Frangipani

by Célestine Vaite

  Materena dropped her broom when Leilani said, “Guess what we did this weekend?” Materena thought Leilani and Hotu were spending the weekend at Hotu’s parents’ weekender in Vairao. Instead they rowed from Tahiti to Moorea together.

  Materena dropped her broom when Leilani told her, “Guess where Hotu and I slept in Moorea?” Materena guessed that Leilani and Hotu stayed at the Club Med. But Leilani and Hotu slept on the beach under the stars, like in the old days.

  And what’s with the massages?

  Last time Materena stood behind the closed door to Leilani’s bedroom to catch a tiny bit of the “biology tuition,” she heard Leilani say, “What am I massaging now? Quick, give me the medical word or I’m stopping! All right, here’s an easy one for you. What am I massaging now?” When Hotu cackled, “My reproductive organ?” Materena hurried away.

  Another time, Moana knocked on Leilani’s bedroom door to offer the lovebirds some almond cookies he’d just baked, and Hotu opened the door wearing Leilani’s underpants around his head.

  Plus, those two are always laughing their heads off.

  Two weeks ago (Leilani’s bedroom was half-open) Materena saw Leilani and Hotu sitting on the floor, holding each other by the chin and singing, “I hold you, you hold me by the goatee beard, the first one who laughs gets a slap.”

  This is an old Tahitian nursery rhyme. Materena went on spying to see who would be the first one to laugh. After half a minute, Hotu burst out laughing and said, “You’re crazy, I’m marrying you.”

  But last week, in the middle of the night, Leilani shouted, “Not until I have a job!” Pito, watching TV, and Materena, ironing sheets, looked up and waited for the continuation. But there was no continuation, just a complete silence followed by Hotu’s faint cackle. So Pito and Materena went back to what they were doing.

  Then, three days ago, Materena was putting something in Tamatoa and Moana’s bedroom when she heard Leilani shriek, “I can’t go on, it’s hurting me!” And then Materena heard Hotu say, “Just a little bit more . . . come on, you can do it.” Poor Leilani was moaning like she was in real pain! Moaning like she was giving birth, actually. What is going on in that room? Materena asked herself. Some kind of torture? After two seconds of reflection, Materena’s mind was made up. She stomped over and put her hand on the doorknob, took a big breath, then changed her mind when she heard Leilani tell Hotu that she had no idea how weak her belly muscles were, and how she’ll definitely aim to do fifty sit-ups every day from now on. Ah, Materena thought, relieved.

  And last time . . . Well anyway, what can a mother do when her daughter wants to be with her boyfriend twenty-four hours a day?

  She can tell her daughter to wait a little, have fun, go to the cinema, plan your future, finish school, you only have three months left. But the daughter is most likely to say, “It’s my life, you had a baby at nineteen years old. And it’s not as if I’m leaving school.”

  Aue. Materena sighs. She’s sure all of this is Hotu’s idea. He thinks he owns Leilani just because she tattooed his initials on her hand two days ago. When Materena saw that tattoo, she went mad. She yelled at Leilani, who yelled back, and they had their first big argument in two years. Pito, who was watching a kung-fu movie, told them both to shut up.

  Aue. Materena sighs again. Here, she’s going to have another Coca-Cola that Cousin Rita has brought along with her today. And here, she’s going to have some chips Cousin Rita has also brought along with her today. She’s feeling so sad. Just thinking about Leilani not living here in this house anymore is terrible. But then, thinks Materena, the house will definitely be more relaxed. Materena won’t be on edge whenever Leilani drops her study to follow Hotu and his plans to rediscover their island, which he missed for five years when he was stuck in France.

  Aue, children, eh . . . they give you tears.

  One son leaves for another country, another son says he’s going to Bora-Bora to be chef at a hotel there, and now it’s the daughter’s turn to leave. What do I do to my children? Materena asks herself. They can’t wait to leave me, or what?

  Aue, Materena is so sad, but she can’t go on doing her long face with her cousin visiting and sitting right next to her at the kitchen table.

