Stella pulls back and pats at her mother’s belly with a puzzled frown. “Mama, you got another baby in there? Your tummy’s still fat.”
Fabulous. Just what every woman wants to hear after she’s popped out twins.
Tamarina laughs though. A tired but delighted sound as she snuggles Stella close again. “Oh how I’ve missed you my darling!”
I’m about to say something but Demetrius gets in before me. “Don’t be silly Stella. Big tummies don’t always mean there’s babies in it. See Aunty Scar has a fat tummy and she don’t got a baby in there.” He turns to me for confirmation. “Do you?”
Fabulous. Just what every fat barren aunty wants to hear.
A weary smile. “Nope. No babies in here. Just fat.” I’m taking one for the team here. Distracting them all from their exhausted mother. What a noble sacrifice. (If I do say so myself.)
All of the children pause to study my belly. Intently. “How do you know for sure there’s no babies in there?” asks Demetrius. His face lights up. “I saw on the Crazy Hollywood Stories program, this lady had a baby on the airplane. She didn’t even know she was pregnant! She was super fat and then she had a sore stomach and BAM! Out came a baby.”
Tamarina’s vigilant mother radar goes off. “Who let you watch Crazy Hollywood Stories? That’s not a show for children.”
Oops. That would be me. Bad Aunty busted.
I am saved by the children who are still fascinated with my secret baby. Dana turns to me, excited. “Aunty Scar, you had a sore tummy yesterday. Maybe you got a baby in there! It can come out any minute.” All the children are riveted on me.
“Don’t be silly.”
It’s Tracey. She’s decided to join us. With a frown, she rebukes her little sister. “Babies don’t just grow from nothing. For no reason. You need to have sex with somebody first to make a baby.”
Dana is immune to the rebuke. Even the word sex doesn’t phase her. (But then, they do have a very progressive mother after all.) “Aunty Scar, did you have a sex with somebody?”
“Ummm what?”
“Sex,” repeats Dana patiently. “Did you have any sex?”
“Aunty doesn’t got a husband,” says Tim primly. “You only do sex if you’re married.”
Tracey’s scoff is enough to unsettle the dead in Sefo’s Funeral parlor next door. “Can you be any dumber?! People who aren’t married have sex all the time. Aunty Scar is probably having sex with a different man every week. Why should she wait until she finds a husband? Right Aunty?”
I should be pleased that my niece has so much faith in my ability to attract sex-mates. A different one every week even!
But instead, my face is on fire. Red like the teuila that I rolled around naked on in the forest a few days ago. I am sure everyone can see every scandalous fiery moment imprinted on my very being. I open my mouth and no words come out. And now my sister has a glint in her eye and she’s giving me a knowing grin. Like she’s put 2 + 2 together and arrived at the all-knowing, all-seeing sum of I-know-what-you-been-doing-girl-ha.
Damn these math geniuses. Bloody mind reader!
The excruciating moment is thankfully interrupted by a mewling sound from one of the babies.
Tamarina sighs. “Scar can you get her for me?” To the children she says firmly, “We don’t ask people about their sex life. It’s private and personal.”
I go to get the noisemaker, carrying her with care to her weary mother. Everyone draws a little closer to get a good look as Tamarina tries to comfort the crier.
“What’s wrong?” asks Stella. “What’s the matter with our baby?”
“Nothing darling,” soothes Tamarina. “She just wants a hug.”
Now Stella is crying. Big fat tears are running down her cheeks. “She’s sad. She’s hurting. I don’t want our baby to be sad. Please make her be okay mama.”
Oh hell. We are all in for a whole lot of misery if Stella’s going to have a meltdown every time one of the babies cries.
The wailing gets louder and a second voice joins in from the incubator in the corner. The children cluster around to coo soothing noises at the second baby.
“Why does she got no clothes on?” asks Demetrius? “What’s that light?”
I explain that his sister has jaundice and so she needs the ultraviolet light for a while.
