Daughter of the Reef (11 page)

“I could have used your strength last night.” Tepua sighed. As gloomy as she felt now, she could not deny the appeal of a bath in fresh water. With an effort, she roused herself from the mat.
 

Outside, the morning sun cast sharp shadows over the leaf-strewn ground. Sweet scents drifted beneath the trees. From the clearing ahead sounded shouts and laughter.
 

“Hoihoi is coming,” the fisherman's sister announced loudly as she walked. “All of you, move aside.” She flung off her wrap and plunged into the pool, spreading waves. Tepua, glad that all eyes turned to Hoihoi, hoped her own arrival might go unnoticed. She waded in, unwrapping the cloth barely in time to keep it from getting wet. She plunged ahead until cool water covered her to the waist.
 

“Who is that new, slender beauty?” asked a male voice, hidden in a thicket just upstream. The laughter that followed made Tepua's face burn. Small green
nono
fruits splashed into the water, tossed by men at women they wished to attract. She was grateful that nobody tossed one at her.
 

The rushing water helped calm her. She crouched, ducking her head, letting the current rinse her long, dark hair. She scrubbed at her skin, trying to wash off every trace of Tangled-net's touch. But one part remained tender and she left it alone.
 

The women chattered, boasted, and teased each other as they bathed. Hoihoi's voice was the loudest of all and her jokes were more ribald than any Tepua had heard spoken by men. A few days ago she might have enjoyed the fun, but now it only reminded her of her recent ordeal. Quietly she finished bathing, waded ashore, and stood in the sunlight to dry.
 

Tepua glanced at Hoihoi, now queen of the pool. Surely Hoihoi would not mind if she slipped quietly back to the house. She felt a pervasive weariness in her limbs and a need to think things out. Arranging her bark-cloth wrap about her, she made her way back down the path.
 

Inside, she lay down once again. A tear seeped out of one eye, rolled down the side of her nose. She thought of Hoihoi and the other women with their boisterous talk. Their first time with a man had surely not been like hers.
 

Often, at home, she had wished she could take a lover. The experience, she thought, would be gentle and pleasurable, and raise the kind of tingling she felt when she caressed herself. But after the ramming and tearing she had suffered last night, she thought she would never want to see a man again.
 

Recalling what Tangled-net had done made her face flush with rage. Until last night, her misfortunes had seemed bearable, like a strange dream that could be endured because she knew it would end. Now she realized that it would not end. Her home had become the dream and this foreign place, Tahiti, her life. She moaned, burying her face between her hands, but she could not deny the truth.
 

Her thoughts slipped back to a time when her family had gathered under one roof, entertaining each other with singing while a storm howled outside. The favorite song was te
ara matangi
, which told of the great canoes and how they were sailed.
Ko te piu
. She could still hear the words.
E ko ne a, hirika
. She remembered the feeling of warmth as everyone pressed together in the narrow house, so that even as a child she did not fear the storm.
Here I go, cleaving the waves, here I go...

At last, Hoihoi returned to the hut and plumped herself onto a mat opposite Tepua. “Still mourning for your coral island, are you, girl? Well, you will find life here more comfortable. How can you live in a place where nothing grows?”
 

“We have pandanus trees, and coconuts...” Tepua protested, but her voice trailed off. There was no way to explain what had been taken from her.
 

Hoihoi merely smiled, opened her large hand, and held out a mound of damp moss. “This is what you need now. Put it between your legs to ease the ache.”
 

Tepua's face burned as she accepted the moss. Perhaps Hoihoi was not as uncaring as she seemed. Tepua offered a word of gratitude, but Hoihoi just snorted. “Now rest yourself, girl. And then we will see what kind of Tahitian we can make of you.”
 

Tahitian? Can it be done
? Tepua wondered. The songs kept echoing in her mind, telling of spray and flying fish and the joy of sighting land on the horizon. Now she would not be sailing anywhere.
 

