Frangipani

by Célestine Vaite

Genres: Biographical; Family Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

In Tahiti, it's a well-known fact that women are wisest, mothers know best, and Materena Mahi knows best of all -- or so everyone except for her own daughter thinks. Soon enough, mother and daughter are engaged in a tug-of-war that tests the bonds of their love.

Release date: December 5, 2008

Publisher: Back Bay Books

Print pages: 307

Sample

The Day You Came to Me

When a woman doesn’t collect her man’s pay she gets zero francs because her man goes to the bar with his colleagues to celebrate the end of the week and you know how it is, eh? A drink for les copains! Then he comes home with empty pockets, but he’s very happy. He tells his woman stories that don’t stand straight to make her laugh, but she doesn’t feel like laughing at all. She’s cranky and she just wants her man to shut up.

Finally he falls asleep. He wakes up with a sore head and says that he’d like some slices of roast beef and lemonade.

Well, Materena is fiu of all this!

She’s not asking Pito to give her all his pay down to the last franc. She just wants a few thousand francs, that’s all. Just enough for food, gas, kerosene, washing powder, and bits and pieces for their son. That is why it is imperative that Materena collects Pito’s pay, to which she believes she’s absolutely entitled. She’s Pito’s cook, cleaner, listener, lover, and she’s the mother of his son. It’s not as if she does nothing all day.

Materena asks Pito if she could collect his pay, with sugar in her voice and tenderness in her smile.

“Don’t even think about it, woman,” Pito snaps, flicking a page of last week’s newspaper. He tells Materena about his colleague whose woman collects his pay, and how all the others mock him. “Who’s the man and who’s the woman between you and your woman? Who’s the noodle? Who wears the pants? Who wears the dress?” they taunt him. Pito doesn’t want the same thing to happen to him. When you have no respect at work and the colleagues mock you from seven thirty in the morning to four in the afternoon, both behind your back and to your face, your life is hell. You don’t get invited to the bar on Friday afternoon.

On Thursday night, Materena combs her hair wild-style, rubs coconut oil on her body, sprinkles perfume behind her ears, and attacks Pito with caresses just as he’s about to drift off to sleep. Pito opens his eyes and chuckles. And while Pito is busy satisfying Materena, she’s busy thinking about collecting Pito’s pay, filling her garde-manger, painting the house, buying a new oven. The future and not just tomorrow.

Materena often imagines herself old, with her gray hair tied up in a thin and tidy bun. She’s sitting in a colonial chair and Pito, old too but still handsome, is standing behind with one hand on Materena’s shoulder and the other leaning on a walking stick. They are in a photo studio.

Materena moans with pleasure because Pito sure knows what he’s doing. She loves him so much right now. She adores him. He’s the king of the sexy loving.

“Pito, I love you!”

With a grunt, his nipples harden, Pito sows his seeds.

After the romance, Materena tenderly and lovingly strokes Pito’s hair as he falls asleep with a smile, his head nested on Materena’s chest. Materena hurries to ask Pito about his pay before he falls unconscious. “Pito, chéri . . . You’re so wonderful . . . your muscles are so big . . . Can I collect your pay?”

Pito’s answer is a tired whisper. “Non.”

That con, that jerk! Materena yells in her head. He only says oui when it suits him! Well, sweet water is over. Materena lifts Pito’s head off her chest and plonks it onto his pillow.

The following Thursday Materena (one hand around nine-month-old baby Tamatoa sitting on her hip and the other stirring the breadfruit stew) asks Pito, who’s just walked into the house, about his pay.

“Are you going to leave off about that pay?” Pito growls.

“Non!” Materena’s answer is loud and clear.

“You want the colleagues to laugh at me?” Pito professes again how he sure doesn’t want the colleagues to laugh at him. He doesn’t want the colleagues to say behind his back: “Between Pito and his woman, who’s the noodle? Who’s the boss? His woman, she wears the pants? Who slaves by the machine five days a week? Pito or his half?”

Materena, who didn’t even have enough money to buy a can of tomatoes for the stew, explodes, “Ah! It’s your mates who decide these days? It’s not you? It’s your mates who wash your clothes, who cook your food? It’s your mates who open their legs when you need?”

Pito gives Materena a cranky look and stomps out of the house.

