All Over the Map (10 page)

“Why not?” asks Tini. “Children are beautiful.”

“Never met the right father, I guess.” I twirl the parasol in my drink.

“But you’re not so old, you’re still attractive,” says Tini. “Why don’t you have a husband?”

“I don’t know.” They look at me expectantly. “I had a husband, but we split up, and since then … I guess I’ve been busy working.”

Sonia puts her hand on her hip and shifts her legs in her miniskirt. “You have a job like a man, traveling by yourself,” she scolds me. “Maybe a man wants someone who is more like a woman.”

It’s making me uneasy, having a fake woman tell me I’m not acting enough like a real one.

Later, in my room—after more drinking with the fa’afafine and dancing with tattooed Samoan men—I am too rattled to sleep, though it’s the middle of the night. I flip on the TV and see that the Brazilians have just won the World Cup. I know that on the other side of the world, Gustavo is going crazy, and I want to talk to him, hear his voice, feel his presence, congratulate him. I dial all the international codes, and when I get his answering machine, I hang up.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, I leave Upolu for Savai’i, a more traditional Samoan island, to see how village fa’afafine are different from the big-city girls. From the plane, a little puddle jumper, velvety green islands rise out of the turquoise sea. Savai’i’s outermost piece of land, a panhandle called the Falealupo Peninsula, floats near the international date line, edging toward yesterday. The lush peninsula is considered the entrance to the underworld, the place where the sun sets into the sea, where the spirits roam freely at night but return to their terrible caves and fires by daybreak. From the air, Savai’i seems much bigger and wilder than Upolu, matted with rain forests, its jagged ridge of volcanic craters raised like the backbone of a dark and ancient sea monster.

The plane lands on a strip cleared in a dense jungle of banyan trees, propellers winding down. A few villagers in rust-rimmed cars greet the other passengers, but there are no taxis. I hitch a ride with a school principal, who offers that he’s going that way anyway. We bump our way over dirt to the main paved road that circles the island, passing open-walled houses, oval thatched huts, and cacophonous tropical gardens.

We chat, and he can’t understand that I came so far to write about fa’afafine, whom Samoans hardly think twice about. “Why don’t you write about how our islands are sinking into the sea instead?” asks the principal. He explains that global warming is affecting people who have no fault in creating the problem and can do nothing to change it. I agree that it would be a better story.

“When Manhattan starts to sink, the magazines will pay attention,” I tell him, and he smiles broadly.

He points to a group of huts with corrugated steel roofs. “This is your hotel.” He gives me the name of a fa’afafine I could talk to, a schoolteacher named Tara, and draws a map of where she lives.

I wander around the resort, a main house with a wide porch upstairs and some landscaped oval
fale
s set around a wide grassy yard, with clusters of ginger stalks waving their waxy red flowers. My little hut is screened, with matchstick blinds, two cots, one frayed pink towel, a cold-water shower, and a cistern of drinking water. Tall coconut palms line the road, and across the street, a white beach seems to stretch forever.

I gather my things for the beach. As long as it’s Sunday, I’m taking the day off. I wander across the road and climb over a rock
wall to the beach. It’s the kind of beach you dream of, the kind you never find when you go on a package tour that advertises a beach just like this one: fine white sand, palm trees, no trash, no people, no nothing but beach and water as far as you can see.

I unwrap my lavalava, spread it out on the sand, slather on sunscreen, and lean against a warm rock, reading. The sun penetrates layers of my skin until I’m glowing from inside like an ember. I dash across the burning sand and plunge into the water, swimming out far around a jutting rock. Then I float, letting the gently rocking water take me where it will.

I swim back, not because I can’t swim far but because there is no one on the beach to say, as the Professor always would, “Stay a little closer to shore.” I have to be that person for myself, the one who doesn’t trust her own strength or the gentle tides. Stay a little closer to shore.

I flop down on the sarong, then doze. I sense a presence and open my eyes. Not far down the beach, a large Samoan man is walking. I suddenly feel alone. I stand up, quickly shake the sand out of the lavalava, and wrap myself. I gather my things and start to walk along the beach, safer in motion.

