Telesa - The Covenant Keeper

by Lani Wendt Young

  “Aha, here it is.” He turned triumphantly to me with a water bottle in his hand. “Want a drink?” He held out the bottle, reaching towards me with one magnificent arm, the other on his hips where ragged shorts clung to his rock-hard frame. Deepening shadows played on his torso, a light breeze set the coconut palm behind him dancing. Jade green eyes smiling in the jade green evening. At me. Us alone, on a green field embraced by scarlet hibiscus bushes. The heat within me surged stronger and I was almost frantic in my reaction. Didn’t this boy have a clue what impact he had on me? Against my will, the words tore from me.

  “Why do you people keep doing that?”

  “Doing what?” His eyes conveyed genuine puzzlement.

  “That. Taking your clothes off all the time. Without even a warning for goodness sake.” My words tumbled over themselves in my frustration as I waved my hands wildly. “It’s … it’s positively indecent! Y’all get hot – you take off your clothes. You get wet – you take off your clothes. You get dirty – you take off your clothes. Just like that, in front of everyone.” My voice went one octave higher as Daniel raised a perfect eyebrow at my descent into hysteria.

  “Umm, I don’t know.” He shrugged, baffled at my attack. “We just do. It’s hot here. It’s no big deal. Heck, before the missionaries came around, you women would be shirtless too and we’d think nothing of it!” His eyes glinted mischievously at the thought.

  The thought of both of us without shirts had me gasping for air. He was definitely NOT being helpful. Roughly I snatched the water bottle from his grasp and moved to sit on the grassy rise as far away from him as was politely possible. I drank deeply, the cold water a welcome relief. Neither of us spoke as he pulled another bottle from the bag for himself.

  I was focusing so hard on calming the heat wave within, that I barely noticed when he sat down beside me. “You can look now. I have a shirt on. Now that I know you Americans are so easily offended by our Samoan indecency. I’ll be more careful next time not to take my clothes off.” I gave him a sideways glance. His tone was teasing but his expression was dead serious. Thankfully, a singlet now covered most of his upper body.

  Ashamed of my outburst, I stared downwards and muttered into the ground. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just different here and it takes getting used to. I shouldn’t be bringing my cultural hang ups and imposing them on you. Please forget I mentioned it. Of course you can take your clothes off whenever you want to. It’s fine. I want you to…I mean …” I stumbled to a halt, aghast at how my words sounded.

  Daniel’s hoot of laughter was so riotous that it disturbed a scatter of myna birds from the coconut tree beside us.“Aah, so you want me to take my clothes off whenever I want to, ay? You want me to get naked!”

  “NO. Oh, you know what I mean. Stop twisting my words.” My mortification lent added sharpness to my tone, but Daniel wasn’t fazed. He nudged me in the ribs with his elbow.

  “Come on, it’s funny. You know it is!”

  I fought an answering grin, unsuccessfully. “Okay, so you’re right. It was funny.” I relaxed in the sultry twilight.” And I’m still sorry for getting on your case about the naked thing. You gotta remember, you’re talking to a girl who’s been in an all-girls school all her life. No brothers. No close cousins. I haven’t had much contact with boys.” Especially not one as flawless as you, I added silently in my mind.

  Daniel stopped laughing and turned serious.“So, did you have a boyfriend back home?”

  I went silent, wanting desperately to say yes. So then I wouldn’t look so pitiful. The shift in the mood unnerved me. “Umm, not really.”

  There was laughter in his voice. “Not really? What does that mean?”

  “It means no. I guess.” Great. I was aiming for mysterious allure and instead was ending up with extreme idiocy. Taking a deep breath, I struggled to save some measure of cool calmness.

  “It means not lately.” There, that sounded better than the truth. The truth being are you out of your freakin mind of course no boy is gonna pay attention to an overgrown, sour-faced hostile brown girl. Not in a universe peopled by perky cheerful blondes and beautiful blasé brunettes. I hoped he couldn’t read minds. Or detect lies. Or put two and two together and come up with the painful truth of four. I hastened to deflect the focus from me and my boyfriend-less state. “How about you? You gone out with anyone lately?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Oh. Umm, why not?” I deliberately kept my tone light. Friendly. Just two friends. Hanging out. Going for a run. Talking about girls. I could do this.

  He shrugged his broad shoulders and took another gulp of water before answering.

  “Nope. It doesn’t really fit my plans to have a girlfriend right now.” He spoke with such finality that I was left fumbling for a reaction as a cold fist plunged straight into my heart. I thought of the light kisses, butterflies in the sunlight, his hand warm and firm in my mine. The way my breath caught at the sight of him.

  “Oh. Okay. Of course. I get it.” A sophisticated woman would have left it at that. (And then swept him away with her sensuous languor so he would have no choice but to have a girlfriend.) But I couldn’t leave it at sophisticated. No matter how hard I tried. I was too direct for that. “Actually, no. I don’t get it. What are your plans?”

  It was his turn to squirm under the microscope.

