I hurried home to get ready for the evening, debating whether to make up some phony destination—a Rec Hall dance or a movie at the club—or tell my parents where I really was going.
My mother was setting the table when I walked in the door, my father putting finishing touches on a bowl of fresh pineapple, mango, papaya, and banana slices. I looked around for something to do, not so much to maintain the usual flow of our family’s cooperative efforts as to shore up my image as a helpful, obedient daughter.
“How was the boat?” my mother asked.
“Boat? I haven’t been on anyone’s boat,” I blurted, forgetting, in my quandary over Lee’s invitation, all about the Australis. Then trying to cover my fumble, “Oh, you mean the ship. It was fine. Big. Pretty. Fine.”
“Say,” my father said, “speaking of boats, you’ll never guess who I met today. That boy who’s sailing around the world. He was down at the market when I was buying fruit. Seems like a very nice young man. He asked if I knew where there was a Laundromat, and I told him he could come over here to use our washer and dryer any time.”
Whatever remaining resentments I had toward my father swirled away like dirty wash water, and in flowed a new current of fantasy material. In my mind, I was still pledged to Dick, even if he didn’t know it. But Dick was work, Dick was trouble, Dick was flirting with Kathi. Lee, though I hadn’t met him yet, at least had the advantage of my father’s approval. No harm in exploring the possibilities while I worked things out with Dick.
After dinner I changed into denim shorts and a red-and-white striped pullover that came as close to looking nautical as anything in my wardrobe; then I headed to Val’s to meet the other girls. On the way to the boat basin, Val and I bombarded Suzi and Kathi with questions about the young mariner. The authoritative tone of their answers irritated me.
“Oh, and you didn’t ask, but his cats are named Suzette and Joliette,” Kathi volunteered.
I thanked her for the information instead of smacking her like I wanted to.
It was dark when we reached the marina, but Kathi and Suzi had no trouble leading us to the slip where Dove was moored. Dick, Eric, and another schoolmate, Ed, were already aboard the sloop, which seemed scarcely larger than the rowboats my cousins and I used to paddle around the lake where their parents had a summer cottage. Sitting with the other boys, wearing a blue-and-white flowered Hawaiian shirt and tattered pants, was the sandy-haired “Schoolboy Sailor,” as newspapers called him.
He flashed the smile I’d memorized from magazine photos: unassuming and lopsided. Then he disappeared into the cabin and popped up with bottles of beer in both hands. The boys took them; we girls all declined. Lee crawled back onto the deck and squeezed between Suzi and Kathi, who’d inserted herself beside Dick before I could claim the spot. The boys continued the conversation they’d started before we arrived, asking Lee all about the boat and his adventures at sea.
Dove’s sway felt like the little dance that mothers do to soothe their babies, shifting from one foot to the other. For accompaniment, riggings clanged against masts, and waves sloshed against the sailboat’s sides. The motion and repetitive sounds put me into a trancelike state. Dick acted calmer, too, nodding and smiling as Lee talked. I wanted him to smile at me. I directed one of my subtle signals his way. He didn’t notice.
I tried to focus on the boys’ conversation, groping for a sentence or phrase onto which I could attach a tiny barnacle of intelligent comment. But I knew nothing about sextants and genoas, and any question I could think to ask about Lee’s voyage seemed shallow and fawning. Finally, I blurted, “Where are your cats?” and immediately wished I’d come up with something better.
Lee, still caught up in boy talk, barely looked my way. “Down below, I guess.”
Then Kathi spoke up. “Hey! Do you know what a cat’s favorite color is?”
Lee gave her the magazine smile. “No, what?”
“Purrrrr-ple.”
Dick, whose arm rested on the back of Kathi’s seat, slipped it around her, gave her a squeeze, and laughed like she’d said something truly hilarious. Ed smiled and nodded. Eric said, “Good one, Kath.” Val and I exchanged eye rolls.
“Okay, how about this one?” Kathi’s eyes shone in the glow of Lee’s kerosene lantern. “What do you call a cat that likes to dig on the beach?” She paused for effect, then chirped, “Sandy Claws!”
