My last day in Stillwater, Cindi and long-time friends Sarah, Michelle, and Marla came to Aunt Opal’s house to say goodbye. We walked to the end of the block, where a cul-de-sac overlooked Boomer Lake, a reservoir of red-brown water with a playground and picnic shelters. It was Sunday afternoon, the day before Independence Day, and families were unpacking picnic lunches and spreading out red-white-and-blue tablecloths. My friends bubbled with plans for a picnic at another lake the next day.
“I wish you could come, too,” Michelle said. “I can’t believe you’re leaving again so soon.”
Cindi made a mock-pouty face. “And I can’t believe you won’t be here for senior year. Are you sure you want to go back? Maybe your parents would let you stay here with your cousins. Then we could all graduate together.”
The other girls bobbed their heads.
Fingering the tortoise shell band that had taken the place of my Tri Chi ring, I looked at the red lake and pictured Pago Bay, looked at the families with their picnic spreads and thought of afternoons at Larsen’s beach, felt the sun beating on my face and wished for a trade wind.
“It’s all right,” I told my friends. “I’ll be home again before you know it.”
I suppose they didn’t realize I wasn’t talking about Stillwater.
Chapter 26—Return to Paradise
Amuia le masina, e alu ma sau.
(Blessed is the moon; it goes, but comes back again.)
—Samoan proverb
Tom got the full report on the trip before anyone else, because he was the first person I saw the morning after our return—he’d moved in with my family before we’d left for the States. Except when he was on duty at the satellite tracking station, he slept on a daybed in a corner of our living room and spent waking hours playing his guitar and serving as my sounding board.
“It was weird, Tom, really weird,” I told him over toasted bread from Jessop’s bakery. Spreading margarine out to the crusts, I detailed the disconnection with Danny and my girlfriends and the unexpected strangeness of the place that once defined down-home comfort. “Thank goodness we didn’t have to stay there. I just wish I could forget we ever went.”
Tom tried for a sympathetic look, but his eyes eased into the Liberace slant. “You need a distraction—I’ll show you my latest project.”
He pulled me to the corner where his record albums and clothes were organized in crates. Reaching into a crevice between folded shirts, he pulled out something furry, yet oddly rigid.
“What on earth … ?” I took a step back as he held it out to me. Chasing toads was one thing, but he couldn’t expect me to cozy up to a petrified … whatever it was.
Tom was in hysterics. “Relax—it’s not dead. Well, it is, but it’s stuffed. I’m teaching myself taxidermy.” He told me he’d been trapping the mice that skittered around the house at night and honing his craft on their sad little corpses.
“Mmm. I see.” I stared at the lifeless fur slab in his hand. This was supposed to cheer me up? The mouse was stretched out straight, front legs up by its ears as if playing Superman. Its tiny feet were curled, claw-like; cotton stuffing showed through holes where bright eyes had been. “No offense, but it’s not very lifelike.”
Tom snatched the mouse away. “Give me a break, I’m just getting started. I haven’t learned naturalistic posing yet.”
“What else have you got?” I ran my index finger along the spines of his albums. “Any new records? New shoes? Anything?”
Tom laid down the mouse and sifted through papers stacked atop one crate. “Okay, so you’re not impressed with taxidermy. What about—” He extracted a slip of paper that looked like an airline ticket and waved it in front of my face. “—a trip to Apia?”
“Are you kidding?” I lunged for the ticket, but he pulled it away and held it over his head. “I’d go there in a minute if my parents would let me.”
Apia was the capital of Western Samoa, and Western Samoa was, according to the tour books, the place to go to see the real Samoa, meaning one unspoiled by American influences. Not that Western Samoa had been walled off from the rest of the world for its whole history. Its two major islands and eight islets had been under foreign rule—first Germany’s, then New Zealand’s—from 1900 until 1962, when the nation won its independence. But most of Western Samoa had resisted cultural contamination more than its American-governed cousin to the east, perhaps due more to geography than geopolitics: Western Samoa’s eleven hundred square miles were undoubtedly harder to infiltrate than American Samoa’s seventy-six.
