Some Girls: My Life in a Harem (15 page)

 

I ate only salad and a bit of chicken for dinner. I needed nothing, I reminded myself. Almost nothing. There were monks who lived on a grain of rice a day. Need was an illusion. There was only wanting, and the strong could live with wanting and not having. No one else was volunteering for the job, so I’d have to be my own cheerleader. Be strong. Go team.

I felt renewed, resolved, until I sat down to use my new makeup and looked in the mirror to find myself facing the truth. My cheerleader role peeled off as quickly as had that Victim One costume with the Velcro closures. My stomach gave a hollow growl. In spite of my pep talks, I knew I’d never starve myself into being beautiful. And I could read every book in the library and still not walk out brilliant. That was the truth.

Not cute enough, not smart enough, not popular enough, not talented enough, not special enough. I was just an average hustler who could sometimes talk my way into getting what I wanted. New eyeshadow or not, I loathed myself in the mirror exactly as much as before. Sighing, I picked up a makeup brush and went to work.

 

That night, Eddie, bug-eyed, nervous, and lecherous as always, sat on an ottoman between Serena and me. The men generally sat on these wide ottomans rather than the low armchairs, probably because they usually didn’t stay in one place for long. The girls, on the other hand, sat parked in the same chairs all night, gradually sinking, turning into discarded marionettes, until the Prince entered and everybody sat straight up as if someone had just pulled the string rising from the center of their heads.

Eddie turned to Serena first.

“You will sing tonight?”

Of course she would sing. She had been right in her initial assessment of me. I was no threat to her icy, sassy blondeness. One thing you can be sure of, the soprano will get the guy.

Then he turned to my chair, where I felt myself receding further into obscurity every minute.

“And you will sing?”

Or maybe not. Serena crackled with annoyance.

“You will sing now.”

I trembled slightly with the adrenaline that was injected into my bloodstream as I crossed to the microphone. I was unprepared. It had been three nights since I had miraculously pulled off “Kasih” and I was sure the gods would not weigh in on my side a second time. But I was wrong about a lot of things. I sang “Kasih” again just fine and drew approving smiles all around, including from the Prince.

When Serena got up and sang “Someone to Watch Over Me” she was cringe-worthily flat. I listened with genuine pleasure. She wasn’t the Sandy she thought she was. During the first chorus, Fiona caught my attention and called me over to where she sat next to Robin. When I reached their hub of power, the three chairs against the wall, Robin turned toward me.

“Sit here,” he said, patting the chair to his left. Fiona always sat to his right.

This was the coveted chair of the second-favorite girlfriend. I sat there the rest of the night, minding my manners, pressing my knees together, and speaking when spoken to. Sitting next to Robin kept me tense and alert. Robin mostly talked to Fiona, but occasionally turned and asked me disjointed questions.

“Do you like horses?”

“I love horses. I hear you play polo.” I don’t really love horses. I like horses just fine, but I’m more of a doggy/kitty kind of girl. I prefer animals that can watch TV with you on the couch. And I had never even seen a game of polo.

“I do.”

“Polo is so dangerous.” I was strictly guessing. “You must be really brave. I’d like to watch you play.”

“You will, I think. How do you like my country?”

Our conversation proceeded along those lines. The dancing music started and we watched the girls dance together to “Things That Make You Go Hmmmm . . .” and “Like a Prayer.” Everyone on the dance floor sang along with the hooks, though most of them didn’t know what they were saying. When the girls got drunk, West and East alike could really get crazy out there—spinning around, lifting their skirts, grinding in a conga line. It was a release from the boredom. The skull-crushing boredom.

But at that instant I wasn’t bored. At the Prince’s parties, the ministers and the mistresses alike lived by their ranking, and mine had just soared. It was a delicate equation that shifted nightly. I had passed my first test: I had been ignored and had reacted accordingly. I had been upset but not too upset, jealous but not too jealous. If it was a game of Chutes and Ladders, I had just landed on that huge ladder that climbs to the top of the board and skips all of the spaces in between. I was about to become extremely unpopular.

