Swell

by Liz Clark

  Meanwhile, my insides are eating me up. When the bus takes yet another detour, I gush my story to Melanie. She listens intently without interrupting, and after I’ve spilled everything, she takes a deep breath.

  “That’s hard,” she says sincerely. And she shares a simple message: “You know, my guru explains that we must turn our poison into medicine. Buddhists believe that difficult people and situations in our lives are our most precious teachers. They give us the greatest opportunities to practice our virtues.”

  “Really?” I reply with tears in my eyes.

  “Yes, by doing this, we can turn our adversities into opportunities to grow. It is the work of a lifetime, but applying this teaching always helps change my perspective.”

  Her words are a beam of light piercing the darkness in my mind. The negative cloud begins to lift as I finally see a positive use for my irritating and inescapable situation. Melanie shares more about her own journey, expanding on these principles. Between her humble presence and the intriguing information, I don’t mind that the bus is stopped again, waiting for more passengers.

  I thank her as we finally pull up at the store more than an hour later. I step off the bus feeling like a different person. I have a new mission.

  Gaspar has finished his shopping and he greets me with an ice cream in his hand. “What takes you so long?” he asks while licking his melting bar. “¡Que día hermoso para pasear en bicicleta!” (What a beautiful day for a bike ride!)

  His arrogant glee would have irritated me earlier that morning, but now I am armed with my new secret weapon.

  Practice my virtues. Practice my virtues. I repeat in my head. “Sí, what a beautiful day!”

  He looks at me sideways, scrunching his brow, expecting a frown or a harsh reply. I walk past him, smiling, in my invisible new armor. Either I am going to be miserable for all of cyclone season, wishing he would go away, or accept my unwanted reality and step up to the bat.

  I can’t believe how quickly the situation turns around. I feel renewed and empowered. I challenge myself to remain calm in the face of what previously provoked anger or sadness. Now that I have a way to use the situation as a personal challenge, I turn it into a game.

  I spend more time with Melanie. She teaches me some meditation techniques and gives me a poster that interprets a well-known Buddhist text—Eight Verses for Training the Mind—to hang in my cabin. Among the verses are avowals to never think of oneself as better than others; avoid all negative emotions; offer victory to jealous people when they treat you badly; cherish difficult people as precious treasure; and avoid worldly concerns like gain-loss, pleasure-pain, praise-blame, fame-dishonor.

  So, difficult people and situations are actually the path to personal growth. This notion makes the elusive goal within reach. If challenges are the tool for liberation, then all I have to do is use the experiences that life provides to keep refining myself and becoming more like that enlightened person on my list of WHO I WANT TO BE. This makes sense!

  Nuclear Bombs and the Reset Button

  While enjoying my new perspective and waiting for a shipment of propane to arrive, I put some miles on my bike—riding between the scattered villages named for the original World War II stations. Men wrap their lower half in bright cloth lavalavas, and women wear handmade tibuta shirts and skirts. The stilted kiakias (homes) are built mostly from parts of coconut palms. Communication is a challenge, but the I-Kiribati are both welcoming and creative. The employees at the town hall even make me a makeshift desk one afternoon so I can use their Internet connection.

  Although the peoples of Kiribati speak Gilbertese and differ in culture from those I’d encountered in French Polynesia, they share some grievous historical similarities. Alongside colonization (mostly by the British in Kiribati), evangelical missionaries did extensive work in the Pacific Islands starting in the 1800s. Seven churches line the main road within the span of five miles, serving a population of about 2,000. The missionaries forced Western beliefs and customs upon the indigenous populations and forbade singing and dancing for a long, dark period. This interrupted the passage of the native peoples’ oral history. Their relationship to nature changed too: Reverent and long-standing resource management practices, like fishing limits, gradually disappeared. They now appear stuck between the two culturally conflicting worlds, and most families and villages are divided by the small discrepancies in the various forms of Christianity.

  And although the nuclear testing here was much less extensive than the horrors the French inflicted on the Polynesian islands—exploding around 180 nuclear bombs in the Tuamotu Archipelago between 1966 and 1996—both the United Kingdom and the United States unleashed nuclear weapons on this island, Kiritimati, in the late fifties and early sixties. It was also used as a strategic base for the Allies during World War II.

