“Don’t cry Scar. Everything will be alright. Just be a good girl.” She looks over my shoulder and out the window. Mutters bad words in Samoan about kaea schools and valea teachers.
Only then do I realise that she’s not angry at me. Her rage is for the school and whatever they have said to her.
That night I find out what it is.
I’ve been expelled. Oh they didn’t use that word of course. No. They said we should think about a different school because they were worried about my influencing the other girls. Besides, didn’t my parents want to get me away from the boy who had gotten me pregnant? Was he a student too? Could Aunty give them his name so the school could punish him accordingly?
“Faikala!” says Aunty with vicious disdain, scrubbing the fa’alifu pot again. Even though the umukuka cousins had already cleaned it. “Why they want to know for? Why they think you a bad girl for the other kids? You a good girl.”
Mother confers with Father in his room where he holds court now from his sickbed. She comes downstairs to announce his verdict. I will go live with my great-aunts in America. My father’s aunts. It will be better for the family. And for me, Mother adds as an afterthought.
It’s then that Aunty does something I have never imagined she would ever do.
She disagrees with Mother.
“No. That’s so far away. Let her stay.”
Mother flinches as if Aunty has struck her. She launches into a tirade. Things like – how dare Filomena question the authority and wisdom of the faifeau? Who does she think she is? Has she forgotten the commandments? Children are to obey their parents that their days may be long on the earth. Is Filomena presuming to come between a child and her parents? How can a daughter who has committed sin after sin, ever repent if Filomena is going to speak this way?
Aunty doesn’t back down. There is stone in her eyes and a lava rock field stretching between her and Mother.
“E le sa’o lea mea,” she says. “This isn’t right. Scarlet needs to be here with her aiga. Tamarina and Naomi need their big sister.”
Mother brushes her words aside with a flick of her hand. “Scarlet is going to America. That is our decision.”
“If you do this thing, I’m not going to stay here anymore.”
“Oh? And where will you go?” says Mother. Her lip curls. She looks at Aunty like she is a half-eaten lizard the cat has left on the kitchen floor. “O ai totogi le pili o lou uso i Mapuifagalele? Who will pay your sister’s bill at the rest home? Go then. You ungrateful woman. All these years we cared for you, provided a home for you. And this is how you repay us?”
My sisters have come in to the kitchen. Quietly. Wide eyed at the frightening spectacle of the two most important women in our lives, fighting. Tamarina slips her hand into mine, and stands bone still and soundless. Never-quiet Naomi wails loudly and runs to clutch at Auntie’s lavalava. She cries the words we’re all screaming inside.
“Don’t go Aunty! Please don’t leave us.” Who will love us if you go?
Mother is triumphant. “See girls? Aunty Filomena doesn’t care about you. See how easily she decides to go from this house? Your sister has a good opportunity to live in America and go to school there, and your Aunty is being selfish.” She makes an impatient sound and pulls Naomi away from Filomena. “Stop that! She is not your mother. And she doesn’t even love you – she chooses Scarlet over you.”
There’s isupe running from Naomi’s nose and she’s almost not pretty as she sobs, standing beside Mother, wailing Auntie’s name over and over. Pleading. “Please don’t go.”
Aunty tries but she is no match for Mother’s iron will. There are two more daughters who need Auntie’s love and Mother threatens to ban her from our home if she doesn’t co-operate. And so it’s decided. I will go to America. Thanks to the magic of Samoa’s musty unreliable Registry office, a birth certificate is produced that declares me Great-Aunty Mareta’s daughter. Never mind that it would be a Mary-Jesus miracle for a near-seventy year old woman to be the biological mother of a fourteen year old!
Aunty Filomena takes me to the airport. My sisters go too. Cousin Aukuso drives. Other boy cousins crowd into the back of the truck. Going to the airport is a sightseeing expedition. Mother stays behind to look after Father.
