Scarlet Redemption

by Lani Wendt Young

  Delicious and divine.

  For a blissful sweet moment I am lost in the sweet joy of him. Then I jerk back to reality. To awareness. “How much of that did you hear? You know those kids are just playing right?”

  He lets me pull away, but keeps my hand in his, so our fingers are linked, his other arm leans on the wall behind me, above my head so all I can see and experience, is him. We may be in my sister’s house crowded with assorted children, cousins and with the sound of Jacob’s busy mechanic shop next door – but here in the dim hallway, we are in our own world. And nothing can break through the shelter that he is.

  Jackson is doing something good as he takes a deep breath of me. Dancing a line of light kisses in my hair, along my forehead, beside my ear, on my cheek. A low laugh. “You mean you’re not pregnant with our love child?” He’s teasing and inviting me to play along with him, but I can’t joke about pregnancy. Not now. Not ever. He doesn’t pick up on my vibe though. He continues. “You’re adorable with those kids, you know that? I feel confident that you’re going to be an amazing mother to our love child.” Another kiss breathed against the side of my neck, another caress. “The dinosaur love children!” A low laugh. But now I’m not feeling the magic anymore. Because even the shelter that is Jackson Emory can’t block out the horror that is the truth of all my family secrets. Because there’s one secret left that I haven’t told him.

  I make a non-committal noise. Not agreeing, not disagreeing. Just being. Just here. Just listening. Can we please stop talking about children? About pregnancy and babies and my imaginary love child?

  He turns serious, not joking anymore. “Hey, I mean it. I know we’re new. Just starting out. But I hope you know you can count on me for anything. To be there for anything. I’d be ready to try and be a good father.” A boyish grin and a wink. “Even to a dinosaur baby.”

  I know he means it and he looks so pleased at the thought of us having an imaginary baby together that a wave of sadness hits me. Call it reality. Call it truth. Call it what you will, but there is nothing that can stand in its path. This can’t work.

  I look up at his face and the sheer perfection of him only reinforces what I know to be true and undeniable. No matter how hard I want it not to be. Jackson and I can’t be together. Because the truth is that I can’t be with anyone right now. I’m not ready or able to be in a relationship of any kind. Not a sexilicious sex-only one. And certainly not one with as much truth and light that Jackson is offering.

  I pull away then. Withdrawing in more ways than one. Stepping back from him.

  He’s puzzled by my sudden retreat. “You feeling okay?”

  I nod, look over my shoulder so he’ll think I’m worried about being caught by the relatives. “Yeah. All good. I sorta need to go. Shower. Get dressed.”

  “Sure. I’ll wait downstairs. Chill with the kids. I texted you to see if we could have lunch. Maybe go to the beach?”

  For a moment I forget my nightmare secrets-reveal session with Mother. “You mean, like a date? Really?”

  He grins. Boyish and endearing. “Yes, like a date. Where I ask you out, come pick you up and take you somewhere nice. And we talk and get to know each other.”

  “Only talk?” I say without thinking.

  Something sparks in his dark eyes. Something primal and hungry. Something that tugs deep inside me and has me weak and feeling like there’s not enough oxygen in this crowded hallway dammit.

  “Talk. And other things,” says Jackson. Then he reaches to slip his hand beneath my hair, to clasp my neck and dip my head back so he can claim my mouth with his. A deep, hungry kiss that leaves me gasping. Someone is thirsty. So thirsty! I sway and Jackson steadies me. I lean into him for a moment, savouring the scent and feel of him. Once more. One last time.

  Because even without thinking about it, I’ve already made my decision. Because was there ever really a chance for us? Especially not now. Again I step back. Free from his embrace. Space. Distance. That’s what I need. Room. Escape. That’s he needs. He may not know it, but I’m doing him a favour.

  I take a deep breath. Steel myself. Appeal to my warrior woman ancestor. The aitu of protection. Give me strength. Give me courage. Give me resolve. “Actually, it’s probably not a good time, y’know? I’m not feeling well.”

  He shrugs away his disappointment and flash of confusion. “Sure. The things is, I fly out tomorrow. Something’s come up at work that I can’t offload on anyone else. If you’re feeling better later, then maybe we can grab dinner? But then hey, we’re both heading back to Vegas, right?” Unspoken is the promise he wrought from me in a hotel room, ‘Say yes Scarlet. Say yes to me…’

  It’s a promise I won’t keep.

