No wonder Makelita was drawn to these people. They were magnificent.
In the Samoan creation myth, the Creator Tagaloa placed the Peopling Vine on a council ground and left it in the sun until masses of worms slithered from it. Tagaloa shredded the worms into strips he fashioned into a human head, face, body, arms, and legs. Then he added heart and spirit and produced four people who went on to populate the land. The longer I observed the Samoans around me, the more convinced I became that these people, who could behave gravely through a kava ceremony but would collapse into giggles over a runaway pig, who were fashioned from a wondrous multitude of earthly worms and furnished with heart and soul from the heavens, were among the Creator’s finest works. Strong, decent, dignified, but alive and free, Samoans were everything I wanted to be.
My own people, the palagi expats, maybe not. Yet the irony was, my Samoan friends seemed to want to emulate us.
I gathered more anthropological data during a beach party at Tafuna Lagoon, a waist-deep, bathwater-warm inlet near the airport and the government housing where many palagi contract workers and their families lived. Wendy and I had spread our towels on the sand and stretched out to deepen our baby-oil-and-iodine-enhanced tans.
“Tafuna is a weird place, Nance,” Wendy said, her voice sleepily sun-dazed. “I mean, here we are sunbathing by a lagoon straight out of National Geographic, but just around the bend are houses that look like they were airlifted out of some Bay Area housing tract. It’s suburbia all over again.” Her face screwed up as she gestured toward rows of identical one-story units.
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked, not sure I’d ever seen or set foot in a suburb. “I think the houses out here are kind of neat.” I pictured the interior of the one Wendy’s family lived in, with its beamed ceilings and clean, contemporary lines.
“Okay. But perhaps you’ve noticed they’re all alike?” Wendy said, sarcasm lifting her eyebrows.
“So? All the Utulei apartments are alike, but that doesn’t bother me.”
Samoan fales were all the same, too, and for good reason, according to legend. Long ago, Samoans built houses in different shapes, but each builder specialized in one design. This caused problems when someone wanted a particular style of house but the only builder who knew how to construct that type was busy. Unable to agree on a uniform shape, the builders appealed to Tagaloa, the Creator. He pointed to the dome of heaven extending down to the horizon and decreed that all houses be built in that shape. Hence, the round fale with its convex roof and poles reaching down to the ground.
So, if Tagaloa ordained it, homogeneous housing couldn’t be all that bad. “Really, what’s the big deal?” I asked.
Wendy pressed her lips together and waited for words to take shape. She peered through her glasses toward the tidy neighborhood in the distance and shook her head as if dislodging disturbing thoughts.
“Okay, it’s not just how the houses look, it’s what living in a place like this does to people. Some people. It’s like the anonymity of the neighborhood makes them feel anonymous, too—like they can get away with things they wouldn’t do if everybody knew what they were up to. But see, the thing is, everybody does know what they’re up to, because this is a small community, and everybody talks about everybody else.”
“I wish I knew what you were talking about,” I said. I felt eclipsed by Wendy’s worldliness. She moved as easily in adult circles as among peers and had an assortment of more mature friends—young wives, oddball bachelors, and other lonely neighbors—who confided in her.
“Let’s just say—” Wendy paused and let her perfect pageboy swing forward to curtain her face. “—there’s a reason they call these places bedroom communities.”
“Ohhhh,” I said. “Kinda like Peyton Place?” Now that I thought about it, there had been whisperings around school—something about “wife swapping” and “swingers” in that outwardly bland community out by the airport. Rumors about some of my classmates’ parents, in fact.
I wondered what else lay beneath the surface and what drove people to do such things. Was it simply lust, or were they, like me, hooked on novelty and the thrill of the forbidden? And if we were alike in that way, in what other ways was I like these people?
It was something to think about. Despite my ideals of decency and dignity, I was more concerned these days with deception, sneaking around to see Dick and encrypting my diary entries in case my parents went snooping. I used a code my junior high friend Judy and I had devised to exchange notes about Mr. Banfield, the social studies teacher and wrestling coach, whose solid shoulders and gummy smile had us aflutter. The code wasn’t exactly impenetrable—we just substituted Greek letters and a few made-up symbols for the Latin counterparts (κισσ for “kiss,” for example)—but it was so tedious to decode we figured no one would bother trying. So when I wrote in my diary the day after Sylvia’s party, I reported in ordinary English all the innocent stuff—who was there, what a good time we had—but then added: Διcκ τολδ με ηε λο7εδ με ανδ Ι βελιε7ε τηατ, documenting that Dick had declared his love and I was convinced of his sincerity.
I was also engaged in another ruse, with my parents and the governor’s teenage son Carlson as unwitting accomplices. Carlson was tinny-voiced and short—maybe five feet tall, maybe not quite—and reminded me of Mickey Rooney in those old movies where Mickey played the spunky little guy putting on backyard shows with Judy Garland. With Carlson’s automatic yes-ma’am, no-sir, please-and-thank-you manners, the governor’s son had the bearing of a kid who’d spent his childhood in the company of adults who expected him to act just like them. For that—and for being the governor’s son, and for being anyone but Dick—my parents adored him. Consequently, any time Carlson invited me, alone or with friends, to go for a ride in his father’s chauffeur-driven stretch limousine, my parents shooed me off with their blessings.