 

 

6

 

FOR a day, Tepua remained inside and let herself heal, coming outside only to eat. Hoihoi brought her
poi
, and a paste called
mahi
, made by fermenting the breadfruit. “You will learn to like it,” said Hoihoi, when Tepua grimaced at the taste. “
Mahi
keeps well underground in pits. Long after the trees are bare, we still have good food.”
 

“Why not eat fish?” asked Tepua.

Hoihoi snorted. “We are not
all
noblewomen here. Go walk through the valleys and count the houses where
teuteu
and
manahune
live. Tell me how anyone could catch enough fish to feed all those people. No, girl. We thank the gods for our breadfruit, and you must do so as well. Without it, we would starve.”
 

Tepua frowned and reached into her bowl again. Though the mash was sour and its taste vaguely unpleasant, it did fill her belly. She hoped that Rimapoa might bring home something from his catches, but until then breadfruit would have to do.
 

Another day passed. Tepua struggled against feelings of despair. She did not belong here. When the canoe had sunk under her, it should have meant her death, the punishment for her defilement. She should be dwelling now, not in a bright and fragrant paradise, but in that other place—the land of eternal night.
 

So much had happened that she could not explain. The gods had let her fall into the sea, but had helped her to reach Tahiti. They had not stopped Tangled-net's attack, yet had kept her from harm in the lagoon. The sharks had spared her. The gods had told her to live.
 

Whenever she was alone, she whispered prayers, begging to know why, but no answer came. Finally, in a dream, she heard the resonant voice of her ancestress, Tapahi-roro-ariki. She was so startled by this rare visitation that she woke up, and lay in the darkness with her pulse pounding. She could only recall fragments of what her guardian spirit had spoken.
I have not forgotten you. . . . You are still my daughter. . . . Go out and see what this new world offers. ...

Heeding these words, Tepua began to accompany Hoihoi on her morning rounds. There was a ritual she followed that started with a bath in the stream. Later, the fisherman's sister would look over her soggy taro patch and her yam garden, then harvest a few vegetables for the afternoon meal. These, along with shellfish she gathered from nearby shoals, she placed for cooking in the earth oven that she shared with the neighboring women.
 

Later in the morning Hoihoi sometimes sat with her friends at a long board, making
tapa
cloth by pounding the inner bark of young trees. Tepua listened to the rhythmic clatter of their wooden mallets and the chants that the women sang as they worked. She could not help thinking of her own island, where women gathered in similar groups, pounding dried cones of the
fara
fruit to break out the edible kernels. When, she asked herself, would she ever hear that familiar sound again? Yet, as she blinked away her tears, she found her fingers keeping time to the beat of
tapa
mallets.
 

In the afternoons, while she and Hoihoi rested and chatted beneath the trees, Tepua learned a bit more about the man who had rescued her. The fish that Rimapoa caught went mostly to others. Here, as on her own island, albacore was a food reserved for noblemen and chiefs. Rimapoa made gifts to the men of importance and delivered the rest, when he had any, to families who paid him with coconuts or ava roots or—for a season's work—with rolls of bark-cloth. Cloth was the principal medium of exchange here, and could be traded for almost anything one needed.
 

It did not surprise Tepua that the fisherman was absent at mealtimes; custom and
tapu
required that men and women eat apart. When Tepua asked where Rimapoa ate, Hoihoi tossed her head and said, “Sometimes with the people who take his albacore. Or with other fishermen, when they tolerate him.”
 

“Why should they not tolerate him?” Tepua asked. To her, Rimapoa seemed inoffensive; she felt sorry that he led what seemed an odd existence.
 

“It is the way he fishes,” said Hoihoi stiffly. “Some say he hurts the catch for others. Some even accuse him of fish stealing.”

Tepua frowned.
Rimapoa, a thief
? But Hoihoi would say nothing else about her brother. Well, that was one more thing Tepua did not understand.
 

There was another mystery the next morning. Tepua woke on her mat with a start, feeling someone's shadow pass between her and the sunlight that streamed into the hut. But when she rolled over and looked up, she found no one there.
 

