Chapter Forty Two

 August 2003

I arrive in Hawaii the day before I left New Zealand. In my head I pretend I've travelled back in time rather than crossed the international dateline. 

   I wish I could travel back in time to before I met Steve, then I could tell myself never to approach him in that bar in Cairns. Or to walk away when Brandon told me he was an asshole, walk away the first time he bit me, walk away when I realised he wasn't going to use contraception, walk away when he dumped me in Darwin, walk away that night in Perth when he made me bleed.

   But that would have been too late, in Perth. I was already pregnant by then. 

   No. I wasn't. I'm not. I've bled since then so I can't be.

I go to the north shore of Oahu. I'm feeling better, that fluey feeling leaving me. It's peaceful here. I lie on the beach. I swim. I snorkel, watching bright fish dart beneath me in the clear water.

   Looking at the sunshine coloured yellow tang I wonder why they need to be so bright. A warning to predators, I assume. And me, in my bright clothes that Steve hates, am I sending out a warning to predators? A warning that Steve ignored. Will he regret it?

   Men stare at me in my bikini. I feel their hungry eyes crawling over me. An American man in my dorm asks me if want to have pizza with him. I decline. I can't be pregnant. My stomach can't be bulging the way I think it is. No man would be interested in me otherwise.

I get the bus to the Polynesian Culture Center and walk around the recreations of villages. I learn to hula dance, wearing a grass skirt.

   I email Steve and tell him I'm disappointed that people don't seem to wear grass skirts in normal life because I think they suit me.

In the evenings I sit under a canopy at the hostel with other people. There's a German woman who seems to have visited everywhere, even my boring town in England. She says she's the reason airlines don't serve peanuts on flights anymore, after she complained because she's allergic.

   One night I'm the only woman sitting there with three men. They talk about pornography, a woman who was famous for sleeping with hundreds of men. 

   One of the men there looks at me. 'Are you uncomfortable with us talking about this?' he says.

   I shake my head. 'No, no. I don't mind,' I say, because what else can I say?

   A propos of nothing he says that women used to drink gin to induce miscarriages. It's juniper berries, he says, they're not good for pregnant women.

Chapter Forty Three