Tiare in Bloom

by Célestine Vaite

Genres: Family Life; Marriage & Divorce; Women's Fiction; Authors of color

Synopsis

Now that Materena is a big star with her radio talk show, Pito can't help noticing some changes in his wife. She's spending more and more time at work and with her girlfriends instead of coming home to cook for him. And why does a Tahitian woman need to know how to drive, anyway? He tries to shrug it off, but when Materena gives him the silent treatment and doesn't come home after a night of dancing, Pito has had enough! How is he supposed to fix things with Materena when she doesn't even give him a chance? Luckily for Pito, his opportunity comes when a threemonth-old girl named Tiare -- rumored to be their son Tomatoa's daughter -- is left on the Mahis' doorstep. Anxious to pull his weight and set things right, Pito embarks on a hilarious and noble mission to prove himself to his granddaughter, his wife, and -- most importantly -- himself. Tiare in Bloom is the heartwarming story of a couple facing big changes on a small island -- and a love that outlasts it all.

Release date: June 11, 2007

Publisher: Back Bay Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Breadfruit

A wise, enchanting tale of Tahitian-style romance, introducing Materena Mahi, whose cleverness, generosity, and appreciation
of island traditions make her one of the most appealing heroines in contemporary fiction

“Like Alexander McCall Smith in his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Vaite excels at depicting the warm sense of community
that pervades her Tahitian island setting. . . . In charming fashion, Vaite conveys universal truths about men and women and
the mysteries at the heart of every romantic relationship.”


— Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

“Vaite’s focus is on how one woman’s strength can affect the lives of her family and the community. . . . She writes about
real people coping and caring and somehow getting along.”


— Ginny Merdes, Seattle Times

“Peppered with witty encounters between Materena and her nosy family. . . . When combined with Vaite’s light touch and the
exotic setting, the result is redolent of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series — a delightful diversion.”


— Publishers Weekly

“Breadfruit is as much about the culture of Tahiti as it is about Materena and her impending marriage.”


— Rebecca Stuhr, Library Journal

. . . and Frangipani


A tale of big dreams on a small island — in which Materena Mahi, professional house cleaner and “the best listener in Tahiti,”
becomes a radio talk-show host

“What a gorgeous, evocative novel! It charmed me from beginning to end.”

— Sophie Kinsella, author of the Shopaholic series

“A winning tale of mothers and daughters. . . . An engaging debut.”

— People

“This delightful novel speaks to the universal nature of the mother-daughter experience. Even though Célestine Vaite writes
of Tahiti, a place I’ve never been and a culture with which I’m entirely unfamiliar, I felt as if she were writing about me,
my own daughters, and my own mother.”


— Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

“Vaite takes us beyond the resort compounds into the rhythms and rivalries of a tropical culture. A novel about two strong
women, Frangipani testifies to the necessity of upholding traditions and defying them too.”


— Carrington Alvarez, Elle

“I read Frangipani in one sitting, falling in love with the characters. Célestine Vaite writes about the bond between mothers and daughters
with such truth and tenderness. I loved reading about the struggle between Materena and Leilani, even when it made me cry.
There are no hopes and dreams like those of a mother for her daughter, and Ms. Vaite made them so real, I found myself missing
my mother terribly.”


— Luanne Rice

“Vaite serves her culture well by taking us into the kitchens of those fibro shacks where we can hear the characters’ travails
in a chatty narrative. Generously, Frangipani gives us Gauguin’s women in their off hours.”


— Victoria Kelly, San Francisco Chronicle

“A lovely and transcendent mother-daughter story. . . . An intriguing slice of Tahitian life.”

— Debbie Bogenschutz, Library Journal

Pito Tehana steps off the truck at the petrol station facing the bakery in Faa’a. His calico bag is thrown casually over his
shoulder and a smile is on his lips because work is over. Still smiling, he gives a little, slow nod to one of his wife’s
many cousins walking to the Chinese store, meaning, Iaorana, you’re fine?


