by Lynn Shurr
“Get dressed, Lita, and go home. Shame on you for being out here with a boy who thinks so little of you he runs away and lets you take the blame,” Adam pronounced.
“He believes you will thrash him.”
“I probably would.”
“Doesn’t matter. He did not satisfy me. I think you could.” The girl stood and advanced on Adam like a famished mongoose after a tasty snake.
“You are a child. I am your elder. Go back to your parents’ house.”
“I am only two years younger than Pala, and you would have married my sister. Let me tell you, I will always be better at this than her.” Lita advanced close enough to tug on the knot of Adam’s lava-lava. Winnie gasped at her audacity, and the girl heard.
“Oh, I see. Adam Malala is out here with his palagi woman and has nothing left to give me.” She shrugged her delicate shoulders. “I won’t tell on you if you don’t tell on me. The matai will not like the example you are setting.” Casually, she wound her lava-lava around her ripe body and sashayed off toward the village.
Winnie moved around the tree to stand beside Adam. “So that skanky piece of work is Pala’s baby sister.”
“Yes, you could call her the anti-Pala. I heard she goes under the palms with all the village boys.”
“I understand sibling rivalry, but with me and Mintay it came down to good grades and who would marry first. I won that last part, unfortunately. What will happen to this girl?”
“One day she’ll get pregnant, and the ministers and matai will ask her to name the boy and force a marriage. Unlikely they will stay together. Her family will raise the child.”
“Are we really in trouble for being out here?”
Adam heaved his big shoulders in that way of his. “We need to be more discreet while you visit here. We must cool it a little, okay? This place is more conservative than Texas, only we have palms instead of cactus, jungle instead of desert, and far fewer guns. I don’t want you to get a reputation like Lita has.”
Winnie nodded and sighed. Just another evening in paradise gone wrong.
Chapter Twenty-Three
By the time she rose the next morning, Winnie found Adam had gone fishing with his father. Ela made tea and pointed to a bowl of tropical fruit salad as well as several leftover cakes from the previous day’s feast.
“Eat when you are hungry. Take what pleases you. Tonight we will have fresh fish. Oh, you are invited to Reverend Tomanaga’s house this afternoon.”
Winnie helped herself to the fruit salad and a slice of one of the plainer cakes. “What time?”
“Whenever you want to go. We do not hurry here. I have choir practice, but feel free to walk around the village. If the dogs bother you, shout and throw a rock.”
Winnie wrapped herself in a lava-lava, saving her puletasi for the visit with the pastor. When she went outside, she discovered her shoes missing from the porch. Fortunately, Ela had not left and offered to find them for her. She returned a bit later with the slides in hand.
“One of the girls took a liking to them, but said they pinched. I explained your feet are too tender to walk without them, and she gave them back. No problem.”
Winnie slipped her feet into the shoes, which felt a little looser than before and headed out for a walk on the beach. Having used the bathroom that morning, she brought along the water bucket for refilling. She made an abrupt U-turn after she’d gone a ways when she came across an old man relieving himself on the sand, all the while gazing out at the beautiful scenery.
Hastily returning through the village, she scooped water from the stream and avoided Sammy Tau who sat unmoving in the shade, brooding like an ancient god displaced. He did not speak to her. Other villagers greeted her cordially in passing as they made their way to vegetable plots on the mountainside. They carried hoes and other gardening implements to work the communal gardens as they had for hundreds of years, beating back parts of the jungle but never taking more space than they needed to sustain the village.
Back at the Malala home, Winnie stowed her shoes under one of the porch chairs for safety and delivered her bucket to the bathroom. Ela still remained in the house.
“Won’t you be late for practice? You needn’t stay on my account.”
“I will go at the right time. We are fined for being late. That way we make sure everyone gets there when they should. Otherwise, who knows?”
“Noa and Adam are fishing, and I saw some of the men and women head off with gardening tools, but Sammy Tau just sits in the shade. What’s up with that?” she asked her hostess.
