by Anne Ostby
A sound by my side, a tiny movement. Through my sunglasses I peer down at the girl with the caramel hair. “You’re quiet, Nau,” says the Star of the Sea. Her serious face sends a ripple of joy through me.
Maraia walks on without another word, and I follow. Her feet know where they’re going. We wander past the other boats ready to set sail, toward the place where the row of coconut palms is broken by a dark, swampy stretch of mangrove forest. Over to the spot under a tree where a larger boat was docked that night, shored up, with a scratched-up hull. A boat that cast a shadow long enough for a person to disappear in, even though the moon shone balolo-big and the beach was full of people.
Maraia halts and squats down in a position my knees recognize. This was where I didn’t sit. This was where I didn’t see Niklas lean forward with his camera. This was where I didn’t shout out when he stumbled and fell. This was where I didn’t cry for help when his body sank into the water and remained there.
Maraia’s eyes glitter like golden grains of sand in the sunlight. When I hesitate, she pats the ground next to her, and I sit down. We say nothing to each other. Behind my open eyes the film reel starts playing again, the man with the camera bag on his back. Ateca’s babbling voice: He would have shouted if he needed help, right? But no one heard anything. You have to believe it was his heart.
Beside me, Maraia draws in the sand with a twig. A heart, she carves the lines deeper and deeper. I watch her fingers grasping the stick, the motion of her delicate wrist. Suddenly she turns to me with a knowing look. “No one heard anything,” she says.
I keep my gaze fixed on the heart in the sand and feel the sun burn my back.
—
We walk back to the house together, a narrow, strong hand in mine. My head is numb, the thoughts spinning around in there without shapes or words. Maybe this is how it is for Maya? The intense feeling that something is happening; you know, you want to, but you can’t quite grasp it. Most of all, I feel the need to cry. As if something between Maraia and me has been established and destroyed at the same time. As if we know something about each other that we’ll never discuss.
We stop for a moment at the bottom of the stairs leading to the veranda. “Do you want to come in?” She nods, and we walk hand in hand up the four steps. I don’t want to let go. I want her tiny, warm fingers to remember the pressure of mine. Ours. Mine and Niklas’s.
I take her to the office nook in the living room. It sits on the corner of the table, the paperweight that held his days together: a five-armed starfish in blue-painted wood. The arms with soft and rounded tips, worn smooth by his fingers. Patiently guarding inflow and outflow, everything that comes and goes. Five fingers on a hand, five women in a house.
I place the star in Maraia’s hand. “It’s yours,” I say. Her fingers close around it, embracing its sleek, comfortable shape.
“Yes,” she says. “I’m the Star of the Sea.”
—
We find Maya in the kitchen. She has a mug sitting on the counter in front of her and is slowly and deliberately removing all the contents of the lower shelf in the pantry. Tea bags, sugar, spices. Honey, salt, oatmeal. Ateca brushes the floor in careful sweeps; she keeps an eye on Maya, who is totally consumed by what she’s doing. The shelf is empty now, everything’s lined up on the counter.
I ask Maya whether she’s looking for something. “Is it the lemon tea you want? I think we ran out.”
Maya looks at me and shakes her head. “No” is all she says. She turns back to the counter and stares at the items she’s removed. Ateca has stopped sweeping. Everything halts as we wait for Maya. She places the empty mug back on the shelf. Then she turns toward Maraia and smiles. “I can show you something,” she says. “I’m a teacher. I can show you something.”
She walks out of the kitchen, and Maraia follows. Her small hand keeps a tight grip on the blue starfish. I peek over at Ateca, but she doesn’t return my gaze. Simply puts down her broom and starts cleaning up the tea and bags of spices.
I head back to the office nook. The pile of papers, letters and bills, spills across the desk. I gather them together, retrieve a smooth white stone from below the porch, and place it on top of the stack.
—
Ingrid has printed out a few articles she thinks I should read; I unfold the top one. Reduces the risk of blood clots! she’s written in the margins in her large block letters. It is a piece about flavonoids in cocoa, how they increase the oxygen supply to the brain, making you more awake and alert. I crumple up the piece of paper and toss it in the wastebasket. Lisbeth has already noted this.
