He pokes his head out of the window and growls an angry growl. “Oi!”
That does the trick.
“Here’s the yellow house!” Materena exclaims, relieved. “And the dog, and the red truck . . . We’re here . . . and . . . Oh, look at the men drinking under the tree, they don’t look very Catholic.” She parks the car, and turns the engine off. “I’m glad you’re with me, Pito. Imagine if I was by myself.”
Pito gently taps Tiare’s bottom and gets out of the car. He stands straight, tall and proud. True, he is a man carrying a baby, but it doesn’t mean he’s a mahu. He’s a man capable of knocking all your teeth out with one punch, so keep your distance and don’t judge him stupidly.
He nods a distant nod to the angry-looking men drinking under the tree. It is not a polite nod. It is not a please-be-kind-to-us-we’ve-come-in-peace nod. It is a nod pure and simple, a nod that says, I see you and so?
The angry-looking men nod back. Their nod is not a polite nod either. It is not a we-are-very-pleased-to-welcome-you-people-to-our-humble-neighborhood nod. It is a nod pure and simple, a nod that says, I see you too and so?
Materena is now by Pito’s side, and these two are quite a sight this Saturday morning in the Makemo quartier. Pito has never heard of this family before. It could be that they’re not even Tahitians.
Tahitians know the welcome-into-the-neighborhood protocol. These people are another kind altogether, or maybe they’re just niakue, Tahitian people who don’t have manners. There’s no Iaorana, just stares. It doesn’t seem to occur to any of these people to at least greet the baby who has lived in this neighborhood for the first few months of her life.
What kind of people are these people? Even the four women busy washing clothes in buckets outside look bizarre. And what about the babies crawling in the dirt? Where’s the pandanus mat?
“What do we do?” Materena asks Pito discreetly, smiling a faint smile at the women, who don’t smile back.
Just then a shriek pierces the air. It is a desperate shriek and it is coming from inside the house. It is the shriek of a woman in trouble. A man yells an angry yell, and it is also coming from inside the house. It is the yell of a man who is in control. The louder he yells, the more desperate the woman shrieks, and soon Pito understands that the woman is getting bashed and nobody is running to her rescue. A child starts crying, and soon a naked two-year-old boy comes outside, wiping his eyes. The yelling must have woken him up from his sleep. He sits by the door and sticks his fingers in his ears.
The man is still yelling. The woman is still shrieking. And the dog tied up to the tree howls. You can always rely on the dogs to howl when there’s trouble in the neighborhood, they are the messengers when the human cries aren’t loud enough. Although you wouldn’t think that was the case today.
Good dog, Pito thinks, nodding to the dog howling louder. Pito is expecting this family’s relatives to come sprawling out of their houses soon, with women yelling, “E aha te ra! What’s this?” Ready to tear the basher to pieces, or at least do the pleas and threats until he stops.
This is rescue Tahitian-style, which Pito witnessed many times in his childhood. The women yell their heads off and a cranky great-auntie comes running and shouting, “When will I have some peace in this world, eh? Plus, my legs hurt when I run!” And to the basher, the old respected woman (she who makes beautiful quilts, rakes the leaves, and minds the grandchildren) will say, “You make me ashamed. You’re making me want to curse you!”
But here, nobody comes and the colorful curtains are drawn closed. It’s a case of what we don’t see doesn’t concern us.
Pito holds Tiare in his arms tighter. The woman stops shrieking and starts to cry, sobs of great anguish and pain. The man walks out of the house. He rubs his hands, spits on the ground, and joins his comrades drinking.
“Who are you?” he asks Pito, giving him the evil look. Then, recognizing the baby Pito is holding, he smiles. “Eh, that’s Miri’s daughter, it’s Tiare.” He reaches out to the baby’s head, but Pito’s hand is much quicker, his grip firm and tight on the man’s forearm.
The two men stare into each other’s eyes. The comrades stand on their feet ready to strike. The women washing outside gather their flock and hurry inside the house, banging the door shut. Materena starts bawling her eyes out.
“Get in the car, woman.” This is an order from Pito.
Materena scurries back to the car and takes her position behind the wheel as Pito slowly lets go of the man’s arm. He turns around and walks to the car. He can hear each one of his footsteps. He can feel the eyes on his back. He knows that a man must never turn his back on his potential attackers, but sometimes a man simply cannot walk backwards. Pito opens the back door of the car.
