Pieces of Happiness

by Anne Ostby

  Johnny, who’s that? And is she sitting in the sun? Maya wraps her arms around herself and squeezes her eyes shut. The feeling of losing her grip. A door nearly slamming shut before it halts and glides back open. A lamp flickering. Her thoughts grow sheer and full of holes, like veils. She longs for Steinar so much her whole body aches. He would have understood how afraid she is.

  —

  Just an afternoon walk, some fresh air before dinner. The rapid sunset surprises her every day when, at exactly quarter past six, the sun waves goodbye and melts into an orgy of pink and gold in just a few minutes.

  “I’m going for a walk on the beach,” Maya shouts to no one in particular as she takes the four steps down from the porch. “I won’t be long.”

  No one answers, nor does she want an answer. She glimpses Ateca through the kitchen window and briskly waves at her as she strides across the belt of seaweed and dry palm leaves at the edge of the sand. Her legs lead her to the right; the houses she passes glint gold as the afternoon light hits the broad glass louvers that are never closed. A woman sits with a pile of split pandanus leaves next to her on the ground; she’s weaving a mat, and sends a friendly “Bula!” in Maya’s direction. Her hair crowns her head in a thick, frizzy halo. Maya can glimpse the vale ni soqo, the community hall, through the palm trees; a few boys are throwing a rugby ball back and forth in the square right outside. A dog lopes behind her for a while before losing interest and scurrying over to a torn-up plastic bag. She intends to walk around the harbor, through the unplowed field by the garbage dump, as far as what she considers the backside of the village, then back home on the main road that branches out into packed dirt paths leading to the small houses and courtyards. Just before she passes the harbor the sun begins to swoop down the sky, piercing holes in the clouds and forming columns of light. “Our Lord’s fingers”—she suddenly recalls her mother’s name for the slender rays that pierced through gray skies and reinvigorated the earth after soggy afternoons of rain. The columns melt as they reach the water, dissolving into a quivering glitter. It grows dark around her as the light is sucked into the sea; patches of pink and orange dance a few last, passionate steps across the sky. Maya remains standing as the dance keeps twirling inside her. How lovely just to stand here and let herself be overwhelmed, to let the lyrics fade and surrender to the melody.

  “Nau, are you all right?”

  The colors are still blooming inside her when a warm hand grabs her fingers. Maya looks down into a pair of wide eyes. The evening breeze nips at the bangs of the little girl who has called her “auntie,” blows them up into a flurry around narrow, nearly translucent ears. The dress billows like a sail behind her, and Maya recognizes the girl from the Christmas party. It is Maraia, whom Lisbeth gave her necklace to—both Sina and Ingrid muttered about that afterward.

  “Yes.” Maya smiles, delighted to see her. “You’re Maraia, right?”

  “Yes,” the girl replies. Her voice is as bottomless as her eyes. “It means star of the sea.”

  “I’m Maya,” Maya says. “That means dream.”

  Maraia nods.

  —

  They remain where they stand, Maya and Maraia, as an invisible hand squeezes the last colors from the day and drops it empty and used into the sea. In the darkness that begins to shroud them, Maya feels hollow and dizzy, exhausted by the ecstatic play of light. She blinks uncertainly, trying to remember where she was going. But the wonder, the fascination over the godly fingers still teems around her like a mystery; something inside her doesn’t want to be switched back on. Maya tightens her grip around the little girl’s hand, tries to catch her breath. Where was she going again?

  The girl’s eyes sparkle as they look up toward her, two lighthouse beams of irrefutable knowing.

  “I can walk with you,” she says. “Come on, Nau. Let’s go home.”

  —

  It feels safe walking along hand in hand. The ocean’s steady assurances on one side; Maraia on the other, showing Maya where she’s going without saying a word. Home to Kat’s house, no, it’s her house now, where she lives, where they all live. When they arrive, she asks if Maraia wants to come in. “You can have dinner with us if you like,” she says.

  But the Star of the Sea shakes her head. One, two, three quick steps and she’s gone, into the darkness.