“Pito?” Materena calls out, rushing to him. “You’re not eating?”

But he’s gone.

Materena and Pito have a miserable week. There’s no yelling—no drama. Pito doesn’t talk to Materena, and he sleeps on the sofa.

A few times Materena tries to lighten up the atmosphere, but Pito refuses to cooperate. When Materena tells Pito, “It’s hot, eh?” he doesn’t reply. When she irons his clothes in front of him, Pito looks at the ceiling. When she asks him if he’d like to eat corned beef with peas and tomato sauce or corned beef with breadfruit and tomato sauce, he shrugs. But he eats everything. He even has second servings.

Four times Materena says, “Pito . . . ,” and waits for him to say a word, but he’s lost his tongue.

Days pass.

A week . . .

Gradually things get back to normal. Pito sleeps in the bed again. He agrees with Materena that it’s hot. He smiles. He rakes the leaves. Materena forgets about his pay. Materena smiles.

Then Materena finds out she’s pregnant. She cries her eyes out because she’s happy but at the same time she’s devastated. Another child, with the pay situation still the same! Materena can’t believe what’s happening. Aue eh . . . eh well, the baby is conceived, she tells herself. Welcome into my womb and into my life. Now, Materena decides, she will simply have to collect Pito’s pay.

Materena is very nervous as she opens the office door. She’s wearing her old faded brown dress. She wants to make the right impression.

“Iaorana.” Materena does her air de pitié to the young woman at the reception.

“Iaorana.” The woman’s greeting is polite and professional. A bit abrupt too because, so Materena understands, the woman doesn’t know who she is and maybe she’s mistaking Materena for someone who’s here to sell something to eat. So Materena reveals her identity (I’m with Pito Tehana, he works here, we live in Faa’a behind the petrol station, we have a ten-month-old son, he’s with my mother today for a few hours, etc., etc., etc., and how are you today?).

Minutes later Materena knows that Josephine has a tane and a fifteen-month-old son. She lives with her tane’s parents but that’s only temporary, she’s looking for a house to rent. Josephine’s mother-in-law is a bitch woman. Josephine’s father is a postman. Josephine’s mother died a long time ago, she fell out of a tree. Josephine was in labor for forty-eight hours with her son, Patrick. Josephine’s tane just stopped smoking . . .

Finally there is a silence and Materena can explain her delicate situation.

Josephine immediately understands. “Aue oui, of course,” she says. “There’s food to put on the table . . . There’s bills to pay . . . No problems.”

She gives Materena the envelope with Pito’s name written on it and Pito’s pay in it and asks Materena to sign her name in full in a black book—the picking-up-pay procedure. After the procedure, Materena opens the envelope and takes Pito’s pay out. Then she puts back one thousand francs. There, that should be enough for Pito to buy himself three beers at the bar tonight.

Less than two hours later Materena is in her house feeling very happy as she puts away the cans of corned beef, the packets of rice, the washing powder, and the chocolate biscuits for Pito. The family-size can of Milo that was on special and . . . what else did Materena get? Ah, mosquito coils, two cans of salmon for Pito, a bottle of Faragui red wine for Pito, soap, aluminum foil, shaving cream for Pito. Materena’s arms are sore from carrying the shopping bags, but she’s not complaining. It hurts more walking home from the Chinese store carrying just one can.

After putting away all the goodies, Materena steps back to admire her pantry stacked to the maximum. Nothing compares to a pantry that is stacked to the maximum; an empty pantry is so sad to look at. Materena hopes Pito is not going to be too cranky with her. She hopes he’s going to be very happy about the salmon, the chocolate biscuits . . . and the baby inside her belly.

At quarter past midnight, the baked chicken is still on the table, but it is now cold and stiff, and Materena is still waiting for Pito to come home.

He’s absent the whole weekend and by Wednesday he’s still missing. To explain things to the relatives who ask where Pito is hiding, Materena invents a story about Pito looking after his sick mother. Six relatives, including Materena’s mother, say, “Ah, that’s nice of Pito to be with his mama when she’s sick. I didn’t know he was like that. We learn things every day.”

Pito makes a brief appearance one Friday morning very early to inform Materena he’s leaving her, and she can keep his sofa, but he’s taking his shorts, his shirts, and his thongs. Materena, half awake and standing still like a coconut tree in the living room, wants to shout, “Stay! I’m pregnant and I love you! I’m never going to pick up your pay again! I swear it on top of my grandmother’s grave!” But she just looks at Pito from under her eyelashes as he turns around and leaves.