I was eager to experience the pristine beauty of its countryside and outlying villages, to get a closer look at traditional Samoan life and absorb more of its lessons. It also didn’t hurt that Western Samoa boasted a capital city with a rocking night life.
I’d visited Western Samoa’s main island, Upolu, over spring break with my parents. While we’d had a pleasant time strolling through Apia’s markets and trekking up a mountain to Robert Louis Stevenson’s home and final resting place at Vailima, I’d spent a good bit of the trip consumed with envy of Wendy and Kathi, whose parents had let them travel to Apia unchaperoned. The two girls were staying at the same hotel we were, and every evening I watched them head off to nightclubs with a rotating cast of good-looking Samoan boys as I sat in the lobby with my parents, reading or making conversation with an officious, old German woman who was vacationing on the island.
Tom brought the ticket down to eye level and fluttered it like a fan. “What if I could make that trip happen?”
“Then we’d be friends for life,” I swore, “and I’d get you invited to every party on the island.”
He promised to talk to my parents, but when I heard the details of his upcoming excursion I was dubious. He and a tracking station buddy planned to fly over the following week and spend five days and four nights sightseeing and hitting Apia’s notorious bars: RSA, the Polynesian Club, and Hula Town.
Right. As if my parents were going to let me fly off to another island with two older guys on a drinking spree. I was not holding my breath. Yet over the next couple of days, Tom worked some kind of magic on my mother and father, and quicker than you could say, These people are not my parents, I had my own airline ticket and a reservation at the legendary Aggie Grey’s Hotel (along with lots of ground rules).
~ ~ ~
The flight to Western Samoa being just over eighty miles, we flew in a small prop plane, not a jetliner. We’d just settled into our seats when Agnes Chan, a Polynesian Airlines flight attendant I’d seen around town, stopped in the aisle beside me and said something in Samoan. I turned toward my seatmate, a heavy-set woman in a purple puletasi, thinking the comment or question was intended for her. Agnes touched my shoulder and repeated herself, speaking directly to me.
I shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re saying. My Samoan’s not that good.”
Agnes scrunched her eyebrows. “You’re not Samoan?”
I shook my head.
“Not even afakasi?”
“Nope.”
“Huh. I thought you were. Well, fasten your seat belt.”
I wanted to ask Agnes what made her mistake me for an authentic islander, but before I had a chance she was hustling down the aisle to secure the doors and strap herself in for takeoff, so I spent the flight speculating. Was it my suntanned skin, dark hair, and tortoise-shell jewelry? Or had some signet of belonging been imprinted on my being?
A short time later, the plane touched down on what passed for a landing strip—a grassy expanse where coconut trees had been cleared away—and I felt transported to the Samoa that Tutuila had been before the current campaign of “improvements.”
Tom hailed a taxi. The three of us loaded our bags into the trunk and set off on the fifteen-mile drive through coconut groves and garden-like villages with traditional fales and stately stucco churches. Children flocked to the roadside and waved as we passed. One little boy with a grin like Tui’s
held out a hibiscus blossom. I wanted to stop the car and scoop him into my arms. We drove on, but I kept visualizing myself back in that village, surrounded by children, loved and in love.
Soon, we reached Aggie Grey’s iconic South Seas inn, a two-story, white-frame building with shuttered windows. Aggie’s was the sort of place where in the movies, you’d see the roguish leading man—say, Gary Cooper—hunched over the bar, submerging regret in swirls of scotch and barking, “Rosie! More of the same!” In fact, Gary Cooper had stayed there, along with the rest of the cast and crew of “Return to Paradise,” when the film was shot in Western Samoa in the 1950s.
That wasn’t the hotel’s only claim to fame. Its proprietress, for whom the place was named, was rumored to have inspired the character Bloody Mary in James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific. But instead of the feisty souvenir dealer that Juanita Hall portrayed in the stage and screen versions of “South Pacific,” the real Aggie—at least by the time I met her—reminded me more of my grandmother. Not twinkly Grandma Dunn, who served up hugs with biscuits and gravy, but my father’s mother Nellie, a no-nonsense woman who sold foundation garments in a women’s wear shop and clerked in a drugstore that smelled of pipe tobacco and Campho-Phenique. And because my parents had notified Mrs. Grey of my visit and asked her to watch out for me, I was as wary of Aggie as I was of the austere Nellie and determined to evade her surveillance.