Fiona leaned over and looked at me over Robin, as if confirming something they had been talking about.

He said, half to her but loud enough for me to hear, “I think my brother would really like her, don’t you?”

She agreed.

Now, what the hell was that supposed to mean?

 

 

 

 

T
he sun bouncing off the fiberglass flanks of the yacht was so bright I saw sun spots when I turned away. The boat dwarfed me. It was so large that it looked like a cruise ship rather than a private vessel. Twelve crew members stood on deck to greet me.

The sticky heat immediately drew pearls of sweat to my upper lip and my bra line. I regretted my choice of pedal pushers and Destiny’s little bolero jacket. When the knock came that morning, I had expected to be shut in another porno icebox, but instead they had driven me to the harbor. I wished I had a bikini, a wide-brimmed hat, and shiny, lacquered red fingernails wrapped around a glass of champagne. Wasn’t that how you dressed for a cruise on a yacht with a prince? Proper duds or not, I was feeling pretty self-satisfied about the prospect of a pleasure cruise with a dozen crew members at my disposal.

This was me all over. Yachts and champagne. International femme fatale slinking up the gangplank.

But when I boarded the boat and stood facing the sharply dressed and uniformed crew, they looked confused. Their eyeballs shifted from side to side, each checking out their neighbor to see who was going to make the first move. The captain, a young, sunburned Australian, greeted me and promptly left me in the hands of two perky girls while the rest of the crew drifted off to their regular duties.

The one with wide teeth, the bigger one, a brunette, said, “I think you’re about my size then.”

They tossed sing-songy questions at me as they led me around the side of the deck and into the crew quarters below.

“Do you usually crew another of the family’s boats?”

“No.”

“Will you be staying with us then? It won’t take us a minute to get Allison’s old bunk ready for you. Allison left about three weeks ago but we thought we were just going to sail a man short.”

They opened a closet filled with uniforms that matched their own, each hanging neatly in plastic, each hanger spaced the same distance apart. They held items up to my body, eyeballed the sizes, and put together an outfit, which they hung on a peg. I’ve always suspected that people who hang clothing in an orderly way are better people than I, with cleaner souls.

“Did Leslie just hire you?”

“Nope.”

“Really? Is someone else doing the hiring now?”

“They never tell us anything,” added the blond one.

They waited for some explanation. I stood my ground and waited right back. The Australian sailor girls were so scrubbed and healthy it almost hurt to look at them. I got the feeling that the close quarters of the ship allowed for no mess, no secrets. What would it be like to live a life you didn’t have to lie about?

“How long have you been a stewardess?”

“I’m not, really.”

“Huh.” They were baffled. They looked at each other and then looked back at me.

“Not to be rude,” said the blonde, “but what are you doing here?”

One of the most useful skills I had learned in Brunei was not to offer too much information. I learned always to hang back until I was absolutely sure what was going on. You never want to be the one who gives the game away.

“What did they tell you?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said the brunette.

“They just told us to come on deck to greet the new stewardess.”

“So if you’re not a stewardess . . .”

“You see why we’re confused.”

“Well, let’s just say I am a stewardess.”

That satisfied them. We found a uniform that pretty much fit me. The starched polyester pants pulled a bit at the ledge where my ass hit my thighs, but pants usually did on me. As soon as I was dressed identical to the two girls, the conversation got friendlier. Together we decided that I’d simply do what they did. They’d have to give me a crash course, because in an hour the Sultan and his family would be coming aboard for a day cruise. Afterward, they’d give me the more detailed, proper job training. I was confident that would never happen, but I thanked them anyway. The Prince, I was realizing, liked to put his people in bizarre situations just to see what they’d do. We were his little lab rats. I wondered if there was something wrong with him, a sadistic streak or a touch of Borderline Personality Disorder. Or maybe it was just a symptom of having too much money and power.

