Throw Down the Gauntlet

By Janet W. Breeze

(Previous chapter)

Chapter 6

Synopsis: Nancy Jackson, with two children, accompanies her husband Grant on a teaching assignment to the Island of Truk. After a brief stopover on Guam, the family arrives on Truk, where a quonset hut becomes their home. However, Nancy is told by a native doctor that she will have to go back to Guam for the arrival of expected twins. A letter comes from the Mortensens, their friends who live on Saipan, saying that the Jackson family will be welcome at their home, and that a teacher will exchange teaching assignments with Grant. Upon their arrival, a native maid, Soledad, takes charge of the children.

At the conclusion of another six a.m. feeding, Nancy held one of the twins, and Grant held the other.

“Do you still think they look like me?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Nancy laughed. “Oh, well — what I really mean is — it’s just about more than Amy and I can stand to be surrounded by so many handsome men all the time!”

“They are the best-looking Saipanese you’ve ever seen, aren’t they?”

“Well— they’re the blondest! Which is more than most of the Saipanese can stand! Every time I go out to the hospital for “baby check,” people come closer and closer, until I have practically a whole crowd sitting on my lap! And then the pinching starts. The first time it happened with Skipper, I thought the clerk in the grocery store was being mean, but out at the hospital, people are constantly coming up and making little cheek and elbow pinches on the children. I don’t know if it’s the different coloring or their chubbiness that makes them so irresistibly pinchable. Come to think of it, though, I haven’t seen Soledad do it to Skipper any more since he bit her.”

“That must have gone over big.”

“Really big. Oh, Grant, I just don’t know what I’m going to do. Soledad means so well, but sometimes I feel like a third thumb around here — like the day I came home from the hospital, and she took the babies away from me. Why, I could have dismissed her right then.”

“But you didn’t — and you wouldn’t. Besides, you weren’t in a very good frame of mind that day, anyway.”

“So would you like to exist on nothing but rice three times a day for two solid days?”

Grant put the baby he had been holding down inside the playpen on its stomach and then twisted open the window louvers to let in more air.

“Let’s not exaggerate, honey. You have canned beef stew for dinner. And you were only in that hospital for five meals — not six.”

Nancy placed her twin beside Grant’s in the playpen.

“It really is fun having one apiece this time, isn’t it?” she asked. “And don’t count too much on Soledad.”

“Why?”

Nancy broke three eggs into the frying pan and then began setting the table for breakfast.

“Well, in the first place, she is becoming more and more unreliable. I never dreamed a calendar had so many holidays! And in the second place, when she is here, I have about had all I can stand of being second place.”

“But I thought she had really been a help to you,” Grant said.

“Well, she has. But she does so much sometimes that I sort of walk around half asleep — just because I’m bored. Now that the twins are sleeping all night, I just wish I knew of a gracious way out, without hurting Francine’s feelings, for having hired Soledad in the first place.”

“But you used to say if we ever had money, the first thing you’d do would be to hire a housekeeper. Now you have one, and you’re still not happy.”

“It’s just that I feel like I’m drifting away from you and the children by not doing more for you. I couldn’t care less what any of you wear now that I don’t have the job of washing and ironing. Well, it’s too hard to explain. I guess I’ve just been getting too dependent on her lately. When she doesn’t show up in the morning, I just about turn inside out at the thoughts of having to clean up the breakfast dishes and make the beds. And I don’t like feeling that way! That’s lazy — and sinful!”

Grant laughed at her and painted his eggs with catsup.

“I guess you’re right,” he said. “You never were happy unless you were going a hundred miles an hour. So what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. But hurry up. You’re going to be late.”

“Listen,” he said, “see if you can get Soledad to stay with the children after school. I want you to go to Lake Susupe again with me.”

As Grant drove away, a jeep came rattling up the hill. When it clunked to a halt outside her door, Nancy heard two familiar voices.

“Hunggan!”

“Ahi!”

“Hunggan! Hunggan!”

“Ahi! Ahi! Ahi!”

Finally, Soledad burst through the door and threw herself down on a kitchen chair with one great disgusted thud.

“What’s the matter now, Soledad?” Nancy asked.

“I wish we could separate!” she said.

“Whatever for?”

“We don’t understand each other.”

“Like how?”

“I tell him, ‘do dis.’ And him say ‘do it yourself!'”

Nancy chuckled. “Excuse me,” she said. “But it sounds to me as if he understands you pretty well. What was it you were shouting to each other?”

“I tell him yes. Him tell me no.”