The only time I was ever assaulted, the only time in all my travels I’ve ever been in serious danger—if you don’t count visiting Baghdad ten days before the first Persian Gulf War as a guest of Saddam Hussein, with no confirmed ticket back to Jordan—was when I was alone on a beach. It was twenty years ago. I’d been traveling in Egypt with another woman, who was fifteen years older—younger than I am now, I realize. She’d seemed so old then. I met Edie on an Israeli kibbutz where I worked as a
volunteer for three months—fishing, picking dates, cleaning used flypaper off of grapefruit trees—and we decided to travel on to Egypt together. We both wanted to explore the Sinai Desert, the tombs of Luxor, the ancient temples and pyramids, but from the moment we arrived in Cairo, we realized it wasn’t so easy to travel around, we couldn’t leave each other’s side. Men constantly called out and hissed, tried to pull pieces of our hair or “accidentally” brush our breasts.

Even together, we felt threatened. We took a bus to the Red Sea, where the guidebook mentioned there were beautiful, peaceful beaches. The bus let us out in the center of a small town, with few tourists, where most of the women covered their heads with scarves. We wrapped scarves around our heads, too, so as not to attract attention or offend anyone.

After finding a little pensione, we went to the beach, a couple of miles from town, and found a nice sheltered spot near some rocks. I wanted to go for a walk, but Edie wouldn’t come along; her energy level didn’t match mine. I was tired of constantly being by her side; if I could just take a walk by myself for half an hour, I’d be content to be in her company again.

We were far from town, there was no one anywhere, so I walked vigorously along the beach, feeling free in shorts and a T-shirt, moving my limbs, stretching out after days and days of slow motion. Then up on the bluffs I noticed a figure in a djellabah. I kept on walking.

“How much for you?” he called out, and I ignored him.

“How much for you? One pound? Two pounds?” I walked faster, until I could no longer see him on the bluff.

I turned a corner, around a hill that tumbled into the sea, and there he was, down on the beach, coming toward me. “How much for you?” he asked, his mouth open and wetly pink under his thick mustache.

“Em-shee bayeed,”
I replied, the only Arabic phrase I knew: get lost. He snickered.

“My husband is over there,” I said, pointing, turning to walk back.

“No husband,” he said, coming closer.

“Yes,” I said, and he grabbed my arm. “No!” I screamed and knew no one could hear.

As he began roughing my breasts, a calmness and clarity washed over me. A movie I’d seen, maybe one of those high school gym class movies about self-defense, started playing in my mind. I followed it, as in a trance. I went limp and could feel him relax his grip in response. Then I gathered up all my strength at once, an energy bolt through my body, and shoved the palm of my hand straight up his nose. He reeled back, surprised. I stepped forward and, with all my sturdy-legged force, shoved a knee into his groin. He fell down, doubling over in the sand, and I had an instant to make a decision.

I’ve always been strong but slow, good on endurance but not speed. If I ran, this lithe Egyptian would get up, follow, catch me, and that would be that. He could kill me. I looked at the waves. If I swam, I might make it. I
would
make it. I ran to the ocean, dived in, slipped off my shoes, untangled my shirt over my head, and swam for my life.

I swam and swam, my heart pounding in my ears, pulling
with all my strength, until I dared to turn around and see if he was swimming after me, trying to catch my toes. But he was way back on the shore, back on his feet, and I could barely make out his yelling: “How much for you?”

I swam all the way back, around the outcropping, past the bluff where I had first seen the man, until finally in the far distance I could spot Edie, sunning herself. I was relieved that she was all right and angry at myself for leaving her side. When I finally stumbled out of the water, collapsing on the sand, I let go, sobbing. Edie gave me water and a reassuring arm. She screamed about the men in that country, pigs who treat women like sheep. I said I might wish the guy were dead, but it was a different culture, not a culture I’d want to live in, but I was walking alone on their sand in an outfit that had a different meaning for them, and I should’ve known. I was stupid.

