Muaulu is a name from the tropical, carefree island Samoa. I received this name three days after my first breath of fresh air from an absent-minded, drugged, carefree aunty. Hilariously enough, this name is hers. She gave it to me like a quick flick, like a cigarette in the middle of the night.  She glanced over at me, shrugged her shoulders, cursed me without a second thought, and left.

To me this name is a secret swept under the rug, waiting for someone to trip over it and uncover its horrific mess. I don’t know this “Muaulu,” which is pronounced like molasses that oozes from your mouth. Muaulu is like walking around with a pimple on your forehead about to pop with puss spouting all over. Everyone just stares in disgust, pointing, whispering, or giving advice on how to deal with it and that it’s “okay.” Growing up I was told “oh you will be just like her” with eyes pitying me like the audience watching Bambi become motherless. In classrooms when the teachers begin to examine the paper as if they are reading an extinct language, I quickly shout over them with the name I chose, Sia.

Sia. That is the name of my great-grandmother, my grandfather’s sister. She was known as the most beautiful woman in the village. She one day vanished into thin air creating a narrative —if she even existed— with the only physical copy proving her existence, a half-burned blurry black-and-white photo. She is smiling and her hair is in the wind just paving her own way. I like to think she paved her own way not carrying a torch to pass it on but blindly walking into the dark and that is the path less traveled by. Hopefully she leaves a string so I can follow behind then cut the string behind me.