“He is musu today, doesn’t feel like doing anything. I suspect he will be musu as long as Adam is here.”
“And that is all right? He sits around while others work.”
“Sure. Next week he will work, and someone else will be musu. It balances out.”
“Whatever you say. I think I’ll go to the clinic and offer to help while I’m here.”
“Good idea.”
She would have gone immediately if her shoes hadn’t disappeared again. Winnie found them on the feet of a child playing nearby and politely requested their return. The little girl kicked them off and ran away laughing with her friends. Shod again, Winnie made her way to the clinic where two nurses on contract worked to provide basic medical services. She soon learned one was being courted by a village boy and the other could not wait for her contract to expire so she could get back to Pago Pago and the wider world. Winnie offered to substitute, giving them both valued hours of free time, enough to go into the city or visit with the young man’s family. Delighted, they showed her around the small, clean building and accepted her promise to sub on Monday.
Returning, she placed her shoes under the porch steps before going inside. Adam and his father had returned smelling of the salt sea and their catch. Ela sat with them. Choir practice must be in the afternoon, Winnie figured. Noa gave her his fine smile. “My son is very strong. We caught many fish, too many for the village to use.”
“Now my husband must go up to the main road and sell the seafood before it spoils,” Ela replied with a hint of censure in her voice.
“Sorry. I will drive him up there in the Jeep and stay with him,” Adam offered, looking shame-faced.
“No, no. You and our guest are invited for tea with Pastor Tomanaga this afternoon. Tam’a will sit in the sun alone and sell his fish.”
Noa helped himself to a piece of cake. “I have more sense than to sit in the sun. I will find a shady spot and sell out my catch in no time, Ela. We will give the money to the church.”
“Here take the Jeep to get you up there and back, tam’a.” Showing more faith in his father than he had in his Samoan cousin’s driving ability, Adam handed over the keys.
Mollified, Adam’s mother cut a large chunk from the sweetest cake and ate it with her tea. Adam went off to shower away his sweat and the fish stink from his body and Winnie to put on her puletasi and try to conquer what the humidity was doing to her hair. When they met again, she wore the blue and green outfit and Adam a formal dark lava-lava and a somber shirt. As he strapped on his sandals on the porch, Winnie searched for her shoes. Gone again!
“Stealing seems to be a problem in the village. My shoes keep disappearing.”
“Not stealing, but taking something that tweaks the person’s fancy. Your shoes are more interesting than the rubber flip-flops most of them have. I told you about this in New Orleans. If you went to their house and decided you liked something there very much, they would give it to you willingly. It evens out.”
“Except I don’t have feet impervious to hot sand and sharp little chunks of lava rock.”
“Not yet. I’ll go look for them.”
Adam hadn’t gone out of sight when he paused to speak to one of the wrinkled grannies so quick to grab part of yesterday’s feast. Winnie’s eyes trailed down the old woman’s worn lava-lava to her spindly ankles. She wore the plain black slides that looked big as orthopedic shoes on her aged feet.
Adam shouted a few phrases in Samoan. The granny nodded and stepped out of the shoes. As she hobbled Winnie’s way, she spoke a few courteous words and moved on as steadily as one of the sand-scuttling crabs.
Adam played Prince Charming and placed the slides on Winnie’s feet. “So beautifully narrow and high-arched, Cinderella,” he said with his winning smile as he ran a tickling finger along that same arch.
Winnie curled her toes. “Save the lavish compliments on my feet. I really need a pedicure. What did the old woman say to me?”
“She’s sorry your feet hurt. Word is getting around that you need your shoes, but this one is hard of hearing.”
“I am not exactly sure I like having communal shoes, but I’m beginning to understand why your parents have very little furniture. Anything not too heavy to lift simply walks off.”
“You are getting the idea. I told you to leave everything at the hotel except your lava-lava, puletasi, and church clothes. Now you know why.”