We walked back to town, my bare feet bleeding by the time we arrived at the hotel. I showered, changed, and took the next bus back to Cairo, where I immediately cashed my dwindling traveler’s checks and booked a flight to a country I’d never visited, where I didn’t speak the language, but where I knew I’d feel more at home: Italy.

That experience should have made me wary. Sure, I hadn’t walked alone on the beach in a Muslim country since. But actually, it gave me an outsized sense of my strength, my ability to protect myself in a pinch. I had fought off a rapist and escaped. I still walk around streets alone, in Naples or the Tenderloin, thinking I have a secret weapon, a bolt of energy, the ability to escape from trouble and just swim away.

I hear the Samoan man on the beach call out, and flinch. I glance at the water, but Samoans are strong swimmers, so I whirl back toward the hotel. He calls, I don’t know what he’s saying, and then I see a little girl run out of the bushes and catch up to him. The man scoops her up, puts her on his shoulders, and continues walking. They pass me.
“Talofa,”
I say softly, eyes looking down.

“
Talofa
,” he replies, and his little daughter waves with a big, bright smile.

I
N THE MORNING,
in the moist heat, I throw on a lavalava and make my way over to the big house for breakfast, sitting at a table on a wooden porch with a view of the sea. I’m amazed that the waiter, Rinaldo, brings me a good cappuccino and that he’s half Italian. Here, out on a remote Samoan island, I’ve found Italian coffee to drink with a view of the most beautiful beach, waves breaking on the coral reef a quarter mile out.

After breakfast, Rinaldo brings out a map of the island and shows me some places to go. I take off in the old Toyota I’ve rented, my ultimate destination the village where the principal said Tara, the fa’afafine, lives. I circle the island, stopping where Rinaldo suggested—caves, a canopy walk over a forest of ferns and banyan trees, blowholes spraying in the lava rock. I follow the map to the village of Safolava and find Tara’s parents’ open-air house, where pigs graze in the front yard. Inside, her mother weaves straw mats on the floor. No one speaks any English; when I say the name “Tara,” her niece starts giggling. “Auntie,” she says.

Tara wanders in, wearing a lavalava and a white shirt that any man might wear. Gentle and intelligent, she has short hair and a quiet femininity. She asks if we can meet tomorrow, if I could come talk to her students in English; then we can go out with another fa’afafine, a friend who lives on a plantation.

On the way back, I make one last stop at the Satuita Falls. I climb the narrow, steep trail, picking my way over rocks, until I hear and then see breathtaking jungle falls, Tarzan falls, a hypnotic gush of water crashing down from the high rain forest into a peaceful pool carved deep into the rock. The water is so clear light blue it’s possible to see all the way to the bottom, and the bottom is a long way down. I dive in for a swim, dry myself with my sarong, and think that so far this has been one of the best days ever, this is why I love to travel.

T
HE NEXT DAY
I put on a dress, pack my beach things, and drive to Tara’s school. About thirty kids are out on recess in the sunny school-yard garden, exuberant with candy-striped plumeria, white ginger, and catwhisker flowers. Shy at first, the braver boys ask me to take their pictures; then they all surround me, smiling and waving. Tara walks across the yard, and the children come to order. “Thanks for coming,” she says, looking me up and down. “I love your dress.”

In the open-air classroom, Tara introduces me as a friend visiting from America and tells the children to ask me questions in English. They raise their hands and, as best they can, ask where I’m from, if I have brothers and sisters, and how I like Samoa.
Tara points to the map of the world to show them where San Francisco is, and they can’t imagine anything that far away; most of them have never been off the island. I talk about buildings as high as a waterfall and subways that run in tunnels underground and a tall golden bridge that serves as a big gate to the bay that surrounds the city. The kids ask where my husband and children are and are more confused when I say I don’t have any than they are about the subways and bridges.

“Auntie,” one little boy says, and the boy next to him giggles. The word spreads through the room, and all the kids are covering their mouths to hide their laughter.

A
FTER SCHOOL
, T
ARA
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.