  “Umm just stuff. You know. Plans.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  “Like I don’t want to be welding gates for the rest of my life. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my work and I’m lucky to have it. My grandfather taught me all he knew and I loved working with him. But I don’t want the welding shop to be me and Mama’s future. I don’t want rugby to be our future either.” His brow furrowed as he spoke carefully, as if anxious to convey the right thoughts, “I like rugby. I’m good at it. It can open lots of doors for me if I train right. But really what I want to do is Civil Engineering, specifically hydraulics.” He halted and looked at me with some trepidation, as if unsure of my reaction.

  “Wow, you’ve certainly put a lot of thought into your plans. What’s engineering hydraulics??”

  “That’s the branch that focuses on everything to do with water. Stuff like dams, and hydraulic systems, and pipelines, and stuff like that …” his words trailed away as he smiled sheepishly, as if embarrassed by his disclosure. “Water. It’s fascinating to me. All the stuff you can do with it, you know? I mean, here we are on an island surrounded by the stuff, and every rainy season we’re deluged with it – but we don’t hardly do anything with it. Leila – the possibilities are endless. Hydro-power is only barely being tapped here. And there’s just so much pollution of the present water catchments that we’re basically shooting ourselves in the foot.”

  He halted and took a sip of water, his face flushed with excitement. I smiled, wanting him to continue but instead he waved a hand at the flushed evening sky spread out before us.

  “Isn’t it amazing? I keep taking for granted how blessed we are to live here. Look at that, I said I wouldn’t keep you out late and here it is night coming in.”

  I turned and for several minutes we sat in companionable silence on the green hill in the green evening, watching as night softly crept out of her hiding shadows. The quiet school block slumbered behind us, far away we could hear the sounds of people strolling home on the main road. I was surprised to realize how quickly the field had emptied and now it appeared only Daniel and I were left. The sunset’s riot of color had dimmed and the expanse of sky was now a velvet grey blanket upon which night was scattering handfuls of shimmering silver stars. For some reason, Daniel’s choice of words had me vaguely uneasy. Without looking at his profile beside me, I asked quietly. “Are you religious?”

  He shrugged. “I believe in God.” He turned his head to consider me. “How about you?”

  “I never really thought about it until recently. We never had much time for religion when I was growing up. My grandmother wen
t to church. But I always thought it was more of a social status thing, you know? Like, she went because that’s what the upper crust did on a Sunday morning. When Dad was home, we just did lots of outdoors stuff on our weekends. Now I’m here, and I realize that going for a two-mile hike or spending the day at the beach is a bit sacrilegious.”

  His quiet laugh in the evening shadows drew me to turn and face him. His liquid emerald eyes considered me thoughtfully. “And now? What do you think of God now?”

  “I guess, I don’t know. When my dad died, I realized that this can’t be it. This can’t be all that we are. Just here one day, and then gone the next. We’re not just chunks of flesh and bone running along like … like auto bots that get switched off. People are more than that. There’s a spirit, there has to be, and we were somewhere before we got here and there’s somewhere else that we go after. There has to be. He’s still alive, existing, real – somewhere. Call it heaven maybe.” I turned pleading eyes towards him. “Right?”

  I caught the outline of his smile in the growing darkness and he nudged my shoulder with his. “Yes he is. I totally believe that, Leila. Not just that, but nothing can take away the love he had for you. That you have for him. I think, in that way, he’ll always be with you.”

  Others had tried to comfort me with similar words in the past months since my dad’s death, but my grieving heart had not been ready to listen. Tonight was different. Hearing it from Daniel, now, a seed of warmth, of hope, was planted. He continued, “And you’re luckier than most. You have lots of good memories of your dad, your time together. Nothing can ever take that away from you.”

  I nodded slowly. “You’re right.” And remembering what little he had told me about growing up without his father made me eager to change the subject. And ask a question that had been itching at me ever since the day we had first met.

  “Tell me about your tattoo. When did you get it done?”

  If he was surprised at the shift in the conversation, he didn’t let it show. “Three years ago. When I turned sixteen. Kinda my present to myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” He was puzzled.

  “Why did you do it? I mean, it must have taken ages, it’s so beautifully intricate … and I can’t even imagine how much it must have hurt. Why did you do it?” As someone who had to psyche herself up for a booster shot, the thought of willingly subjecting one’s self to hours of needles seemed like insanity.

  He didn’t answer for several minutes and I wondered if I had offended him.