  “Sure,” I say. “I’ll call you later and let you know how I feel.” Lies.

  We say goodbye and I watch from the window as he drives away. Then I’m on the phone changing tickets and making the necessary arrangements. Within a few hours it’s all sorted. I’m going back to Vegas. Tamarina gives me a questioning look but doesn’t pry. She’s always been able to calculate the answers without even asking the question. I’m sorry to be leaving so soon after she’s come home with new babies but she waves aside my guilt. “Don’t be silly. Jacob’s home. And his mum always comes to stay for a few months when we have babies.” She says that with tired happiness because Jacob has the blessing of a mother who isn’t like ours. My big sister guilty conscience somewhat assuaged, I pack and then head out.

  There’s only one other person I need to say goodbye to and I know just where to find her.

  Aunty Filomena goes to Bingo religiously every Saturday afternoon. Which is perfect because it means I don’t have to go back to the house. I don’t have to risk seeing my parents.

  The hall is a bustling, crowded place, children playing outside under the mango trees as their parents chase luck and fortune inside. I find Aunty at her usual table and slip into the seat beside her. She’s surprised and even more so when I whisper my news.

  She is sad, but accepting. How much did she hear from the confrontation with Mother? How much does she know?

  “When will you come back?” she asks. Because of course I will come back. I’m a daughter of Samoa after all and like the toloa bird, it doesn’t matter how far away we fly, or for how long, but we always come back to our familiar nest of water. Don’t we?

  In that moment I notice what I haven’t seen before. Aunty Filomena is old. The knowledge is like a punch to my chest. When did it happen? Why hadn’t I noticed it before? Does our love for our elders blind us to their mortality? Do we think that like the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, that if we just believe hard enough, and not question enough – that they will live forever? And never leave us? Fear claws its way up from my gut, cold and hungry. Why had I not considered it? I am taken back to the day I was first sent away. Aunty Filomena’s tears, the comfort of her embrace. It never even occurred to me then that I might not see her again. Had she been thinking of it? Then when I was allowed to return for my 21st, only to be sent packing in disgrace, again – Aunty Filomena had again been the one who accompanied me to the airport with the boy cousins. She had cried that day too. And held me a long time. But again, like the self-obsession of youth, or its inability to comprehend endings – I didn’t think it might be the last time.

  But today, I see it. Today, I know it. I acknowledge here and now in this sweaty crowd with its overarching smell of too much Impulse and Lynx deodorant, that I might not see Aunty Filomena again.

  I hug her fiercely. Feeling the bony frailty of her through the floral mu’umu’u. There’s strength and resilience in that frailty, and love. So much love. Tears choke me as I whisper, “One day. I’ll come back. I promise.” Feeling sick with guilt because I don’t mean it.

  Because I know she means, when will I come back to the family house, to the aiga, to live with my parents, to be a good daughter. Because always, Aunty Filomena hoped for the best outcomes, for the best of people and the relati
onships we have with them. Even my parents. She hopes the best of them and that makes me resentful because the little hurt child in me wants her to choose a side, hate them, condemn them. Give up on them. But I know she won’t. Because that’s not how Aunty Filomena loves.

  We don’t say that we love each other. Because we are Samoan after all. I want to say thank you for all the years of making my favorite foods. All the times she saw my hurt and tried to heal it the best way she knew how. I want to tell her that I know how much she gave up to be our second mother. That her sacrifice didn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated.

  Instead, Aunty pats me on the back and repeats the mantra that has sustained me throughout my years of exile.

  “Be a good girl Scar. You a good girl. Don’t forget, eh?”

  I nod. Tell her that I’ll remember. I’m a good girl.

  But today, I try something different. I look her in the eyes and say, “You too Aunty. You be a good girl. Don’t forget, eh!”

  She’s surprised and puzzled for a moment and then she laughs, swats at me with a light hand. “You funny girl. Go on. Don’t go too long eh? You come back soon. Now you go. I’m going to miss my Bingo. Alu loa.”

