a short story by Kelly Riggle Hower

The belt itself was not exceptional: pretty, but not expensive; hand-tooled leather with some colorful woven in-lays; the kind of gift a daughter might bring her mother from Mexico. That was, in fact, the route of this belt into Caren's possession. It was the belt's route out of her possession, though, that brought me into such detailed knowledge of an accessory not my own. The link between Caren's belt and me was Lola.

Lola, or Aulola (Tongans use L's in place of R's) Fanua, is what most of the pälangi women here call my "house girl." I'm politically correct, a former Peace Corps Volunteer. I say "housekeeper," though that's a rather fancy name for the bit of cleaning up and looking after my little girl that Lola does each week. Perhaps my reluctance to call 45-year-old Lola my "girl" resides in the tug of recollection and relationship that stirs in me at the sight of Lola and her daughter Ane hanging out my laundry in just the way my then 45-year-old mother and I hung out other people's laundry fifteen years ago. But this is Lola's story, and the term carries different freight for Lola than it does for me. Lola is fine with "house girl." It was when Caren called her a thief that Lola minded.

"Katie, I have been working with my people for twenty years, and this is the first time someone says I have taken something. I feel I have to tell you this. You should know. If you hear it somewhere lese maybe you begin to wonder if I will take something from you."

Lola calls the pälangi for whom she works "my people," for they are her people and she their guide through the daily and weekly succession of simple but confusing encounters of one culture with another. She explains in the language of diplomacy that it's "good to let the people cut that tree in your yard, but better they don't cut it too often or too deep, or the tree will die and no medicine for anyone." Taking me outside, she shows me where the tree, the bark of which is used to cure stomach aches, has been cut and where it has grown back. Lola takes clippings from the tree and plants them around this part of the island, a strategy she hopes will reduce the demands put on this old and balding tree, the only one of its kind in these parts.

Shortly after our arrival in Tonga, my husband Michael's assistant Tomasi made us a lü kapa pulu dinner and introduced us to Lola's diplomatic credentials by way of a story. Several years earlier Tomasi had asked Lola to gently persuade one of Michael's predecessors that the director of an international aid organization should not dress like a beachcomber. Lola then explained to this guy, a Peace Corps Director, "Good to wear your shorts and thongs for the cool, but better to wear your nice shirts with long trousers and shoes for meetings. The staff will like that. And you know, one of your ties would look nice with it, too!" Was ever a dress code more agreeably laid down?

But I digress. The belt is my story here, and for the sake of it Lola was dismissed, without benefit of diplomatic language, by one of her people. She arrived at my house early the next day with a thick packet of letters of character, from recent employers to those from 1974.

"Lola, she thinks you took the belt?"

Lola turned her face, swollen with misery, toward me--as if to congratulate me on asking the essential question. She handed me the packet with a look that said these letters stood between her and her destruction.

"She says it's gone, and it's me working there."

"Oh, Lola, she just doesn't know you. She doesn't understand what kind of reputation you have for honesty. She's just mislaid her belt, I'm sure. I'll ring her up and vouch for you," thinking I'd like to wring her right, between my hands.

"Mo ring her already, but she still not satisfied that I did not take it."

Picking up the phone to call Maureen O'Riley I began to hope for a sane solution for or at least shared indignation at what seemed a lunatic situation. Also thirty-four years old but my senior in parenting, Mo is possessed of a level head and warm, direct manner that have guided me along unfamiliar terrain before. Except for a few hours Saturday morning at Caren's, Lola divides her work week between Mo's household and mine. Lola, Mo and I are problem solvers. Watching one third of the "fierce and inventive" membership pawing numbly through a yellowed envelope of reference letters as if they were a map to water in the desert gave me a parched feeling. It's just the dryness before a good Tongan rain, I told myself. It's just that this crazy pälangi woman is new in town and doesn't know Lola.

"O'Riley residence," came Mo's pleasant combination of broad and flat, the Irish battling with the Australian in her accent.

"Mo, Lola's here and really upset over some business with Caren. And a missing belt?"

"Oh, Jees, yes. I told Lola I'd call you and put you onto all that, but she said no, she better tell you herself. As if we're going to forget all our time with her and sack her over some missing belt of Caren's if she doesn't show us those letters of reference."

"So you talked to Caren?"

"Yea. Told her she must'a mislaid it, to look around for it because Lola would never take a thing. She said, 'Well no one else could have.' But I said, 'Look for your belt again, Caren. I know Lola didn't take it, so you're bound to find it."