They set off for the pastor’s fine, two-story home next to the church. The temperature climbed and clouds bearing the afternoon rain as reliably as an UPS delivery swept in across the sea. People who spent the morning in the communal garden or banana plantation returned from their labors with baskets of taro roots and fingers of fruit. Sammy Tau still sat glaring in his protected space. No one paused to try to jolly him out of his mood and certainly not Adam and Winnie.
They arrived on the airy verandah of the pastor’s mansion right before the torrents fell. A pretty woman whose pregnant belly strained the loose top of her puletasi greeted them and escorted the guests to a high-ceilinged room possessing an impressively carved dining room table already set for tea and six massive chairs capable of holding a Samoan of any bulk. Small dishes of nuts and plates of quartered, crustless sandwiches surrounded three pre-sliced cakes prettily decorated with fresh flowers. As if awaiting the second of their arrival, a girl darted in with a steaming kettle of hot water and filled a silver teapot.
The pregnant woman beckoned them to sit. “I will get my husband.”
She had no need to leave the room as the door across the hall opened and Davita Tomanaga left his study to join them. Adam shook the hand of the much slighter minister vigorously. “Not doing bad for the runt of our group of boys.”
The pastor shook his head ruefully and said mostly for Winnie’s benefit, “The furniture is compliments of one of our late Victorian missionaries. All the rest—well, our people love to make gifts to the church and the minister. If I go elsewhere, all of this will remain behind. You’ve met my wife, Lila. We expect our first child any day now. She attended boarding school with Pala, came to visit, and was foolish enough to stay and marry me.”
Lila smiled shyly and gazed on her husband with large, soulful dark eyes brimming with admiration and love for her man. Her lovely face lacked the strong bone structure of many Samoans and sat small and delicate above her swollen breasts and huge belly. “Please sit and I will pour the tea. We had an English headmistress at our school and she taught us how to do it properly. We thought Winnie would be more comfortable at a table than on a mat, but I understand she did very well at the feast and impressed the matai.”
“They stopped eating exactly at the point when I couldn’t hold another bite, thank heaven.”
“We do, and often.”
Following a brief blessing, they worked their way through nuts, sandwiches, and small talk. Lila insisted Winnie take a thin slice of each of the cakes that she had made fresh that morning. Thinking of bending over a hot oven at nine months pregnant in this heat and humidity, she could hardly refuse to taste each one. Before Lila could urge her to eat a second helping, the serving girl appeared to deliver a message.
Lila stood with the help of the stout arms of her chair. “You must excuse me, but the women have gathered for a Ladies Aid Society meeting in the church hall. So nice having you here, Winnie. Adam, do take some of this food home for Ela and Noa. Please, both of you come to worship with us tomorrow.”
“I would like that, but I believe Adam told me his family is London Missionary Society.”
“Only because they love to stay late at a fiafia. The Methodists want everyone home for prayers and tucked in after six,” Adam interjected. “Most of the villagers go to both services since the times are staggered for exactly that reason. Not much else to do here on a Sunday but worship and eat.”
The reverend nodded. “Sad but true about the dancing. I make myself scarce early so I don’t have to chastise any of my congregation who want to stay late for the festivities. Earlier preachers felt dancing after dark led to sin.”
“Imagine that,” Winnie said, keeping a very straight face.
“Pala does her job well shutting down the events by midnight,” Lila mentioned in praise of her friend.
“Yes, she is practically perfect,” Winnie agreed without a hint of sarcasm.
Lila took a black umbrella worthy of a London businessman from an ancient elephant foot stand by the study door and went out into the rain. They watched her progress through the downpour from the dining room window. Others oblivious to the weather covered their heads with large banana leaves and scuttled through deep puddles in bare feet to their destinations.
The conversation indoors turned to old times. Adam asked after their mutual friends. They recalled the antics of the boys who slept on Auntie’s porch in Pago, those selected for more specialized schooling in the city.
