Author: Karen.

Email: keh36@student.canterbury.ac.nz

Website: http://kphoebe.livejournal.com

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Listen to me.

I'm using your language because you didn't learn mine. So you listen good. I worked hard at learning English.

I know that if you don't understand me, it won't be my fault. I am going to tell you about me, and you are going to listen.

I am an island girl. This island is many years old. A volcano spat it out, a paradise created from the throat of hell. The beauty of this place must have hurt the fire trapped within the earth, oyster grit to pearl. It's a postcard of a place. White sands, blue ocean, green lagoon. Coconut trees and thatched huts and turtles and fish. Coloured fish the only jewels we needed, once.

My family has lived here for generations. My grandmother can recite our genealogy back, right to the first canoe, crewed by one of my ancestors. He wasn't the navigator, nor the priest. But to be here first, that's a position of honour. We've been here a long, long time. We have our own rituals, the Easter feasts, the family reunions. Every Sunday, I went to church and sang, so holy and pure in my white dress and hat.

When I'm five, I go to the primary. They tell me my island was found by a white man called Cook. Like it wasn't here before he came, holy white foot on the sanctified white sand. It only counts if it's discovery by a white man. That's what we learn at school. My grandmother's stories, they might be true, but they aren't the truth. They don't mean anything. Before Cook came, we learn, we were savages. Heathens. Now we are saved, by the good white man.

Salvation is his gift. This language is another.

You people are just full of gifts. Come to the beautiful islands. Bring your bikini, your sunhat and your smile. Bring your irregular verbs and pronouns and idioms. Bring beads and nails and muskets. Bring your God and your pollution and your nuclear tests. Bring your deadly diseases, your alcohols, your prostitution, your guns and your casual, sure arrogance.

It would be very impolite to refuse your gifts.

I, me, I have another gift. I am clever, clever enough to go to the high school on another island. Every morning I am awake at dawn, washing myself, dressing so carefully. Tying my hair back in the two tight plaits, so I can be clean and pure for study. A big clean bowl to pour all the knowledge into. Like chicken blood into the white basin on Easter Saturday. On the ferry, I can see the rising sun spilling silver over the water. It makes a road I could follow into the sun, if I could walk on the water.

One teacher, an old white man, he takes an interest in me. Because I am gifted, he tutors me extra, in the evenings. I get home late, my chores are not done and my mother scolds, my sisters pull my plaits because they don't want to do my chores for me. But I am happy. I am learning so much. I am shining and brimming over with this knowledge. I understand the secret language of algebra. I can write compositions, As every time. I walk slowly home at night and sing the old songs, the breeze lifting me home.

At the end of the year I am first place in everything, except Sport. I play netball, but clumsily. Not even C team. I fall over a lot, over my own feet.

I had polio when I was young. Not very bad. But my legs are weak. Sometimes, walking home, I take long, long rests, looking out over the island. It is a peaceful, aching time for me.

Three years, this man tells me, only three years. You are clever, you study hard, you will get a scholarship. Then you can go to the big country, go to university there. Bring back a degree. Make things better for your people.

Three years, he puts his hands on me.

I learned many things from that man. He taught me well.

In winter, I went to Aoteoroa, to the university there. The land of the long white cloud, that's what it means, the name the people who discovered it gave it. They say it was a fish pulled out of the ocean by a god.

It is a cold, dead fish. It is so cold there. All the food is in jars. There is a sea, but it is dirty and cold to swim there. There are many island people there, but no one from my island. I am marked out, by my skin, by my limp. My English, the best on the island, is clumsy in my mouth. My letters from home are short and make me ache with love and loneliness. I cry all the time.

People say 'In summer, it is better.' 'In summer, go to the black sand beaches, the kauri forests. You will like it in summer. It will be more like home.'

Some people say 'Go home, coconut. This is our country.'

I cannot wait until the summer. I go home.

My mother and sisters are pleased to see me. There is lots of work to do, and they have missed me. I am so glad to be warm again, so blessed to be back on my white sand island.

My father is not so pleased. It is an expensive education that he has wasted on a girl. To please him, I take a job at the high school, assisting my former teacher. That is good, a position of respect. My father forgives me. I am teaching the sons and daughters of his friends. They are very eager to learn, very respectful. I teach as well as I can.

It seems I have a gift for that too.

But I do not let the old man touch me any more. I have nothing more to learn from him.

And then comes that day in May. A clear bright day. The strengthening time came so quickly. It is a brief, silver moment, and after, I walk home with no limp. I play netball with my sisters that evening, and I am fast and strong as any of them. Faster. Stronger.

Later, alone, I throw the ball as far as I can. It flies far out to sea. I tell my sisters I am sorry, and buy them a new ball.

That is all the testing I need, all the power I want. I can run now, and that is enough.

Like all your gifts, it came without asking. A little silver fish swimming into my head, the words bubbles rising up from its mouth: "Are you ready to be strong?" it asked me.

But it swam away again before I could answer.

You never waited for my answer either. You never even asked the question. Yesterday, you came here, your holy white man foot on this white sand. And you said, "I've found you."

You told me about Slayers and Watchers, about vampires and demons. An army is gathering, you said. You will come with me to London, you said. You and I are on one side, they are on the other. Duty, honour, decency, you said. A special gift, you said.

You presumed, with your casual, sure arrogance, that I would fall into line. Salute, perhaps. The discovered girl, her past history disregarded, pure and holy for the clean white war against evil.

And you would not listen when I said no.

That is why I hit you over the head, Mister Fendalton. That is why you are tied to the chair, with my shirt in your mouth. Now, no words coming from your own mouth to fill your ears, you can listen to me good. I am an island girl. I would die in your cold London, if I did not die in your army. My duty is here. My honour is here. Why should I die in your wars?

Your army can spare one island girl. This power was forced on me, but you cannot force me to wield it for you.

I will stay here, and teach the children of this island, boys and girls. I will teach them true histories, and I will teach them how to fight. I will teach them that sometimes, it is necessary to be impolite.

If the evil you speak of finds us here, we will fight that too.

But not for you.

I refuse your gift. Take it back, if you can. Leave it, if not.

Nod if you understand me, Mister Fendalton. Nod if you understand that Sina Faalofe will not join you.

And if you will not understand me, if you will not swear to leave me in peace... well.

I can give you a gift that you cannot refuse.