  21

  Lisbeth

  Lisbeth looks around. Her gaze follows Ingrid, who gets up from the table. The piece of fabric she’s tied around her waist is faded, and has a faint, indistinguishable border at the hem. Kat’s silver-streaked hair is flying in all directions; she probably hasn’t been near a mirror today. Sina has never had much to show off, Lisbeth thinks, and glances at her friend by the window, but at least she always wears a bra. The saggy bounce under Ingrid’s T-shirt reveals that she’s thrown caution to the wind, and Lisbeth heaves a deep internal sigh: does she really have to let everything go?

  Suddenly Maya appears in the doorway, and Kat welcomes her loudly, in a cheerful voice: “There you are! And we’re almost done eating!” Maya just smiles, and Lisbeth’s critical scowl glides over her stocky frame. She is wearing a shapeless sack dress, bluish green, the hem hitting somewhere midcalf. The straw hat she always wears is plopped down over her flattened curls. She slips into the empty place at the table, and Lisbeth feels something like compassion softening her irritation.

  Still, the fact that Sina has assumed the role of—what should she call it, Maya’s personal assistant?—is above and beyond. The way she’s never more than two steps away from her, the way she drops everything the second Maya puts on her ridiculous hat and wants to go for a walk. Lisbeth had to say something about that today, when Maya announced that she was going out, and she saw that Sina was ready to run after her.

  “You’re not going to leave me to prepare dinner all alone?” she had to say. “It’s Tuesday, that’s our turn!”

  Sina hadn’t replied and had just continued chopping onions, but Lisbeth felt the antagonism like a gust of wind around her. Dear me! As if Maya, a grown woman, couldn’t take a walk on the beach by herself! And now here she is in the doorway; they’re almost done eating, but so what? She just went a bit too far and took her time getting back, right?

  “Long walk, Maya?” she asks casually, and pours some more water in her glass. “Or did you get lost?”

  She doesn’t mean anything by it, she really doesn’t. She herself has gotten lost here several times, especially at night, when it’s hard to navigate between the small, identical houses in the dark. So she’s completely taken aback when Kat snaps across the table: “Leave her alone! She just walked in the door!”

  Lisbeth blinks in surprise; she hadn’t meant to offend! She opens her mouth to explain herself, but Kat shoots her a dirty look and leans forward to create a wall between Maya and the others. “You must be starving,” she says to Maya. “I hope the food is still hot.”

  Sina looks worried; she lifts her arms as if to do something, but they remain suspended in air. Only Ingrid seems unperturbed; she’s put her glasses on, and takes a seat in the chair under the one reading lamp.

  Suddenly Lisbeth can’t stand another minute with any of them. “I’m going out to buy smokes,” she says, and gets up abruptly. “I’m sure Salote will open up for me.”

  —

  Lisbeth appreciates the wonderfully flexible opening hours in Korototoka. The store is open whenever the customer arrives, and there’s no food safety inspector to worry about. When someone stops outside Salote’s pink corrugated metal house and calls out “Kerekere…? Excuse me…?” the door glides open, whether it’s five o’clock or seven or nine-thirty, and Salote will emerge, key in hand. The key opens the padlock on the door of the little side addition, which reveals a counter with a few shelves on the back wall. Salote will slip behind the counter and retrieve a box of the completely melted margarine, or she will brush the ants off a bag of brown sugar, or pull down a box of matches or a package of powdered milk. Or, for L
isbeth, a pack of Benson & Hedges.

  “Vinaka,” Lisbeth says, and sticks the cigarettes and change back in her bag. She lingers for a while outside Salote’s “canteen,” as the small home-operated store is known for some strange reason, observing the proprietress as she gets out the broom and starts sweeping the stairs in the gleam of the light bulb above the door.

