Scarlet Redemption

by Lani Wendt Young

  “That’s what she was like. Before. The toughest girl in the neighbourhood and so funny,” says Tamarina. “Everyone wanted to be on her team in all the games. Everyone looked to her for the ideas, to make the plans. She was the boss. So confident. Always so creative and organising all the cousins to do skits, tell stories, and act out our favorite movies. And she loved to dance. Her and Beyonce watched music videos religiously and learned all the moves.” Tamarina smiles then at the memory. “But above all that, Scar valued her role as our big sister. She took care of me and Naomi. I was different from the other kids. But nobody teased me because if they did, Scar would make them stop. She was always protecting us. Covering for us. Watching out for us.” She points to the tree in the photograph. “Naomi fell out of this same frangipani tree and broke her arm. This was after Scar told her not to climb up by herself and Naomi didn’t listen. I’m the one who dared her that she couldn’t reach the top branches. But Scar never said anything when Mother got angry at her for not looking after Naomi properly. Mother used the salu on her and Scar just stood there with her head bowed. Because she believed it was her fault. Because she didn’t want me to get in trouble too.”

  It’s the most words I’ve heard Tamarina speak in one go. I don’t say anything or even move because I’m worried it will freak her out and make her stop.

  Tamarina frowns then. “Things changed when Solomon came. I didn’t understand why. Not then. There were many whispers that I couldn’t make sense of. My big sister changed. Slowly. And then they sent her to America. I could see she didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave us. She felt responsible.” She takes a deep breath and looks at me. “We all carry secrets inside us. Scar has more than most people. The man who loves my sister, will need to be patient. He has to be a good man and know how to love, like my Jacob knows how to love. He will need to be strong and endure with enough hope for two. But whoever that man is, he will be a lucky man because my sister knows how to love. She is loyal. Protective. She takes care of those she cares about. No matter what.” Her eyes get laser beam intense. “If that man knows he can’t be that? Can’t love my sister like that? Then he should leave her alone.”

  Warning received loud and clear.

  From somewhere in the house, a baby’s mewling cry is heard. Tamarina sighs and her scary laser eyes now just look tired. “I must go.” At the door, she pauses. “I have seen how Scarlet is when she’s with you. She is happy. No matter what she wrote in her letter? You make her happy.”

  Scarlet

  Nina meets me at the airport. It’s easy to find her in the crowd. She’s the breathtaking statuesque supermodel radiating sensuality and don’t-you-wish-you-could-be-me confidence. Even in stiletto heels, and a demure pencil skirt, she glides through the waiting area, grace personified.

  Nina has different personas for different occasions and today she is in executive CEO mode. Cinched waist jacket with a hint of cleavage, hair pulled back in a simple chignon at the nape of her neck, a silver torque necklace, subdued makeup with just a splash of red at the lips, and severe glasses. The suave composure cracks though when she catches sight of me, as she quickens her step with a huge smile on her face. We air kiss and hug, but only for a brief moment because she knows I don’t like too much of that stuff.

  I have prepped myself on the long flight, to show her the best side of me. I’m not ready to talk about the gut wrenching revelations and the messy family dynamics. Or the glory (and pain) of Jackson.

  So I have a smile and a litany of funny stories ready for her as we make our way to the car. But once we get to the apartment and we’ve lugged my bags up the stairs because the elevator is on the blink again, Nina confronts me with her hands on her hips.

  “What happened?” she says.

  I avoid her searching gaze. From experience, I know its near impossible to lie to Nina. I busy myself with turning the air conditioning on and grabbing a soda from the fridge.

  “What do you mean? I’ve been telling you about my trip ever since we got in the car.”

  “No,” she says abruptly with that no-nonsense tone of hers. The one she uses on slow-moving cocktail waiters. “Something happened over there. I know it. Something bad.” She studies me some more and then her eyes widen. “And something really good.”

  “Yeah, I survived being with my dysfunctional family. That’s good.”

  “You met someone,” Nina announces with triumph. “Someone hot and sexy as fuck!”

  For a moment I am transported to a grey-toned beach day with Jackson. I feel the steel edge of the car at my back as he kisses me, the razor edge of his cheek against my skin. I hear the cry of white terns as we make love under a green mantle of tropical forest. I see his smile, the slight dimple in his left cheek, the dark promise in his eyes when he’s teasing me.

  “Yes, I did,” I confess.

  And then I burst into tears.

  Nina hugs me. Screw the rules on Scarlet’s #dontTouchMe hangups. I cry for what seems like forever. All the hurt of the last few days rushes out, impossible to hold back any longer. My best friend hugs me and when enough time has passed, she sits me up.

  “What did the asshole do to you?” There’s menace in her eyes. My bestie is ready to kill for me. “What happened?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t him. He was perfect. It was me and my shitty family.” I erupt into sobs again. Straight up bawling. The kind like when you’re a kid and you’re hiccupping and your crying is caught in an endless repeat frame and you’re making no sense any more.

  Nina can see that only the best damage control can have a hope of bringing any solace here. She goes to the kitchen and brings back an arsenal of weapons, lining them up on the table in front of me.