“Soledad, I hate to tell you this, but your matriarchal society is coming to an end.”

“What that?”

“Times are changing. Your men have been going to school long enough now that they’re beginning to see how other people live. And Nana is no longer the boss.”

“You not boss here?”

“No. Latter-day Saint women do not boss their husbands. We call ourselves companions. That means we both try to be helpful to each other, but the man still remains the head of the house.”

“You like that?”

“I love it. It’s a good feeling to have someone you can depend on to tell you what he thinks is the right thing to do.”

Now Nancy felt she had caught the moment she was hoping for.

“Soledad, do you really have to work?” she asked. “I mean — your husband works. Doesn’t he make enough to buy your rice?”

“Sure!”

“Then why work?”

“I don’t like to stay home!”

“Why?”

“It not pretty like here.”

“But couldn’t you make it pretty?”

“I don’t know. I never try.”

“Don’t you think that could have something to do with the reason you and your husband fight all the time?”

Soledad gave the traditional Saipanese blink of the eyes, which interpreted means, “Who knows?”

“Frankly,” now Nancy was getting around to what she really wanted to say, “I feel my husband would be happier if I were to do more for him. What I mean, is, why don’t you try staying home part of the time and making it a place your husband will want to come home to?”

“You think maybe that work?”

“I’m sure of it, Soledad, I’m sure of it!”

“Maybe I try. You don’t get new maid — I work part time.”

“Okay.”

“I stay today — late. Finish work.”

“Fine, Mr. Jackson wants me to go ‘boondocking’ when he gets home. Will you stay with the children?”

“Hundert per cent, Missus!”

“Si Yuus Maase, Soledad.” Then Nancy repeated herself in English. “Thank you.”

When Nancy and Grant had first entered Trust Territory, it had been the rainy season. Now they were in the middle of the dry season. Many of the tangan-tangan plants had dropped their foliage, and the penetrating odor of smoke polluted the fresh Pacific air as one “boonie” fire after another broke out across the island.

“This really is the only time of year to do this,” Grant said to Nancy, as they walked the shores of Lake Susupe. “During the rainy season, there’s more water in the lake — and it’s harder to get in here through the boonies.

“What does it matter how much water there is in the lake when it has no bottom, anyway?”

“Oh, that’s just a native superstition, that and the alligators. No American has ever seen an alligator on Saipan. But this lake is supposed to be full of them. Just folklore. The only threat here is this bog. Probably somewhere in the dim, dark past, somebody was trapped in the quicksand, and the whole lake took on an aura of suspicion. Anyway, I want to measure the depth of the quicksand just out of curiosity. Then I think I’ll come back Saturday morning and collect some plant specimens. Here, hold the other end of this pole.”

“Oh, by the way,” Nancy said, “we have a new maid.”

“Oh?”

“Yes! Me.”

“Now, how are you going to get your book researched if you spend all your time cleaning house?”

“I’ve about given up on that,” she said. “There have been so many cultures influencing these people for the past hundred years, I’m beginning to think there is no such thing as a native dance. The Saipanese do a great polka they picked up from the German occupation. And you saw the Palauans stop right in the middle of swinging their grass skirts and mark time, ‘Hot, do, tree, far!’ They would make much better soldiers than dancers.”

As they slowly worked their way around the swampy shore of the lake, the sun was extinguished by the sea before they realized their probing of the quicksand was approaching an end.

“We’d better get back,” Grant said. “There isn’t enough daylight left to go on around. It would be too dangerous not to be able to see where we were stepping.”

Nancy turned and followed him in retracing their steps, taking care not to walk near the tiny, round pieces of wet quartz.

“You know,” she said, “I think I’m going to miss Soledad.”

Grant stopped suddenly and held his arm out to prevent Nancy from passing him.

“Shhh, listen,” he said.

As they stopped talking, both of them could hear a sound like popcorn popping.

“I thought I could smell smoke a little stronger,” Grant said. “The wind must be blowing a boonie fire this way.”

“Don’t you think we can make it back to the car?”

Now the smoke was becoming more evident and flaky black ashes began drifting about them.

“No, I don’t,” he said, “and we can’t go in the other direction either. There’s only one way back to the car, and that’s across the lake.”

“Swim? In a bottomless lake? With alligators?”

“I’ll tie up a little raft for our things, Nancy. You take your shoes and stockings off.”

Nancy removed her footwear as she was told.

“Looks like a picnic,” she whispered.

Then she stared at the darkening water, and her armor dropped with a thud.

(To be continued)