  “So, Cousin?” Materena says. “Work is fine?”

  “Cousin,” Rita replies, “you can be sad. I understand. I’m not here for you to make me laugh.” She puts a hand over Materena’s hand. “It’s a shock when the daughter leaves the house.” Rita knows what’s she’s talking about. When she left her mama’s house at the age of thirty-one, her mama was inconsolable for three whole weeks. It didn’t matter that the relatives said to her, “About time! Alleluia!” Auntie Antoinette cried nonstop.

  “Has Leilani packed her bags yet?” Rita asks.

  “Non, not yet, they’re going to find the house first.”

  “Ah.” Rita caresses her cousin’s hand. “Be strong, eh, Cousin?”

  Aue . . . the packing of bags . . . it’s very sad for the mama. In Rita’s opinion, it’s best that Materena doesn’t watch, because if she watches her daughter pack those bags real fast, like she can’t wait to get out of there, well, she might get a bit hurt.

  That happened with Rita’s mama. Rita was stuffing her clothes in her suitcase (because she couldn’t wait to get out of the house and live her own life with her boyfriend) and her mama was standing by the door, crying her eyes out, moaning, “The way you’re stuffing those clothes in that suitcase, it’s like you’ve been living in a prison here.”

  “Don’t watch the packing of bags,” Rita says. “Go in the kitchen and do something, okay?”

  “Oui,” Materena says, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. “I just hope Leilani is going to choose the house she’s going to live in. She’s the one who’s going to be in that house most of the time . . .”

  “True.” Rita nods in agreement. “I hope too that there aren’t too many doors in the house. I should have told Leilani about the doors, doors are bad. Doors suck energy. It’s true,” she says to Materena’s skeptical look. “Lately I’ve been having zero energy, but really zero, even with all the vitamins I take.”

  “Ah, because you take vitamins?” Materena didn’t know this.

  “When you’re past thirty and you’re a woman, you’ve got to take vitamins,” Rita says, and goes on about doors again. Doors make it impossible for love to grow because people are always on edge. It’s true, Rita swears, because lately she’s been so edgy with Coco.

  “Doors . . . ,” Materena says vaguely. “What kind of doors? Opened doors, closed doors, doors that keep banging shut and you get cranky?”

  “Doors, full stop!” Rita shouts crankily. “It’s not complicated! I told you before! I explained to you!” Then, quickly remembering the situation, Rita goes back to doing her air of compassion and speaking softly. “Be strong, Cousin. At least Leilani is not moving to another country.”

  “Well, I just hope Leilani isn’t going to let Hotu take her to the other side of the island.” Materena shakes her head with resignation. “It’s a very long way when you want to see the family.”

  “Cousin,” Rita says, cackling, “have you seen Tahiti on a map of the world? It’s a dot . . . to go around the island takes less than an hour.”

  Materena gives her cousin an angry look. “In a car, Rita, oui, but I don’t have a car . . . If I want to see my daughter for five minutes, I have to be in a truck for two hours.”

  “Oh,” Rita hurries to say, “I’m sure Leilani is not going to go and live on the other side of the island. She doesn’t need to hide.”

  Aue eh, Materena thinks. Here, she’s going to have a bit more Coca-Cola.

  “You know what Pito said when Leilani told him she was moving out with Hotu?” Materena asks.

  Before Rita has time to guess, Materena tells her what Pito said. He said that he’s going to put the TV in Leilani’s room because he wants to watch the TV in peace without Materena brooming in the living room
or ironing in the living room. But there’s no way Materena is going to let Pito lock himself in Leilani’s room with his TV and his beer. As far as she’s concerned, her daughter’s bedroom is going to stay just as it is. Pito wanted to put the TV in his sons’ bedroom too when Moana left, but Materena told him no way.

  “My children’s bedrooms are not for TV,” Materena says to Rita. “Leilani wants to come home, no problem, her bedroom is here waiting for her.”