Naomi cries as she hugs me tight. “Why do you have to leave us?” she asks. “It’s not fair Scar. You get to go to America and we have to stay here!” She is envious. “You’ll get to have Barbie dolls and watch Hanna Montana all day on TV. Maybe you might see her somewhere?”
I promise her that if I meet Miley Cyrus, then I will tell her about my little sister Naomi and can she please audition to be a backup dancer at her concerts.
“Don’t forget your promise Scar,” says Naomi as I extricate myself from her hug.
Tamarina doesn’t say anything. Just presses a lumpy package into my hands, wrapped in a piece of paper torn out of a school book. Then retreats to stand beside Cousin Aukuso.
Aunty Filomena weeps. “Be a good girl Scar. Teine lelei.” She hands me over to the flight attendant who will be my escort.
When I’m sitting in my seat on the plane, then I open the package. It’s our aki stones. Gleaming in their perfection. A thousand and one games cross-legged on the floor, sister squabbles, triumphant wins and dejected losses, an endless litany of laughter.
It’s my sisters in the palm of my hand.
That’s when I cry. Holding the stones of our childhood in my hand, wishing for one more glimpse of my family as the plane taxis down the runway.
I won’t see them again for seven years.
Present Day
“I don’t want to see new babies. I’ve seen plenty. Why do we need any more for?” says a disgruntled Tracey. She plops down on a seat in the waiting area and opens her book. “I’ve got more important things to do.”
I think about ordering her to go with us but decide against it. Four other child visitors is plenty. Tracey will have plenty of time to sort out her big sister issues. Hey look at me, I’m thirty and still figuring out mine.
“Aunty Scar, can we go now? I wanna see the babies,” says Dana.
“Yeah, just leave her,” suggests Tim, Tracey’s twin and opposite in all things.
“Wanna see Mum,” says Demetrius.
My stone cold heart melts a little at the sadness in his face. It’s been two days since they saw their mom and an even tougher forty-eight hours for the babies. After the initial buzz of their safe delivery, baby Number Two had sent everyone into
a panic when she had trouble breathing. It had been a tense night with lots of praying from us all. She was stable now but still in an incubator and hooked up to some scary wires and beeping machines.
I’d been back and forth to the hospital ever since I first brought Tamarina in (with Jackson.) But I’m not thinking about him. Not now. Not ever. Fuck Jackson. I’ve put him on the shelf of THINGS I WONT THINK ABOUT, along with the earth-shattering revelations Tamarina had given me on that first night in hospital. I wasn’t thinking about any of it. Father being an adulterer and cheating on Mother with her own sister. Or maybe sending me away to protect me and not because he was ashamed of me.
Nope, not thinking about any of it. See? Can’t you tell?
I give myself a mental shake and return to the task at hand. Being a good Big Sister and a reliable, awesome Aunty.
Stella slips her hand in mine and tugs. “Babies, Aunty. Go see the babies.” The excitement in her eyes more than makes up for Tracey’s world-weary experience of being a big sister to six little siblings.
That decides it. “Tracey, you stay here, okay? Read your book. Don’t go anywhere.” And for good measure. “Don’t do drugs. Don’t drink beer. And don’t talk to any boyfriends.”
Tracey rolls her eyes and goes back to her book.
“Or girlfriends,” adds Dana helpfully. She explains for my bemused benefit. “Mum says girls can have girlfriends too and boys can have boyfriends. You don’t choose who you love.”
Tim snorts. A most undignified sound. “Nobody’s gonna choose Tracey anyway. She’s too ugly to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend.”
Before Tracey can volley back with an attack of her own, I herd them all down the hall. “Come on. Your mum’s waiting for you. And remember, she’s basically run ten marathons so be nice okay? No whinging, whining or pestering her about silly things.”
In the room, Stella breaks free from my grasp and runs to hug her mother fiercely. The others follow, crowding in for their share. There’s so much mother-love in the room that I have to turn away for a minute or else I’m going to break down and bawl. Must be the hormones. By association.
Scarlet Redemption Page 2