“Floor it, Tuke!” Carlson would order the driver, an impassive Samoan man, and we’d be off to Tafuna Lagoon or Larsen’s Beach for an afternoon of swimming and sunning. Apparently it didn’t occur to my parents that Dick, though never a passenger in the limo, would make his way to these beach parties, and that the strength of my resolve to keep distance between us ebbed and surged with the tides.
This very day, I’d ridden in the governor’s car out to the lagoon, where Dick, Fibber, and some other kids waited. As I emerged from the limo with Carlson and crew, Dick leaned against a palm tree and watched me with a narrow look that was hard to categorize: equal parts aloof, appraising, amused, and amorous. His stance—weight shifted onto one slim hip, head cocked—conveyed the same mix of attitudes. We chatted awhile, flirty, teasing talk, then he splashed into the lagoon, and I stretched out with Wendy on the shore.
Now, as I lazed on the beach, my mind replayed the conversation with Wendy, the dinner at the Finleys’, my other anthropological observations. Palagis, I concluded, were a blight on the island, a corrupting influence far worse than any long-haired, cigarette-smoking boy with a motorcycle. But did that excuse my deceptions?
Dick dropped onto the towel beside me and gave my arm a playful punch. Sand clung to his skin and scratched me when we touched.
“Hey, girl from Nowhere.” His eyes disappeared into crinkles. “Let’s get outta here and go Somewhere. Anywhere. I’ve got the bike.”
It was late afternoon, and the Tafuna kids were drifting back to their look-alike homes. Carlson and the other kids from town gathered up towels, suntan lotion, and snacks as Tuke stood by.
I brushed grains of sand from Dick’s arm and avoided his eyes. “You know I can’t do that,” I said. “I have to go back to town with Carlson.”
Dick’s face unfolded and hardened. “Can’t do that,” he mocked. “Can’t do this. Can’t go on the bike. Can’t go out with me. Can’t talk to me. What the hell can you do?”
A low, mechanical mutter signaled Tuke had started the limo. Car doors opened with a metallic co
mplaint, and kids piled in amid gales of laughter. Glancing up, I saw Carlson motion for me to come on.
“I don’t know.” I stared at my hands and worried my Tri Chi ring. “I guess that’s what I’m trying to figure out.” I was living out one of those Baptist Training Union scenarios. I wished I had Evelyn to lead me through it.
“Well, when you do know? Let me know.” With that, Dick stood and brushed himself off. I looked up at him, but already he was walking away, a featureless silhouette backlit by tropical sun. Moments later, the bike whirred and Dick sped off, headed for somewhere I would not be going. Not today, at least.
Chapter 11—Language Lessons
matagofie
beautiful
motu
island
gagana
langage
mātua
parent
ita
anger
“Sunday, October 10, 1965. We’re sending along a few of our better slides to show you some of the sights on the island.”
My father spoke into the microphone of a portable tape recorder. A projector set up on the dining table beamed a bright square onto the cinder block wall. He clicked a button on the projector, and a scene of verdant peaks and shimmering water replaced the square of light.
“This view is what greeted us when we first arrived from the airport, at Utulei, near Pago Pago. This was taken from just off our front step, facing toward the bay and the mountains on the opposite side.”
The projector’s click punctuated the travelogue my father was recording to mail with the slides to relatives in the States, and as he continued his narration, I noticed the way he drew out his words in a voice languid as a stroll down the streets of a small town. He still used a schoolteacher’s diction and grammar, combined with the measured delivery of a doctor accustomed to calming anxious patients.
“This is looking across the malae, or city square, in the main business district of Fagatogo, which is the downtown part of Pago Pago. Beyond the malae are Haleck’s and Kneubuhl’s and several other general merchandise stores. Also, the Pago Pago Angel Den bar is over there.”
He stumbled over the word malae the first time, but pronounced it perfectly on the second try. It was the way he said “downtown,” though, that made me take note. I remembered him telling me how his mother used to try to purge him and his siblings of their Oklahoma accents before visits to relatives in Iowa. She’d make them practice saying, “I’m going downtown to shop around” until they could pronounce downtown with only two syllables instead of four. Over the years, my grandmother’s elocution lessons had worn off, and my father had slipped back into the cadence and twang of western Oklahoma. I hadn’t noticed until now.
He paused and clicked the button on the projector, and another scene slid onto the wall. In the reflected light, I studied my father’s face—the upturned nose, hazel eyes, and heavy eyebrows I’d inherited; the full, wide lips I wished I had. Except for a fan of lines at the outer corners of his eyes and silver streaks in his dark hair, he showed few signs of his fifty-two years. The laugh lines and graying temples made him more handsome, I thought. Distinguished, my mother said.
“This is the newly completed marketplace. Another part of the market has stainless steel bins for the fruits and vegetables, but we chose to get this view because the natives were sitting Samoan-fashion on the floor.”
