white mary
My office consists of a plastic chair and a wooden table shoved against the window. It is undisturbed. My most intrusive colleague is the sea.
I cherish its peace but all the same, I’ve never managed to sit there from morning tea till moonlight. I may be two-thirds hermit, one-sixth shy, and a dash of crazy but even I sometimes need companions. Luckily, I’m surrounded by neighbors and there are no fences between us. They’re friendly too, knocking on my door bearing warm smiles and tasty gifts: pineapples and coconuts from their gardens, sweet potatoes and fish straight off the grill.
I’m only talking about the women, of course. I’ve been advised not to socialize overmuch with men and besides, on Krangket Island it’s generally the women who stay home while their husbands work in town. There are exceptions. Some men farm and fish on the island; some women go to work. All my immediate neighbors play the classic role though, overseeing the management of food and children and never-ending loads of laundry.
When all that’s done, there’s time for malolo too — moments of leisure in which my neighbors can be found sitting and chatting on the porch. So, when the endless lines of words start to crawl like biting ants, I wander over to Kelin’s house or Bessie’s house or Shiela’s house and strike up a conversation. Well, “conversation” might be rather a grand word for the exchanges that take place…
Once upon a time there were still such things as strangers, in the full sense of the word. Nineteenth-century sailors and Pacific Islanders were such. Pale moon men with strange seeds. Half-naked hunters with strange dances. Standing face to face on the frothing shore, they must have been to one another pure exotica.
Nowadays we are not so easily amazed. We no longer associate an unfamiliar skin tone with marvels. We’ve been disillusioned. We are none of us Gods; we are none of us Noble. Just a bunch of boring, petty humans, the whole world round.
Illusions have not, however, been replaced by deep or subtle understanding. We’re less fascinating to one another, but still far from comprehensible. I know that making the transition from friendly to friend is never easy, not for someone of my age and temperament. Maybe the differences between me and my new neighbors just make that inevitable struggle all too transparent.
Or maybe I’m just too rich.
The women I’m trying to impress don’t have phones or computers or library cards they can use to check out the latest local poetry. They don’t have gas ovens. When they want to boil rice or drink tea, they build a fire. They don’t have faucets; they fetch water from the well.
As there’s no electricity on Krangket, there are no washing machines either. Many hours of my neighbors’ weeks are devoted to doing laundry. In fact, “doing laundry” is the first phrase I learned in Bel — abang bang falani. It was easy to remember because I have so many chances to use it.
I’ve done our abang bang falani a couple times since we moved to Krangket. It can be kind of calming to sit outside and dip my hands into cool soapy water. But when I don’t feel like it or there’s too much, I pay someone to do it for me.
I can’t help but feel these differences digging a gulf between me and any prospective gal-pals. A case in point:
One hot Sunday afternoon, Daniel and I walked with Buri and Kelin and their kids to the island’s premiere beach for swimming and snorkeling. After a long delightful dip, Daniel went out with some guys to learn to paddle the single-outrigger canoe. I see-sawed back and forth between reading a novel and sitting with the group of women. The novel was engrossing. An easy, familiar pleasure. The women … less so. They sat on wooden benches, eating rice boiled in coconut milk followed by very sweet tea. They seemed to be having a grand time. Except whenever I came and sat down with them — silence.
I’ve experienced the same thing many times since. As soon as I join a group, an eerie silence falls. It seems my mere presence is intimidating, stupefyingly so. Is it my wealth, my color, my language? Something in me serves as an extremely effective damper on general merriment.
Except, that is, when I do my best to fit in. Trying to say some words in Tok Pisin or the local Bel language is the surest way to provoke giggles all around. It is kinda nice to feel that I’m adding something to conversations, generating social value. But it might also be cool if, at some point, my contribution evolved beyond being the sideshow freak.
Getting excluded for being too rich and powerful is obviously less painful than a lot of alternative scenarios. But it still makes me feel lonely.
Besides, my interpretation could be totally off. Maybe they don’t see my many luxuries as points of pride. Maybe to them I’m just a lazy child-wife who doesn’t know how to cook.
I don’t want to admit that there may be no way beyond the barriers between us. Not yet. My favorite coping strategy is always to study up, so I’m doggedly learning the languages. At least that gives us something fun to talk about. They tell me words, I write them down.
By the time I’ve learned all the words, perhaps I will have figured out what to say.