I stared up at the stars and for the rest of the night, sent no more smile signals.
Val sat at the kitchen table, scraps of colored paper splayed before her like a hand of cards.
“How do you like my invitation design?” She held up a bit of orange paper cut into a shape that resembled a tombstone with feet. On the tombstone’s slab, she’d drawn an amusing face and stick-like arms that held a square sign on which to write the invitee’s name.
“It’s an Ug!” I said, recognizing the cartoon character she’d invented. “I love it!”
The Ug cartoons had started as a distraction for the two of us on afternoons when the wind kept us indoors. We’d retreat to Val’s bedroom or mine and draw comic strips dramatizing events of our lives—or, more accurately, our fantasy lives—populated with Ug versions of our friends and family. Ug-Dick, who starred in many of the strips, had a sweep of blond hair. Ug-Wendy wore a stylish bob and a permanent blush. Shy Li’i was represented by an Ug facing the opposite direction, and Peki’s Ug kept its arms folded across its chest in Peki’s usual stance. Eventually, Kathi and Suzi saw a few of the cartoons, and word spread. Now Val was famous around school for representations that, with only a few features, perfectly caricatured our classmates and teachers. Ug-shaped invitations were ideal for her fifteenth birthday celebration, a party we were planning together and, with typical adolescent delusion, expected would resolve any social and emotional difficulties we were experiencing.
Parties in Samoa weren’t like the basement rec-room get-togethers I’d gone to in Oklahoma, where a couple dozen kids gathered to play records and drink Cokes on a Saturday night. That kind of event was an everyday occurrence here—with Fantas standing in for Cokes—but real parties, which someone threw every weekend, had live bands and guest lists of seventy-five to a hundred kids, palagi and Samoan. Val’s invitation list included all the usual gang, plus a slew of Samoan kids from Fagatogo, Utulei, and Pago Pago who had invited us to their parties, and of course Robin Lee Graham. In the days since the boat party fiasco, Val and I had run into Lee and his friend Jud—who’d flown down from California to keep Lee company—once or twice in town. We’d even managed a bit of conversation, enough to feed our crushes on Lee and to convince ourselves that, though he was difficult to read, there was a good chance he found us irresistibly witty and attractive.
I picked up a pair of scissors and started cutting out Ugs as Val inked in their faces and wrote the party time and place on their blank backs.
“Just promise me one thing,” I said, “that you won’t sneak off to deliver Lee’s invitation without me.”
On party night, Val and I wore dresses we’d made just for the occasion: hers a white pique shift, mine an empire design with puffed sleeves, in a blue-and-green print of Mod-style daisies as big as dinner plates. I’d fashioned a headband from the same fabric and wore it with my bangs peeking out from beneath. The other girls had gone to extra lengths to look good, too. Kathi and Marnie wore floor-length holomuus; Suzi and Wendy, floral prints; Sylvia, satiny pink with a matching bow perched like a skittish butterfly between bangs and teased bubble. Amazing that she’d kept it in place on her way to the party—the wind was so fierce we could feel it indoors, blasting through the screened walls and flapping the canvas curtains.
Boys showed up in pairs: Karl and Nat, Eric and Ed, Fibber and Gus, Li’i and Peki, Carlson and his best friend Riley. Wayne, the hyper kid who’d moved to Samoa a few months earlier, arrived with his sidekick Tau and Tau’s brother David, who was visiting from the States. David, like Tau, was quiet and m
annerly, with a smile that never quite seemed to reach its full potential. But all three boys talked excitedly about their plans to go surfing that weekend at Nu’uuli, one of the few places on the island where coral reefs weren’t a hazard. The crazy winds should whip up some killer waves, they figured.
The Vampires, set up in a corner of the Pucketts’ living room, began playing from their repertoire of Ventures-style surf music—Walk, Don’t Run; Diamond Head; Slaughter on 10th Avenue—tunes with cascading glissandos that brought to mind boys like David, Tau, and Wayne riding boards down waves as high as Solo Hill. As the dance floor grew more crowded and the dancing more frenetic, I regretted my headband—my head was sweltering—and was grateful for the strong breezes through the screens. The tempo slowed, and the band launched into Blue Star, the plaintive melody they’d played on my first date with Dick at Goat Island Club—the tune with bass notes that resonated in some aching chamber inside me; high, vibrato strains like transcriptions of my own stirrings, and a wistful ending that sounded like raindrops plinking into a pool.