She remembers herself with him in the shower and they’re embracing like they’re under the rain. She pushes the soap away with her foot. The last thing she needs right now is to slip on the soap and crack her head open.

She’s with Pito under the frangipani tree behind the bank and he rips her sexy black underpants with his teeth before she has the chance to tell him that they’re not her underpants, they’re her mother’s from a long time ago when she wasn’t religious.

Pito busts a wall to install a shutter so that more light and fresh air come into the bedroom. Materena passes him the nails. He doesn’t know what he’s doing and she tells him what she thinks. He gets cranky and yells at her. She yells back at him.

Pito is gone now, and Materena walks to the kitchen to get her broom. She starts sweeping long, sad strokes.

She doesn’t know what else to do.

What Is the Needle Going to Say?

Some women like to keep the sex of their baby in the dark until the midwife shouts, “It’s a boy!” or, “It’s a girl!” Other women, like Materena, want to know right from the start if they’re talking to a son or a daughter.

Holding a needle attached to a thread above her belly button, Materena waits for the verdict. After a while the needle starts to move. Clockwise one time, in a tiny circle, a big circle, a bigger circle, another and bigger circle. Tears fall out of Materena’s eyes. It’s a girl! Materena is going to have a daughter! What emotion! Oh, even if the baby were another boy, Materena would still be crying, but a girl, eh? A daughter, what a responsibility!

Materena isn’t saying that a boy isn’t a responsibility. A child, no matter the sex, is a responsibility. True, Materena understands that when you sow you assume responsibility. From the day the child is conceived till the day the child leaves home you’re responsible for its well-being. Actually, you feel responsible until you die. Even then it’s not guaranteed the children are going to stop needing you and leave you alone. A child is a gift for eternity.

Materena lovingly rubs her belly, thinking of her daughter. First she sees a little girl with plaits who looks like her when she was little. Next she sees a confident and strong woman with a degree, a good job, a driver’s license, a briefcase. A champion with words and mathematics—a schoolteacher, a professor, a somebody.

She realizes that children don’t always fulfill their mother’s dream, but Materena will definitely aim to raise a woman who knows what she wants and makes it happen. When you’re this way, it means you believe in yourself, which is not a bad way to be when you’re a woman. Materena is determined her daughter will never worry that she’s not good enough. She will know that she is, end of argument.

As the days go by Materena talks to her daughter in her womb. “And how are you today, girl? You’re fine? You’re comfortable? It’s Mamie here talking to you . . .”

Materena talks about Tahiti to give her unborn baby girl a general idea of her soon-to-be home. That place is the scorching sun at midday, the heavy and still humidity before the rain. “So? It’s going to rain or not?” Materena asks her baby girl and describes to her the sweet smell of flowers as they are opening up early in the morning, the aroma of coffee brewing in kitchens, and fresh bread being baked at the bakery nearby. She talks about the bright colors everywhere you look; the red and orange hibiscus edges, the yellow monettes—“They make the gardens so pretty, little one, you’re going to like them!”—the white tiare Tahiti flowers people wear behind their ears, the right one meaning “I’m free,” the left one, “Sorry, I’m taken.”

She points out the trees planted to mark the day a child comes into the world, the day someone we love goes away, a day people will talk about in one hundred years. Frangipani, kava, mape, tamarind, lime, orange, carambolas, quenettes, the list is endless because the soil here is so fertile. You throw a seed and it grows. But the tree Materena prefers, she confides to her unborn daughter, is by far the breadfruit, because it is beautiful with its large green leaves; strong too, and what’s more, it is a tree that feeds—always there for you when money is low.

“Our island is so beautiful, girl, it’s paradise,” Materena gushes, listing off all the things that people come here to see—the mountains, the white-sanded beaches, rivers, waterfalls . . . “But I’ve never been to these places,” she admits. “Why? Well, because I love it so much here.”

And as she continues the baby’s guided tour, Materena sees her place with new eyes herself. Faa’a PK 5—behind a petrol station, not far from the Chinese store, the church, the cemetery, and the international airport. It is mismatched painted fibro shacks, church bells calling out the faithful on Sunday morning, the endless narrow paths leading to relatives, quilts adorning walls, diaper cloths drying on clotheslines, and someone in the neighborhood raking brown leaves.