When my parents and I had stayed at Aggie’s in April, we’d been assigned to a modern, motel-like wing out back. This time I had a corner room on the original hotel’s second floor—a quintessential tropical bedchamber with a mosquito-netted four-poster and louvered doors that opened onto a balcony overlooking the sweeping blue arc of Apia harbor. I had to share a toilet and shower down the hall, but the room had a washbasin in the corner for freshening up and a small table where, every morning of our stay, a bellboy would set a pot of breakfast tea and a china cup.
I’d never had my own hotel room, always shared with my parents. Now, each minor act of independence—opening the door with my very own key, unpacking and arranging my clothes in my very own closet and dresser, stepping out onto my very own balcony—triggered a tiny, rippling thrill. Here I was, the consummate solo traveler exploring the world on her own, unfazed by the unfamiliar, glorying in the experience.
As soon as we’d checked in and unpacked, I was ready to go exploring, but Tom and his friend Jay were tired from tracking satellites all night. They retired to their rooms for naps, and I reluctantly followed suit. When the boys finally got moving again, it was early evening and time for our first foray into Apia nightlife. I suggested Hula Town, having heard stories from Wendy and Kathi about long nights of dancing and romance punctuated by the occasional drama of a fistfight.
The nightclub, like my room at Aggie’s, could have been lifted straight from the set of a South Seas movie: multi-colored lanterns on the patio, a grass-roofed bar, a dim interior with slants of dusk’s last light slipping through gaps in the shutters. We took a table in an out-of-the way corner, and Tom ordered beers all around. No one asked for my ID. This really was going to be a different kind of vacation. Tom was no fuddy-duddy stand-in parent; he was treating me like the grown-up I felt myself to be.
In contrast to the tepid, watery stuff I’d forced down at Suzi’s, the brew our waitress brought had a bready taste and a carbonated zing that made the top of my head feel like it was floating several inches above the rest of me. I liked it! The boys and I nursed our beers and waited for the excitement to begin. But the place we’d expected to be rollicking remained largely empty and quiet except for a radio playing Samoan music. Even the hibiscus blossom behind the barmaid’s ear looked listless.
“When do things get lively here?” Tom asked when the waitress brought a second round.
“You come back Friday,” she said. “Live band. You have good time then.”
When we returned to Aggie’s, Tom and Jay called it a night, but I was still keyed up and over-rested from the afternoon nap. I wandered into the only part of the hotel where I saw any activity: the bar. Had it been a murky, smoke-clouded saloon, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to venture in alone, but the open-air lounge on the hotel’s lower level was bright and welcoming, with clusters of cushioned chairs around low tables, and the bartender—I remembered her from the previous visit—was a motherly Samoan woman named Nana.
I ordered a Coke and took a seat near the bar, not noticing a group of men in the corner until one spoke to me: “What’s a little girl like you doing all alone in a big hotel like this?”
I turned toward the voice. A man I guessed to be in his thirties smiled with a brilliance I’d seen only in touched-up toothpaste ads. He had olive skin and black, wavy hair, but his features looked neither Samoan nor palagi.
Flattered at the attention of an older man, I smiled back. “I’m not exactly alone,” I told him. “I’m here with friends.”
The man rotated in his chair like a radar dish, scanning the room and settling his eyes back on me. “So, where are they?”
I shredded the edge of the soggy cocktail napkin beneath my drink. “Sleeping. They sleep a lot.”
He stood and walked toward me. I noticed wide shoulders beneath his island-print shirt. I also noticed Nana keeping her eyes trained on my table like she expected it to burst into flames that she’d have to rush over and extinguish.
“Mind if I join you?”
