Chapter 36

It seemed that I hadn’t gotten up early enough. My bed was shaking and coming up off the floor.

“Wake the fuck up sleepy head.”

“What time is it?”

“5am.”

“What the hell?”

“Let’s go, we’ve got work to do.”

I sat up. My leg wasn’t as bad as it had been although I knew that the crutch was still necessary.

Getting dressed there was grumbling on the other side of the door. There’d be hell to pay if the ankle biters were woken up early; Grandmother would kill us.

There were some mango slices in the fridge when I went to get some juice. Eating as I went out to the backyard, I got told to hurry up.

When I got to the hole, the amount of stuff laying there was enormous. The wood was placed into the Imu so that a fire could be started, then the rocks were placed on top of the wood and the fire was started. It was a about an hour or so wait till it got to the point that the next step was started.

While prepping everything, I was wondering what the hell the banana tree stumps were for; turned out they would steam and provide moisture.

The hog was seasoned with rock salt and pepper inside and out, and then laid onto some chicken wire. Banana leaves were placed inside the stomach cavity, then a bunch of hot rocks from the fire were placed on the leaves before the hog was wrapped up by the chicken wire it was laying on. The mashed-up banana stumps went on top of the hot rocks and coals, then the pig in its chicken wire blanket. There were a lot more banana leaves that got piled on top, followed by a large wet burlap sheet. This was then covered with the dirt from the hole.

“You ready to go?”

“Yeah, but who’s going to keep an eye on this thing?”

“It’s taken care of, don’t worry about it.”

We headed around front and got into the meat wagon. It was about a 30-minute drive to the east side of the island. We arrived at a ranch style house with a little covered raised platform of to the side.

There were two older Samoan men sitting on the platform when we walked up and noticed that both men had to be in their 60’s. We walked up onto the platform taking our shoes off first. I felt a hand touch my shoulder, and then heard Fiti behind me.

“Barnim, the man on the left is Tanielu Alovili, our father. The fine gentleman on the right is Henare Faleafu who’s a tattooist here on the island. He apprenticed with a prominent clan in Samoa and does all the tattoos for the family and clans.”

“It’s an honor to meet you both.” I was confused as what this was all about.

Tanielu got up and came over to me. Though he was north of 60, he was almost the same size as Fiti and Sammy. I was caught off guard as he grabbed me in a bear hug and was even more shocked when he lifted me off the ground.

“Barnim, I wanted to thank you for keeping my boys from getting hurt. When they told me what happened, I was 100% percent behind the family adopting you. It was a little harder convincing my brothers, but they finally consented.”

As he lowered me to the ground, I told him, “I appreciate the vote of confidence and I’ll do my best to be worthy of the honor.”

He looked at them. “He will make a fine addition to the family.” I stumbled a bit as he slapped me on the back. They then explained why we were here.

By this point I’d gotten the gist of what was to take place and it was going to get me in so much trouble. The only thing I could think of was a phrase Stosh and JJ liked to use a lot, “Better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission”.

“So, you’re here to get a tattoo if you want. What you did proved to all of us your passage to a man. You won’t get Pe’a [lower torso tattoo], but it will cover your shoulder and upper arm. There will be two images that will show you’re a part of the family. All Samoans on the Islands, Hawaiian and Samoa will recognize them.”

Well, I had some reservations about going ahead, though as the minutes went by the idea was growing on me.

Then they described the process to me, well this was going to be different. No tattoo gun, it was going to be traditional with a couple of different needles attached to sticks, tapped with a weighted stick. The needles were made from hog’s teeth and tortoise shell. This was major old school tattooing at its finest.

I’d had tattoos in the first go around that had hurt to some degree, but this method was guaranteed to hurt even more. Guess it was time to bite the bullet and find out.

There was one thing I insisted on though, it needed to be a sleeve and wrap around the whole arm. Henare was all for it, though it would add a good bit more time. He said it would take between 2 and 3 days to complete.

Then Sammy said he had another surprise for me. This day could only get more interesting.

Sammy went to the meat wagon and brought back a plastic bag. It turned out to contain a blue Lava Lava; I guess his early prediction was going to come true. He told me the pattern mimicked the images that would be on my tattoo to mark my induction to the family. They showed me how to put it on and had a look of shock as I took off my shorts to put it on. I wasn’t going to be a schmuck and put it on over my clothes.

Both Henare and Tanielu wanted to see my wounds. There were some gasps and wows let out as I pulled off the bandages so they could see.

As Henare was getting his materials all prepped, he told me that he was going to get the outlines done in the 7 hours we had today. He then sat and went over what the elements of the tattoo would be and what their significance was.

It seemed that the two images that would be representing the Alovili family were a turtle and a stingray, with the stingray at the top, the stingray represented protection, and they were supposedly the only family that used this particular imagery in this manner. The turtle represented health, longevity, and peace. There was a bunch of other imagery that would be used throughout the tattoo.

Sharks teeth would be used to represent strength and guidance. The other major symbol used was Enata, which represents people, and there would be two major types used. Those with dark bold thick lines would represent my new family, the Alovilis, and then the ones with a thinner black line would represent my biological family.

I was laid on my back in front of Henare and the tattooing commenced. It hurt a lot more than my tattoos from the first go around did as I expected. Henare explained that the inside of my arm would hurt even more as that skin was a lot more tender. There was to be a line of spearheads going from my armpit to my elbow. The other designs would wrap around and almost touch the row, with just a little blank space between them.