  A tub of ice cream. Rum’n’raisin, my favorite.

  A takeaway container with half a chocolate banana cream pie.

  A bottle of champagne.

  “What’s all this?” The confusion at least puts a dent in my crying fit. “How did you know I’d need it?”

  She shrugs. “I got it for something else. Never mind what. Now, eat and talk. Tell me everything.”

  Two scoops of ice cream, a bite of pie and I’m ready to talk. I tell her everything. All the bad. All the good. All the ugly. I hold nothing back. The shadows lengthen as the day fades and still I talk. Nina is the best listener and because she knows all my sordid past, she is able to connect all the dots without my needing to rehash anything.

  “I’m sorry Scarlet,” she says when I’m done. There’s a razor edge of anger in her voice. “I wish I could have a few words with your parents. Just give me fifteen minutes in a room with that woman who doesn’t deserve to call herself a mother. And that man who dares to claim he’s a Christian!” She takes a deep breath to collect herself. “Sorry, I know they’re your parents but screw them Scarlet. I thought I had bad parents, but yours are in a whole other next level of fuckery.”

  I can’t argue with her. Even though my Samoan soul cringes at anyone putting my parents and the F-word in the same sentence. Because no matter what parents do to us, we’re supposed to honor them. (If we want to live long on this earth anyway. The Bible says so.) Nina sees my discomfort and she’s known me long enough to understand it. Even though she doesn’t agree with it.

  “Right, enough about that. I want more about Jackson.”

  She wants to see pictures. Of Jackson. The wedding. Of Brian the photographer. Of me in my emerald dress (that she chose for me). Of me in my scarlet corset dress (that she bought for me). Of me in my maillot (that she ordered for me). She frowns when she sees me wearing it with shorts and a lavalava, but takes pity on me thanks to my tears, and doesn’t hassle me like I know she is dying to.

  “So how did you end it with Jackson?” she wants to know. “What did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t tell him anything. I wrote him a letter.”

  “You did what?”

  “There was too much going on with my family and I’
m a mess so I wrote him a letter,” I say.

  “And what did this letter say?” Nina has one eyebrow raised. Like the Rock, only scarier. Because Nina in boss-mode, is more frightening than the Rock could ever be.

  “Just that I enjoyed spending time with him and he’s a great person. But at this point in my life I can’t commit to a serious relationship. I’ve got issues to deal with, and I hope he has a safe trip back home.”

  “That’s it?” says Nina in disbelief. “The man gives you four orgasms in one night, and all you can say is – have a safe trip home?!”

  This is the problem with telling Nina everything. She remembers details you would rather she didn’t, and then she repeats them out loud. Really loud.

  “It’s for the best,” I say. “It would never have worked.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we come from different worlds.” It sounds pathetic, even to me.

  “Yes, because you’re an alien from Mars,” Nina says drily. “Try another one.”

  “He doesn’t really know me. It was a holiday fling. That’s why it worked, why we connected so well.”

  A sly grin then. “Mmmhmmm, girl you got that right. You connected again, and again, and again!” She says it with a breathy sex-filled voice which has me rolling my eyes and for a brief moment we laugh.

  Then she gets serious again. “That doesn’t make sense either. Sounds like you let him know more about you than you’ve ever told any other man. I mean, who else besides me knows about your past? About all of it? You told this honey, about the most painful things and showed him your scars.”

  “Well not quite,” I say, thinking of what I didn’t tell him as the light streamed through the stained glass window of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus.

  Nina waves away my disclaimers. “No. I won’t let you do this. Do you know how rare and precious it is to find someone you can show your true self to – and have him accept you in all your complicated, unique hot mess, as you are? What I would give to have that.”

  There’s anger in her voice now. And pain. I catch the gleam of unshed tears in her eyes and a gut-punch of guilt shames me.

  “Oh Nina, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t mean…”

  “It’s okay. It’s not about me and my shit.” She takes a deep breath, steels herself and for a moment there is silence.

  “How’s Andrew?” I ask. Andrew is her on-again-off-again boyfriend, a marketing executive she met at the club where she works weekends.

  “There is no more Andrew,” she says with a curl to her lip. “I pushed too hard for him to introduce me to his friends and he ended it. Said we weren’t compatible. He sure seemed happy with our compatibility though, when he was banging me on every durable surface in this apartment.”

  I have a flash image of them having sex on the table we’re eating ice cream on and I jump up, holding my bowl aloft. “Ewww yuck Nina! Germs.”

  “Ah stop panicking. I cleaned! Disinfected the whole place for two days straight while you were gone. Therapy.”

  Nina’s a clean freak and forever on my case to raise my hygiene standards to hers, so somewhat mollified, I gingerly sit back down. But still. Who’s going to disinfect my brain from the pictures of them going at it on our dining table?

  “I don’t want to talk about Andrew,” she says firmly. “He’s in the past. Forget him. We’re talking about you and your issues and how you put up walls so that a hot honey like Jackson can’t reach you.”

