Frangipani

by Célestine Vaite

  “This is my beautiful oldest son, Tamatoa, at his confirmation,” Materena tells the interested visitor. “He’s playing soccer at the moment with his father and uncle. And this is my youngest son, Moana, at his confirmation. He’s also playing soccer with his father and uncle at the moment. This is my mother when she was young, this is me when I was young, and this is my husband when he was young. This is my husband and me when we got married six months ago . . . with our beautiful children.”

  “Is it the custom to marry late in Tahiti?”

  “Oh, oui and non,” replies Materena. “In Tahiti we believe that it’s unwise to marry before —”

  “Men don’t like to get married in Tahiti. They always give women excuses and they’re lazy.”

  Again, Materena gives her big-mouth daughter a discreet look to be quiet.

  “And is that you?” the woman asks Leilani, pointing to a framed newspaper clip.

  “Oui, that’s my girl.” Materena sighs with pride. “It was after a running competition. She came in fiftieth, but there were thousands of competitors.”

  “One hundred and twenty, Mamie.”

  “And this is a school award Leilani got when she was ten years old,” Materena says, ignoring Leilani’s last comment. “For a story she wrote.”

  “Do you like to write?” asks the woman, smiling at Leilani.

  “Oh oui, she loves to write!” Materena exclaims. “She’s always writing, that one, she writes, she reads, she’s very intelligent, all my children are intelligent, and to think that I’m just a professional cleaner.”

  “Oh, you’re a cleaner!”

  “A professional cleaner,” Materena corrects. Because there is a difference.

  “I admire professional cleaners!” the woman exclaims. “My mother is a professional cleaner, I believe professional cleaners ought to be decorated!” Materena looks at the young woman with little eyes. What’s this? she thinks. It’s to make me buy an encyclopedia set?

  “I admire professional cleaners too,” says Leilani. “It’s so hard to clean. Last time I helped Mamie clean Madame Colette’s house, I was so tired. I had to sleep in the truck on the way home.”

  “You didn’t help me,” Materena hurries to add. She just doesn’t want the encyclopedia woman to start thinking things. “When you told me you wanted to be a cleaner, I had to show you how hard cleaning is.” Materena explains to the Frenchwoman that it is definitely not her plan for her daughter to become a cleaner. In fact, she’s always pushed her daughter to see beyond cleaning and to get a job that has nothing to do with a broom and a scrubbing brush.

  “You are a clever woman,” the encyclopedia woman says. “May I show you the encyclopedia?”

  “Sure. What’s your name, by the way, girl?”

  “Chantal.”

  “Ah, what a beautiful name you have, Chantal. Okay then, Chantal, you and Leilani make yourself comfortable at the table, I’m going to make us a lemonade.”

  “And what is your name, madame?” Chantal asks with a genuine smile.

  “Materena.”

  “You have a beautiful name too, and,” turning to Leilani, Chantal adds, “your name is lovely as well.”

  Leilani informs the visitor that she was called after a Hawaiian ancestor, but not Leilani Lexter, whose husband (Tinirau Mahi) soon regretted having married her because she liked partying too much. “I was called after Leilani Bodie,” Leilani says. “She was very serious. She was a medicine woman.”

  “Oh . . . well, you might become a medicine woman too,” says Chantal.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t like sick people.”

  “We never know!” Chantal exclaims as she sits at the kitchen table.

  “May I ask you a few questions?” Materena, cutting the lemons for the lemonade, hears Leilani ask. Chantal invites Leilani to ask her as many questions as she wants. She’s in no hurry at all. Materena cackles. Chantal, you have no idea what you’ve just gotten yourself into.

  “Why doesn’t it snow in Tahiti?” Chantal repeats Leilani’s question. “That is a very intelligent question, and the answer is that Tahiti is too close to the equator.” She asks for some papers and a pen, which Leilani hurries to get, and next minute, Leilani is getting a free geography lesson.

  Now Leilani would like to know, What is the medical term for the neck?