Here is also women talking stories by the side of the road, barefoot children chasing chickens or flying kites, babies falling asleep at their mother’s breast, men gathered outside the Chinese store counting the few cars driving past.

“It’s our ways, our island,” Materena says with a tender pat for her belly, and keeps on talking. About the weather today, what she ate this morning, who the baby’s father is, what happened with him three days ago, how she met him, the two years she waited for him when he went away for military service in France, and how he never sent her a parcel, not even a postcard. She talks about the baby’s family—the brother is Tamatoa, the grandmother is Loana, the other grandmother is Mama Roti, and the uncles are . . . And the aunties are . . . One by one, Materena tells her unborn daughter who is who in the family, who is nice, who is not so nice, who is dead.

When baby Tamatoa has his nap Materena talks to her unborn daughter about herself. Well, for a start she likes to broom. When she’s cranky she brooms (rapidly), when she’s sad she brooms (slowly), when she’s lost she brooms (half rapidly and half slowly). The result is the same, though. The floor is clean and Materena is happy. She’s also happy when the garde-manger is full, when she gets a little compliment about her cooking; love, respect, a bit of rain now and then.

She’s sad when people and animals die, someone she loves yells at her, money is low. She likes to listen to people talk and she doesn’t mind raking the leaves.

She left school at fourteen years old and has been working ever since. She’s sold peanuts and lemonade at a football stadium, washed dishes in a restaurant, made sandwiches at a snack, where she met Pito, cleaned houses, and now she’s a housewife.

She doesn’t have a coconut tree in her hand, that’s for sure. She’s not lazy. And she’s very proud to have been born a woman because women are the strongest creatures on Earth. And speaking of women, the two women Materena admires the most in life are her mother and her godmother, Imelda. Her favorite cousin is Rita. Her favorite color is blue. Her favorite singer is Gabilou. And she used to have a dog.

Materena keeps on talking cheerfully as she makes her son’s bottle. He wakes up minutes later.

“Your brother is awake,” she says out loud, walking to his room to get him. “Oh, la-la, he’s so cranky today! Can you hear him?” By the time Materena opens the door, Tamatoa, sitting upright, is yelling his head off.

“But, chéri?” Materena cackles as she bends over to pick her son up. “What’s the matter? You had a little nightmare?” She gives him a big kiss on his head to reassure him, but the baby keeps on yelling.

“What is it?” Materena asks, checking her son for mosquito bites on his arms. She finds none. She lifts his shirt. There are no bites. She puts baby Tamatoa back on the mattress and takes off his wet diaper. “There,” she sighs. “Feel much better now?”

Tamatoa is still yelling his head off.

“Oh,” Materena says. “Don’t panic, Mamie has got your bottle ready.”

She hurries to the kitchen and takes Tamatoa’s bottle, being heated in a pot on the stove. She squeezes a bit of milk on the palm of her hand. “Look at what Mamie has got for you,” she sings, showing her son his bottle. But instead of smiling with relief, baby Tamatoa yells even louder. When Materena gives him the bottle, he throws it back at her. When she picks it up and puts the teat in Tamatoa’s mouth, he spits it out.

“What’s the matter with you today?” she asks, thinking that the whole neighborhood must be wondering what she’s doing to her baby for him to yell like this. Materena picks him up and gently pats him on the bottom. “Good baby,” she says, and he buries his head in his mother’s chest and starts to sob.

“But, chéri,” Materena whispers, “it’s not like you to cry like this. What’s wrong?” The baby, now whimpering, lifts his beautiful sad eyes to his mother and suddenly she thinks she understands the situation.

She squeezes her baby tight. “I forbid you to cry for him, you hear? I forbid you. I’m all that you need.” And for the first time since Pito has left, Materena bursts into tears, her head falling onto her son’s shoulder, her heart beating with profound sorrow.

Side by Side

Even if your heart feels like it is being crucified you still have to wave to relatives.

Materena, on her way to visit her mother from the Chinese store, carrying a bottle of cooking oil and a crucified heart, waves to her cousin Tapeta on the other side of the road. Tapeta waves back and hurries to cross the road as fast as her big pregnant belly allows her, all the while calling out, “Iaorana, Cousin! I need to ask you something!”

