Page:Coming of age in Samoa.pdf/178

 these, a girl who had deserted her husband and was living with a temporary successor came to live in Luna’s household. She and Luna were constant companions, and Luna, quite easily and inevitably took one lover, then two, then a third—all casual affairs. She dressed younger than her years, emphasised that she was still a girl. Some day she would marry and be a church member, but now: Laititi a'u (“I am but young”). And who was she to give up dancing.

Her cousin Lotu was a church member, and had attended the missionary boarding school. She had had only one accepted lover, the illegitimate son of a chief who dared not jeopardise his very slender chance of succeeding to his father’s title by marrying her. She was the eldest of nine children, living in the third strictly biological family in the village. She showed the effects of greater responsibility at home by a quiet maturity and decision of manner, of her school training in a greater neatness of person and regard for the nicety of detail. Although she was transgressing, the older church members charitably closed their eyes, sympathising with her lover’s family dilemma. Her only other sex experience had been with a moetotolo, a relative. Should her long fidelity to her lover lead to pregnancy, she would probably bear the child. (When a Samoan woman does wish to avoid giving birth to a child, exceedingly violent massage and the chewing of kava is resorted to, but this is only in very exceptional cases, as even illegitimate children are enthusiastically