Carlson asked me to dance. I accepted but kept looking over his shoulder at the doorway. Just as the music came to its most heart-twisting crest, Dick walked in. He wore his usual party outfit: short-sleeved shirt tucked into tight wheat jeans, shiny black Beatle boots. His hair, combed straight back but not slicked down, brushed his collar. Had he ever looked better? My heart wound itself into a tight little knot, and I drew a sharp breath. I tried to catch his eye and send one of my signals, but Kathi caught it first, and he made his way to her side. I crumpled. They’d been keeping steady company since that night on Lee’s boat, and I was completely thrown by the development. Even when Dick and I had been forbidden from seeing each other, and I’d run around with every other boy on the island, he had never shown any interest in other girls. Even when I’d had misgivings about him, his affection for me had never wavered. But now he was tying up at another port, and I was adrift. That was another thing about attachment, I realized now: the pulling away could tear you up.
The music stopped. I told Carlson I needed a drink of water.
“I’ll get you a Fanta.” He made a move toward the refreshment table, his hair flapping like a silken flag.
“No,” I said, “water. I’ll get it,” and I walked away. I stopped short at the kitchen door when I saw my parents sitting at the table with Val’s mother and father. My mother and Mrs. Puckett were laughing, but the men wore serious faces, and their heads were bent in deep conversation. As they talked, my father swigged orange Fanta from a bottle; Dr. Puckett, a lean, dry-witted counterpoint to his wife’s ample boldness, drank from a can of beer. I knew they were talking hospital business, commiserating over their frustrations: the opposition they encountered when they tried to introduce a birth control counseling service, the temperamental physicians they had to deal with daily. Val and I had heard our fathers blowing off steam about their troubles at work, and our mothers worrying about the toll the stress was taking on them. If even parents couldn’t control the turbulence in their lives, how could we? My old protective impulse—the one I’d recently diverted to Dick—kicked in, and my temporary escape from the party seemed less important than my father’s venting session. I might not be able to smooth things over for him any more than I could for Dick, but right now he seemed more worth the effort. Instead of interrupting to get a drink, I returned to the living room and found Val tidying a stack of napkins on the refreshment table.
“Party’s going well,” I said. “Is Lee here yet?”
Val nodded toward a distant corner.
Lee, in his blue Hawaiian shirt, leaned back in his chair, an expression of mild amusement on his face. It was as though he was observing all of us for a sociological study, interested in our habits in an academic way, but not engaging in our rituals. The difference between his life and mine was so vast I could hardly stand to think about it. Here I’d thought moving to Samoa was a major adventure, but all I’d done was tag along with my parents. What I truly longed for was an experience that required real bravery and tested my fortitude. It occurred to me then why I’d felt attracted to Lee. I didn’t want to date him; I wanted to be him. Sure, even he had to sit out hurricane season, but in other ways, he was in control, sailing his own ship, making the winds work for him instead of railing against them.
Was that also the root of my attraction to Dick? Wanting to be like him—bolder, more outrageous (not the throwing-typewriters, making-people-hate-you part, but the oh-yeah-who-says-I-can’t part)? Did I think that by attaching myself to these boys I’d be transformed into someone who could do things my way, too? No matter. The romance with Dick had been blown off course, and the one with Lee had never left port.
I looked out through the screens at palm trees waving their fronds and lights winking from across the bay, sending signals I didn’t know how to read. I couldn’t make out the mountains in the darkness, but I’d stared at them so often I could see their shapes like after-images. I knew they were resolute in the wind.
The wind. How it changed everything, and how I hated it. Just weeks before, I was on top of the world—or at least on top of Mt. Alava—in love with everything around me and absorbing the love flowing to me from all directions. Now everything had twisted and turned, as if the papers on which I’d so neatly sketched out my life had been ripped from my hands and scattered down the street, the wind hooting at my distress.