The girls broke out three Diet Cokes for us and they told me about the job while we sipped from the cans. They were yacht stewardesses, hired out of Australia with the same crew they always worked with. The job on the Sultan’s yacht was the easiest job either of them had ever had. They had been in the employ of the Sultan for about six months and he had yet to go on the boat for more than a day trip.

Being a yacht stewardess didn’t sound too bad. I’d spend my nights rocking in a bunk and listening to the waves slap the hull. I’d spend my days striding purposefully across the deck with a tray full of drinks. On nights off, I’d drink merlot under a starry sky and flirt with the captain. Maybe I should consider it. Maybe I could stay on and no one in authority would even notice that I wasn’t supposed to be there. Maybe I could get out from under the Prince’s thumb now, before I became as miserable as Serena and Leanne.

They went on to give me the job description. We took drink and food orders. We cleared glasses and dishes, never letting an empty glass sit. We stood at the door of a room, on the ready for any and all requests. We were present and invisible at the same time. We passed appetizers. We straightened the room immediately after anyone left, so that if they returned it would be back in impeccable condition.

They took me to the bathroom in order to demonstrate the most important trick: how to fold the edge of the toilet paper back into a perfect point after anyone used the toilet.

“They love it when you do that. It makes them feel that you’re on them like white on rice.”

On second thought, maybe yacht stewardess wasn’t it for me after all. I took a break from my toilet-paper tutorial and stood on the deck, letting the sun warm my back through the stiff white shirt. The sea air smelled of brine and the slight rot of low tide and was less oppressive than the tropical rainforest farther inland. I recalled the Jersey Shore.

Every summer our family would travel to Beach Haven, on Long Beach Island. There, Johnny and I would meet up with a marauding band of wild kids. A gang of us would run from the ocean to the Engleside Motel pool and back again, diving into the churning surf and then racing through the white-hot sand to cannonball into the deep end of the pool. Back and forth, all day long, breaking only briefly for Creamsicles from the ice-cream truck.

At the end of the day, sunburned and with sand still crusted in our hair, Johnny and I would go with our parents to the bay side of the island to eat fried-clam sandwiches at Morrison’s restaurant. After dinner we’d walk out onto the pier and watch the sailboats returning to the harbor.

This, the smell of low tide rising from the harbor, was how the nights in Beach Haven smelled. But how Beach Haven felt was something else. I remember that it seemed I breached the borders of my skin. The lights of the carnival and the taste of the hot, cinnamon-sugary morning doughnuts and the tickle of the sand crabs weren’t just something I felt from the outside in; they were a part of my body. They always had been. Brunei was the opposite. Every day I was further from my body. I was more disconnected all the time from the world around me. I noted the loss with some sadness but also with a kind of satisfaction. Not being able to feel your body was its own kind of safe harbor, its own kind of freedom.

From where I stood, I watched a caravan of the ubiquitous black Mercedes pull up. I retreated back to the cabin as both plainclothes security and uniformed guards emerged from the cars and came aboard, fanning out and securing the boat.

The security protocol was subtle. Once they were on board, the men made themselves unobtrusive. If you weren’t looking carefully, you could miss how well protected the royal family was, how closely we all were being observed. Things were carefully orchestrated to preserve the illusion of a regular life for the Sultan, his brothers, and their families—or, rather, some rarefied bell-jar version of a regular life, in which every need or want was fulfilled practically before they even knew they had it. They probably thought the toilet paper just magically formed itself back into a perfect triangle after every time they wiped their asses. It was stifling. No wonder the Prince wanted to fuck and fuck.

The plainclothes guards were men dressed in sharp suits, who walked around and delegated, switching back and forth effortlessly from Malay to British-accented English. One of them talked to the blond stewardess for a while. They spoke in low voices across the room and at one point the conversation turned to me. I knew because the guard looked me over and then paused to think before continuing. He didn’t know what the hell I was doing there either, but he knew more than the boat crew. He knew enough.