All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [34]
AFTER SCHOOL, TARA and I pull over to a shaded spot under some coconut trees. From a trail deep in the jungle emerges a thin, weathered fa’afafine with ratty bleached hair and a ragged tank top that shows her hard biceps. Tara introduces Lucy, who squats by the side of the road and rolls a cigarette. Tara explains that I’m writing about fa’afafine, and Lucy brags about all the beauty pageants she won years ago. She is almost as famous as Sonia, she says. “I have a lot of shiny dresses.” She takes a drag on her cigarette and smooths her hair.
Tara and Lucy talk about how difficult it is to be a fa’afafine on the island—no place to go, nowhere to dress up. Lucy disappears to her hut and comes back with a pineapple she cuts with a knife, the sweetest pineapple I’ve ever tasted. I ask how old they were when they knew they were fa’afafine.
“I changed my life when I was seven,” says Tara. “We used to go to Sunday school, and we had to weed the plantation for the pastor, we were out in the weeds with the boys.” She looks out across the field. “I still remember the boy that did it to me, he was older than me. After that boy did it to me, then other boys would do it to me in the weeds.” She laughs, and I wonder how she can laugh.
Lucy wipes her mouth on her shirt. “I changed my life when I was ten. It was my brother-in-law,” she says. “When my father would beat me at home because I wanted to wear dresses and dance, I would run away to my sister’s house. She had a husband, maybe eighteen or nineteen, and when we went out to feed the pigs one night, he did it to me there. He showed me what was in his pants, and I didn’t know what to do, and he grabbed me and pulled me down.” She takes a bite of her pineapple.
“Were you scared?” I ask.
“No, I didn’t tell anyone,” says Lucy. “I could never speak of it to my sister, and my father would have beat me. I didn’t know I was a fa’afafine then, but my brother-in-law kept doing it to me in the fields, and then other older boys would do it to me, too.”
Lucy and Tara finish the pineapple, but I’ve lost my appetite.
“Let’s go to the surfer bar,” Lucy says, eyeing the car.
THE MAGOGO BEACH club is the center of the local surfer scene, with huts on the beach to rent, camping supplies for sale, and a bar. Young Australian and New Zealander surfers, tanned and tattooed, pound down the beers after a long day riding the waves. Tara and Lucy find a table, and the waitress, a trendy-looking Samoan woman in her forties, takes their order for beers. “Big ones,” says Lucy.
The first Vailimas are served, and before the waitress leaves the table, Lucy orders another round. She and Tara drink as if they don’t know when in life they’ll find another palagi to foot the bill, and I lose track of the rounds. The drunker they get, the less English they speak. I drink because I’m getting bored, tinged with sadness at these two fa’afafine and their gaiety, which now seems so forced.
At a nearby table, the young palagi surfers, blond and buff, are becoming raucous. “Hey,” Lucy yells over in their direction. “Why don’t you guys come on over and buy us a drink?” One of the young men glances over in our direction, nudges a buddy, and they all laugh uproariously.
Undeterred, Lucy swings her way over to their table and sits down. The young men seem greatly amused by her presence, and she acts as if she is wildly entertaining, not the butt of their jokes. “Come sit on my lap, baby,” one says in his thick Australian accent, and the others double over laughing. Lucy slides onto his lap, and he makes obscene pumping motions, holding her waist. He pinches her breast, hard. “Are these real?” he asks, and while the others laugh at her, Lucy beams like a child.
“You’re cute,” she says, throwing her arms around his neck. The joke has gone too far, and he pushes her, roughly, off his lap. In her inebriated state, Lucy falls off the edge of the bench. She picks herself up, dusting sand off, stunned, and then, just as others might cry, she bursts into laughter. The surfers have lost their appetite