“I know how you and Sammy turned out, but what about Losi, Pisa, and Pati, the old gang? I admit I lost touch with them in college since we each went to different schools, or not, in Sammy’s case,” Adam asked.
“Pati and Pisa send contributions to the matai and the church, but we never see Pisa. He did not finish med school but got a doctorate in philosophy instead. Not much use in the islands. He married a palagi woman and has a couple of children.” The minister’s eyes turned briefly toward Winnie, then fixed on Adam again. “He teaches at Berkeley.”
“Did Pati get his degree in accounting? The village teacher said he had a brilliant mathematical mind, Winnie.”
“Oh, yes. He works in Pago, has a city wife, and four children. As expected, he provides free financial advice to the matai who rarely take it. Many in the village give away so much to attain status their families live in poverty. Pati tried to teach them differently, to earn and save, but that is like the trying to contain the sea with a dike of sand. Pati drinks too much, I am afraid.” Somber, Davita turned to Winnie. “It is not easy balancing the fa’a Samoa—the traditional Samoan way of life—with the modern world.”
Before she could reply, Adam cut in as if trying to lighten the mood. “What about Losi, always our joker, our trickster, but a talented artist, too?”
The reverend bowed his head and murmured a few words. “God bless his soul. Even when we were young, I suspected he might become a fa’afafine.” He explained to Winnie, “That is a man who lives as a woman, who might even go with a man.”
“Like a drag queen in New Orleans?” Winnie asked.
“Something like that. They are often entertainers and are not looked down upon, but when Losi went to the mainland to study art he began practicing the gay lifestyle. That is not accepted here, not by the churches, not by the ’aiga, the large family groups.”
Beneath Adam’s tan skin, a faint flush of red appeared. “Jesus. Sorry. When he told me he’d follow me to the University of Oregon and become a cheerleader, I thought that was just another one of his jokes. I mean, the Sinners have a gay punter and he is an all right kind of guy, but that way of life would never be accepted in the village.”
“Losi came here with a young man when I’d barely taken over this church. Inexperienced and unmarried myself, yet they came to me for counseling. I told them what they did was a sin. They must give up their feelings for each other or return to California and never return. Still, they told the family and were cast out. Losi returned to the mainland with his lover. When h
is lover left him a year later, he committed suicide. I did not have the right words to help him, and he chose that man over his family ties.”
“I’m so sorry,” Winnie murmured.
Anguished, the pastor said, “He’s not the only one. We lose our youth to despair, always expected to obey and give to those older and care for those younger without any thanks. The ’aiga is all and the individual nothing no matter what they achieve.”
Winnie shook her head sadly. “I can think of one person who doesn’t follow the party rules.”
Looking pained, Adam said, “Me.”
“No! I was thinking of little Lita, Pala’s sister.”
“She is another kind of problem,” the minister agreed. “Her father has beaten her several times for being indiscriminate, but that kind of treatment makes her more defiant. She laughed when Lila tried to speak to her. I suspect she’ll be another one who leaves with the first man who offers to take her away from the village.”
“What about Sammy Tau who sits on his butt doing his musu thing while everyone else works and thinks he is better than Adam?” Winnie persisted, not believing Adam could feel badly about himself when he was so successful at what he did.
“Sammy has given all he has, which wasn’t much, to attain status as junior matai. After he marries Pala and climbs to the top, he will get the best of everything. He wants what Adam has, fame, luxury, a beautiful woman, wealth, but he hides that by claiming to live the fa’a Samoa. Adam has given us funds to put new roofs on both churches and last year, computers for the school. Sammy belittles that by saying he should give more, give all to the village. He does not have the heart of a good matai.”
The rain let up and allowed a ray of sunshine to race across the still heavily laden table like a golden mouse giddy with the abundance. Davita clapped his hands and the serving girl appeared to take away the food and stow it in two big baskets for the guests to take home.
