I’m used to the women from the Comoros Islands who crowd onto the beach near the house, dressed up in gold bangles and earrings and their best lace-trimmed blouses. They clap and sing in circles for hours, jumping up to dance in pairs, wagging their backsides in tiny precise jerks, laughing and flashing gold teeth. They wrap themselves up in their good time in a way that intimidates me. And I’ve come to an understanding with the older women of the village, who come by to bring us our morning ration of zebu milk (we drink it boiled in coffee) or to barter with rideaux Richelieu, the beautiful muslin cutwork curtains that they embroider. They are intensely curious about me, l’Américaine, who looks not unlike one of them, but who dresses and speaks and acts like a foreign madame, and is clearly married to the white man, not just a casual concubine. They ask me for medicine, and if I weren’t careful they would clean out my supply of Advil and Bimaxin. They go crazy over Lele, whom they call bébé métis—the mixed baby. I want to know all about them, their still eyes, their faces of varying colors that show both African and Indonesian blood, as I want to know everything about this primeval chunk of Africa floating in the Indian Ocean, with its bottle-shaped baobabs and strange tinkling music, the sega, which is said to carry traces of tunes from Irish sailors.
But the girls squatting under the mango tree stare hard at me whenever I sit out on the beach or walk down to the water to swim. Then they make loud comments in Malagasy, and burst out laughing. It’s juvenile behavior, and I can’t help sinking right down to their level and getting provoked. They’re probably about eighteen years old, both good-looking; one with a flat brown face and the long straight shining hair that makes some Madagascar women resemble Polynesians; the other darker, with the tiny features that belong to the coastal people called Merina, and a pile of kinky hair tinted reddish. Both are big-titted, as Michel pointed out, the merchandise spilling out of a pair of Nouvelles Frontières T-shirts that they must have got from a tour-group leader. Some days they have designs painted on their faces in yellow sulfur clay. They stare at me, and guffaw and stretch and give their breasts a competitive shake. Sometimes they hoot softly or whistle when I appear.
My policy has been to ignore them, but today they’ve taken a step ahead, got a rise, however ironic, out of my man. It’s a little triumph. I didn’t see the Zodiac ride, but through the bathroom window I saw them come back. I was shaving my legs—waxing never lasts long enough in the tropics. Squealing and laughing, they floundered out of the rubber dinghy, patting their hair, settling their T-shirts, retying the cloth around their waists. One of them blew her nose through her fingers into the shallow water. The other said something to Michel, and he laughed and patted her on the backside. Then, arrogantly as two Cleopatras, they strode across the hot sand and took up their crouch under the mango tree. A pair of brown netsuke. Waiting for my move.
So, finally, I act. Michel comes sauntering inside to tell me, and after he tells me I make a scene. He’s completely taken aback; he’s gotten spoiled since we’ve been married, used to my American cool, which can seem even cooler than French nonchalance. He thought I was going to react the way I used to when I was still modeling and he used to flirt with some of the girls I was working with, some of the bimbos who weren’t serious about their careers. That is, that I was going to chuckle, display complicity, even excitement. Instead I yell, say he’s damaged my prestige among the locals, say that things are different here. The words seem to be flowing up into my mouth from the ground beneath my feet. He’s so surprised that he just stands there with his blue eyes round and his mouth a small o in the midst of that Indiana Jones stubble.
Then I hitch up my Soleiado bikini, and march outside to the mango tree. “Va-t’en!” I hiss to Red Hair, who seems to be top girl of the duo. “Go away! Ne parle plus avec mon homme!”
The two of them scramble to their feet, but they don’t seem to be going anywhere, so I slap the one with the straight hair. Except for once, when I was about ten, in a fight with my cousin Brenda, I don’t believe I’ve ever seriously slapped anyone. This, on the scale of slaps, is half-assed, not hard. In that second of contact I feel the strange smoothness of her cheek and an instantaneous awareness that my hand is just as smooth. An electric current seems to connect them. A red light flickers in the depths of the girl’s dark eyes, like a computer blinking on, and then, without saying anything to me, both girls scuttle off down the beach, talking loudly to each other, and occasionally looking back at me. I make motions as if I’m shooing chickens. “Allez-vous-en!” I screech. Far off down the beach, they disappear into the palms.
Then I go and stretch out in the water, which is like stretching out in blue air. I take off my bikini top and let the equatorial sun print my shadow on the white sand below, where small white fish graze. I feel suddenly calm, but at the same time my mind is working very fast. “My dear, who invited you to come halfway across the world and slap somebody?” I ask myself in the ultra-reasonable tones of my mother, the school guidance counselor. Suddenly I remember another summer on yet another island. This was
