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Samoa.
    Years later, I asked Mom why she went abroad while seven months pregnant instead of selecting cribs, stocking up on diapers, and knitting booties. She paused, then gave three explanations. The first was that she wanted to put flowers on Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave. The second was that she wanted to see the setting for cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead’s research on teenagers in Samoa. And the third was that she wanted a break from winter on the Cape. I soon intuited that the silence between her answers had everything to do with my father and their on-again, off-again relationship.
    During this capricious adventure, my mother astonished locals. Not only was she unmarried and pregnant, with a small child, but she also immersed herself in the culture by renting a fale for six weeks. Fales are houses without walls, where crickets and spiders and cockroaches are free to wander in and out. At night, gauzy, white netting was her only protection from the giant mosquitoes.
    Still, Mom says a life without walls is the most efficient and harmonious way to live. And it’s also the only way to live in Samoa, where the sun smolders so deeply that it settles into a person’s very marrow. Without walls, the slightest breeze can work its way into the fale and bring a whisper of relief.
    Whenever Mom walked through the village, the women along her path would ask her the same questions over and over: “Where are you going?” and, in the same breath, “Where is your husband?” Before she could answer, they’d scoop up little Michael, whose baby blond hair entranced them, and walk a ways with Mom. They soon learned there was no father, no husband.
    The women fawned over Mom’s widening belly, bringing her roasted pork, breadfruit, taro, coconut crème in taro leaves—all cooked on brick and wood fires. They made Mom part of their community. Michael and Mom washed these gifts down with Samoan cocoa while I grew strong from within.
    Mom planned to stay on those islands forever, wrapped in nothing but the traditional lavalava dress. But as my due date drew closer, reality set in. I was born back on the Cape, where Mom found a small apartment to rent with government assistance. She wrote to my great aunt: “I’ve been paying into the system all these years. Once this baby is born, I’ll need to be a full-time mom.” She certainly couldn’t count on Oliver, and she wasn’t about to put us kids in child care to work as a teacher. “There’ll be time enough for a career,” she added, “ after I raise Michael and this baby.” It almost seemed as if she was trying to make up for the time she’d missed with her first three children.
    Once she’d settled in, Oliver started hanging around again, only to vanish three weeks before the birth. When she went into labor, Mom sent all her friends searching for him. A buddy finally brought him back to their apartment. While she labored through the night, Michael played with blocks on an old mattress nearby while Oliver led a raucous game of cards with a friend on the other side of the bedroom door. The closest my mother got to him was the smell of his cigarette smoke trailing into the bedroom where she lay or the pop of his laughter through the papery walls. Sometimes his voice crackled accusingly when his friend would drop a beer bottle. Other times, he’d call out “Cheater!” when a questionable hand was played.
    It was just Mom, one of her friends from the shop, and a midwife in that darkened room when I arrived around midnight. After they left, Mom remembers showing a sleepy Michael his new baby sister. In the still of the night, he leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Mom waited for Oliver to fawn over me, but he never came. When she registered my birth a few days later, he was long gone. There is no father listed on my birth certificate—just a blank spot underscored.

    Mom named me Musashi. The most famous Japanese samurai of all time, Musashi was a