  —

  Why did she do it? Why make the turn up toward the church when she could have just gone straight home? When she should have turned around and taken the same way back, straight past the dalo field, past Ateca’s house, the cobbled-together mess of additions and porches that forms the home of Jone and his numerous family members. But Lisbeth doesn’t. She’s suddenly determined to end the evening with a breeze in her hair and a cigarette at the end of the pier, and takes the long way there. Along the main road, past the houses that are mostly dark at this hour. There’s a grog party under way on a bolabola, a wooden deck with a thatched palm roof; a strong, tattooed arm lifts up a bilo. None of the men take notice of Lisbeth. She’s startled by a sudden roar of laughter; she hugs her purse under her arm and sets out up the long, gentle hill.

  It happens right after she passes the chief’s bure and is on her way back down, in the direction of the beach and the crashing waves. The man who comes walking toward her has a knife in his hand, the large cane knife that’s as common in the hands of women as men as they walk to and from their plantations, the grandiose name for the small patches of land that feed their families’ stomachs. The most useful of all tools, with a wooden handle and a blade with a blunt tip, she still feels uncomfortable to see it. Wiry old men with muddy rubber boots and rags wrapped around their heads, gently swaying women bearing woven baskets filled with sweet potatoes and tavioka, barefoot young boys carrying frayed burlap sacks on their shoulders—they all carry it, the sele kava that looks so fearsome. Lisbeth sees it every day; Mosese has it in his hand when he brings dalo or breadfruit to them in the afternoons. Still, she can’t help shuddering. The giant fists, fingers gripping the steel, the pictures she’s seen online and in Maya’s books: threatening poses, the clubs and axes they clutch in their hands. The war paint and the gruesome whale-tooth necklaces. Kat has explained that miniature cannibal forks are among the tourists’ favorite souvenirs here: a carved handle with four long prongs forming a neat square, perfect for scooping brain matter out of crushed skulls. Kat laughed when she told them about it, but Lisbeth felt a chill run through her. It’s been only 150 years since the last person was killed and eaten in this country!

  There’s something about the enormous knife, dangling so carelessly from the man’s hand as he comes up the hill toward her. Something that makes the fear surge in her stomach; Lisbeth suddenly realizes it’s been there growling all along. Now he’s directly in front of her; she can see he’s young, his face is soft and strong. Smooth muscles tense under the skin; blue-black tattoos wind their way around his powerful biceps. He blocks her path with a wide stance. The hand with the knife lifts as the scream rises in her throat.

  22

  Ateca

  Dear God

  It’s as if the light changes color when Maraia and Madam Maya are together. I heard them singing this afternoon. Maraia’s high-pitched voice, and Madam Maya’s with deeper and looser tones. They sat on the floor with two brown and green pieces of fabric between them, which they had folded into the shape of small animals with bodies and heads. “We sing for the turtles,” Maraia said. She must have told Madam Maya about the princesses Tinaicaboga and Raudalice, who were transformed into turtles when they were kidnapped by fishermen from a village on Kadavu. They found a way to escape, but they had to go on living as sea turtles in the bay off the island.

  Maraia knew the song as well, the one the women in the princesses’ village sing to them from the cliffs on the beach.

  The women of Namuana are dressed for grief

  They carry their holy clubs, decorated in strange patterns

  Raudalice, come up and show yourself to us!

  Tinaicaboga, come up and show yourself to us!

  When the women sing, the giant turtles come up to the surface and listen.

  —

  Maraia’s family isn’t from Kadavu. But she has wise eyes and knowledge about many things. And I think it’s good for Madam Maya to get to know the sea. Perhaps she’s the least kaivalagi of them all, Lord? Madam Maya has let so many things go; that’s why she can take in so much more.

  —

  Dear God, thank you for bringing together those who need each other. Thank you for letting Maraia sing with Madam Maya.

  In Jesus’ holy name. Emeni.

  23

  Lisbeth

  Why didn’t she say anything? Why didn’t she rush up the stairs when she got home and shout that she’d been attacked? Kat would have taken charge. She would have found out who he was, who his family was, and the village’s own penal code would have taken care of the rest. Why did she only give a brief nod to Ingrid and Kat on the porch? Said hi to Sina, who stood in the living room with a coffee mug in her hand and questions on the tip of her tongue: “You were gone a while—did something happen?” Instead of telling Sina about the young man with the large knife, she’d forced herself to stop and flash her a calm smile: “Happen? No…I took the long way home, that’s all. It was so nice to take a little evening stroll.”