  Nuclear fallout from the uncontained explosions spread across the Pacific, and continues to be linked to health problems. I was spooked by the green clouds that linger daily above the island, thinking they had something to do with radiation residuals, but Henry quickly assured me that they are caused by a reflection off the turquoise color of the atoll’s enormous, shallow lagoon. “We can’t see the leftover radiation,” he said, “but it’s here.” A UK official is currently here managing ongoing nuclear “cleanup,” but after seeing him toss plastic trash right out his car window, I lost faith in his efforts.

  One sunny afternoon after filling my water jugs ashore, I trudge back toward Swell, using my bike as a dolly to push the ten-gallon load back toward the pier. I hear a cacophony of sounds coming from below a low, broad-leafed tree and swerve right to find a small group of kids crowded into the shade, all heartily jamming on instruments made from trash.

  A boy of about ten is drumming on an old, tin powdered-milk container with a broken fork and a small stick. Another plucks a string bass made from a plastic jug, a long stick, and fishing line. A tall skinny girl, maybe eleven, drags a small plastic soda bottle across an old piece of corrugated aluminum roofing. A smaller girl uses an empty beer can filled with pebbles as a shaker. The last member of the ragtag band, a tiny girl who can’t be more than four, is sending bold huffs of air through an orange trombone-shaped flower, making it toot wildly. I clap madly when they finish. The beer can is passed to me as they start in again. Like everywhere I’ve sailed, children don’t care about language differences or skin color; they’re always excited to make friends.

  All of the I-Matangs pitch in to help Chris get through his implausible hull repair. He manages to get the boat hoisted out of the water and delivered to a grove nearby. My contribution is mostly in the realm of moral support and hydration, arriving with some encouraging words in the afternoon, and climbing the surrounding coconut trees for “atoll Gatorade,” as he calls it. From up in the tree I watch I-Kiribati men sing merrily as they collect sap from the flowering shoots of coconut palms; they’ll ferment it and turn it into toddy, the local alcoholic beverage.

  Gaspar continues to make an effort to rekindle our romance, and although it’s flattering, I resist. Until one evening after a little party at Henry’s bar, I see the silhouette of Gaspar’s hair under a tree beside the road. Feeling confident with my new knowledge, I stop and sit down next to him without saying a word. I don’t move away when he puts his arm around me. We lean back into the sand together, and stare up at the stars. My new outlook makes me think being closer with him again will be okay. It could be part of practicing my virtues and learning to control my emotions.

  “You know, Lissy, maybe I understand you mejor ahora (better now). Maybe we can at least be amiguetes (friends),” he offers.

  “Maybe,” I tease, appreciating his effort and openness. We ride double on my bike back toward the anchorage, him pedaling and me on the handlebars.

  “Lissy!” I hear outside Swell the next morning. “¿Quieres nadar conmigo?” (Want to swim with me?) I don my fins and we swim off to explore the nearby coast. Although he’s awkward in the sur
f, he has a dancer’s grace underwater—calm and confident as he kicks down to the seafloor to point out an octopus or conch. We marvel at multicolored sponges, gaze at swirling packs of baitfish, and dodge wily barracudas. A fart slips out when I’m fifteen feet down and the bubbles float up toward the surface; Gaspar’s mask explodes with laughter. On the next dive down, he reaches out to me and we kick on together, hand in hand.

  The morning swim turns into pancakes. Pancakes turn into a siesta. The siesta into sweet love—but this time with the notion that nothing is forever. We don’t need to own each other, nor do we owe each other anything besides honesty. With fewer expectations, we start over.

  Don’t Ponder Others

  After an overnight passage, Swell and Octobasse ghost along, side by side, in light following winds at dawn. The next island, one hundred and fifty miles north, welcomes us around midmorning with a slack tide at the pass, a pod of leaping dolphins, and local men criss-crossing the turquoise waters in one-man sailing canoes, out for their morning catch.

