Some Girls: My Life in a Harem

by Jillian Lauren

  I told my parents I had spent the night at my friend Julie’s. Later, when I told Julie the story, I remember we laughed and laughed when I got to the “lots of songs about seventeen” part.

  I sat up straight and acted giggly as the servants refilled our bottomless glasses of champagne. My back was facing the door, but I felt Robin walk in behind me and my body reflexively responded as if I’d just tossed back three shots of espresso. I nervously smoothed my skirt; I brushed aside a curl that kept falling over my eye. A few minutes later, when Robin drifted into my sight line, he gave me a brief hello while looking over my head. Then he didn’t speak to me for the rest of the evening. He pulled Leanne out of her chair and had an involved conversation with her at the bar before taking his usual seat next to Fiona.

  Leanne sat back down next to Serena and they acted particularly animated and interested in me. Nausea pushed up against my throat and I shoved it back down. I wanted to crawl over the table, grab Serena by her fucking French twist, and bring her pert little face down onto the glass tabletop. Instead I joined the conversation about astrological compatibility.

  Robin, Leanne informed us, was a Scorpio, hence the charisma, the confidence, the power, the rampant sex drive.

  Serena was a Taurus, Leanne a Pisces. Destiny told them she was a Christian, that’s all, and they could shove it.

  “Scorpio is a water sign,” said Leanne. “Like Pisces. So Robin and I flow together but it’s often way too emotional. For both of us.”

  I had a hard time imagining Robin getting too emotional.

  “What sign are you?” she asked me.

  “I’m a Leo.”

  “Fire,” she responded, followed by a pause of quiet triumph.

  Every evening Robin would disappear from the party for about a half hour sometime around midnight. While he was gone, we would look around and try to determine which girl was also missing. That night, Leanne’s chair sat empty directly across from me. I drained my champagne glass faster than usual. I might have wound up truly plastered—ugly plastered—had Robin not left early with Fiona on his arm and cut the night short.

  I chided myself for the stab I felt. When I went to the bathroom to retouch my lipstick, I recognized the tight smile on my face as the same one I had seen on Serena and Leanne. The girls at the other tables, the Asian girls, didn’t seem to care too much where Robin was or whom he was with. Of course, Leanne and Fiona were Asian, too, but they had escaped exile to the lower-ranked seating areas based on celebrity status and the ability to speak perfect English.

  If Robin was still absent when the disco started, we top-rung-ers often sat in snits with our arms crossed over our chests while the rest of the tables got up and danced anyway. The lucky ones slow-danced at the end of the night like it was a prom, resting their heads on their boyfriends’ shoulders. We Western girls weren’t required to have boyfriends in the Prince’s entourage. Instead, we competed with each other for the Prince.

  Another night passed the same way. I didn’t bother to pretend to smile while I watched the heels of his sneakers as he climbed the long staircase to the exit.

  One morning, Serena woke us early and told us she had received special permission (from whom was a mystery) for us to go to the Yaohan. She had fistfuls of Bruneian money to hand out. It was the first time I’d seen any money since we’d entered the country. I had been living for nearly two weeks free of commerce. Well, sort of.

  I looked at the money she doled out like a Monopoly dealer, and there he was again: the Sultan, bearded and looking dignified, floating on the orange, green, and blue notes.

  “What’s the exchange rate?”

  “I don’t know. Who cares? We have plenty. Cover your hair. You’re not blond so it’s not as big a deal, but cover it anyway.”

  We piled into a waiting Mercedes and Serena sat up front chatting with the driver. She had penetrated this world and I hadn’t. In three days I would go home and would have seen little, understood even less, and been sampled and passed over like the orange cream in a box of assorted chocolates. What was it about me? Why did I always come so close to getting what I wanted, only to get shut out at the last minute? Usually I took it upon myself to quit before I got rejected, but this time I didn’t really have the option.