I'll say this, among a great many other things, for Mo: she knows how to say shit if she has a mouthful, as they so nicely say it back home.

"Okay, Mo. I'll take it from here. I think Lola's doing okay, and she knows we'll do what we can to help out with this loony belt bit."

"So is this Caren demented, or what? Have you met her, Katie?" cam Mo's no nonsense inquiry.

"Yeah, I met her at the British High Commission one night with her husband that new doctor. Mo, I'd like to be able to say I'd pegged her for a jerk right off, but it wasn't like that really. I mean I had some reservations, she was critical of the Tongan educational system. But who isn't? And I have reservations about most Americans I meet in Tonga other than Peace Corps Volunteers until I've met them two or three times without being offended. I thought she was okay. She seemed like the goodwill ambassador type, sort of. I don't know, Mo…" I trailed off, disheartened at my inability to give a definitive answer to that questions.

Caren had been bright and charming and generally positive about Tonga, but in a way that subtly suggested she was trying very hard and that the pleasant surface might crack. And yet I wondered if this hindsight perception wasn't colored and shaped by Lola's current problems with Caren.

"Well," came Mo's voice to pull me back, "maybe she's just so attached to this belt form her kid that she can't be reasonable about it. We'll just stand by Lola 'till the silly thing's found. Good on ya for ringing me, Darlin.' I'll be talking to you soon.

To offer Lola comfort, I read the packet of references:

The others were variations on the theme. Caren clearly did not understand she was accusing Mother Theresa of pinching her belt.

"Come on, Lola. Let's have a cup of tea before we start today. Just stay away from my belts." I was pleased to see Lola laugh without missing a beat.

When Michael came home for lunch and heard our account of Caren's accusation, he said flatly, "Quit her, Lola. Don't work for someone who assumes on no evidence that you took something she can't find. She'll probably blame you for every rubber band she loses."

"Yeah, Lola," I added. "We'll pay you for the half day you've been working at her house. Come over here and play with Rosie while I try to get something going for that writer's circle I'm in now."

"You would do that? …" Lola trailed off.

"In a minute. And her loss is our gain."

Quitting was not so simple a proposition, as I learned in conversation with Lola the next day.

"I think maybe I should stay till I find her belt. Then I will prove I am honest. She wants me to work till the belt is found, and to come with Ane in the evenings and look for it. Then when the belt is found, I can quit."

My objections had to take a number. I hated the idea of dragging young Ane into Caren's craziness, and I hated the idea of Lola spending her off hours pursuing Caren's obsession. Most of all I worried that if Lola did find the belt she'd be accused of planting it back on the premises.

"Quit now, Lola!" I urged in conclusion. "You don't owe her another hour of your time."

But my arguments fell on years attuned to a different language of community ethos. Lola felt she was guilty till proven innocent and moreover, that it would be wrong to do anything so confrontational as refuse to do what someone asked of you within the limits of the law. She would, in the words of the letter, do "whatever … asked at any time."

I even called Caren myself, trying to convey concern in what she probably recognized as a clenched teeth voice. I told her I was sorry she'd lost something she prized so and that I was sure it would turn up, that I was sure Lola hadn't taken it so there was reason to hope it was around somewhere.

She was pleasant enough but brief, describing the belt, as if Lola might wear it to my house one day, and saying she'd never had this happen in years of hiring household staff. Her voice told me, after those few sentences, that the conversation was over, and we said our good-byes.

The situation I reported to Michael over lunch the next day was still more Sisyphean in its dimensions. Mo told me by phone that Caren was demanding not requesting, that Lola stay till the belt was found and threatening to go to the police if it wasn't. She now couldn't find a dress ironed by Lola's sister Seine who had filled in one Saturday while Lola was sick. If the dress didn't turn up, Caren warned, she'd go to Seine's boss at the Water Board and tell him about the theft.

In response, Lola politely assured Caren that she, Lola, would do all she could to help find the belt, dress or whatever else Caren can't find but that Seine had only been at Caren's house one evening and must be left out of any actions Caren takes against Lola.

"Not good to have Seine's name mentioned with theft, after all her years of a good reputation at the Water Board. Better for me to do this. My people know me, and they will probably believe me even if Caren tells the police there are thefts," Lola staunchly reported to me.

"What thefts?" I railed to Michael, relaying Lola's stand. "Caren mislaid the damn dress in the same place as the belt, the hole in her fucking psycho head! I'm sure Seine is going to handle all the salaries at the Water Board for years without misappropriating any funds, just biding her time for the chance to steal some pälangi woman's stupid dress! Caren probably got drunk and left the party without it!"