  She doesn’t know why. All she knows is that there is so much about these people she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand their laughter, their voracious appetite, or their loud, incomprehensible language. But what happened on the road below the chief’s bure wasn’t something she needed to understand. When the young man dropped the knife and grabbed for her purse with both hands, she yelped, hugged her purse closer, and met his eyes at once. What she saw in them startled her. No crazy rage. No thirst for her, no blaze of desire. As he tugged at the purse and tried to yank it off her shoulder, his eyes were just full of regret.

  Lisbeth has never been attacked before. She’s shuddered when reading about elderly people being mugged and beaten up for fifty kroner, but never imagined that she’d find herself standing here in the middle of a gravel road at the outskirts of a Fijian village, struggling stubbornly and silently against a handsome and well-built young man. Who obviously wanted to mug her, but put his knife away instead of using it to threaten her and looked at her with a kind of plea in his eyes: Let’s do this without fighting, please.

  She’d lost her footing and fallen as he snatched the purse from her, turned, and began to run in the other direction. Her fingers grabbed hold of something on the ground: his knife. She automatically raised her arm as he tossed the purse aside and came back. He held her money, a meager clutch of bills, in his hand as he slowly approached, his eyes on the knife she still held high in the air.

  “Give me back my money!”

  She was the first to speak.

  He shook his head. “I can’t. I need it. And I need my knife, you have to give it to me.”

  “Not if I don’t get my money back!”

  He stood right above her and stretched out his hand to help her up, a whiff of sweat coming off his body. She swayed slightly when she got to her feet; his hand was warm, it enveloped hers around the handle of the knife, and she let go without a struggle. Suddenly she felt a lump form in her throat, the tears ran warm and bewildering down her cheeks. Clumsily he patted her on the shoulder: “There, there, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

  I don’t want it to be okay! The words rushed through her head. What I want is to feel your arms around me and your hot breath against my face. I want your eyes to glow as they rest on me, your lips to search for mine.

  Lisbeth’s heart hammered as she swayed in toward his chest. She couldn’t see his face, but felt him go rigid as he pushed her away: “Ma’am, are you okay? Do you want me to walk you home?”

  “No, no, I’m okay. Just give me my purse.”

  She rummaged through it quickly, found a hand
kerchief, and wiped her face. Her cards were still in her wallet, though the young man held her cash in his hand, clearly seeing it as his property no matter how much concern he might have for the woman he’d taken it from.

  Lisbeth didn’t ask for the money again. She slowly extended one finger, aching to touch his round, strong face. For a moment he stood completely still and let her do it. Then he took a step back and the darkness swallowed his polite goodbye: “Ni sa moce, ma’am. Good night.”

  She remained standing, her pulse beating hot and heavy in her throat. “I need the money,” he’d said. The truth, a flash of clarity in her mind: it is about sharing. When those who have so much don’t think to share, this is what follows. The regret in his gaze was not about what had happened. Only that it had happened in a way that scared her.

  Other pieces of the puzzle hurtled through her brain and fell into place: the afternoon she’d complimented Mosese’s wife Litia on her purse, a simple shoulder bag made of straw. Litia had responded by emptying out its contents and handing the bag over, and Lisbeth had stared at her in shock: “No, no, please! I just said I liked it, I didn’t mean…” But Litia had walked away, and Lisbeth was left sitting with the purse in her lap, red-faced and embarrassed.

  She stood motionless in the middle of the road as fragments of Kat’s explanation ran through her mind: how custom and courtesy urge you to honor someone’s admiration for your possession by gifting them with it. Suddenly it all made sense. You’re supposed to share. And we just sit here with our belongings and our money, clinging to it, not sharing. So this is how it has to be.

  —

  She had kept going down to the beach, had walked out to the pier as intended, had lit the cigarette as planned. But it had been so long since she had bought it from Salote’s canteen, half an hour and a whole dream ago.