EVERY PLACE I'VE NEVER BEEN (PART 4)
It’s time for the next episode of “Tom Editing his memoir.”
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Tom
MISSING THE BOAT
I want to go home. I don’t mean America, though I’d like to go there too. And I’m not ready to think about the fact that “home” and America are already two different places in my mind. Right now I just want to get back to our house in Lae. I miss running water. Here in the village we have to pump our water with a hand pump that is a hundred meters from where we are staying, or go to the river, which is further. I want to drink cold water, instead of the water that we boil to kill parasites, and usually turn into hot tea. I want to see my cat. I want to be able to flip a switch and flood a room with light, instead of sitting by a hot fire at night, or trying to read by the dim smoky light of a kerosene lantern. I want to eat meat, and cookies, and anything besides rice, taro, kumul and pit-pit. I am desperate for the privacy of my own room, a refuge where no one comes to stare at me like an animal in a zoo. I want to be able to speak without first thinking how to put it in Tok Pisin.
It is supposed to happen tonight.
Later tonight we will catch the Lutheran Shipping vessel Umboi, and tomorrow morning we’ll be back in Lae. But first we have to finish this feast. What seems like hundreds of people are spread out over this gentle hillside. The grass is green and short, and it is so nice and even that I think it must have been cut by a lawnmower, not the grass-cutting knives we call saraps. The lawn slopes down to a beautiful blue bay called Dregerhafen, a little harbor sheltered by a few barrier islands. The islands are low, and we can see the wide ocean beyond them. We are a few kilometers from Obasega, in the direction of Maneba, which is where we will catch the ship. We are all packed up, and our luggage is with us. We’ll catch a ride from the feast, and go on to the ship at Maneba.
I don’t know what the feast is all about. It seems like we’ve been to an awful lot of singsings and feasts lately. There is plenty of rice, and taro, and cau-cau and pitpit and kumul, and a very little bit of boiled chicken. The food is cooked in coconut milk which makes it much more tasty than ordinary village fare. Even so, to me it’s a feast in terms of volume, rather than in terms of food I would like to eat. An old man gives me a bite of salty corned beef from a can, and it tastes delicious. When I want more, Mom and Dad stop me from asking.
“Meat is a special treat for someone like him,” says Dad. “He needs it more than we do.”
I guess he’s right. But meat is a special treat for me too, at this point. I can’t wait to get home. There are speeches and other things I don’t care about. It’s already getting too dark to read a book.
“Mom,” I say, “shouldn’t we get going? We don’t want to miss the ship.”
“We aren’t going to miss it, Tommy,” says Mom. She seems a little irritated with me. “A car is coming for us. They know where we are.”
Darkness falls quickly, and I try Dad. “Dad,” I say, pulling gently on his arm, “We should go. We’ll miss the ship.”
“The ship isn’t supposed to leave for hours, Tommy,” he says. “And anyway, we can’t go anywhere until our ride gets here.”
“When?” I ask.
“I don’t know, exactly, but they aren’t going to leave without us.”
I am not reassured. I feel that Mom and Dad are being entirely too casual about this. I want to go home. I want to eat meat, and take a shower in running water and read by the light of an electric light. I want to be alone in my room with no feasts and nobody following me around and staring.
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