The woman shrugs an insolent shrug, flicks her hair, and keeps on walking.

“You need something, you,” Pito mutters under his breath.

Another of his wife’s relatives walks past, but this one has already done her grocery shopping at the Chinese store. Today,
that means a family-size packet of disposable diapers and ten breadsticks. Pito gives another Iaorana, you’re fine? nod. She raises an eyebrow, gives Pito a long look, and turns away.


“Iaorana, my arse!” Pito calls out, thinking, Here, now you have a reason to be rude to me.


He is puzzled, though. It’s not that he expects Materena’s relatives to be overwhelmed at the sight of him, they never are.
But give him a nod at least! A little nod, where’s the politeness, eh? It’s not as if he was asking for a salutation to the
sun!


Then Pito spots Materena’s cousin Mori playing his eternal accordion and drinking his beer under the mango tree near the petrol
station.


“Mori!” Pito calls out. “E aha te huru, Cousin?”


“Maitai, maitai!” Mori calls back, putting his accordion down.


Mori never ignores Pito. Enfin, Mori never ignores anybody. The two men shake hands.


“Eh?” Pito asks Mori, who sees and hears everything from his mango tree. “What’s the story with the Mahi family this time?”

Mori considers the question. “Well, it’s about you, hoa hia.”


“It’s always about me, what did I do now?”

After a moment of hesitation, Mori spills the bucket. “The family says that you don’t care about Materena’s new job because
you didn’t invite her to the restaurant and she’s been at the radio for a year.”


Pito gives Mori a blank look.

“Twelve months, Cousin,” Mori continues. “And you know about Materena’s radio program, it’s a success, it deserves champagne,
an invitation to the restaurant. It’s the most listened-to program in Tahiti, Cousin!” Seeing Pito’s incredulous face, Mori
asks, “You didn’t read Les Nouvelles on Tuesday?”


“Non.”


Mori shakes his dreadlocks, meaning, You don’t read the news? “There was an article, it’s official, nobody can say it’s just stories. Materena is the star of radios! But she hasn’t turned
into a faaoru, a show-off, she’s still the same Materena that I know. She says good morning, she talks to you.”


There, Mori has spoken the truth.

“What else are they saying about me?” Pito wants more information. What he’s just heard isn’t enough.

“You’re a big zéro.”


“Eh oh,” Pito protests, looking wounded.

“You’re thirsty, Cousin?” Mori hurries to ask, as if to make himself forgiven for the harsh comment.

“Oui, my throat is a bit dry,” Pito admits, and sits down on the concrete. He never refuses a beer with Mori. It is so rare. It’s
not that Mori is tight with his beer, but when you drink thanks to your mother’s generosity, you can’t distribute like you
want.


Pito takes a few sips of his warm beer and explains his case. He doesn’t like to eat at restaurants, it’s simple, d’accord? He doesn’t want somebody coughing on his food, spitting on his food, talking over his food. When you eat at a restaurant,
you don’t see what’s going on in the kitchen. And anyway, he likes to eat at home, his wife is a number-one cook . . .


“Where’s the problem?” Pito asks Mori.

“Cousin,” Mori says nicely. “Women like to eat at the restaurant now and then. It’s an occasion. They put on a beautiful dress,
makeup, shoes . . . They feel special and they have a rest.”


Pito shrugs. He’d like a rest too, and not having to work eleven months of the year. Everybody would like a little rest, but
it doesn’t mean people can tell stories about him.


“It really annoys me,” Pito continues, “when people talk like they know what they’re talking about and they don’t even know.”

By people Pito means women, because they’re always talking, those ones, they never shut up. “My husband did this, my husband did that.
My children talk back to me. Tonight we’re going to eat breadfruit stew . . .” They talk in the truck, outside the Chinese
store, inside the Chinese store, over hedges, under trees, by the side of the road, on the steps of the church, on the radio
. . . Even when they have the flu and their voice is croaky, they talk and talk and talk.