I pick up the next article, but put it down again without reading it. I feel the restlessness prickle in my body. Where was Maya taking Maraia?
The door to Maya’s room is half open. The two of them are seated on the floor in there. A large atlas lies open across Maya’s lap; her strong, crooked index finger traces the outline of Viti Levu on a map of the South Pacific.
“The ocean is big,” Maraia says.
Maya solemnly nods. “The island is only a little bigger than my finger.”
“And we’re even smaller.”
Maya agrees: “We’re smaller than a tiny dot.”
“Is that because the ocean is so big?”
Maya contemplates the question. “Yes,” she says at last. “We’re so small because the ocean is so big.”
The shuffling footsteps behind me tell me it’s Sina. I quickly pull back from the door frame, as if to shield the pair’s solemn game. But Sina isn’t as fiercely protective of Maya as she once was. The revelation, the confession, the announcement—however she chooses to think of it—has made her less fierce. Or, not fierce…less sharp, maybe. Not as brusque and prickly as before. It’s most obvious in her relationship with Lisbeth, of course. The balance between them has shifted. But Sina doesn’t act like a repentant sinner—on the contrary. It almost seems like she’s relieved; maybe that’s what happens when old secrets are set free? Her jaw is unclenched, the frown lines on her forehead are less deep than they were.
I turn toward Sina, and to distract her from the two behind me on the floor, I ask her whether she wants to sit outside for a while. “Do you know where Lisbeth is, by the way?”
She shrugs, and there’s no edge to her voice. “On the computer, I think. She was going to write to her son.”
—
Maybe it’s the thought of Niklas’s blue starfish in Maraia’s hand. Or maybe it’s because Sina sits down in the chair closest to the door, where he always sat. Whatever it is, he’s there, his presence stronger than I’ve felt it in a long time. My nose tingles, liquid pools in my eyes and in my throat, and I can tell I’m going to cry, right there, in front of Sina. She leans toward me, shocked.
“Kat, what is it? Kat?”
I shake my head, force my throat open. “It’s nothing, I…I miss Niklas,” I finally say. It feels safe, like a line from a movie. I’m allowed to say that I miss Niklas.
Sina nods. “I miss Armand,” she says.
I think to myself that’s not the same thing.
“And now he’s not just mine anymore.”
In a flash, I see what she means. Now that everything’s out in the open, he belongs to everyone. I think that I should say something consoling, but Sina continues.
“I wish I had another kid.” She reaches out her hands and grabs my knees. “Do you? Do you wish you had kids?”
I stare at her, stunned. Did she actually say that? Grumpy, crusty Sina entering my most intimate and private territory. Do I wish I had kids? Maraia’s earnest face flickers before my eyes, the sound of her silver-bell voice rings in my ears. No one heard anything. My Star of the Sea.
Sina continues frantically, far beyond tact and sensitivity now. Her eyes are feverish and distant at the same time. “For years I thought Armand was enough. Everything he was going to become.” She pulls back her hands and places them on her stomach, which bulges out under the loose shirt. “Maybe, if he’d be
en a girl.”
“If I’d had kids, I would rather have had a girl,” I say, struggling to keep my voice even. “Someone to see myself in, somehow. A reflection of my face in the mirror.”
Sina looks straight into my eyes. “Was it Niklas who never wanted it?”
Is she really asking me these questions? I look at the hands of this new Sina, and my palms fold over my belly in the same way, resting on the muscle in there that has never gotten to show how it can contract and stretch. Was it Niklas who never wanted it? There are so many things wrong with the question that it’s impossible even to search for an answer.
He never said it, that he didn’t want children. He didn’t have to, it was clear it would never make it far enough up the list. It would always be at the bottom of the agenda, not a priority. I’ve often thought that my own weakness was to blame. My need to be the person I thought he wanted: the patient, compassionate, selfless Kat. Was I afraid to lose my status as equal partner in Project Save the World? Could we have become parents, together, if I’d been brave enough to say it? Niklas, I want children. I want to have children with you.
