The Day After American Samoa Is Under Water
The evening news helicopters compete for the best camera angle
above the water, fighting to find anything worthy of coverage.
A floating high chief. A baby’s arm flattened by a coconut tree. Anything
Even the Titanic was enormous enough to leave remnants of itself
to buoyancy. They were a giving people. There’s gotta be something here.
Congress assembles immediately to vote on a bill that supports relief efforts
for our displaced, and our Congressman sits in his own numbing silence,
knowing that by law: he still does not have a vote that will count for anything
due to the U.S. national status of our island country, as he watches
his colleagues raise and lower their hands amidst his own spinning head.
The Department of Homeland Security calls an emergency meeting to strategize
where FEMA should deploy relief efforts. After ten minutes, they declare relief
pointless and decide to go home. The Pentagon, however, collapses
into the arms of their own fiscal grief, realizing that their #1 army recruitment
station for enlisting the most soldiers in the world is now underwater.
On land, news anchors are practicing their pronunciation of American Samoa
to themselves, struggling to stretch the long “ah” sound across the country
of their mouth. The cameraman rolls, and every news anchor forgets everything
they have spent three whole minutes trying to not mess up. Except American,
of course. No lips ever slaughter that word. Critique it til dissection, sure.
Slice it down its chest, skin pinned back like butterfly wings, but even that
is a careful cruelty. Even that requires gloves and good lighting. Patience.
All across the world, maps are being dusted off and pulled out of desk drawers.
Google overheats in frantic frequency and the search for where exactly American Samoa
is begins. Was. Where it was. In other people’s homes, parents press
their child’s hand to the blueness of the gridded paper and pronounce Pacific
slow to the rhythm of their child’s puckered lips. To make it more interactive,
world maps are being taped to the walls of living rooms
blindfolds are tied softly across the budding eyes of toddlers
ribbon in hand, as they are instructed to pin the tail on the island that once was.
In our homes, you can hear the wailing of our grandparents
through every avenue that sound can travel. Never could I have imagined
the day where all of us Samoans would curse the U.S. for treaty writing us
into owning us, but here we alive ones are, a panic of mouths swollen at the throat
of our American nightmare. In my home, grandpa is alone in his room,
looking outside the window. I walk over to sit beside him, my hands cupping
his hands in my lap, as he mumbles quietly through a stream of tears:
Where will the family bury me now?
by Terisa Siagatonu
from Split This Rock