  Easy, the Frenchwoman quickly draws a human body, and next minute, Leilani is getting a free biology lesson.

  And who started the French Revolution?

  Easy . . .

  And do fish sleep?

  Of course—Chantal smiles—but because fish don’t have eyelids they can’t close their eyes. But fish do sleep.

  On and on and on Chantal shares her knowledge with a delighted Leilani, the knowledge she insists she got after years of reading encyclopedias and other books of interest.

  The main salt in the sea is the same as the salt people put on their food. Its chemical name is sodium chloride.

  Plants make much of their food from water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight. This process, called photosynthesis, produces oxygen.

  When we’re sick our body temperature goes up above normal, which is 98.6 degrees. This rise in temperature is called a fever and is triggered by the germs that cause the illness. They release chemicals that act on the part of the brain whose job it is to control temperature. This in turn produces other chemicals that make us feel cold.

  The human body has more than six hundred muscles, which together make up more than 40 percent of the body’s weight.

  Sixty percent of the body consists of water.

  Hiccups are caused when our diaphragm (the wall of muscle between the abdomen and the chest) goes into spasm.

  Fingernails grow four times as fast as toenails.

  By the time Materena is signing her name at the bottom of the form binding her to thirty-six repayments for the encyclopedias, Chantal looks very drained.

  She earned her commission, that’s for sure.

  Bedsheets, Onions, Coconut Milk, and Women

  Materena’s deal with the children is: Read the encyclopedias and you won’t have to lift a finger around the house. But Leilani is the only one who has taken up Materena’s offer. You won’t see Leilani with a scrubbing brush these days. She’s too busy reading her encyclopedias, which she has personally covered so that they won’t get dirty. Leilani also washes her hands before opening a page of her precious books, and you won’t catch her reading and eating at the same time.

  Materena is certainly pleased with her daughter’s fondness for the encyclopedias, but she really wishes her sons were fond of them too. So far, ever since the encyclopedias made their theatrical entrance into the house two weeks ago (in front of the entire curious neighborhood), Tamatoa has opened one single page to see what the word sex had to say. He was so disappointed he shoved the book back in the bookcase. He had expected to see explicit drawings. As for Moana, he makes an effort now and then to read the encyclopedias, but Materena knows it is only to make her happy. Moana sits on the sofa with an encyclopedia opened, but his eyes are on the wall.

  Presently the boys are doing push-ups outside, right in front of their father and Uncle Ati, who are sitting comfortably in a chair with a beer in hand, counting from one to ten. When Pito and Ati get to the number ten, the boys have a quick rest, long enough for Papi and Uncle to take a couple of sips.

  Materena peeps outside from behind the curtains and shakes her head with disapproval, but what is bothering her more now is to watch her youngest son crumple onto the ground as soon as his set of ten push-ups is finished.

  My poor baby, Materena thinks.

  “One!” Pito and Ati call out, and the brothers go on pumping their muscles again.

  Moana is red in the face, sweating and suffering, not keeping up at all with his older brother, who, to make matters worse, decides to clap his hands together as he lifts his body up. Tamatoa just has to show off that he’s unbeatable.

  “Ten!�
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  Tamatoa keeps going as his brother sags to the ground. Pito and Ati take a couple of sips.

  “One!”

  Aue, Materena can’t bear to watch. “Pito!” she calls. “I want the boys inside the house for a bit of reading.”

  Pito glances at Ati and shakes his head. “What did I tell you,” he says. “She’s obsessed with her encyclopedias.”

  “Well,” Ati says, “we’ve got to see beyond our nose.”

  “Merci, Ati.” Materena smiles a sweet smile to her husband’s best friend, who smiles back, winking.

  “Come on, boys, chop-chop, on your feet.”

  “Mamie,” Tamatoa protests, “I just want to be strong.”

  “Me too,” Moana follows.

  “One!” Pito begins.

  The training continues. Materena can’t believe her eyes! Where’s the respect for the mother?

  “Five!”