How can I answer Sina’s question? “I don’t know.” That’s the truth. I don’t know the answer, because I never asked.
How can I tell her about the suspicion that grew in me, slowly and reluctantly, about the man I’d risked everything for? For whom villagers in Malawi and women’s associations in Pakistan held speeches, and to whom they had waved tearful goodbyes when he left? A certainty that grew out of tiny pieces of evidence: her strangely narrow ears, almost without earlobes. The caramel-golden shimmer in her hair, the short, wide nose. Her mother, Sai, who never came near our house. When was it that the pieces fused together into a kind of conviction? One that placed the words on my tongue, ready to be hurled at him: “Maraia is yours, isn’t she?” Or was I enjoying the fact that I was the one who knew? That was something I could explain to Sina. The power of being the one to know and not say. She’d understand that.
But that’s not how it was. I wasn’t out for revenge, I didn’t want to wound. Not Niklas, not anyone. It was the disappointment. The sorrow that he knew, and turned away. The pain in seeing the pitiful side of the big Mister Niklas. That he was no better than any other Harald Høie.
Didn’t he trust me enough? We could have made it work! Couldn’t he have allowed me that, allowed us that? The joy over the Star of the Sea, we could have made so much room and time for it. Why didn’t he trust me?
“It’s best for everyone this way,” was the answer I got the night I finally asked. No, I didn’t ask. I just told him that I knew. And that all I wanted was for us to share it. Share Maraia, like we’d shared everything else.
At first he looked shocked, almost scared. Then embarrassed. Defensive. I was astonished by my own reaction—I felt myself wanting to stroke his hair, cheer him up, tell him it was all going to be okay. I had to shove the lifelong team-player Kat aside, and heard my own voice, shrill and unfamiliar: “How could you not say anything? I could have lived with it, Niklas, I could have turned it around! We could have been…godparents, something! Instead of this…cowardice!”
He still could have saved it. Could have stood up, could have said he would try, that he would talk to Sai. We could have discussed it, continued to be Team Kat & Niklas. Found solutions that worked in the light of day. We could have turned it around. It could have become something good.
But instead he left. Stood up from his chair and spoke right past me. “You’re hysterical and exhausted. We can’t talk when you’re like this. I’m going to bed.”
“You robbed Sai of her husband!” I wanted to scream. “Do you think it was a coincidence that he left? You robbed Maraia of a father! You robbed me of—”
But he had already closed the door behind him. His backpack with the camera equipment stood ready in the corner. And that night the balolo arrived with the full moon.
—
I fold both hands across my stomach again. A mirror image of Sina sitting opposite me. She stopped waiting for an answer long ago.
46
Ateca
Dear God
I can’t sleep tonight. The nuts on the vonu tree are hard as turtle shells and slam when they hit the ground. Vilivo hasn’t come home tonight, and the screech of an owl makes my heart grow small and tight with fear. Help me watch over everything. Tell me what to do.
Aren’t all waves part of the same ocean, Lord? The ladies’ village lies by another sea, a much colder one. But all stories mix together in the water; they all share their secrets. So the waves off the coast of Madam Kat’s village must know what’s happened on a beach here in Fiji. Everything is connected, and the ocean doesn’t lie.
Balolo will come in three days, when the moon is full again. Madam Ingrid wants to come out to see it, she’s the only one in Vale nei Kat who wants to go. It was easier last year, the ladies were new to Korototoka and they didn’t know what balolo was. But now Madam Ingrid thinks she knows everything. I’ve told her that iTaukei don’t like to have kaivalagi with them when the balolo comes. I know you’ll forgive me for that lie.
—
I’ve asked you many times, Lord, whether it was a dream I had that night. The balolo night two years ago, when the sea was rainbow-colored under the boats and the women ran around on the beach with buckets and pots and pans. I meant what I said to Madam Kat, that no one had seen anything. That no one had heard Mister Niklas cry out, that he must have fallen, his heart must have stopped. But it’s in my dreams that I see things most clearly, Lord. What has happened and what must be done. And it’s not always that we hear with our ears or see with our eyes. Sometimes the waves wash away what we see; it doesn’t have enough soil stuck to its roots to stay planted.