  “Sorry. It’s personal. You don’t have to answer me. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  He smiled at my apology. “No, that’s not it. It’s not some deep state secret or anything. I’m just trying to see if I can explain it in my head to myself and have it make sense before I put it into words.” He took a deep breath before proceeding. “My mom was Tongan and Samoan. But my father was palagi. I never knew him. Don’t even know his name. Don’t know what he looked like. Don’t want to know. He abandoned my mother when she was pregnant. Up and left her. Never looked back. Never thought about what that would be like for her. Only eighteen years old. No husband. Pregnant. Anyways, not long after she gave birth to me, she drowned. They never found her body. Everyone says she killed herself. Apparently she was an amazing swimmer. Spent all her time in the sea, knew all the currents and tides and fishing spots like the back of her hand so no-one could figure out how it was that she drowned.” A gentle smile and a shrug. “So I grew up being half and half. You know what that’s like. For all intents and purposes, I’m Samoan. With a bit of Tongan. I speak it. I live it. But I’m stuck with these eyes and this damn coloring,” he pulled at his hair wryly, “and REAL Samoans love to remind me that I’m not really Samoan. That I had a palagi father who couldn’t even stick around to see me. That I had a mother who was naïve enough to fall for his lies. With not enough good girl morals to keep herself ‘pure’ and chaste.” His tone was light-hearted, but the cut of his words betrayed the depth of his tortured emotions. I almost wished that I hadn’t asked about his tattoo. He took a deep breath and continued. “So you’re wondering what the heck does that have to do with my tattoo! I decided when I was sixteen that I wanted to make a statement to myself about who I am. Yes, I’m afakasi and don’t know my father. I can’t escape that. But I’m tired of being ashamed of that. I decided to stop making excuses for what I am. I designed the pattern myself. See? It incorporates symbols from all of my cultures and it’s got a lot about the people in my life who mean something to me.” He leaned his arm closer to me, pointing out different shapes. I had to peer closely to make out the symbols in the dim light. “These fish and waves – those represent my mother. Mama said she loved the sea. It was her home. What gave her joy. Those leaf patterns are for Mama of course. And the flowers. Here’s fire, my grandfather and our welding. And this koru shape – that’s for New Zealand. Apparently that’s where my father was from. This line is the horizon and a canoe on the waters, you know, for palagi.”

  “No, I don’t know. All I know is that’s what people say to me in town when I can’t understand them. What’s it mean?”

  Daniel’s smile was soft, his eyes alight with understanding.

  “Papalagi – that’s what Samoans use for white people. A long time ago when the first white people came in their boats, Samoans thought they had literally exploded through the sky, so they called them ‘sky bursters.’

  “Oh, I get it now.” Pleased to finally have the word make sense to me, I went back to studying his tattoo. “It’s beautiful. I like it. I wouldn’t ever get one done myself, I’m way too chicken. But this is beautiful.”

  “Thanks. I’m getting myself prepped to get a sogaimiti done later this year.”

  I turned questioning eyes at him. “What’s that?”

  “You know, the full body tattoo that the men get? Have you seen any? It’s not as common as it used to be, but there’s still quite a few around.”

  I blanched as I realized what he was talking about. I had seen pictures of the detailed tattoo that covered a man’s body from waist to past the knee, and I had heard horror stories about people who died from it. “Daniel, are you crazy? Why would you do that? What does your grandmother think about it. Is this her idea?”

  Daniel shook his head. “No, she hates it. Whenever I talk about it she reacts pretty much the same way you are now. It’s the one thing we argue about, well, besides you… She’s still determined to change my mind. But, I’m sure. It’s what I want.”

  Almost stupidly, I asked again, “But why?”

  “Traditionally, a sogaimiti marked the passage of a boy to manhood. And it was the mark of a warrior, one who was brave enough to defend the village, his family. My grandfather had one – a Tongan one, and I would like to honor him and my culture by having one done as well.” He spoke simply and I could see there was no swaying him.

  “May I?” I gestured to his arm, dying to do what I had longed to since the first time I saw him.

  “Sure.” He shrugged.

  Hardly daring to breathe, I reached with a trembling hand and traced the pattern of his tattoo, beginning at the tip of his shoulder and moving down his forearm, dancing over the swirls, the bold geometric designs. Leaning closer, I peered intently at the patterns, seeking their hidden stories. I wished I dared to put my lips on his skin. It felt so … smooth. I was surprised.

  “I thought it would feel bumpy – you know – scratchy. Like raised patterns on your skin.”

  “No. When a tattoo is well done, there’s none of that. The patterns blend with your skin.” His short tone confused me. Was he angry at my invasion of his space? I dropped my hand quickly.

  “Sorry. I was just curious.”

  “Don’t be. Sorry I mean. It’s not you. It’s …” For once he seemed to be struggling with words, oddly ill at ease.

  “What’s wrong?” I wanted to smile at his discomfort. It was … nice … to see him be the one out of sorts for
a change. I peered at him closer. “You’re squirming! What is it? Come on, tell me.”

  He ruffled his hair – a gesture I recognized now as a sign of when he was uncomfortable with something. He took a deep breath, bracing himself. When his words came, they stumbled over each other in a rush to be spoken.

  “I can’t handle it when you touch me like that. I don’t like it – I mean – I like it but I can’t handle it. This. I can’t handle this.”

  There was an awkward silence as I struggled to process the punch to the solar plexus that his words had dealt me.

  “Oh. I see.” But I didn’t. He liked me touching him but he didn’t? What did he really mean? What was he really trying to say? Was he trying to tell me nicely that he didn’t feel anything physical for me? Like those inane teenage romances, was he trying to tell me that he liked me but he ‘just wanted us to be friends’? I wanted to scream with frustration. Arrgh. Why couldn’t people just say what they felt and be done with it? Come to think of it – why didn’t I?