  It’s like I’m invisible, Materena yells in her head. What I say doesn’t count!

  “Ten.” Pito adds that he’d like now to see sit-ups. “Go and get a towel.” The boys run into the house and are back within seconds, but Materena is not going to let her boys put clean towels on the bloody ground.

  “Eh, ho,” she says, grabbing the towels off her boys. “Do you think I’m a washing machine?”

  “Materena, stop annoying us. Go and dust your encyclopedias and give me those towels.” This is Pito’s order. Materena marches to the house, her clean towels safely tucked under her arm before Pito has the chance to snatch them off her, and as she puts them back where they belong, an idea comes into her mind. Well, if it’s so important for Tamatoa and Moana to be strong, they can start making their own bed, washing their own clothes, and cooking.

  “So you want to be strong?” Materena asks her boys the next day when they are arm wrestling at the kitchen table.

  “Yeah,” Tamatoa replies, looking his mother straight in the eye and flattening his brother’s arm on the table.

  “And you?” Materena asks Moana, who’s rubbing his arm. “You want to be strong?”

  He nods, grimacing a little.

  So far, so good. Now to Materena’s mission, but first here’s a packet of Delta Cream cookies to make sure the boys don’t run off. They’re into those cookies in a flash, and so Materena makes herself comfortable at the kitchen table and begins. “You know how Papi always says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Well, it’s not true. It’s never too late to learn new tricks. It’s only too late when you’re dead. You understand?” Tamatoa laughs his head off and nearly chokes on his cookie.

  “What’s so funny?” Materena asks.

  “It’s your voice, Mamie, it’s so serioso.”

  “Well, this is a serioso situation.”

  Both of the boys are now laughing. “Boys!” Materena can’t stop laughing either, but she better, because the cookies are disappearing fast and once they’re gone, she’ll be talking to the chairs. “Boys . . . come on . . . I just want one minute of your time, okay . . . just one minute. The world has changed. Women are doing lots of things they didn’t do in my day, like driving trucks. So men have to change too.” Materena informs her sons that women of today are only interested in men who know how to do women’s things, like ironing, hanging clothes on the line, folding clothes, sweeping, making the bed, cooking . . . Men who know nothing about these things can’t get a woman. “And I’m telling both of you,” says Materena in her serioso voice, “I’m not going to be your wife, okay? As soon as you’re men, you have to look after yourselves. Mama Roti gave me a man who couldn’t cook, couldn’t do zero, and I’m not going to do this to my daughters-in-law.”

  “Mamie.” Tamatoa is up. “You’re on a different planet now, I’ve got things to do.”

  “Tamatoa! I haven’t finished!” But Tamatoa walks away, because the last person he fears in this world is his mother.

  Moana stays, because the person he loves the most in this world is his mother. “Mamie,” he says, taking his mother’s hand, “I’ll listen to you . . . so women like when men cook?”

  “Oh oui!” she exclaims. “You want me to teach you how to cook?”

  “Okay.”

  Later, in front of the garde-manger, Moana gets his first cooking lesson.

  “A good cook,” Materena tells him, “can cook anything with whatever is in the garde-manger, but always make sure to have cans of tomatoes and coconut milk, onions, and rice in your garde-manger.”

  And to Tamatoa, standing at the fridge snorting, Materena says, “As for you, you can change your own bed from now on. You’re going to be fourteen years old soon, and I sure don’t want to be changing your bedsheets by then.”

  On the Subject of Cleaners

  In the Mahi family you’re never going to hear a woman say about another woman that the reason she cleans houses for a living is because she’s got rocks in her head, that she’s stupid.

  For the Mahi women, cleaning is one of the best jobs to have and it is as good as any job in an office, if not better.

  Cleaning houses helps you be independent (you don’t have to rely on your man’s pay so much) and, what’s more, you’re your own boss. You walk into a house, you clean, and you get out. There are no papers to sign.