I said I didn’t. He told me his name was John and that he was Maori—an indigenous New Zealander. He said he was part of a diving team working off a New Zealand ship that was in port.
A Maori diver, trying to pick me up? I was sure Wendy and Kathi hadn’t had any encounters equal to this one.
John raised a hand to get Nana’s attention—as if he needed to—and called out, “Another scotch and whatever this young lady is drinking.” Then turning back to me: “After we finish our drinks we can walk down to the harbor and I’ll show you the ship.”
That sounded fun. And risky. My parents would have a fit if they knew I was even talking to this guy, much less thinking of leaving the hotel with him. But Wendy and Kathy had gone on dates when they were here, so why shouldn’t I, the dauntless traveler living it up on holiday? I gave John the slanty, shady look I’d perfected with Dick and picked a little more at the napkin, trying to decide what to say. Before any words came to me, Nana emerged from behind the bar, scowling.
“This young lady needs to get to bed,” she said.
John gave her the same smile he’d used to initiate our exchange, one I’d begun to suspect he’d cultivated over the years for just such situations.
“Oh, I’ll make sure she gets to bed,” he said. The men at the other table laughed, rough laughs that sounded like rasping machinery, and John turned and winked at them.
Was I supposed to laugh, too, or was the joke on me? All of a sudden I didn’t know how to act. But Nana did. She slammed John’s drink on the table so hard I thought the highball glass would shatter. Then she picked up my empty glass with one hand, and with the other swept me out of my seat—not exactly yanking, but employing a grip so firm I knew there was no arguing with it.
I made an exasperated face for John’s benefit, but honestly, I wanted to give that woman a hug.
The next morning Tom rented a car, and we drove through mile after mile of unspoiled scenery, marveling at sugary beaches and mountaintop views of the island’s vastness. Such purity. I daydreamed about living in such a setting, with Samoans who weren’t so swept up in Americanization. Would their fa’a Samoa grace and generosity rub off on me, displacing my palagi ways? As I took in the sights, I felt less like a tourist than a prospector, collecting gems to stash in the pockets of my imagination.
By afternoon it was naptime again—for Tom and Jay, at least. “Will you be okay on your own for a couple of hours?” Tom asked before heading off for his siesta.
I assured him I’d be fine—I’d brought a book
to read, and I’d see him at dinner. As soon as he and Jay disappeared into their rooms, I set off to explore Apia on my own, familiar enough with its layout by then to be confident I could find my way back.
Apia had more of a real downtown than Fagatogo or Pago Pago, with white stucco buildings facing the harbor, a maze of back streets begging to be investigated, and constant traffic directed by police wearing military-style, khaki shirts and caps, matching lavalavas, black leather sandals, and white gloves. One cop stood on a traffic island in front of Apia’s famous landmark: a spire-topped, stucco clock tower in the heart of town. I circled the tower and wandered over to the open-air market to examine jewel-toned fish, piles of taro, and banana bunches as big as upside-down Christmas trees. An old woman with saddle-leather skin beckoned to me, and when I approached, handed me a glass of milky liquid she’d poured from a coconut. I took it and drank without stopping to think about germs or the dangers of accepting things from strangers, simply wanting to taste whatever was offered.
The coconut juice and the whole scene gave me the heady feeling of being immersed in adventure: a sharpness of sensation, a newfound boldness, an awareness of myself as not a mere observer but a fully involved participant in the world around me.
That feeling carried over into evening, when the hotel hosted the weekly fiafia, with its block-long buffet of roast pig, breadfruit, taro, palusami, and other traditional treats, including the cake-like steamed concoction known as Samoan pudding—a gooey dish I’d detested ever since I accidentally stepped barefoot into a basket of it at a Rec Hall dance. On the previous visit with my parents, I had daintily picked at the fiafia fare with a knife and fork, but this night, I dug in with my hands, Samoan style, savoring the smoky-sweet-sticky-squishy combination of flavors and textures.
“You cannot believe how much better food tastes this way,” I told Tom, who poked a tentative fork into pinkish pig flesh. “I’m eating everything with my hands from now on.”
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