  I navigate Swell through the pass and into a little bay, then circle around looking for the best place to anchor. The water is a silty turquoise, making it difficult to judge its depth. As I’m preparing to drop the hook, a blue dinghy comes charging over from a sailboat tied to the sunken barge with a slender middle-aged woman driving. She introduces herself as Loreen and before I can get a word in, she launches into informing me that she and her husband have been here for over a year, telling me what the island’s like, and advising me on who I should and shouldn’t talk to. Swell is drifting into shallow waters before she’s even taken a breath.

  “Thank you, Loreen. Now I need to get anchored,” I say.

  She races off toward Octobasse and I hear her repeat her spiel to Gaspar. I’m relieved when my anchor sets, so I can go rest; my stomach is still in knots from a bout of food poisoning the night before. I wake to the sound of violent splashing an hour later. Baitfish? A shark? I scurry topside to see Loreen in a pink, full-body rashguard and matching swimcap doing a grossly exaggerated butterfly stroke beside my boat. I duck down, pretending not to see her, and quickly retreat to napping.

  When I launch the dinghy the following day, Gaspar and I head off to check in with the officials and explore the main village. The island has no running water, no phones, no Internet, no airport, no toilets, no doctors, and certainly no Target or West Marine. There is a modest cement government building, a post office, a basketball court, and some shaded benches and tables belonging to the cruise liner that stops in for a few hours once a month. There’s also a dark, musty little “store” with one row of shelves offering sugar, soy sauce, some scary-looking cans of beef, weevil-filled bags of rice and flour, and Australian beer. Supply ships pass even less frequently here. I’m not complaining. This is why I wanted to come here. To simplify. Get away from it all. Work on myself. Find some peace.

  I sit outside the immigration office staring down at my scarred and callused feet while Gaspar completes his paperwork. Finally, a towering, barefoot man calls me inside and I hand over my passport and boat documents. He eyes me suspiciously.

  “Not same boat? Only you?” he questions, furrowing his tall, tanned brow.

  “Yes, sir,” I reply respectfully.

  He retorts with an exaggerated exhale. I look back at him blankly and shrug my shoulders. His brow relaxes and his full lips part into a giddy, half-moon grin. He prattles off something in Gilbertese to the two men sitting cross-legged on a table behind him. They both turn and stare.

  “Mauri,” I offer. Gilbertese for “hello.”

  “You the first girl come alone on yacht,” he explains. I accept the honor with a nod, pleased to provide them with a new perspective of a woman. Here, a female captain is about as common as a dog flying a plane back home.

  After we’re done, Gaspar and I wander around the village, admiring the thatch-roofed homes, communal seaweed and fish-drying systems, and handcrafted canoes that line the lagoon. By chance, we meet another Spaniard. He runs the generator that provides electricity to the government buildings and a few homes and is married to a jovial Kiribati woman. They invite us to a barbeque that evening. After our tour, we help them prepare food and sip their homemade coconut toddy. By the time night falls, a dozen local friends have gathered around playing music and chatting merrily.

  And then Loreen and her husband appear. Loreen, wearing a shockingly short skirt, snaps at me for not having come to see her yet. I start to explain that we’ve been taking it easy because of the food poisoning.

  Before I can finish my sentence, she cuts me off and starts pummeling me with questions about how I got my boat and where I have sailed. When I begin to answer, she looks away uninterested. I escape as soon as possible, and watch her attach herself to Gaspar, rubbing her body on his and throwing her head back with laughter. For the rest of the evening I hang out with the kids, slinking to the other side of the room every time Loreen nears. Gaspar sees through her quickly, but his social cunning is better than mine. He knows it’s better to keep the dangerous ones close.

  After we’ve eaten, Gaspar and I walk out to the village basketball court to shoot some hoops in the moonlight. We start a game of one-on-one, but halfway through, Loreen appears. She runs around the court trying desperately to block the ball, all the while asking us inappropriate questions and insisting we come to her boat for dinner the following night.

  Without Melanie’s influence, I would have quickly made it clear that I wasn’t looking to be friends, maybe even let an elbow fly at her irritating mouth. I refrain, though, wondering how this clearly difficult person fits into my path to enlightenment.

