The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

Chinese shop in Papeete to purchase a red pareu with showy white flowers. Barbara started tying her hair back and tucking a tiare or plumeria flower behind an ear. And Corie taught her the island ways, like how to use coconut oil to protect her hair from the seawater.

On March 4, Barbara turned fifteen. Her mother treated her to chicken and vegetables smothered in the famous sauce served at Moo Fat’s Kitchen. Earlier that day, her mother had harangued about her not holding up her end of the transcription work. It seemed all her mother wanted to do was work. So Barbara had slipped away for a visit with Corie’s family—it was her birthday, after all. But over dinner, her mother chatted pleasantly, and Barbara set aside her vexation and thanked her mother for the gift of a coconut braid hat.

Perhaps, Barbara thought, this was a good time to ask permission again to do the one thing she wanted more than anything in the world. On their walk home, she told her mother, “It’s grand, turning fifteen in Tahiti and living like a native.”

Her mother eyed her sideways. “Don’t go thinking you’re a native now. You’re from a different world.”

The way Barbara saw it, they could stay in Tahiti forever. Since she’d first sighted its silky sands, mossy green countryside, and turquoise-blue shallows, she understood altogether why Fletcher Christian had mutinied: How could anyone who’d partaken of this island’s delights resist it? Soon she’d send the letter she’d been composing for her father. How could he be anything but charmed—and jealous—of her South Pacific adventure?

“This place is a paradise, Mother. All I need to complete my life is an outrigger voyage.” Barbara had spoken with Corie’s uncle about sailing Tahiti’s atolls in his splendid proa, and he’d promised to take her, Corie, and Corie’s brother Tane journeying. How glorious it would be to hop from atoll to atoll. To sail with only the wind’s power, free from the churn of engines. To thrust her face into the sea breeze. To make the South Seas her whole world.

Her mother huffed. “You can’t go off sailing on your own.”

“I won’t be on my own. Corie’s family knows these waters.”

“How many times do I have to say no?”

Barbara kicked at the sand. “I’m old enough to be on my own.”

“You’ll do no such thing. It’s not proper—going off with two men.”

“But they’re Corie’s family.”

“I don’t care. And please quit wrangling about it.”

Barbara bit her lip. She’d suffocate if she didn’t escape her mother’s stifling watch. If her father could do whatever he pleased, why shouldn’t she?

Two days later, Barbara’s mother asked her to fetch the mail in town.

“It’s hardly worth the effort,” Barbara said.

“I’d like to check anyway. Now go.”

Barbara trudged to the post office. And there was a letter. For her. From her father. After a full year with no word from him. Her hands trembled as she held the envelope in her father’s unmistakable scrawl, with the return address Boothbay, Maine. It was bulky as if it contained more than a typewritten sheet or two. She’d not open it until she found a private place.

She hiked to Papeete’s outskirts and sat down in a shaded frangipani grove. Her father had fashioned a birthday card for her. Glued to the front was a photo of the two of them outfitted for their Franconia hiking trip. The card contained a handwritten greeting: “Birthday wishes to my darling daughter on her 15th. Love always, Daddy.” Tucked inside was a typed letter. She unfolded the pages and read.

✭

It was late afternoon before she returned. She found her mother hard at work, bent over the table.

“I expected you sooner, dear.” Her mother looked up from a stack of typed note cards. “Any mail?”

Barbara sloughed off her shoulder sack. “Just a birthday card from Daddy.”

Her mother bolted upright. “What does he say?”

“Happy birthday.”

“Can I see it?”

“No.” Barbara walked to her side of the bed. There was hardly any privacy in this hut. She sat down on the bed and, keeping her back to her mother, pulled the letter out of her sack and stuffed it in the pages of her English-French Dictionary.

“Has he said something to upset you?”

Barbara rolled her eyes, though her mother couldn’t see. “Daddy doesn’t write for a year, and now you ask if I’m upset?”

“Bar, that’s not fair. You know how concerned I’ve been about you. And I would like to know what he said.”

Barbara twisted around and faced her mother square on. “It’s addressed to me.”

“Fine,” said her mother, leaning back so forcefully her chair creaked. “Bar, you look flushed. Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine.” Her skin did feel overheated, most likely from the botheration of it all.

“Why don’t you help me with these transcriptions?”

“I don’t want to.” How could her mother ask her to work at such a time? She stood and grabbed her swimsuit off the indoor clothesline. “I’m going for a swim, and then I’m going to the celebration by myself tonight.”

Her mother’s gaze followed her. “I am invited, you know.”

Barbara walked to their screened-off shower. She hated her mother watching her every move. Lately, she’d taken to dressing and undressing behind the screen. “I know, but for once, I’d like to go by myself.”

“For once? You practically do everything by yourself.”

“I just want my own friends. Can’t you understand that?” Barbara slipped into her swimsuit. She’d swim and swim and wash away her father’s words.

“Please don’t be this way,” said her mother.

There was so much Barbara wanted to say: Then find your own friends; then don’t jabber endlessly about work and money; then start all over on your miserable marriage. Instead, she stomped out of the hut and down to the beach.

✭

When the sun’s rays made looming shadows of the island trees, Corie came to fetch them. Dressed in a royal-blue pareu and garland of scarlet hibiscus, she beamed with excitement. “Bon soir, Madame Follett, Barbara.”

Corie had arranged a traditional celebration for her “white islander friends”—as she