  I look over my shoulder one more time to see Aunty, trying to memorise her like this, in her element. She is arguing with another woman about the Bingo numbers. Even though she’s younger and bigger than Aunty Filomena, it’s clear who is winning this confrontation. The other woman doesn’t have a prayer of outplaying or out-arguing my aunty. Filomena is happy and ferocious at the same time. Shaking her fist across the room, hurling insults and automatically looking around for stones to throw at people – even though she’s in the church hall.

  Goodbye Aunty. Ou te alofa ia te oe.

  I am on a plane that night. I leave a letter for Jackson. Because I’m not a total bitch. He deserves to know why I can’t do it. He doesn’t need to be burdened by all the gory details, but I give him the bare bones. I tell him that I’m sorry but I can’t say yes. Because I have shit to work through before I can trust anyone enough to let them in.

  If we don’t fix our brokenness, then we will break others. If nothing else I have learnt that from my parents on this trip home.

  I’m sad but I’m also relieved. There’s no more secrets now. I am traversing from Pulotu to the light. I don’t know what the future holds and it’s scary not knowing, but the lightness of being, of being freed from secrets – it’s worth the fear of the unknown.

  My name is Scarlet Pele Thompson. I had a brother who betrayed the feagaiga covenant. I hid in shame and darkness, but no longer. I was broken but now I am putting the pieces of me together. I was a prisoner of shame and guilt, but now I am free. I had secrets, I lived with lies – mine and the lies of others, but no more. I walk in truth now. No matter how harsh, brutal or unforgiving the light may be. I’m ready.

  Jackson

  She’s gone?

  I’d come to Tamarina’s to see her and instead been given a letter. I read it through several times over before crumpling it up in a handful.

  Fuck!

  Her rejection is a freight train out of nowhere. How could this happen? Just yesterday she had lain in my arms, that amazing waterfall of hair spread out over the pillow, looking up at me with nothing but trust and happiness in her eyes. Or what I thought was happiness. Turns out I was wrong. She’d said yes. To me, to us. She’d said it with her body many times over. And whispered it to me in the shadows throughout the two most incredible nights of my life. But she’d lied.

  ‘I’m sorry Jackson. You’ve given me the best days of my life and I wanted so badly to continue on this journey with you. I thought that I could. I thought that I was ready. But I was wrong. There’s too much baggage that I haven’t fully dealt with. There’s too much I haven’t told you, and I don’t know if I ever could. You deserve to be with someone who can give you the truth. Who can give you everything. I really wanted to be that person but I can’t. Please forgive me.’

  Everyone knows what that’s code for. What those excuses really mean. It’s not you, it’s me. Ha. It’s the classic breakup line known to man. The biggest fucking lie. She couldn’t even give me the truth. Not even now. A memory is a knife-stab to the gut. The first day we met. She lied to me then. And in spite of everything we’ve gone through together over the last few weeks, she’s still lying? To herself? To me? Why?

  There had been a moment when she stepped out from behind the walls she’d carefully constructed to keep herself safe. That day in the church when she’d told me about being an abuse survivor. No lies. No holding back. No family barriers. Just raw truth. Just us. She’d let me in, let me see her vulnerability and her incredible strength. I think that’s the day I started falling for her. Or maybe it was the moment she spilled out of her red dress at the wedding. The flash of her glorious smile when she realised it, her forever ability to laugh at herself, to find gleeful joy in life’s moments of realness. A rush of memories. Scarlet and I dancing while her aunties ogled my backside and she tried and failed not to laugh. Scarlet on stage, wearing an octopus corset and singing her heart out. The way her nieces and nephews adore her, hanging on her every word.

  I want to smash things. I want – no I need – to get out of here.

  There’s a sound behind me. A man enters the kitchen. He’s huge. Tall and built like a football player – but none of the bulk is padding. Just muscle. He doesn’t smile.

  “You’re the one who took my wife to the hospital?” he says, accusatory. Still no smile.

  “Yes,” I say. “Jackson. You must be Jacob.” I extend my hand. I have no smiles in me either but I can be polite.

  The man ignores my hand. Instead he takes several steps forward and grabs me. Its crushing and terrifying because for a crazy moment I’m not sure if this is a hug, or he’s trying to kill me.

  “Thank you uso,” he says, with muffled emotion. “You saved my wife and my children.”

  I’m having trouble breathing so I just bring a hand up and pat him on the back.