  The next evening, I drag my feet getting ready for dinner. I am dreading an evening in a confined space with that woman. Gaspar convinces me to consider it entertainment, and so off we dinghy to the South Wind. Loreen comes out of the boat in a shirt that she’s wearing as a dress. A necklace of enormous pointy urchin spines hangs around her neck. She cracks a witchy smile through excessive compound, eyeliner, and mascara. Dinner is leftover quiche and octopus salad.

  As a conversation about sailing ping-pongs between Gaspar and Richard, Loreen’s husband, she somehow always finds something negative to interject about her “evil sister” or the exorbitant slip fees in Hawaii ... The Kiribati people are ignorant and have terrible hygiene ... The weather here is unbearably hot ... It’s impossible to get any decent food ... Richard is pleasant, though, and even offers me one of the Kiribati fishing hats he was given.

  As the evening winds down, questions start to come our way. How long have we been together? Where had we met? What are our plans? I let Gaspar do the talking. He pulls me onto his lap, elaborating about how wonderful I am and how we’ve found true love and decided to sail on together.

  “We both want to have niños (kids),” he carries on, exaggerating. Loreen grows visibly displeased. I’m fairly certain she hoped we’d join them in some sort of sexual group escapade.

  I begin yawning profusely and thank them for the meal. Clearly disappointed, she offers tea or more wine, but we repeat our thanks and stand up to leave. As we say goodbye she dives toward Gaspar to kiss him on the lips and he turns his head just in time.

  After that, I decide to politely steer clear of Loreen. If she’s a spiritual teacher, I’m not ready for that class. But the more I avoid her, the more she forces her way near. While Gaspar and I are on a drift dive in the pass, she shows up hunting for octopus. We wave courteously and swim the other way, eventually drifting up onto a strip of sand to bask in the sun. Not more than five minutes pass, and here she comes with an octopus on her spear, beating it madly on the rocks nearby. She continues her daily butterfly swims alongside Swell, crashes our potluck dinner with some newly arrived cruisers, and always tries to head off any sort of exploratory mission that Gaspar and I set off on.

  Finally, I’m fed up. Maybe I’m taking the wrong approach? Maybe, instead, I should just go talk to her? Gaspar tries to d
iscourage me.

  “She’s loca (crazy), Lissy. Nada (nothing) you can do,” he says. But Melanie’s wisdom has already helped me so much. I’m convinced it can help her, too. So I dinghy over to the South Wind one quiet afternoon.

  “Hello,” I call. “Anyone here?”

  “Yes, hello,” I hear Loreen say. “Come in.”

  I step aboard and push through the screen with a sinking feeling. I reach the bottom step and she comes around the corner stark naked. I realize my mistake too late. I want to turn and run. She looks as bitter and shriveled as a rancid Slim Jim. I pity her, but she scares me a little too.

  “Hi, Loreen. I just wanted to see if we could talk. But if you’re busy, I can come back another time,” I stutter, backing out the stairs and staring up at the ceiling.

  “No, no. It’s fine. Have a seat.” She ushers me toward a seat and sits down across from me—still totally nude. Sweat beads form on my forehead and upper lip.

  “It’s just ... well ... I feel like there’s an odd tension between us. We are both going to be here for a while longer, so I was hoping we could clear it up.”

  “Oh re-e-e-e-e-ally, what do you mean?” she says in an exaggerated drawl.

  I mention her passive-aggressive comments, the way she acts toward Gaspar, when she pulled up her skirt on the basketball court, and how it feels like she shows up wherever we are.

  “What are you talking about? I haven’t done anything wrong. How could you accuse me ...” Her volume climbs to a yell.

  “Sorry, no, I didn’t mean that you had done anything wrong, it just seems like ... hmmm ... well ... I don’t know ... Is there something troubling you?”

  She bursts into tears and between sobs launches into stories from her youth, her bare chest heaving. It turns out that she has been depressed for years and was hoping I would be her friend.

  “Please,” I break in. “Let me just share some wisdom that a friend recently told me.”

  I explain Melanie’s ideas as best I can, and how she might try to apply them. But Loreen continues, as if she didn’t hear any of it.