Spearheads, because they were going to be touching tip to tail, had a traditional meaning of defeating your enemy in battle. They joked that I’d already done that, and my enemy was currently cooking in the Imu.

I endured a good bit of pain until I was able to center myself and slip into a meditative state. My arm was getting numb, and the pain was still there but was getting somewhat bearable but only just.

As Henare worked, I could hear the “tap, tap” as the mallet stick struck the needle stick. I stopped noticing my arm being manipulated around as the somewhat rhythmic tapping actually lulled me to sleep. I already was laying there with my eyes closed, so it wasn’t that big of a stretch.

I was shaken awake. They were all looking at me when Henare spoke.

“I wish everyone fell asleep as it would make my job that much easier although your snoring was so loud it drowned out me doing the tattooing. I need you to move so the inside of your arm is pointing up. We tried to move you but you’re heavier than you look.”

They were all laughing at me as he said it, which wasn’t a big deal. I moved onto my back so I could get into position. It was a couple minutes before we started again.

HOLY FUCK! This hurt to a level that neared getting punched in the face, though this was a constant pain. I tried to move my arm thinking readjusting myself might alleviate some of the pain.

Henare snapped at me. “You do that again and I’ll have Sammy and Fiti sit on you.”

With that tone I knew he wasn’t kidding around. Take the pain or be smothered by two Samoans. What a toss-up. Settled down and Henare went back to work.

As we went along the meditating wasn’t really working anymore. About 6 hrs into the session, and about an hour into the inside of my arm, I did the only thing that my body would let me. It shut itself off and I passed out.

I came to with water being splashed on my face.

“Nice to see you decided to stay conscious this time.”

“This time?”

“Yeah, you were in and out a few times, though not really coherent. You kept mentioning someone named Kiskan. From your talk it seems you two had a wild night together.”

OH FUCK, just what did I say while this was going on. I looked around and Sammy was the only one left on the platform with me. I noticed a crinkling sound as I tried to sit up, though all I did was manage the fall back down. I was light-headed and there was now a pounding in my head. Then I noticed that the noise was coming from the plastic wrap on my arm.

“How long was I out for?”

“In and out for over an hour. You need to drink some water.”

“What?”

“Let me help you sit up.”

“Don’t we need to finish?”

“Nope you’re done for the day. Henare said you took the work better passed out than asleep.”

“Hold on a minute.”

“Don’t worry, we made sure you were breathing and had a strong pulse. Drink some more water. You were probably slightly dehydrated which caused you to pass out.”

There was a big glass of water next to me, I drained it, giving me some cramps. Sammy refilled the glass.

“Take it easy and slow down.”

Fiti and Tanielu came out of the house.

“I told you he’d be up, there’s a strong spirit in that boy. Now pay up.”

“Come on Dad, you can’t be serious.”

“You made the bet, now pay up.”

I watched Fiti pull out what looked like a $20 bill and hand it over. I couldn’t believe they were betting on how long it would take me to come to.

They came over and Fiti gave me a tin that looked like the one Sammy had given me. It was stuff to put on the tattoo. I was supposed to keep it out of the sun till the next session. Looking down, the tattoo outline went from the point of my shoulder down to the crook of my elbow. It looked awesome from what I could tell. You could see what everything was going to be even though it was just outlines.

They told me that even the placement had its own significance. The upper arm and the shoulder were for strength and bravery. Sammy mentioned that it was appropriate for the profession I was choosing. Seemed Grandfather was expanding the circle of those who knew. They all assured me they wouldn’t let anything out before it happened.

It was time to head home as the luau would most likely have started. There was going to be a lot of yelling when Grandmother saw my arm. Mom would probably make me dig my own grave when we got back to Atlanta. That was going to be a blow up of monumental proportions.

The drive back was okay as the sun was starting its downward slide and was starting to cool off. As I got out of the car, you could hear the people and music as we headed for the backyard. I steeled myself for the coming shitstorm.

Luckily Grandmother was in the house doing something, so Mariana was the first person to see us. She walked over, looked me over and began shaking her head.

“Barnim, why would you do something like this? I’m disappointed in you.”

“It’s fine. You know Grandfather has a tattoo also.”

“Yes, I do know. I just don’t get it though. Disappointing.”

Well scratch one female from the Barnim Admirer Club. I learned late in my former life that you can’t make everyone happy and that only person that you need to devote yourself to making happy is yourself. I never had a wife and kids in my first life, if that happened in this life, it might change but probably not completely.

As I made my way over to where the tables were, I had a beer thrust into my hands. I say tables even though they were just plywood on sawhorses. The hog was laid out on top of banana leaves on one table along with some other dishes.

I was starved, so grabbing a plate, I got in line to get food. I hit a table with mostly cold dishes. Two of the dishes that looked good were actually made from the tuna I caught and were raw dishes.

Although I thought raw, one had a little chemical cooking that was achieved by adding acid from some fruits. This starts a chemical reaction or what you would consider cooking. The dish was called Oka.

For Oka, the fish was cubed then had lemon juice and coconut cream along with some cucumber mixed in. The other dish was called Poke, which is cut up fish, soy sauce, Maui onion, and a type of seaweed. They were both delicious, I had several servings of them.