  “Fine, we won’t talk about Andrew.” I go over and give her a quick hug. “But let me just say this. He’s an asshole. He was never worthy of a woman like you. And any man who can’t handle everything that you are? Doesn’t deserve to even be in the same room as you, let alone banging you in our apartment. That special man who is worthy? He is out there, looking for you. And one day, he’ll find you and treasure and adore you the way you should be treasured.”

  For a moment Nina shows me the vulnerable jelly vulnerability she is inside. “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  She gives me a wobbly smile and for a moment we are freshmen in college again…

  My first day moving into the dorm, terrified and trying not to show it. Feeling like an imposter with my full scholarship , still uncertain how I ended up there in an Ivy League school. Slowly unpacking my suitcase and then hearing raised voices from across the hall. Only the first day and already people are fighting? The noise got louder and impossible to ignore. It brought a growing crowd of spectators and even I paused in my unpacking to look out at the two roomies yelling at each other. One was a petite white girl with a blonde bob, her face twisted in distaste. The other was a black fa’afafine dressed like she just stepped out of VOGUE magazine. Red dress with knee high boots, flawless makeup.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what they were fighting about, as the beautiful faafafine said with barely contained rage, “This is a co-ed dorm.”

  The blonde raised her voice, in a heavy southern accent. “Aah know that. And aah asked to room with a girl.”

  “I am a girl.”

  “No you aint. You’re a big black man wearing a dress. And it don’t matter if it’s Chanel, you’re still not a girl and aah am not sleepin’ in the same room as you, getting undressed with you watching me!”

  “Oh please, even if I were into girls, you are not my type. You have nothing that I want,” the other said icily. “And besides, I refuse to room with a transphobic racist.”

  The blonde girl spluttered at that. “Who aah you calling racist? How dare you? Aah am not racist. Aaah have black friends. Black FEMALE friends.”

  “Now you’re going to try the I-have-one-black-friend-so-that-excuses-my-racist-ass card? Oh that’s tired. And weak. I’m out of here. I’m going to file a complaint with the office. We’ll see how this goes down.”

  “That’s right, you go!” The girl lost it then. “Aah guarantee you nobody here wants to room with the likes of you.” She gesticulated wildly at the small crowd that had gathered in the corridor. “None of them will room with you. It’s a safety issue. There’s no room for you here!”

  The fa’afafine seemed to finally be aware of the audience. She looked around and I caught a brief flicker of panic as she let her mask of confidence slip. It was only an instant but it was enough.

  “You can room with me.” My voice was a squeak and I had to repeat myself louder to be heard.

  Everyone turned to look. The blonde paused in her tirade and I said to her, “I can switch with you.” Then to the faafafine. “Only if you want to. It’s just a suggestion.”

  There was a tense moment where I died a thousand deaths, quailing inside as everyone stared. The fa’afafine glared at me, and for a wild minute I was sure she would reject my offer. Reject me. But then she squared her shoulders and bestowed a brilliant smile on me, with her hand outstretched.

  “Thank you,” she said, “I’m Nina.”

  The blonde girl packed up her bags (with sniffs of disdain) and I moved to the other room. I was making up my bed with the elei bedspread the Aunties had sent me to college with when Nina confronted me. Once the crowd had dispersed (the show all over) and the door was securely closed against all faikakala’s.

  “Why?” Arms crossed across her abundant chest. “Why’d you offer to switch?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t like the look of my roomie.”

  She didn’t buy it. But I wasn’t about to try and give her the entire low-down on Samoa’s third gender and the cultural identity of Faafafine and Faatama. So instead I pulled out the framed photo of me and Beyonce that I’d brought to put on my desk. “This is my cousin Beyonce. We grew up together and went to school together too.”

  It was enough.

  It didn’t take long for Nina and I to become the kind of friends who stay up until two in the morning, talking about anything and everything. We were oceans apart in many ways, but soul sisters in others. Her family made mine look almost angelic in compa
rison. She only had one sibling – an older brother that she loved fiercely. He had stood by her when her parents threw her out. Nina had told them she was going to transition and her father had beaten her, breaking ribs and affecting her hearing in one ear. Her mother had stood there praying through the ordeal. Nina’s brother Adam had called the police which probably saved her life but Nina refused to press charges. Instead she had taken a scholarship at a college as far away as possible from home. I told her about Beyonce and the other fa’afafine I knew back home and she had been wistful.

  “It’s not all roses,” I warned. “Beyonce will tell you how hypocritical it can be. Her family relies on her as the main income earner and they’re very proud of her position at the bank. They even cheer on her performances at the club. But that’s where it ends. She has to hide her relationships from them. It’s like, you can be faafafine but you just can’t have sex with a man.” I added wryly, “Although many men have no problem with having sex with faafafine. They just won’t acknowledge them in public.”

  Nina knew all about that. Cue Andrew. Who had been preceded by a long line of lovers with the same aversion to dating her publicly. Nina’s family had cut her off financially and she’d had to work her way through college. Which is how she’d started in the exotic dancer business. She’d since moved to being a showgirl in a cabaret show. She worked five days at an accountancy firm in the city, but her real income earner was show-girling.