Materena waits, hoping Tapeta’s request requires a simple yes-or-no answer. Her mother is waiting for the cooking oil to start frying fish for dinner.

The two cousins embrace, gently tapping each other on the shoulder.

“How’s baby?” asks Materena.

“Oh, bébé Rose is fine,” Tapeta replies, rubbing her enormous belly, “but she’s getting heavy.”

“Eh, eh.” Materena smiles, eyeing her cousin’s belly, thinking, How is that baby ever going to come out?

Tapeta, mistaking Materena’s smile for a smile of envy, chuckles. “Eh! Don’t you get clucky on me now! You’ve got to wait until Tamatoa is two years old to get pregnant again, you don’t want your children to be too close. Don’t do what I’ve done three times!”

Materena laughs a faint laugh, and she’s just about to excuse herself when Tapeta takes her hand and leads her to the shade of the mango tree near the petrol station. She needs to ask something, she says, and it won’t take too long, she promises.

“Oui, because Mamie is waiting for her cooking oil,” Materena says.

“Sure, five minutes. I just need a little advice, but first I have to tell you the full story.” When Tapeta, comfortable under the mango tree, says the full story, she means the full story—the story from the very beginning.

“You know I had a brother,” Tapeta begins.

“Oui, oui, he died before you were born.”

“Correct, five years before I was born, and you know on which island he’s buried.”

Aue, Materena thinks. She knows it’s an island far away, but which one is it? “Raiatea?” Materena says, hesitantly.

“Apataki!”

“Ah oui! Apataki . . . I don’t know why I said Raiatea.”

“Well, you forgot where my mother is from, that’s all. Now, I hope you remember where she’s buried.”

Yes, this Materena remembers. Tapeta’s mother is buried in the Faa’a cemetery, in the Mahi burial plot, underneath her husband, one grave up from Mama Jose’s grave and one grave down from Papa Penu’s grave. When it comes to the people buried in the Faa’a cemetery, Materena knows all the details. Even if by some horrible twist the names on the crosses were wiped out, Materena would still be able to tell you who’s buried here and who’s buried there.

Tapeta gives Materena a big smile of gratitude, her eyes getting tearier by the second, and asks, “You know how my brother died, eh?”

Materena, hoping she’s remembering correctly, tells Tapeta that her brother died in his sleep.

Tapeta confirms this with a sad nod. “Eh oui,” she sighs. “Three months old. One day he was alive and the next . . . eh-eh, poor Mama.” Tapeta talks about how her mother carried the memory of her beautiful son in her heart right till the day she died. She had a lock of his hair in her pendant, his pillow on her bed, his baptism robe in a glass frame, his little white shoes in her sewing box. “She could never love me like she loved him,” Tapeta says, her head down. “I suffered, you know . . . the alive can’t compete with the dead.”

“Cousin.” Materena takes Tapeta’s hand in hers. “Don’t think about stories like that when you’re pregnant, it’s not good.”

“I know, but bloody Mama came into my dream last night! I’ve been calling out to Mama for years, but she never came. She just bloody ignored me. And then last night, just like that, she decides to visit me. She comes into my dream to tell me she wants to be next to her son.”

“Aue.” Materena has goose bumps.

“She says this to me,” Tapeta continues, shaking her head with disbelief, “but she doesn’t give me instructions. It’s up to me to guess who has to be moved! Who do I dig out, eh? Mama? Private as she was? I don’t think she’s going to be too happy having people going through her bones. I move my brother, then? But he’s already been moved once. I don’t want my little brother to be disturbed again.”

“Really? Your brother has already been moved?”

“Ah, you didn’t know?” Tapeta informs Materena that her parents, Reri and Julien, were in Makatea working in the nickel mine when her brother died, so the boy was buried there. But two years later, when they returned to Apataki, Reri took her son along even though it was, at the time, against the law that says you can’t move a dead body for fifty years. The mama furiously dug the little coffin out in the middle of the night, all the while muttering, “I’m not leaving my son behind.”

Years later, the husband decided to come back to Tahiti, and Reri was prepared to do the same thing, but he said, “What for? We’re going home to Apataki soon. Your island is my island.”
. . .