As she leaned on one elbow, blinking, she smelled a delicious aroma. Roasted fish, something she hadn't had in days. She saw a moist, leaf-wrapped packet next to her mat.
 

She glanced toward Hoihoi, who twitched and mumbled in her sleep as if she, too, had smelled the fish. Quickly Tepua drew her wrap about her hips and scurried outside with the packet between her hands. Feeling slightly guilty, she found a place behind a tree.
 

She should share this with Hoihoi, she thought. But the older woman would probably eat most of it, or worse yet, tell her that eating it was
tapu
for women, then take the packet for herself. Tepua's mouth watered. She was tired of breadfruit, even when served as
mahi
. Carefully she opened the packet.
 

Albacore. She knew it by the aroma, by the pale tan color and the firm flesh. Eagerly she popped a piece into her mouth. Mmm! A delicious morsel, seasoned with salt water. She had finished most of the fish before she admitted to herself who had brought it. Of course, Rimapoa.
 

Suddenly she stiffened. How many
tapus
had she just violated? In Tahitian eyes she was a commoner now. Such women were forbidden albacore. Nor was any woman supposed to eat what a man had cooked. Yet women sometimes ignored these restrictions.
 

She glanced about nervously, hoping that no one had seen her. More troubling thoughts surfaced. Rimapoa had brought her a gift. Was this his way of courting her? If so, then how could she avoid disappointing him?
 

 

The next morning, when Tepua was returning with Hoihoi after gathering mussels, she saw Rimapoa waving to her from farther down the beach. “You talk to him,” said Hoihoi brusquely. “I have work to do, and the sun is getting hotter.” She snatched Tepua's basket of shellfish and continued on her way, leaving the younger woman to greet the fisherman.
 

Tepua watched Rimapoa as he drew nearer. She did not like recalling how she had first thought of him—as little more than a kindly servant. But what servant would brave sharks to rescue his master?
 

Now she had begun to see him simply as a man. By Tahitian standards, she knew, he could not be called attractive. He was tall, but not broad. His arms and chest were wiry instead of fleshy, his skin tanned and roughened by the sea. He had the long legs of a runner, and she could easily imagine him speeding down the beach, his loincloth flapping about his narrow hips.
 

His eyes, dark gray brown like the outer husk of the coconut, were wrinkled at the corners from squinting against sea glare and wind. Today the lines around his eyes and across his brow gave his face a touch of worry.
 

As he walked up to her the fisherman smiled, erasing the lines for a moment. His grin had a rough charm that warmed her as she looked at him. “I left early and fished well today,” he said. “Now I would like to do something for you. I would like to show you a special place.”
 

At these words, she grew uneasy. Up to now she had enjoyed a pleasant friendship with Rimapoa, but she knew that he wanted more than that. “Hoihoi has gone off without me,” she answered.
 

“Good. Then you are free now. Let me take you up to the hills. It is a pleasant walk.” The lines on his face deepened again, as if he feared she might refuse him.
 

Her first impulse was to do just that. But he had always been kind and gentle to her. Would it do any harm to go with him, even if she had to fend off a few caresses?
 

She glanced inland toward the towering green heights, a sight that still startled her. Her life had been spent on a low island, close to the sea. She could not imagine what it would be like to climb toward the sky.
 

“I will go,” she said, and added, “but not for long. I think Hoihoi will be looking for me soon.”

“We will be back before she needs you.” The fisherman smiled. His teeth were even and white and his lips, especially the lower, curved on the inner margin, giving a unique roguishness to his grin. Once again she felt the warmth of his charm.
 

They took a path that wound toward the hills. Now and again they passed men carrying bundles of firewood suspended from poles across their shoulders. The wood carriers stared at Tepua with open curiosity, recognizing, she thought, that she was not a native, not Maohi.
 

She felt a chill as they passed her, as if they had penetrated some inner secret. How much could they tell about her just from a glance? She knew that she was not only slimmer but also taller than the women she had seen here. And perhaps her manner of walking also marked her as different. A sharp-eyed observer might realize that she carried herself like a chief's daughter.