  Rita nods. She understands what Materena is saying. Her mother did the same. When Rita moved out, her mother said, “You want to come home, no problem, your bedroom is here waiting for you.” But Rita can’t see herself ever living with her mother again. They would be fighting every day. Still, it’s a nice thought, knowing your bedroom hasn’t been turned into the family TV room or the storage room in your absence.

  Rita’s bedroom is still as she left it years ago. Materena’s bedroom is also still as she left it years ago and her daughter’s bedroom is going to share the same fate. And talking about Materena’s daughter, here’s the girl in question coming through the door, all smiling and happy, and announcing that she and Hotu have found the perfect house! And plus, the rent is cheap!

  “Oh, when the rent is cheap,” Materena snarls, “there’s something wrong.”

  “And how do you know this?” Leilani laughs. “You’ve never rented a house in your whole life, Mamie.” Then, sitting next to her auntie Rita, she asks, “Auntie Rita, tell me, you who’ve got so much experience in renting houses . . . When the rent is cheap, does it mean there’s something wrong?”

  Oh, la-la . . . poor Auntie Rita. Stuck between the lettuce and the tomato yet again. When the rent is cheap . . . does it mean there’s something wrong? Well yes, of course! When the rent is cheap it means the house is run-down, that’s what it means. The house is run-down, there are missing louvers, and there are holes in the walls, or somebody died in that house. Then again, sometimes the rent is cheap because the owner of the house just wants someone in the house to look after the garden, but there are usually conditions, like no children in the house and no animals in the house. But then again, sometimes the rent is cheap because you get lucky, you were at the right place at the right time.

  So . . . when the rent is cheap does it mean there’s something wrong?

  “Not necessarily,” Rita says.

  “I hope there’s not a hacked tree in the garden,” Materena says, looking into her daughter’s sparkling eyes. And before the daughter gets the chance to inform her mother, the auntie asks if the house faces north, because the house has got to face north, you’ve got to have the morning rays of sunshine filtering into the house through the louvers.

  “Ah oui, Auntie!” Leilani exclaims. “The house faces north all right!” And here she is demonstrating with her hands which part of the house faces where, and Materena, who still doesn’t know where north is, shakes her head, thinking, Here’s Leilani going on again with her geography.

  Like it’s more important than to know that when there’s a hacked tree in the garden, it means something bad has happened. Someone fell off that tree and died.

  Like it’s more important than to know that the house is not built on top of a sacred site. There’s a story about Tahitian builders who stumbled upon a sacred site in the middle of digging the foundations of a hotel, and they were horrified, the poor men. The priest was quickly called to the site, along with the Tahua priest and professional bone removers. It was a whole ceremony. The priests recited prayers, the professional bone removers counted the bones, the journalists took pictures of the ceremony, the TV people filmed the ceremony, and everyone from the neighborhood watched. It was quite a big ceremony. But the hotel went on being built despite protest marches. And even today, bizarre things are always happening in that hotel.

  Nobody in their right mind is going to build a house or a hotel on top of a sacred site. “Your house?” Materena asks Leilani, who’s still going on about north and all that. “It’s not built on top of a sacred site?”

  Leilani stops talking to give her mother a funny look, then looks back to her auntie Rita, who says, “I hope there’s not too many doors, girl, doors are bad, they suck the energy out.”

  “There’s no doors,” Leilani says.

  “No doors?” Materena and Rita say together. “What do you mean, there’s no doors? You can’t have a house with no doors!”

  Well, there are no doors in Leilani and Hotu’s house.

  “How do you lock the house?” Rita asks. She’s wondering about that house. No doors? What is this house? A cave?

  Well, there is a door, the door to get in and out of the house, but then once you’re in the house itself there’s no doors.

  “So what do you have?” Materena asks. “Curtains?”

  “Non,” Leilani replies, “just empty space. You walk in the house and there’s the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the bedroom.”

  Materena and Rita look at each other.

  “Then,” Leilani continues, “you go outside and there’s the veranda with the table to eat and there’s the view right in front of your eyes. The view of the ocean.”

  “You can see the ocean from your house?” Rita exclaims, all excited. “You can see the sun rise in the morning?”

