by Xenia Taiga

1.

They were watching her. She was one of the first ones to come. They stared at her. It wasn’t the first time that they had seen people like her. They had seen plenty of people like her. But it was the beginning of the tourist season, the ending of a non-working typical bad boring winter, and she came like a welcoming rain in the dry desert, a blooming and gleaming orchid in a crowded monotone jungle. So they watched her, her every move. More would come. Of course, because of summer, and now it was only May. There was June, July and August to come. She wouldn’t be the only white goddess. They would be more white gods, coming and spending and gorging and floating in the ocean.

But she was the first and her white skin shone in the sun, blinding them. She was not alone. A man was with her. A man far too young for her but matching her beauty. He came and stayed but not too long. Two days, at the most. Two days and then it was only her. That white body lying on the beach.

Of all the hotels laid out on the beach strip, she stayed at the most expensive one, the one that the ugly fat American made. Who later married that poor prostitute and who later abandoned that prostitute for another one and then another one and then well, they stopped paying attention. Greed was evil and jealousy even worse. So they busied themselves on the beach, underneath the woven palm thatched roof, waiting.
On the fourth day she came up to them; her big black sunglasses covering nearly her entire face and that obscenely small bikini covering almost nothing on her body. She came with a smile on her face and left with a smile, even though they noticed it was a bit weary. A weary smile like a coconut that had been slam dunked too many times in the thrashing ocean.

They got to work quickly; brushed off the sand, gently pulled the woven bamboo mats and laid her down. Her skin was so white, whiter than the sand on their beaches. They squinted around her as they worked.

And for a woman who brazenly worn such tiny obscene bikinis, who had money to lie around at the beach and enough money to stay at the ugly American’s hotel, she was really stressed.

Her muscles were hard as rocks. Sharp like the broken beer bottles you find in the ocean, slicing your foot bloody raw, but so beautiful, like a sea shell discovered in the sand, rolling about in the waves. The colors calling out to your eyes with such wondrous poems and songs and you’d dip the shell over and over into the water. Allowing the salty water to gleam and re-gleam the shell. This was she. She was such a sea shell.

Her hair was white like fire. The end white tips of a blazing fire. So fine and soft. Her legs as well had soft and fine hair. You wouldn’t even know that hair existed on her legs, but you could feel it. A soft subtle growth like the moss growing on the stones at the edge of the rocks that stayed in the sea.

And so big. So much land to cover and massage and groom. All of it so firm; firm arms, legs and breasts. All the shaking and pounding and slapping would not snap them loose.

Her flesh and muscles rolled and shivered like the foam bristling on the top of the ocean waves. But her flesh was whiter and cleaner than that, it was like snow. Yes, snow. Although they had never seen snow before but imagined that this was how snow would look, blowing in the wind, shifting on the mountains. She was a snow queen. Snow white. The others agreed.

When she finished, the snow queen stood up. Her face red and pink, marked by the bamboo mats. She shoved the money quite fiercely into the girl’s hand; so fierce, so strong! She smiled at the girl, at all of them. But her smile was forced, odd, off key like a sour lime that had gone bad. She strolled off, trembling in the sand, back to the ugly American’s rich hotel. It wasn’t until the snow queen reached the stone pavement that the girl realized in her hand she held an American dollar bill. She ran after her, calling her. The snow queen finally turned around with that sour lime smile and waved her off.

They decided to tape the dollar bill onto the ceiling of the bamboo thatched roof. It would be the first of many from many other strange and beautiful snow gods.

2.

My gawd! I mean simply my gawd! I come to paradise and then everything is lost. Two days it was paradise. Blissful, beautiful, and then like everything else in life, impermanent and unstable, it was all lost.

It was the day on the beach when my toy boy husband said he needed to get something. I said,
“Fine.” Didn’t bother to ask more questions. Did I need to? No, I was not his gatekeeper and he was not mine. But he didn’t come back until midnight. No explanation. Nothing. I was so angry. I just went to bed. And then the next morning he didn’t even bother to come with me to the beach.

I said, “Fine. See you there.”

He never showed up. I caught him later with a prostitute. No more than fourteen, fifteen? I mean, My gawd! How disgusting could it get? How much worse could it get?

I went to the beach; stunned. I tried frying myself and those images of him and that child. I only ended up pink and red and swollen. The pictures still stayed in my head.

What was I to do? Divorce, surely! Disgusting, filthy ungrateful pig runt! But how to face everyone? Their smug faces surely I didn’t want to see; their “I told you so” faces. I could move. I needed a change anyway. Wasn’t that why I married toy boy? Maybe I could move here?

The questions kept running around and around in my head. Decisions needed to be made and I was on vacation not to make any.

I saw them from the first day. Their gawking faces. And thought “Why not?” A massage would do me good.

There was a fat lady sitting there at the far end and I was hoping I would get her. All the others were super tiny with tiny hands and tiny fingers. I had a rock in my neck, head and shoulder. The fat lady with the big spread out fingers would do me good. The fat lady didn’t even move. I guess she was too fat to bother and they gave me the tiniest, youngest one of the bunch.

Immediately her fingers jabbed into me. They weren’t fingers but needles and pins and knives. There was a lot of slapping and pounding going on. I don’t know what that was all about. She nearly pulled off my head. Jumped on the platform, squatted near my head, jabbed those bones around my head and pop! Then she flapped around my turkey arms and my turkey gut. A lot of flapping, too much flapping.

It was then that they were talking. I was fire red when she finished. I held my tongue. I was nearly to the point of yelling at her and at that stupid fat lady and all the other tiny ones who stared and gawked and talked in that language, smiling at me. I know they were talking about me. I could tell. I’m not stupid. But how rude! Rude! But I held my head high.

Collected myself and cooled myself down. It wasn’t them that needed the yelling. I knew who needed the yelling. I knew who I was going to yell at. And when the little one yelled after me, chasing me and trying to give me back the one American dollar that I gave by mistake. It was a dollar. What would a dollar do? What would a stupid one American dollar do to change this situation? I had things to do. I had to find my stupid ungrateful toy boy and tell him a few things. No, yell a whole lot of things. I waved her off, irritated by her. I glanced back once and she had the biggest smile on her face and held that one dollar bill close to her chest like it was a million bucks. It wasn’t a million bucks. But that smile was. And I was gonna have that same million dollar smile when I was finished with toy boy.