  Thankfully Tamarina walks in just then. “Jacob I think you’re choking him. You can let him go now.”

  The man releases me and I can breathe again. “I didn’t do anything,” I say. “It was your wife who did all the work. Basically we just stood there and tried not to get in her way. Tamarina was amazing.”

  Jacob’s face lights up in a smile as he looks at his wife. It’s a smile that completely transforms him. “She is amazing,” he agrees. Then back to me, “But she told me what happened. You took care of her and the babies. I owe you a debt I can never repay.”

  His face is granite seriousness again and I don’t know how to respond. I’m not going to say ‘it was nothing’, because it’s starkly obvious that to Jacob, his family means everything.

  Tamarina steps into the silence. “Jacob wants to name the babies after you and Scarlet.”

  “What?!”

  Jacob nods solemnly. “The girls will be called Jackson and Scarlet.”

  I’m stunned. I try to protest. “But you don’t really even know me?”

  Jacob speaks. “Tamarina says you are a good man. My wife is an excellent judge of character. It will be an honor for our child to bear your name.”

  “No that’s not necessary. Really. I was happy to help. Besides, what kind of name is Jackson for a girl? She’ll grow up hating her namesake.”

  Tamarina waves away my excuses. “She’ll love it. Don’t worry. It’s tradition in Samoa to name children after the day they were born, or after a person who was significant in their delivery.” She teases, “Hey, it’s either you or the doctor who was on duty that night and the doctor’s name was Peiosepua’a! Which means ‘Looks like a pig’…so Jackson is much better.”

  We all laugh and the mood lightens considerably. But inside I am chaos. With a name, they are binding me to their family and I know after my time here in Samoa - that’s not a small thing. The ties of family come with boundless alofa and generosity. But th
ey also bring responsibility and obligations. Am I worthy of that? And do I want to be? Scarlet just dumped me. Took my hopes of an actual relationship with her – and stomped all over them. Don’t I want to just get on a plane and go as far away as possible from this country, from this aiga, from everything that’s connected to the woman who I thought I was falling in love with? And never look back? But what can I do? Tell them I refuse to allow their baby to be named Jackson? Offend the aiga who have been nothing but kind and welcoming to me? It’s not like I own the copyright for a name…

  We small-talk for a while and then Jacob has to go back to work so he shakes my hand with a wincingly firm grip. “You are family now,” he says to me. “If you ever need anything, just ask.”

  I’m about to leave too when Tamarina stops me. “You got Scarlet’s letter?”

  I nod, and try to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Yeah. Not that it said much.”

  “You care about her, don’t you.”

  “It’s that obvious, huh?” I say with a lightness that I don’t feel.

  Tamarina looks at me for a long moment, with an inscrutable air. Most people don’t stare at you when you can see it. Scarlet’s youngest sister doesn’t hide when she’s studying you. She has an unflinching gaze that unsettles you when you first meet her. But I’m used to it now. And after being all up in a woman’s business, trying to help when she’s giving birth in the backseat of car? Well, it kind of dispels any walls you may have had with each other!

  “My sister feels things deeply,” says Tamarina. A frown. “Even when logic dictates one path? She has emotions that take her down another. It doesn’t always make sense. Not to me anyway.”

  I don’t know where this conversation is going or what Tamarina is trying to tell me. So I nod with what I hope is polite interest.

  Tamarina goes to a desk in the corner and rifles through a drawer, then comes to me with a photograph. It’s of three little girls sitting in a frangipani tree, grinning at the camera. Sisters. She doesn’t have to tell me which one is Scarlet. I know her immediately. A wild tangle of hair, deep-set dark eyes, and a huge smile that shows the slight gap between her two front teeth. She’s obviously darker than her two sisters, and bigger, bolder. She radiates an open kind of cheerful joy that is unafraid and unrestrained. It’s a free spiritedness that I have only caught glimpses of in the adult Scarlet. When we’re alone, away from her family and the rest of the outside world, and she laughs with that belly-deep pleasure. When she’s with her nieces and nephews, telling them a story, refereeing their squabbles and she’s trying to be the serious disciplinarian, but failing. That night at the club when she took to the stage with Beyonce and belted out their anthem of independence, when she was strutting the stage in her octopus costume.