As it turned out, the dress's disappearance occurred through a much tamer avenue; running out of hangers while ironing, Seine had doubled dresses and shirts on single hangers.

"Oh, sure, the dress showed up," said Michael in his best Sherlock-Holmes-on-drugs voice, in our next installment of the ongoing lunch time saga. "Lola doesn't have a dress fetish--unless it's a leather dress. I have a good mind to call Caren up and tell her about the time we came home and found Lola buck naked and wrapped in all our belts. It wasn't pretty, and, boy, was it hard to get her untangled.

"Shut up, you're no help. As if you have a good mind, period," I ranted in amused irritation while the Peace Corps Volunteer having lunch with us looked as if he hoped we were joking.

Lola, meanwhile, continued to look for the belt.

 When the belt was found, by Caren, its discovery was presented to Lola as a gift might be. Lola told me about it over the phone later that week.

"Good news, Kati! Caren found her belt."

"Caren found it herself, Lola? Not you?"

"Yes, she call me this morning to tell me she found the belt in one drawer she has not use for a long time and so now everything can be right between us again."

"Lola, she said that to you?" I shrieked, ignoring the conciliatory note toward Caren I detected in Lola's voice. "She wasn't embarrassed to death to admit finding it after putting you and Seine and Ane through hell. She just drops it like a piece of rocking good news that now you can all be friends again?"

"Katie," said Lola, with a patient sigh, "I don't want to be angry with her. But I don't want to work for her any more, either."

"So did you tell her that?"

"Yes, I told her, and she asked if I would come by and talk to her about it."

"Oh, Lola don't go back there."

"Well, I feel I have to, it's the right thing to do to sit down with her this last time, since she asked me."

"Just don't let her out of your sight, Lola, or yourself out of hers. You don't want her missing something else and blaming you."

"'Io, I will be careful, and I will never work for her again," asserted Lola in a voice that didn't sound ready to do "whatever … asked at any time."

Lola's plan for her last meeting with Caren is to drop by on Christmas Eve with a basket she has woven for Caren and to pick up a gift Caren has for Lola.

"So, Lola, are you going to tell her that this is really the end of it?" I pressed her this morning.

"I don't want to embarrass her, with her family there and Ane with me, at Christmas, but I have this note for her. After I have give her the basket I will give her the envelope and ask her to open it after we have gone."

I opened the envelope Lola handed me and read the note inside, on a piece of pink paper wrapped around Caren's key.

"Caren--I want you to have a happy Christmas and all good things. I know you want the same for me, but I don't think it would be such a good thing for me to work for you again after our misunderstanding. I know you did the best you could, and I did too. May God bless you. --Lola.

"Jees, Lola," I said, finding my voice after a moment, "you could give Christianity a good name."

Lola laughed, "That's what my sister Seine sad to me. She wanted to sue Caren, but I said no, better to know we are right and be done." I noted and approved Seine's un-Tongan expression of rancor without mentioning it to Lola, whose truly Christian grace I admired as I do the flight of birds.

On an impulse I asked Lola to wait a moment because I, too, had a gift for Caren. I ran to my room, boxed my gift and wrapped it quickly while Lola gathered her things to go.

"Tell her it's from me, Lola. And tell her to open it later, with your card."

I kissed Lola good-bye and sat down to consider my gift, turning it over in my mind like the pleasant shifting of stone's weight from hand to hand. For the first time I tried to imagine Caren's response when she would open the gift and see it there, my favorite belt--Mexican leather with hammered silver ornaments--nestled in an old tie box of Michael's. Like Seine, I am not overburdened with allegiance to the beatitudes. Unlike Lola …

The thought of Lola jolted me from my reverie and sent me tearing down the road to catch her.

"Lola! I should take that gift to Caren myself!" I gasped, winded from my run and shocked at my near-foiling of Lola's lovely gesture.

She took my arm and spoke gently to me. "Maybe you should keep this present, Katie." She handed me back my box. "Good sometimes to think about whether you want to start something or to finish it."

I kissed Lola good-bye again and headed home, unwrapping the gift along the way to discard its box and paper on the pile of burning rubbish outside the "Captain Cook Motel." I carried the belt in my hand the rest of the way home, fingering its ornaments like the beads of my childhood rosaries and thinking of Lola.

©1997 Kelly Riggle Hower
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