A nurse comes in and efficiently tends to the infant in the incubator.
“What’s he doing to our baby?” asks Stella. There’s a #readyToFight look on her face. “Mum he’s hurting our baby!”
It takes a lot of reassuring noises and explanations, but Stella finally calms down and accepts that her sister isn’t crying because she’s being hurt somehow. Still, she continues to give the nurse suspicious looks from across the room and doesn’t let up until he finishes his work and leaves the room.
“I don’t like him,” she announces. “He’s got funny ears. Our baby’s scared of his ears. Mama can we get a different nurse who has nice ears?”
Before her mother can reply, there’s a sound at the door.
It’s my brother-in-law Jacob. Rumpled, unshaven, and looking like he’s travelled all night and day through several time zones to be here. Which he has.
Tracey sees him first. “Daddy!” All her big sister airs evaporate. She rushes and hugs him tight around the waist. “Mama nearly died in the car.”
Jacob bends to hug her back, whispering reassurance, but all the while his eyes don’t waver from his wife. In that gaze is an endless ocean of love, hope and worry. Quick hugs for the other children and then he crosses the room in several long strides to take Tamarina in his arms. Towering tall, broad and built like a prop rugby player, he is a force of restrained strength and as I stand there, I see my forever calm and unruffled genius little sister crumple.
“I was so scared,” she whispers. “I needed you.” And finally, after how many days of tension and fear, she bursts into tears.
Jacob holds her in a soothing embrace. “I’m sorry.” He’s a man of few words. Even now. “I’m proud of you,” he says in his distinctive deep timbre voice. “You did good.”
They are oblivious to us all. Babies, sisters, children, nurse and all. Secure in their world that can’t be shaken or stirred so long as they are together.
I want to take a photo and log it under the dictionary definition of love. Then I want to cry too. Because they’re beautiful. And also because I had a fight with Jackson and now I’ll never have a Hallmark card moment with him like this one. I shake off the self-pity and rouse myself back to Aunty duties., ushering the children out of there and shushing their complaints.
“No let’s leave them to have a bit of space to themselves, okay?”
Stella is indignant, “Mummies and Dada’s don’t want space to themselves. Why did they have us for then?”
I soothe her and try bribery. “We’re going to get ice cream. Double scoops for everyone to celebrate the new babies.”
They don’t want to go, but I make them, throwing one more glance back over their shoulders at their parents lost in an embrace that encompasses every missed minute and frantic fragile breath over the last two days.
For a moment I am stabbed all over with envy, coveting this. The love in the room. The steadfastness and the surety. Will I ever find that? Will that ever be me?
Jackson
When she wasn’t making me laugh, Scarlet was making me mad. And through the two extremes, she made me hard. How is it possible for one person to make me feel so many wildly different things, and usually all within the space of a few minutes?
Take that night of the wedding for an example. Sitting across the room at the table with the other bridesmaids, she was a vision of luscious beauty that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her. That dress was scandalous the way it cradled her breasts in a scarlet wrapped offering that threatened to break free at any minute. The disapproving looks from every senior Aunty who passed by had me grinning. But the lascivious stares of every unrelated
male in the room made me grit my teeth and clench my fists. I wanted to break their necks. Or at least forcibly remove them from the reception. She was dancing with one of them now and he was trying to get up in her personal space even though it was a fast Enrique Iglesias number and there was no reason for him to be trying to put his paws on her waist.
My irritation must have shown because Troy had nudged me, “Hey, you okay? You look like the French team all walked in, and we’re down by three all over again.”
I had to laugh at the rush of memory he’d evoked. We had both been typecast in college, pushed towards playing basketball. Troy even more so. In rebellion we had signed up for the whitest sport we could find – water polo – and then worked like hell to excel. It had given us great satisfaction to be eventually selected for the US Olympic team and losing to France in the final still rankled. It may have been over ten years ago but I still didn’t like telling people about my water polo past. A silver medal meant that we’d lost and I hated that.