  The only downfall is that when you’re sick, when you’re stuck in bed on your back and you can’t go to work, you don’t get paid. But the boss still gets her house cleaned because you’ve sent a cousin to replace you for the day. The boss is happy, the cousin is happy, and even you’re happy because you didn’t let your boss down. Your conscience is clear.

  It’s impossible to count on the fingers how many Mahi women are cleaners. But one thing’s for sure, Materena is the champion cleaner of them all. She’s the only cleaner in the family who’s been cleaning the same house, the house of Madame Colette Dumonnier, for more than twelve years. And that is no small achievement, considering that there are more women willing to clean houses than there are women willing to pay for that service.

  So that’s why Materena is always the relative that young women thinking of a career as a professional cleaner go and see.

  Not only does Materena know all the tricks of the cleaning trade, but she also knows what makes a boss really happy, so happy that even if another cleaner came tomorrow to propose her services for 30 percent less pay, the boss would say, “I’ve already got a cleaner, thank you.”

  In Materena’s mind, cleaning is not only about cleaning, because anyone can clean, but not just anyone can be trusted and keep secrets. You see, a cleaner is bound to see things, and find things—things that she might be tempted to take or that are so bizarre she’d want to tell the whole population about it.

  With Materena, no matter how much the relatives ask her questions about her boss, the boss’s family, the boss’s husband, the boss’s house, she has only one answer to give: “It’s not your onions.”

  Other relatives aren’t so discreet.

  One relative, not long ago, told the whole population about how her boss was having an affair with a man she called her architect. Apparently, as soon as the boss’s husband left for work, the lover appeared to pick up the boss. The boss would say to her cleaner, “I have a meeting with my architect, I will be back at three o’clock.” But one morning the relative (who was already suspicious of her boss’s story) saw her boss and the architect kissing like crazy in the car, and she said to the whole population (right outside the church), “‘My architect,’ my eye! We kiss our architect in the car, eh? We kiss our architect on the mouth?”

  Another relative also told the whole population about her boss having an affair.

  Another relative told the whole population about her boss going to the hospital to have an abortion.

  Another relative told the whole population about her boss writing a very mean letter to her mother.

  You’re never going to hear these kinds of secrets coming out of Materena’s mouth about her boss. She’s taking every single secre
t about her boss and her family to the grave. Still, she agrees that some information about the boss can be passed on to the whole population.

  Just like a relative passed on the information about how her boss ate only soups. Carrot soup, turnip soup, leek soup, soup after soup after soup, soup day and night. Worse than Mama George. And another relative passed on the information about how her boss hated living in Tahiti, she hated the heat, the mosquitoes, she always begged her husband to go home where they belonged. The husband would just snap, “Enough!”

  Another relative talked about her two bosses who were sisters. Their house was always clean and always tidy and the relative had to try to find something to do. But most of the time, the sisters would ask their cleaner to join them around the piano and sing. The relative always accepted the invitation. Singing is less boring than pretending to be cleaning.

  Now, there’s no harm in passing that kind of information on to the whole population. But still, you’re never going to get any information out of Materena about her boss (and boss’s family, house, etc.) because, as far as she’s concerned, everything about her boss (and boss’s family, house, etc.) is top secret. The fact is that when Materena cleans, she cleans, she doesn’t snoop around looking for secrets. She only does this with her children.

  What matters more to Materena is that her boss’s house shines, the clothes are washed and ironed, the books put away, the plants watered . . . Materena really takes pride in her work. She’s the only cleaner in the family who gets Christmas and birthday presents from her boss.

  That’s another reason why young women thinking of a career as a professional cleaner come to see Auntie Materena, and this is what Materena tells these young women, the future cleaners of Tahiti.

  First, if the young woman has only just left school because she was too bored there, Materena tells her to forget about a career in cleaning, because there’s too many cleaners as it is. Go back to school, get your degree. But if the young woman has left school a long time ago and she’s got a couple of children and a man who doesn’t have a job, or a man who’s tight with his money, a man who wants his woman to be nice to him twenty-four hours a day before he gives her one banknote, well, this is what Materena says: