not,” Todd Williams says. “If we can reduce our carbon footprint and take measures to build up these islands, we could turn it around. I’m going to work on this in college.”
Mister Norman barks a laugh. His yellow teeth remind Nora of ancient ivory and time so deep she can’t even imagine how far back it goes, like Mister Norman himself, who looks too old to be teaching, almost too old to be alive.
He snorts: “You do that, Mister Williams, you save us all from oblivion, would you?”
Todd grimaces and kind of shrugs as he leans against the rail and stares at Ebeye. A small funnel of black smoke drifts from one end of the island.
Stef says, uptalking in protest, “Mister Norman, last week our club, the Environmental Advocates, sold 220 carbon footprint vouchers?”
This makes Mister Norman nearly choke with laughter. He’s heaving, his eyes red and tear-filled. “Oh god,” he gasps. “Oh, my little hopefuls!” He coughs. He swallows. He sighs: “Oh shit, the world is too much for me!” Then, wiping at his eyes, he sucks up a big breath and says, “Sorry, kids. I know you want to help. And you are helping, aren’t you. We’ve got these computers to deliver, don’t we?”
Todd and Stef and Tabatha and Nora sort of nod in agreement but nobody knows what to think. If it’s all a joke, if the world is already ruined the way Mister Norman says it is, then what’s the point?
Bringing gifts to Ebeye makes Nora feel good—like she’s putting herself on the line somehow. Most Americans wouldn’t dare come here, even though it’s only two miles away from Kwajalein. The Marshallese people, really, are very nice, even if they don’t have a fraction of the cool stuff Americans have.
“We go for the wrong reasons,” Mister Norman says, still wiping at his eyes, “and we do almost everything wrong, but it’s better than not going or doing at all.”
Mister Norman is kind of entertaining when he revs up. He’s as crazy a person as Nora will ever meet.
Here’s the coolest thing about the trip: Nora’s parents have no idea she’s on Ebeye. They can’t keep up with her many co-curricular activities. She’s planning to surprise Jeton, who hasn’t been able to get near her since she got grounded after her parents caught them fucking on the patio last week.
God, did that freak them out!
As soon as the DDs step off the boat, Todd and Stef wheeling the computers on a freight dolly, a crowd of children swarm after them.
Mister Norman has taught the DDs how to say the official greeting:” “Iọkwe eok!” Which sounds like “Yuck-way!”
“Don’t you surrender a penny!” he warns—because the children are always asking for money. Even a quarter is a big deal to them.
He calls the Republic of the Marshall Islands “a nation of children” because the average age of its citizens is, like, sixteen: a fact that makes Nora giddy with fantasies about how different the world would be if teens ruled. There’s nothing teens couldn’t do, if only the grown-ups would get out of the way!
“Sup?” the little kids are saying. Most don’t have shirts; none have shoes; and a couple of the smallest don’t even have undies. Playing in puddles, dragging sticks and palm fronds behind them, chasing dogs, they look happy enough. And nobody appears hungry.
“Who looks after the children?” Nora asks.
“Their parents are working or looking for work or fishing,” Mister Norman says. “There’s probably a cousin or aunt nearby.”
The causeway project is the biggest employer now. It will connect Ebeye to the several islands just north of it, which will create more room for all of these people. Mister Norman says that space is so precious out here in the Marshalls a California company has been trying to get the Republic to build landfill with American garbage. “If that’s not the most fucked-up proposal you’ve ever heard, I don’t know what is,” he said. “But, hell, why not? We’ve already dumped all kinds of atomic fallout on these people, haven’t we?”
He went off on that one for about an hour. Whenever he rants, Nora calls it “the Norman Invasion.”
Mister Norman is leading the way, right down the middle of the street, which has been paved recently. The shacks on either side are painted as varied and brightly colored as the women’s muumuus. And every fifth house seems to be a small church.
Mister Norman walks so fast, Todd and Stef can’t keep up, pushing that heavy cart.
“Mister Norman, slow down,” Nora calls.
He stops. Then a motorcyclist speeds by, nearly swiping him.
“Eājāj wōt!” he shouts after it.
Nora assumes this is a curse, though it could mean anything, like “thanks a lot!”
“Sup? Got a quarter?” a little boy asks Nora.
She shrugs in response.
“Quarter?” he repeats.
Then Mister Norman shoos him away.
Suddenly the sky opens up. A pile of afternoon thunderheads has tumbled in from nowhere. Nora and her companions are drenched within a minute. Leaving the cart of computers at the curb, they run to the corrugated tin overhang of the Independent Baptist Church, which at a glance looks like another shack.
“See that?” Mister Norman says, nodding like the know-it-all he is. “That’s why I had you secure the computers under a plastic tarp.”
Then, like a message from God, a Toyota pickup roars down the street in the torrent and slams full into the cart, computer parts spilling and spinning like shrapnel—and making such a loud smack! that Nora, Stef, and Tabatha scream in unison.
The truck screeches to a stop, sliding several yards, the rain still gushing like whitewater.
“Serves us right,” Mister Norman says in disgust, stepping into the downpour. “Serves us fucking right!”
The driver clambers out. “Very sorry,” he says. He looks Indian and he’s young, of course, but not a teenager. Like most Marshallese men, he’s wearing khaki trousers and a T-shirt. The Marshallese love American T-shirts! This one says “AC/DC” across the front.
Then the rain stops—just like that—and the sun glides out, rays glinting from the blue-oily puddles on the asphalt, and the children are playing again, dogs barking after them, and the air is smoky again with the smell of burning garbage and maybe barbecued chicken.
The driver helps Mister Norman and the DDs pick up the wrecked computers, but many of the pieces disappear with the children, who dart in and out, grabbing what they can as if this were a game. The DDs load the junk into the back of the man’s pickup, then the man drives Mister Norman and the DDs to the high school. But no one at the high school seems to know that the computers were coming. A stout middle-aged Marshallese woman nods “yes’ to everything Mister Norman says but she can’t tell him anything he wants to know.
It’s so un-PC to say it, but all middle-aged Marshallese women look alike to Nora. They are short and stocky and have thick black and/or graying hair that’s been cut to the shoulders or tied back in a knot. And they wear long flowered dresses and no make-up and still have nice smiles but every last one of them seems to have let herself go. It must be all the children they’ve had. You can’t keep up with all those children. Nora has promised herself that she’ll have only one child. Well, maybe two. Or maybe none. But she won’t ever let herself go.
She and Stef and Todd and Tabatha help the driver unload the broken computers onto the sidewalk. The sun is so hot, they are almost dry from the downpour already. Nora feels a trickle of sweat skid down her spine. She’d like to be fresh for Jeton, but nothing stays fresh for long in this climate. She thought there’d be a ceremony to celebrate the computers or some gathering where she’d see him. He doesn’t even know she’s here!