  When faced with such despair, a girl can always shop. We hit the Yaohan with travel goggles on, the kind that make every little thing look irresistible because it’s exotic and the money makes no sense and you feel like you’re in a video game with tinny Asian pop songs and smiling wide-faced shop girls who speak to you in rhymes and giggle at your strangeness. In this video game you gain strength by acquiring snacks and T-shirts and little stuffed animals and sweet-smelling soaps and brightly colored lip gloss.

  The women in Brunei, I noticed, did not generally cover their hair, as was the custom in some other Muslim countries, though they did dress modestly. They were miles away from the striking, stylish women I had spied during my brief stay in Singapore.

  Leanne and I paired off, all rivalries from the night before discarded as she led me to the Shu Uemura makeup counter. The counter girls pantomimed lessons and suggestions for us. Leanne sat me down on a stool and charitably showed me how to do my eye makeup so I didn’t constantly look like I was auditioning for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

  “Beautiful skin,” Leanne said, blending some blush into the apples of my cheeks. “Like Snow White. Where are you from?”

  “New Jersey.”

  “No, I mean, what are you?”

  That question always seemed weird to me. What are you? Are you a good witch or a bad witch? I’m just Dorothy Gail from Kansas.

  “Russian. Polish.”

  “I thought something else.”

  “I was adopted,” I said.

  She paused in her ministrations and looked at me with something like interest mixed with something like sympathy.

  “Do you know your real parents?”

  “My adoptive parents are my real parents.”

  It’s the kind of question you’re trained to answer as an adoptee, a question you hear a million times. You hear it so often you don’t even hear it anymore.

  “Still,” she said.

  I let the conversation drop. I wasn’t about to get into it with her. In order to get beyond my stance of defending my family, I needed to be talking to someone who could digest a little more complexity. But the truth was, she was right. The truth was, I wondered. My family was my family, but still. Still I wondered if somewhere in my DNA I would find an explanation for my restlessness, if somewhere in my biology lay the arrow pointing me in the direction I was meant to go.

  Leanne turned me toward the mirror, and my makeup was subtle and lovely. I bought it all. It was the first makeup I had ever owned that hadn’t come from a Rite Aid and the first grooming tips I had received that hadn’t come from a drag queen or a stripper. Leanne and I each walked away with a hefty bag full of paints and potions. I was coming up in the world—quite a lady, with my eyeshadow palette and my mystery money. I also bought some diet tea and a new pair of sweatpants and promised myself that I’d work out the next morning. I planned yet again in my life to force myself into a thinner and more desirable body. Fuck biology. I could construct myself in whatever image I wanted. That was the freedom of not knowing the origin of your eye color. Audrey Hepburn, move over. Even if this Prince Charming had tossed me aside, there would be another and the next one wouldn’t. I would make sure of it.

  I ate only salad and a bit of chicken for dinner. I needed nothing, I reminded myself. Almost nothing. There were monks who lived on a grain of rice a day. Need was an illusion. There was only wanting, and the strong could live with wanting and not having. No one else was volunteering for the job, so I’d have to be my own cheerleader. Be strong. Go team.

  I felt renewed, resolved, until I sat down to use my new makeup and looked in the mirror to find myself facing the truth. My cheerleader role peeled off as quickly as had that Victim One c
ostume with the Velcro closures. My stomach gave a hollow growl. In spite of my pep talks, I knew I’d never starve myself into being beautiful. And I could read every book in the library and still not walk out brilliant. That was the truth.

  Not cute enough, not smart enough, not popular enough, not talented enough, not special enough. I was just an average hustler who could sometimes talk my way into getting what I wanted. New eyeshadow or not, I loathed myself in the mirror exactly as much as before. Sighing, I picked up a makeup brush and went to work.

  That night, Eddie, bug-eyed, nervous, and lecherous as always, sat on an ottoman between Serena and me. The men generally sat on these wide ottomans rather than the low armchairs, probably because they usually didn’t stay in one place for long. The girls, on the other hand, sat parked in the same chairs all night, gradually sinking, turning into discarded marionettes, until the Prince entered and everybody sat straight up as if someone had just pulled the string rising from the center of their heads.