Mori chuckles.

“I’m sure women are born with a special mouth,” Pito says, pretending he doesn’t see the cranky look another relative by marriage
fires at him as she walks past with her breadsticks. Mori gets a friendly wave. Mori always gets a friendly wave.


“Cousin,” Pito says.

“Oui, Cousin.”


“What else are they saying about me?” Pito mentally prepares himself for another story. With the Mahi women, there’s never
just one story. But Mori has said enough for today, perhaps even too much. His lips are stitched.


“Cousin?” Pito repeats.


“That’s all I know.”

Fine. Since Mori doesn’t want to speak, Pito will say a few words. In his opinion, Materena’s relatives have never liked him.
He understood this during his first official visits to Materena at her mother’s house. Before that, Pito’s visits to Materena
were behind the bank, under a tree, in the dark, and in total secrecy. Then Materena fell pregnant and . . . welcome into
the family, eh? The moment he arrived in the neigh-borhood, the Mahi family felt they knew Pito Tehana. “I hope you’re not
going to abandon Materena after what you’ve done to her,” one of Materena’s relatives would greet him. “You better recognize
Materena’s baby.” “You better not make Materena cry.”


The first time Loana met Pito, her greeting was much shorter. “Ah, you’re here.” She did her little eyes at Pito as if he
were a nuisance and not her potential son-in-law, the father of her unborn first grandchild. “Take your thongs off before
walking into my house.”


Pito never stayed for too long back then, ten minutes was enough. He had to save a bit of energy for the journalists waiting
for him by the side of the road. “You don’t care about Materena’s baby,” they said. “We see it in your eyes. Have you bought
any blankets for the baby, at least? We don’t dance the tango alone, you know. It takes two.”


Pito couldn’t believe his ears! In his experience, a Tahitian man who does the right thing (by this, Pito means visiting the
girl he got pregnant) is feted like an ari’i, a king! The girl’s relatives give the father of the unborn baby a chair to sit on, and somebody (usually the grandmother)
gives him something nice to eat like cookies — fried prawns if he’s lucky. This happened to two of Pito’s brothers. But all
Pito got from Materena’s family, he tells Mori, was tutae uri. Dog shit.


“I bet I could write a book on all the stories your family has told about me over the years,” says Pito.

“It’s true.” Mori smiles. Aue, if Pito only knew! He could write a whole encyclopedia!


“Unbelievable.” Pito finishes his beer, thanks Mori, and gets up. “Your family can say what they want, I don’t care.”

“Maybe you should, Pito.” Mori’s smile drops.

“A man can congratulate his wife in other ways. There’s no need to go to the restaurant.”

“True, Cousin,” Mori agrees, feeling friendly towards Pito again. “A bouquet of flowers, a —”

“I congratulate my wife in my own way,” Pito goes on, with a smirk that tells long stories. “And no complaints so far.”

Pito walks home, his head held up high.

You talk of a congratulation, Mori says to himself, and, picking up his accordion, he attacks a love song, the one about Rosalie
and how she left.


“Rosalie,” sings Mori. “Elle est partie . . .”


He doesn’t know why that song came into his mind. It just did.

“And if you see her, bring her back to me.”


With her first driving lesson fresh in her mind, Materena opens her radio program at eight p.m. on the dot, straight after
Ati’s love song dedication program.


“Iaorana, girlfriends!” comes Materena’s cheerful greeting, followed by a special thank-you to all the women who called last night
to share their stories on the radio, moving on to the necessary technicalities such as the radio’s two telephone numbers.
Then she jumps straight into her opening story.


“Girlfriends,” Materena laughs into the microphone, “I had my first driving lesson today and let me tell you . . . Aue . . . this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but I didn’t have the confidence to do it until today . . .”