The natives? The word conjured up mental pictures of wild-eyed savages with bones in their hair, awaiting a meal of stewed missionary, not the fine men and women in the photo my father was describing.
The projector made a shuffling sound, and a new scene appeared.
“This is the view from our back door, looking up the mountain … and this is one of the many Samoan houses stacked on the mountain behind us. You can also see the rising smoke from one of their cooking fires, which is very common.”
The house in the picture was neither a traditional fale nor a modern frame dwelling, but a mere wooden shack with chickens running around outside. In the mornings, when sunlight seeped over the mountains and the rooster crowed, I often saw an old, lavalava-clad man sitting in front of the house. A native, sitting Samoan fashion, my father would say. I assumed the man lived alone, except for the chickens, so I was stunned one day when, walking me home from school, Fibber—that hipster clown from the tennis court crowd—pointed to the shack and told me that was where he lived.
I tried to picture him getting dressed for parties in such a setting—shining his Beatle boots, styling his coppery pompadour—but the images were too incongruous. The knowledge that Fibber could look down on my apartment from his hillside home made me feel a special bond with him, though. And the feeling seemed to be mutual: he often stopped by our doorstep to chat and sometimes accepted my invitation to come inside and listen to records or do homework together. I’d been seeing less of Dick since the Tafuna beach party, and I welcomed the company. Fibber’s from-the-neighborhood status carried some weight with my parents, too, who viewed him more like Barry, the benign Texan in our apartment complex, than the daughter-ravaging delinquent, Dick.
After a few solo visits, Fibber started bringing his cousin Peki, a boy with a whisper of mustache, a schoolgirl giggle, and a funny kind of appeal.
Ah, Peki …
The projector’s click snapped me out of my island-boy daydreams and back to the slide show.
“… and here’s a view of the runway at Pago Pago International Airport, with the lagoon and the mountains in the distance. These pictures were made at the inauguration of a jet flight from New Zealand to Pago Pago. The natives in the foreground here are quite typically dressed.”
That word again. Natives. It nettled me like sand in my swimsuit. And what was “typical” dress—lavalavas and puletasis, or the American-style clothes most of my Samoan schoolmates wore?
From the projector came a smell like melting plastic as the bulb heated each snippet of acetate in its cardboard jacket. Feeling warm myself, I escaped to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator’s freezer compartment.
“I’m getting ice cream, Daddy, want some?” Ice cream was one of our father-daughter things. My mother occasionally indulged in a single scoop of vanilla, daintily spooned from a tulip-shaped dish when we had guests, but for my father and me, loading up crockery with tennis-ball sized servings of chocolate was a nightly ritual. I reached for the carton, already sensing the cool sweetness in my mouth.
“You’re getting what?” Over the drone of the projector, my father’s tone sounded surprisingly brittle.
“Ice cream. We have chocolate—want some?” The rime on the carton’s surface melted beneath my hand.
“Don’t say it that way.” Frost in his voice like the blast from the open freezer. “It’s ice creeeam, not ice cream.”
My father’s sudden preoccupation with pronunciation bewildered me. Surely there were other words we pronounced differently, but he’d never commented on them before, much less erupted in anger. How was my deviation from Okie drawl any different from his practiced “downtown”?
“Ice cream, ice creeeam, what’s the difference?” I snapped.
In the projector’s glow, I could see my father’s complexion darken and his lips purse. Even the streaks in his hair looked more steely than silver.
“It’s ice creeeam, ice creeeam. That’s the way we say it. You’ve been spending too much time with that tennis court crowd, especially those West Coast beach bums you’ve taken up with, and now you’re starting to sound like them. But you’re not like them, do you hear me?”
So that was what this was about: not inflection, but identity. I was rejecting my “native” tongue, allying with another tribe, and it was too much for my father to bear.
Once, I would have given in and revised my pronunciation just to appease him. What were a couple of words, anyway? If I could keep him happy with a simple shift of emphasis, then why not?
But this time, something was crystallizing in me, freezing solid and refusing to melt.
“Good grief, Daddy,” I said before slamming the freezer door and stomping upstairs, “it’s only ice cream.”
My copy of Teach Yourself Samoan, a slender volume with a cornflower blue cloth cover, lay on my nightstand. I opened the book and read the foreword:
The purpose of this manual is to enable a student to acquire a working knowledge of the Samoan language without the personal tuition to be obtained in a classroom or from an individual teacher. It is believed that a careful study of the Lessons will equip him with all the knowledge required to read written Samoan as is likely to swim into his ken and, with practice, to carry on conversation with Samoans on all subjects he is likely to find it necessary to discuss.
I shook my head. I could hardly make sense of the author’s English; how was I supposed to learn Samoan? For weeks I’d been memorizing vocabulary lists and poring over the book’s lessons on nouns, definite articles, indefinite articles, and verb particles, but I still felt ill-equipped to carry on any but the most simple-minded conversation. I could ask “Alu i fea?”—”Where are you going?”—but not respond to the same question asked of me. Keeping up with an exchange between my Samoan friends was completely out of reach, and I felt left out even when they prefaced their lapses with a courtly, “Pardon me while I speak the Samoan language.”
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