She impatiently looks forward to the monthly visits by the regular ship. She will walk down to the wharf and watch men and machines busily strain underneath the Pacific sun unloading goodies for her island.

But the watching is not for long, she has a different purpose. The sailors, bored with weeks of oceans, gaze at her with unveiled interest from the decks of their ship and blatantly express their desire. They are not gentlemen, but hard men deprived of female companionship for too long. This does not worry her, for she has no pretensions at being anything other than a boat girl who is there to sate the sailors with longed-for sex. Boats mean business for this island girl and her clientele’s harsh crudeness is accepted without complaint.

In her gay floral dress she will sneak past bored Port Authorities in their drycleaned uniforms and try to beat her girlfriends on board.

A few moments on board are spent choosing a customer (or vice versa) and settling the cost of pleasuring him. She will be lucky if her client can offer a drink. One drink can lead to many and a drunken sailor is easier to manipulate, or cheat.

 

Rima turned seventeen on board a ship last week. She cannot remember whether it was the Fetu Moana or the Tiare Moana, only that two days were spent in drinking and sweaty sex in the mephitic atmosphere of the cramped cabins. Everybody had wanted a try of the birthday girl, who eventually stumbled off the vessel two hundred and fifty dollars richer.

On this particular morning Rima opened her sleepy eyes and recognised the familiar surroundings of her shabby room. There is no ship in today.

Tired eyes focus on the digital watch strapped to her thin wrist. The watch, a present from a now obscure lover and an object of envy amongst the other girls, told her it was 2.47 p.m.

She unsuccessfully tried to recall the previous night’s events before kicking off a thigh her partner had carelessly flung over her after a night of heated sex. She rolled off the lumpy, sweat-dampened mattress and wrapped a faded pareu around herself.

Not bothering to glance at sleeping Ioane, Rima crept out of the old house and ran to the rickety shower-house made of corrugated iron. Her mother, Vera, had attempted to conceal the rusted roofing by planting kopi around the outside. Despite Rima’s hangover she noticed the kopi flowers smelt particularly lovely this morning.

The cold shower washed away her hangover, fatigue and traces of the night’s primitive crudities. Rima reminded herself to buy another bottle of shampoo on Monday and for the time being resorted to using Lux instead. Gathering her pareu around her lean wet body, she remembered her nosy neighbours and dashed into her clothes-strewn bedroom.

She flicked her wet hair over Ioane’s sleep-creased face.

‘Oi, get up’.

The sleeping figure mumbled an unintelligible oath and came to life. ‘You’d better get up and put your clothes on — and you might as well go home.’

Rima made it sound more a command than advice.

Ioane reluctantly raised himself, unable to conceal the typical morning self-consciousness at his naked body.

After the youth left, Rima tidied the room, which she usually shared with two younger sisters, and counted her last boat takings after folding away the last of her clothes. A hundred and ninety-five dollars left; the Banana Court had been the recipient of sixty-five dollars last night and God knows who else she had bought drinks for apart from Ioane and herself. And Vera would be asking for money to buy food for the family, and her sisters needed new uniforms. She’d be lucky if thirty dollars would be left over after her family had their handouts.

Lighting her first cigarette of the day, Rima quietly comforts herself that another boat is arriving tomorrow.

It is during the few solitary moments like this, Rima often wonders about love and remembers how she became a boat girl.

Her first visit to one of the ships was to accompany a friend, a hardened, older boat girl, to meet a prospective customer. The boat seemed enormous and exciting, and fascinated the naive fifteen-year-old virgin. Rima did not know exactly what prostitution was, or what the word meant. She only had a vague idea why her friend Tutai was on board the ship. Tutai introduced her to some sailors who welcomed the young girl so profusely she found it overwhelming. Nobody had ever made her feel so wanted.

In the stale, stuffy cabin, Tutai explained to the younger girl about being a boat girl.

‘Plenty money,’ Tutai told her confidently. ‘You can make over a hundred dollars in one night and all you have to do is open sesame’. To Rima this sounded simple enough. The money temptation was hard for the young girl to resist, and her family’s poverty was quite well known in Tupapa.

Anyway, her virginity would be lost sooner or later, and in the process of losing her virginity she might as well earn some money, Tutai reasoned.

Rima’s first customer was one of the officers whose seniority gave him privileges which were not confined by ship rules. He was a big, hairy, rough man who crushed the young girl to the narrow bunk, making it difficult for her to breathe, and when she was able to gasp for air, it sickened her stomach to inhale the papa’a stale breath.

Three hours later, Rima left the ship, no longer a virgin, a hundred dollars clutched in a nervous small hand and unsteady on her feet after her first taste of rum and Coke.

From that day ships became a means of quick finance and an easy exit from the boredom of school. Her parents eventually gave up trying to stop Rima, and only acknowledged her presence when money was needed in the family or chores had to be done when her sisters were not home. Rima didn’t mind, it left her bereft of parental nagging and she could do what she pleased.

Except fall in love and be loved.

It would be nice to fall in love, whatever love may be, Rima constantly assured herself. Often the young girl would ask herself whether love was the safety of marriage and children or the seemingly never-ending nights of fulfilling desire … merely as a vessel accommodating sailors with sex. Rima yearned to exchange the short soulless business ventures for permanent love. But the money she earned from ‘business’ she could not afford to sacrifice.

But local men don’t fall in love with boat girls, she sadly reminded herself. Her occupation was common knowledge, and marked her like an ugly tattoo as far as the local males were concerned. She provided for only the few who were hard-up for loose sex, and then there were never any dates or rendezvous afterwards.

Rima always assured herself that one of these days a handsome local fellow (preferably one who had come back from New Zealand) would fall in love with her (or her love-making) and marry her. She would be such a good wife.

But the other boat girls, especially the older lot, laughed at Rima’s thoughts.

‘No guy will want to marry you, you’re just a taramea,’ they would say.

Rima gave up sharing this dream with her friends, but kept on hoping.

Epilogue

It is six years later and Rima is twenty-three; most people think she is older; the haggardness of her face tells of struggle, disappointment and approaching alcoholism. The constant bouts of VD have also left their wrinkles on the once smooth, attractive face. Her figure is still slim, but her belly protrudes even though Rima is not pregnant. She doesn’t make as much money from the boats; the regular sailors are tired of her and seek the younger girls.

You will see Rima at the Banana Court hanging onto a post because she can’t stand upright. As usual she has had too much to drink after spending her last boat takings.

A good boat night means thirty dollars these days, all of which is spent on drink, and Rima still prefers rum and Coke.

Most of the BC males know Rima by sight and try to avoid her. Unwary tourists passing her by will be shoved an empty glass with the plea that it be refilled, and if they stay long enough, will hear Rima speak with sadness in her large unfocusing eyes about her one hope, to fall in love with the right man.

‘I’ll make such a good wife,’ she’ll tell.