In fact, Materena’s foot was jumping on the clutch, she was so nervous. But she got through the lesson, managing to change
gears seven times and stall only five, and with one satisfactory reverse park in front of a snack filled with people eating
sandwiches.


Well anyway, this is Materena’s story and she now appeals to her listeners to share their own stories of overcoming fear,
their stories of moving forward and getting confident. “Let’s inspire ourselves, eh? And thank you in advance, girlfriends.”
Materena used to appeal to the male listeners too but has since given up on the masculine sex. Never once has a man picked
up the phone to ring her, in fact Materena wouldn’t be surprised if men didn’t even listen to her program.


She plays a soft song to give the listeners an opportunity to grab their telephone, then she leans back and anxiously looks
at her two assistants behind the glass, thinking, as always, What if nobody calls? She often has nightmares of this happening.
She’s in the studio waiting and waiting but nobody is calling because the movie on TV is much more interesting.


But tonight, as usual, all is fine. Her two assistants are giving her the thumbs-up, meaning, We have calls.

The first caller confesses to Materena that three months ago she got confident enough to set her ex-husband’s snack on fire,
as she’d been dreaming to do for years. She didn’t do this out of revenge and hatred, she insists. She just wanted to show
her ex how well their son had turned out. It was her way of telling him, “Do you remember what you told me when you left with
that skeleton woman who can’t cook? That my son was going to be a good-for-nothing? My son is a fireman, he has medals and
he has letters of recommendation! Who saved your snack today, eh? It’s not my son by any chance?”


Another caller got fiu of complaining to her husband about her Christmas present from his mother. “A cheap bottle of shampoo! Is this all I’m worth
in her eyes? Me, the mother of her grandchildren? The woman who cooks, picks up, washes, who does everything?” And the husband
would say, “Aue, it’s the thought that counts,” but for Materena’s listener, most of the time it’s the thought that’s the problem. So she
finally got the courage to give the mother-in-law a bottle of cheap shampoo on her birthday, her way of saying, “Voilà, this is how much you’re worth in my eyes: less than three hundred francs, one and a half packets of rice.” This past Christmas the caller got some very nice
pearl earrings.


More stories follow. These are stories of women getting themselves a new job, whiter teeth, a business, new shoes, a child,
a checkbook, a new meaning in life.


“Iaorana, Juanita!” The calls are still coming in. “And what’s the big change in your life?”


“I’m divorcing my husband.”

“Juanita,” Materena says as if she were speaking to a friend, “what made you decide to divorce your husband? Tell us your
story.” Materena leans back in her chair and listens.


To begin the story, Juanita would like to inform Materena and the other women listening that she’s been married for six years
and has been planning to divorce her husband for the past three years. But she kept thinking about what people were going
to say — her family, his family, their friends. And what about her marriage vows? To love and obey her husband and stay with
him no matter what, in sickness and in health, till death, et cetera. But she never said it was acceptable for her husband
to treat her as if she had the word idiot tattooed on her forehead.


“He’s only my husband on paper,” says Juanita. “If he was really my husband, he wouldn’t leave me at home with the kids all
the time to go surfing. Sometimes I feel that his surfboard is his wife. He tells me, ‘Surfing is my religion,’ but when he
gets his needs, it’s me that’s his religion. Get lost! And he never helps me with the house, the kids . . . rien de quelque chose. It’s like I’m his slave.”


Two months ago in bed, the day before Juanita’s husband went for yet another surfing holiday, Juanita told him that she wanted
to talk to him about their marital problems. Next second, he was shouting at her, “Merde! You are a real boil, you know? Stop masturbating your mind!” Then he kicked the quilt and turned his back on his crying wife.


So Juanita is divorcing her husband. She knows her mother will be very disappointed because she’s from the generation that
doesn’t expect much from their husband. But this is Juanita’s life. She wants a real husband, a real man, not a living room doll. Juanita keeps on talking and Materena keeps on saying oui. Her oui says, “I hear you, girl, go on, give me more information.” Meanwhile Materena’s two assistants behind the glass window are
slicing their throats with their fingers, meaning, Cut! Cut now!