Troy was waiting for my response and his grin had faded, replaced by a raised eyebrow and a thoughtful look. He was way too astute and the only reason he hadn’t picked up on my thing with Scarlet, was because of the wedding chaos. But he had given me that look. The one that said, I know something’s up and you better spill. Or else.
“Don’t worry about me, old man. You’ve got more pressing concerns now.” I waved to a flock of senior relatives who were dancing in a wild circle. “Aunty, Troy wants to join you. Can you teach him some of your siva moves?”
They hadn’t needed any more encouragement and Troy was quickly borne to the dance floor. He’d thrown me a murderous look as he went and I laughed.
Once he was out of the way, I’d gone back to watching Scarlet. She’d finished dancing with the creep and was back at the table, eating with gusto. Where the other bridesmaids politely picked at their food, Scarlet savoured each bite, eating with the same intensity as when she made love. With complete and utter sensory enjoyment. She popped a mussel into her mouth and half-closed her eyes as she licked the curry coconut cream off her fingers. I flashed back to that day on the plane, watching her eat savouries like they were manna from heaven, and just like that day, I was immediately, uncomfortably hard.
This is messed up. Who gets a hard-on simply from watching their lover eat seafood? From across the other side of a crowded room?
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her.
Then Scarlet stood up and waved to one of the waiters. Obviously another one of her cousins as he smiled and – in response to her request – handed over not one, but two of the petite bowls of dessert. There was an untouched dessert serving in front of me and I wanted to go over and take her mine so she could smile at me like that. So I could sit beside her and feed her, so I could alternate custard trifle with kisses.
I’d wanted her so bad, I could taste it. All I wanted was to take her away from there. Back to my hotel. Where I would finally get to have her all to myself. Cars, forests and church supply rooms became magic when Scarlet was in them, but a bed? And a lock on the door? With none of her 101 relatives around to disturb us? It would be heaven.
Then the baby emergency happened. And it was pretty special – although not quite the night I had been hoping for. Seeing another side of Scarlet, her panicked vulnerability and how much she cared for her sister had brought out a protective instinct in me that I didn’t know I had. And when her mother had blasted her like that? I hated seeing Scarlet wither and retreat inside herself. I kept seeing it when she was around her family. Like a glorious flower wilting.
And for what? For people who treated her like shit? Even now, remembering the scene in the hospital waiting room had me clenching my fists. I had my fair share of shit mother experiences but Mrs Thompson was in a whole other sphere of fucked-up.
But I had overstepped. Scarlet wasn’t mine to protect. She wasn’t mine to shelter. Something she’d pointed out to me. She was right. She wasn’t mine.
But I wanted her to be.
How had this happened? In the space of only a few weeks, this woman with her rich belly laugh, wicked sense of humour, and the most glorious body I’d ever seen - had become the person I thought about when I first wake up. It’s her face I see in the heated dreams I’d been having since arriving. It’s the sound of her laugh that I follow in a crowded room. How did this happen?
When she said this was just a holiday buzz fling – it had been like a boot to the gut. Because I wanted more of this woman.
But now thanks to my big mouth, my inability to stay out of her family drama, I may have ruined any chance to make this more than a holiday fling. I was supposed to fly out in a few more days. I had to fix this. Quick. But how?
Scarlet
Now that Jacob is here, I can ease up on Big Sister duties. Which makes me an easy target for the Aunties. Because all the baggage that goes with the wedding of the year still hasn’t finished. Naomi and Troy are back from spending two honeymoon nights at a resort on the other side of the island and now we can open the wedding presents. As in, the entire extended family aiga. As in, all six hundred plus presents. Just as the aiga had planned, actioned and paid for the wedding, so too must they share in the wedding bounty as well.
The big fale had to be set up appropriately and food prepared. Large steaming vats of chop suey and stir fry. A couple of pigs roasted. Siaosi and his crew of boy cousins had been up most of the night prepping everything for the umu. Aunty Filomena had made her signature puligi’s and was letting me make the custard to go with them.