  Eddie turned to Serena first.

  “You will sing tonight?”

  Of course she would sing. She had been right in her initial assessment of me. I was no threat to her icy, sassy blondeness. One thing you can be sure of, the soprano will get the guy.

  Then he turned to my chair, where I felt myself receding further into obscurity every minute.

  “And you will sing?”

  Or maybe not. Serena crackled with annoyance.

  “You will sing now.”

  I trembled slightly with the adrenaline that was injected into my bloodstream as I crossed to the microphone. I was unprepared. It had been three nights since I had miraculously pulled off “Kasih” and I was sure the gods would not weigh in on my side a second time. But I was wrong about a lot of things. I sang “Kasih” again just fine and drew approving smiles all around, including from the Prince.

  When Serena got up and sang “Someone to Watch Over Me” she was cringe-worthily flat. I listened with genuine pleasure. She wasn’t the Sandy she thought she was. During the first chorus, Fiona caught my attention and called me over to where she sat next to Robin. When I reached their hub of power, the three chairs against the wall, Robin turned toward me.

  “Sit here,” he said, patting the chair to his left. Fiona always sat to his right.

  This was the coveted chair of the second-favorite girlfriend. I sat there the rest of the night, minding my manners, pressing my knees together, and speaking when spoken to. Sitting next to Robin kept me tense and alert. Robin mostly talked to Fiona, but occasionally turned and asked me disjointed questions.

  “Do you like horses?”

  “I love horses. I hear you play polo.” I don’t really love horses. I like horses just fine, but I’m more of a doggy/kitty kind of girl. I prefer animals that can watch TV with you on the couch. And I had never even seen a game of polo.

  “I do.”

  “Polo is so dangerous.” I was strictly guessing. “You must be really brave. I’d like to watch you play.”

  “You will, I think. How do you like my country?”

  Our conversation proceeded along those lines. The dancing music started and we watched the girls dance together to “Things That Make You Go Hmmmm . . .” and “Like a Prayer.” Everyone on the dance floor sang along with the hooks, though most of them didn’t know what they were saying. When the girls got drunk, West and East alike could really get crazy out there—spinning around, lifting their skirts, grinding in a conga line. It was a release from the boredom. The skull-crushing boredom.

  But at that instant I wasn’t bored. At the Prince’s parties, the ministers and the mistresses alike lived by their ranking, and mine had just soared. It was a delicate equation that shifted nightly. I had passed my first test: I had been ignored and had reacted accordingly. I had been upset but not too upset, jealous but not too jealous. If it was a game of Chutes and Ladders, I had just landed on that huge ladder that climbs to the top of the board and skips all of the spaces in between. I was about to become extremely unpopular.

  Fiona leaned over and looked at me over Robin, as if confirming something they had been talking about.

  He said, half to her but loud enough for me to hear, “I think my brother would really like her, don’t you?”

  She agreed.

  Now, what the hell was that supposed to mean?

  chapter 13

  The sun bouncing off the fiberglass flanks of the yacht was so bright I saw sun spots when I turned away. The boat dwarfed me. It was so large that it looked like a cruise ship rather than a private vessel. Twelve crew members stood on deck to greet me.

  The sticky heat immediately drew pearls of sweat to my upper lip and my bra line. I regretted my choice of pedal pushers and Destiny’s little bolero jacket. When the knock came that morning, I had expected to be shut in another porno icebox, but instead they had driven me to the harbor. I wished I had a bikini, a wide-brimmed hat, and shiny, lacquered red fingernails wrapped around a glass of champagne. Wasn’t that how you dressed for a cruise on a yacht with a prince? Proper duds or not, I was feeling pretty self-satisfied about the prospect of a pleasure cruise with a dozen crew members at my disposal.

  This was me all over. Yachts and champagne. International femme fatale slinking up the gangplank.