Ah hia hia, this is the hardest part of the job for Materena. Cutting people off, especially cutting off a woman pouring her heart out,
but Materena has to be fair to the other women calling, she can’t keep them waiting for too long. Otherwise, they’ll hang
up and switch to another station.


Ati explained when she started working at the radio that the time limit for someone to be on air is forty-five seconds because
that’s how long it takes to tell a good yarn. More than that and it’s just blabbing. Juanita has been talking for nearly one
minute and a half. Materena leans forward and softly, diplomatically, says, “Juanita, let’s see if our next caller has a story
that might help you. Keep listening to Radio Tefana, we need to help each other.”


“Pardon,” Juanita cackles. “I talk too much, Heifara always says that.”

Ouf, Materena is so relieved Juanita didn’t get cranky, unlike one of her callers, an old woman who went on and on about how these
days old people are not respected when Materena told her (diplomatically) that her time was up.


Eh well, you can’t make everybody happy.

Materena thanks Juanita, presses the button, and is immediately connected to the next caller, who doesn’t want to give her
name and who only has one thing to say to Juanita.


“Life is not a fairy tale, the Prince Charming doesn’t stay charming forever, he turns back into a frog.”

The following caller urges Juanita not to throw the pillow out of the window and to remember what attracted her to Heifara
at the beginning of their story. Wasn’t it his surfing? The salt on his skin? Didn’t she brag to her girlfriends, “Guess what!
My boyfriend is a surfer!”?


“It happens,” the caller continues, speaking with a maternal voice, “that the thing that attracts us at the beginning is the
thing that annoys us later on, but it doesn’t mean we should divorce, my chérie.”


The next caller has a solution. “Speaking of pillows, I’ve been married for eleven years, and my husband is a real husband,
not a work in progress. He sweeps the floors, he hangs the clothes on the line, and he’s a father hen with the children, it’s
like he’s the one who gave birth to them!” The woman sighs like she can’t believe how lucky she is. “As soon as he does his
parara,” she continues, “like go out with his friends, waste his money, tell the children to go away, mock my war wounds —”


“War wounds?” Materena wants to know.

“Well, my stretch marks,” the caller explains, cackling, with Materena joining in.

She continues, “So, when my man is like that, I get my bottle of ylang-ylang and sprinkle a few drops on his pillow at night
while he’s asleep.” The woman swears that the scent of the ylang-ylang does something to a man’s brain, because when her husband
wakes up in the morning, he looks at her with surprised eyes and exclaims, “Who is this beautiful woman in my bed?” After
that, he’s like hypnotized, he gives her compliments and does all that she asks. Sometimes, she doesn’t even have to ask.
It’s the world in reverse!


The lucky woman has been using that trick for ten years now, and for your information, sisters, here’s the address where she
religiously buys her magic potion twice a year.


Next morning, passing the very tiny Oils and Soaps shop, Materena finds fifty women, many with babies in their arms, squeezed
against each other and spilling out onto the footpath. There are big women, little women, middle-aged women, young women,
women who’d never heard of the magic ylang-ylang until last night on Materena’s program. Materena rarely gets to see her audience.
That is the reason she’s here. She doesn’t need a potion, her kids have all grown up. For some reason, she’s also suspecting
that the woman who called last night is inside that shop, behind the counter, at the cash register.


“Eh,” Materena asks a young woman nearby, “you’re here to buy ylang-ylang?”

“Oui, but it’s not for me, it’s for my sister.” She takes a step forward without a glance at this woman twice her age.


“Ah, and she has children?” Materena asks.

“Oui, five, but it’s not the potion that’s going to save her.”


“Ah bon?” The next question on Materena’s lips is, And what is going to save your sister? But you can’t ask too many questions to
people you don’t know. It’s not proper. On radio it goes, but. . .