  Rita is so excited she hugs her niece and congratulates her. She’s been trying to get a house with ocean views for years, but once people move into a house with ocean views, they stay in that house. They don’t move. All Rita can say now is that today must be her niece’s lucky day. How many times does a house facing north with ocean views and no doors come up for rent? Ah, Rita is feeling a bit envious.

  “You’re so lucky, girl,” she says.

  But Materena is not sharing her cousin’s opinion. When a house has got views it means the house is on the top of a hill, and you know what that means, eh? When a house is on top of a hill, true, you’re going to have a view, and it’s not bad to have a view, you can admire the view, the magnificent ocean, and all that. But you’ve got to get the telephone connected because the relatives aren’t going to walk all the way up the hill only to find out that there’s nobody home. They’re going to want to go to the telephone booth and ring to make sure someone is going to be in the house by the time they climb that hill. You’re never going to have unexpected relatives visiting.

  Now, sometimes that is not a bad thing. But don’t forget that when a house is on top of a hill, it also means it’s a long way from the main road . . . from the Chinese store. You’re not going to be able to decide at six o’clock what you’re going to cook and then stroll to the Chinese store, minutes before it closes, to get the ingredients. You’re going to have to run. And if you’re pregnant, you’re still going to have to run. And if you have a baby in the carriage, you’re still going to have to run.

  Good luck to you on your way back to your house with all the shopping bags.

  Materena tells all of this to her daughter.

  “Oh, la-la,” Leilani says. “I’m going to have my driver’s license next year. And so what if I have to run down the hill and up the hill with the shopping bags? It’s good exercise.”

  “There’s a breadfruit tree in the garden, at least?” Materena asks.

  This is a question Tahitian mothers often ask their daughters when they are moving out to be in their own house, to live by their own rules and regulations. You can have hibiscuses and lemon trees and pawpaws and palm trees, but if you ain’t got a breadfruit tree . . . poor you.

  With a breadfruit tree nearby, when there’s no money in the bank and no money in the can, no worries. Just climb that tree and get a breadfruit and eat it barbecued, baked, in the stew, fried, with butter and jam.

  So, there’s a breadfruit in the garden, at least?

  Non, there’s no breadfruit, and this doesn’t bother Leilani at all because she doesn’t really like breadfruit and Hotu doesn’t really like breadfruit either and so . . .

  Materena cackles.
“Ah, that’s what you say now, but wait until you have a couple of children, you’re going to love breadfruit.” Well anyway, Materena stands up and asks if it’s possible to see that house on top of a hill which has a view but not one single breadfruit tree.

  Within minutes, the three women are on their way, with Leilani in the front of the car to give Rita directions.

  “Turn left here.” Rita turns left and they’re now heading for the RDO, the road that takes you to the top of the mountain. Materena, looking out the window, shakes her head with disbelief. It’s one thing to be living on top of a hill, but it’s another thing altogether to be living on top of a mountain.

  “Turn right,” Leilani says.

  Rita turns right and glances to Materena through the rearview mirror. They haven’t even done one mile, so it means . . .

  “Keep going . . . keep going . . . turn left . . . and here’s the house . . . my castle.”

  Rita switches the engine off and comments on the house. “The house is very small and looks a bit abandoned,” she says, “but it’s very cute. All it needs is a good coat of paint. But look at that frangipani tree growing next to the veranda! It’s so beautiful! It must be over one hundred years old! What do you think, Cousin?” Rita asks. “The house is cute, eh? And look at that frangipani!” Materena admits that the house is very cute and that the frangipani is very beautiful, and she’s now looking at the view. This is a very beautiful view, she thinks, it’s a shame the airport is in the way, but still, you can see the island of Moorea. And there’s the green house on the corner before you get to the airport and a bit further, the Chinese store, and a bit further, the petrol station.

  Well, she didn’t go too far, that one. Materena smiles with relief and thinks, She’s not silly. “How much is it going to cost Hotu for you two to live here?” she calls.