But those mountains. No matter what might blow in and out of my life, those mountains would not fail me.
Chapter 18—More Wind
Ua tagi le Fatu ma le ‘Ele’ele.
(The stones and the earth wept.)
—Samoan proverb
Rain was pelting the tin roof like buckets of BBs, and the sky was still black when Val and I dragged ourselves out of bed around noon the next day. The revelry had gone on until one-thirty in the morning, and my parents had let me stay to help clean up and then to spend the night.
Rain was an everyday occurrence in Samoa, but most showers were brief mistings from a sky that didn’t bother to cloud up, or sudden downpours that eventually yielded to bright skies. This rain was unrelenting, with a darkness that swallowed up morning and refused to let even a rivulet of light seep through its pores.
Val’s mother was in the kitchen when we went to make coffee.
“Radio says there’s a hurricane headed straight toward us,” she said with no alarm in her voice. “But it’s supposed to hit the other side of the island, and not until four o’clock this afternoon. You should probably get home, though, Nancy. I’ll drive you.”
In the short time it took to drive to Utulei, the forecast was revised, and by the time I got home the cyclone wasn’t expected until evening. My parents had the radio on listening for updates and were busy making preparations, as the broadcasts advised. As always, they worked in sync, knowing instinctively what needed to be done and setting to work with no discussion of who should do what. My father rounded up a flashlight, batteries, and kerosene for the one small lantern we owned. I pitched in unprompted, following my mother around the apartment to search for candles. We found only half a dozen, but they’d have to do; all the stores on the island had closed.
Next, we stockpiled water. We had no bathtub, so we filled the washing machine tub and every empty pot, pan, can, and bottle in the house. Usually, when I helped my parents with chores, we chatted to take our minds off the work. This afternoon, subdued by the pounding and squalling outside, we hardly spoke.
“Now what?” I asked my mother when we’d finished with the water, hoping she’d come up with another chore to keep us occupied.
“Just hole up and wait, I guess,” she said. “There’s not much more we can do.” She slumped a little, just for a moment, then straightened her spine and smiled at me. “Guess I’ll finally get caught up on those back issues of Ladies Home Journal.”
I’d seen my parents in scary situations before: when tornado sirens blared
and we had only minutes to take cover, when nurses wheeled my mother away for cancer surgery, and of course, the night of our apartment fire. They never panicked, never showed their fear, always took appropriate action without a lot of fuss, and then hoped for the best. They were brave.
I wanted to be brave, too, like I was in my imaginary life. But I didn’t feel it. We were in a house with screens for walls, on an island with few other substantial buildings. If the wind, my old adversary, took out its rage on us, what would become of my family, my friends, my glorious island, that sense of harmony I was trying to hold onto? There was no way of knowing. There never was, was there, when scary things happened? You just had to search every corner of your soul, gather up as much courage as you could find, and hope everything would turn out all right. Or at least not all wrong.
~ ~ ~
Cloistered in my room, I tried to read but couldn’t concentrate with rain hammering the roof and wind like an insistent, uninvited guest rapping at the tightly-closed louvers. I peeked out the narrow window beside my bed and caught glimpses of palm trees whipping like wheat stalks. I found Mike, a smoke-colored kitten I’d adopted from the Baker sisters after the fire, cowering under the bed. I pulled him out and tried to hold him on my lap, not sure which of us needed comforting more. He slithered from my grasp and retreated to his hiding place.
My mother looked in and asked how I was doing.
“This is getting scary, Mom. What’re we supposed to do?”
“Just sit tight,” she said. “I guess they’ll tell us on the radio if we have to go to higher ground.”
“How would we do that?” No roads snaked up the mountains, and I doubted the cable car to Mt. Alava was operating in this tempest.
My mother didn’t answer. I looked around my room, mentally gathering up treasures I’d take with me if we had to flee: the oversized, brown leatherette-covered photo album filled with snapshots from the past four months; Danny’s letters, stacked and bound with blue satin ribbon; my Every Day Diary; as much tortoise-shell jewelry as I could cram into my purse.
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