Was it real, Lord? Or was it a spirit you showed me in a dream? A shadow of a figure in a plaid shirt disappearing into the darkness behind a boat.
Was it you who gave me a sign? Should I tell Madam Kat about it? Please, Lord, show me what to do.
In Jesus’ holy name. Emeni.
47
Ingrid
Ingrid’s always been good at accepting the facts and moving on. She registers that the equilibrium in Kat’s vale is disturbed but keeps on with the daily life she’s built for herself: tending to the vegetable garden, pouring the chocolate into molds in the sweet house, and driving the truck—she’s become the regular driver in the house now that Vilivo is gone. Ateca was beside herself with worry the morning after Ingrid dropped the boy off at the bus station in Rakiraki. How could Ingrid have known he hadn’t told his mother he was leaving before getting a ride with her? He’d chatted away, told her about the job opportunity he’d heard of, something about a bridge construction project. It didn’t occur to her for a moment that he hadn’t told Ateca.
Of course she’s noticed that the balance of power between Sina and Lisbeth has shifted: one is more even-tempered than before, the other holds her head up high in a new way, as if the judgment of others no longer concerns her. Best not to remark on anything, Ingrid thinks. Just let things be.
But Wildrid inside her wants more. The drama, the undercurrents of shock, betrayal, and shame, it energizes her and makes the thoughts swarm in her head. She keeps a close eye on Sina, delighted that her sullen scowl is gone, and feels a pang of joy to see that Lisbeth appears not to give a damn. Wildrid wraps an orange scarf around her head and removes the bra under her T-shirt before strolling out to the porch in the night air. Offers up a bottle of wine she’s brought from her trip into town.
“Are we celebrating something?” Kat asks, and reaches her glass out.
Ingrid pours and shrugs. “That we’ve come this far, maybe? Kat’s Chocolate. We’ve created something here. Isn’t that worth celebrating?”
Kat raises her glass. “It is,” she says. “It definitely is.”
“A toast to the chocolate ladies!” Lisbeth chimes in. “Plain and simple!”
Her tone is so carefree that Ingrid
has to look at her twice.
Sina looks like she’s about to speak, but shuts her mouth again. Wildrid spots Lisbeth’s cheerfulness and slams the bottle down on the table. “We have to have a taste!” she says exuberantly. “A little piece of happiness right now, we’ve earned that much!” She scurries across the courtyard, opens the door of the sweet house, and returns with a tray of small, elaborately wrapped packages in shiny cellophane, which she sets down in the middle of the table. “Eat, drink, and be merry!” she says gleefully, and puts a piece of chocolate in her mouth. She closes her eyes as she inhales the sweet delight, lets it flow through her whole body. Licks her lips and lets out a sigh. “That delicious feeling,” she says. “Again and again.”
Kat unwraps a piece, folding the cellophane between her fingers as she chews slowly and thoughtfully. “Who would have thought,” she says, “that we could make this happen? It tastes like…”
“Success!” Lisbeth chimes in. “It tastes like success!” She puts a shiny dark piece in her mouth and smacks her lips as she tastes with an expert’s tongue. “Round and deep,” she says. “With a trace, just a tiny hint, of coconut. The sound of crashing waves and wind in the palm trees.”
“You can hear the chocolate?” Sina teases her. She pops a piece into her mouth. Something gentle spreads across her face; the tense frown lines soften. “It’s good,” she says. There’s surprise in her voice, as if it’s a discovery she’s making in this very moment. “Damn, it’s good.”
Maya sits with a wrapped piece of chocolate in her hand; her fingers can’t quite remember how to unwrap it. Wildrid grabs it and quickly rips off the cellophane. “Here, Maya. You have to celebrate a little too!” Maya carefully closes her mouth around the aromatic piece; a tiny quiver in her lips as she lets it melt on her tongue. The chocolate leaves brown smears at the corners of her mouth as she smiles. “It tastes like happiness,” she says. “Like everything we ever wanted.”