  But when I boarded the boat and stood facing the sharply dressed and uniformed crew, they looked confused. Their eyeballs shifted from side to side, each checking out their neighbor to see who was going to make the first move. The captain, a young, sunburned Australian, greeted me and promptly left me in the hands of two perky girls while the rest of the crew drifted off to their regular duties.

  The one with wide teeth, the bigger one, a brunette, said, “I think you’re about my size then.”

  They tossed sing-songy questions at me as they led me around the side of the deck and into the crew quarters below.

  “Do you usually crew another of the family’s boats?”

  “No.”

  “Will you be staying with us then? It won’t take us a minute to get Allison’s old bunk ready for you. Allison left about three weeks ago but we thought we were just going to sail a man short.”

  They opened a closet filled with uniforms that matched their own, each hanging neatly in plastic, each hanger spaced the same distance apart. They held items up to my body, eyeballed the sizes, and put together an outfit, which they hung on a peg. I’ve always suspected that people who hang clothing in an orderly way are better people than I, with cleaner souls.

  “Did Leslie just hire you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Really? Is someone else doing the hiring now?”

  “They never tell us anything,” added the blond one.

  They waited for some explanation. I stood my ground and waited right back. The Australian sailor girls were so scrubbed and healthy it almost hurt to look at them. I got the feeling that the close quarters of the ship allowed for no mess, no secrets. What would it be like to live a life you didn’t have to lie about?

  “How long have you been a stewardess?”

  “I’m not, really.”

  “Huh.” They were baffled. They looked at each other and then looked back at me.

  “Not to be rude,” said the blonde, “but what are you doing here?”

  One of the most useful skills I had learned in Brunei was not to offer too much information. I learned always to hang back until I was absolutely sure what was going on. You never want to be the one who gives the game away.

  “What did they tell you?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” said the brunette.

  “They just told us to come on deck to greet the new stewardess.”

  “So if you’re not a stewardess . . .”

  “You see why we’re confused.”

  “Well, let’s just say I am a stewardess.”

  That satisfied them. We found a uniform that pretty much fit me. The starched polyester pants pulled a bit at the ledge where my ass hit my thighs
, but pants usually did on me. As soon as I was dressed identical to the two girls, the conversation got friendlier. Together we decided that I’d simply do what they did. They’d have to give me a crash course, because in an hour the Sultan and his family would be coming aboard for a day cruise. Afterward, they’d give me the more detailed, proper job training. I was confident that would never happen, but I thanked them anyway. The Prince, I was realizing, liked to put his people in bizarre situations just to see what they’d do. We were his little lab rats. I wondered if there was something wrong with him, a sadistic streak or a touch of Borderline Personality Disorder. Or maybe it was just a symptom of having too much money and power.

  The girls broke out three Diet Cokes for us and they told me about the job while we sipped from the cans. They were yacht stewardesses, hired out of Australia with the same crew they always worked with. The job on the Sultan’s yacht was the easiest job either of them had ever had. They had been in the employ of the Sultan for about six months and he had yet to go on the boat for more than a day trip.

  Being a yacht stewardess didn’t sound too bad. I’d spend my nights rocking in a bunk and listening to the waves slap the hull. I’d spend my days striding purposefully across the deck with a tray full of drinks. On nights off, I’d drink merlot under a starry sky and flirt with the captain. Maybe I should consider it. Maybe I could stay on and no one in authority would even notice that I wasn’t supposed to be there. Maybe I could get out from under the Prince’s thumb now, before I became as miserable as Serena and Leanne.

  They went on to give me the job description. We took drink and food orders. We cleared glasses and dishes, never letting an empty glass sit. We stood at the door of a room, on the ready for any and all requests. We were present and invisible at the same time. We passed appetizers. We straightened the room immediately after anyone left, so that if they returned it would be back in impeccable condition.

  They took me to the bathroom in order to demonstrate the most important trick: how to fold the edge of the toilet paper back into a perfect point after anyone used the toilet.