Aunty Valerie was not happy that Troy’s parents had already gone back to America, flying away on their private jet. I could only imagine their bemusement when invited to attend the opening of the wedding presents.
“Can you believe it?” Aunty Valerie snaps, from her chair at the front of the fale where she sits supervising the preparations. “She say no that’s alright, they don’t need to know anything about the mealofa’s! So rude. What? They think they too rich to accept any presents? They too good for this aiga?”
She pauses in her tirade to yell at a passing boy cousin and jab at him with her walking stick. “Vale! Stupid! Don’t walk on the fala? See your dirty feet? Amio pua’a.”
The cousin winces and leaps nimbly out of her reach, taking his accused pig-feet back outside the fale.
Mother rushes to soothe her sister. “It’s not that Valerie. Troy’s parents are very busy. The Senator has to go back to do her important government work. They were here for a week you know. That’s a long time to be away from her position.”
It’s clear from Valerie’s grim expression that she doesn’t think that’s an acceptable excuse.
Both women are thankfully distracted by the truck pulling up to the side of the fale. It’s full of wrapped gifts stacked high and everyone under the age of 30 is called to come and help unload them. There’s too many to fit on the tables we have lined up and so others are carefully stacked behind them. A second truck of gifts will have to wait.
There’s something about pretty presents wrapped in pretty paper that eases the tension of the rushed morning and soon there’s a festive feeling as everyone works. Someone turns the radio up and we are moving in synch to the music, with some singing and humming. Then Cousin Siaosi breaks into an impromptu siva and several old Aunties jump to join him. Anyone who’s seen old Samoan women dancing to a Samoan-style remake of a hip hop song will know what I mean when I say – the party had well and truly begun. The older the aunty, the wilder their dance moves, and soon their antics had the rest of us cheering and urging them on with often graphic half-insults and encouragement.
I pause to watch, stepping outside the scene with my writer’s detachment, and a sudden burst of happiness catches me by surprise.
This, this is what home is. All the bitching aside, this is Samoa, this is aiga. A woman in her sixties, wearing a orange floral mu’umu’u, dancing in a near-obscene fashion with one of the fale posts. Another
having a Gangnam dance contest with one of my teenage cousins – and he’s clearly losing. I’m surrounded by family, laughter, music and wild dancing. My sister and her babies are okay. Her husband made it safe to be by her side. My other sister is married to the love of her life (for now anyway). And I know there’s a big platter of faausi in the kitchen, waiting for dessert time. For a moment, just a moment – I know this is joy.
Of course it doesn’t last. Eh.
One of the cousins trips mid dance step as he’s transporting a present inside the fale. The tinkling crash of something precious shattering makes a spectacular noise and just like that, the party’s over.
Aunty Valerie launches into a tirade filled with too many curse words to write them all. (I’m not sure I even know how to spell them…) The music is switched off, and everyone is told to get back to work. The bashed present is opened by the senior aunties and more cursing eventuates when they see it’s a box of wine glasses.
Then Mother catches sight of me. “Scar look at you! Go kaele and get ready. Everyone will be here soon.”
I deep sigh as I go back inside the house like an #ObedientDaughter. But my annoyance with her is tempered somewhat because now I know the truth. Can I ever see my mother and her twin the same way, now that I know? For a strange moment I want to hug Mother. I think about how it would feel if my sister slept with my husband. Of course I don’t have a husband, but IF I had one….who looks like Jackson Emory…who IS Jackson Emory. A surge of rage. I would beat my sister to a pulp if that were me. And quite possibly chop my imaginary husband into a hundred imaginary little pieces.
Unbidden, an image of Jackson comes to mind. Of us. Bodies entwined. I shiver in the humidity and then force myself back to reality. Me and Jackson are not together. We are not a ‘thing’. And thanks to our argument, there will be no more ecstatic encounters of any kind. In the bushes or anywhere else. The end.
Scarlet Redemption Page 3