“Pito,” Materena tells him, “I can’t put the key in, my hands are shaking.”
“Get in the back,” Pito orders, and Materena scrambles into the backseat with her bundle of her precious baby granddaughter still asleep. Pito makes himself comfortable behind the wheel, starts the engine, and puts his right foot on the accelerator, getting out of this neighborhood as fast as he can without looking like he’s hurrying.
Driving confidently and slightly above the speed limit, Pito imagines himself growing up in this neighborhood. He wouldn’t wish this on anyone, not even his worst enemy. His granddaughter? Don’t even think about it.
The Man of the House Speaks
There’s a baby in Materena’s house — quick, let’s go and see if it’s true, maybe Loma made up the whole story to seem interesting . . . though Mama Teta also swore she saw Materena in her car holding a baby. Pito was driving, and it’s not like Materena to let someone who doesn’t have a driver’s license drive her car, especially with her in it. Driving a car without a permit is against the law and Materena always keeps to the law. She must have been completely turned over by the baby she was holding. That baby must be a very important baby, eh? Not just any baby.
Who is that baby?
Within less than an hour a crowd of curious relatives (all women) has gathered in Materena’s living room. As for the baby girl, she’s sound asleep in Pito’s arms, while Materena is busy getting some refreshments. Barging into a relative’s house is not considered polite at all, and certainly doesn’t justify freshly squeezed lemonade and Sao biscuits with jam; but then again, today is no ordinary day.
Today is the kind of day people will talk about for years and years and years, a tree might even be planted to mark the event. If refreshments are not served, you can be sure this will also be remembered, so here are your Saos, relatives. Materena has even had to use a few of the plastic cups from her wedding more than ten years ago.
Drinking and nibbling, the relatives are comfortable on the floor, facing Pito and the baby, along with Materena’s mother, sitting on the sofa. They know the story about Tiare being the alleged daughter of Materena and Pito’s eldest son — the unwanted baby given away by the auntie because the mother went walkabout and the auntie has enough babies to look after. This valuable information was passed on minutes ago.
“She looks a bit like us,” Mama Teta ventures.
“Oh,” Meme Agathe snorts, “it’s best not to trust appearances. My brother Thomas, he’s dead now, he had nine children but three of them aren’t from him, they’re from the man who used to sweep the church and —”
“We don’t need to hear the whole story,” Meme Rarahu steps in, “your story has got nothing to do with the story here, learn to listen. Sometimes I have the impression that your ears aren’t attached to your head because —”
The baby stirs, whining a soft whine, and silence immediately falls in the room. A few women who have been fanning themselves stop in midaction.
“She has a dimple like me when she smiles,” Materena says, carrying on the conversation.
“Lots of babies come to the world with dimples,” her mother shrugs.
Heads nod. The matriarch has spoken. It is her duty after all to protect
the inheritance of her present and future grandchildren, the true ones, the certified, the proved. A few relatives think it’s a bit strange to hear Loana talk that way, though, she having been a denied child and everything. You would think she’d have a bit more compassion.
“This is the first baby with a dimple I’ve seen.” There, Pito has just decided to voice his opinion. “In my life,” he adds, to give his opinion more weight. The mother-in-law shoots him an irritated look. “In my whole life,” Pito clarifies.
Heads nod. True, the relatives are saying, dimples are extremely rare, a bit like twins, or a particular dot on a particular spot. They’re the rarest — particular dots on particular spots — they’re almost sacred actually. God gives these dots, God places them where it counts, God decides our fate.
It’s like when God gave Loana the face of her father, the face of the Mahi people, there was never any question about her roots. She belonged to the Mahi clan.
But a dimple, eh? It has to be worth nearly as much.
“When is Tamatoa going to call?” Meme Agathe asks, noisily fanning herself with a blank sheet of paper.
“He’s going to call when he’s going to call,” Meme Rarahu fires back.
“I was only asking, I don’t know why you always —”
The baby stirs again.
“Every time you open your big mouth,” Meme Rarahu whispers, “you wake up the baby.”
“It’s you, you have the voice of a man.”
“What!” Meme Rarahu shrieks aloud.
The baby opens her beautiful brown eyes, stares at the curious eyes staring back, gurgles, and smiles up at Pito. Then, her eyes rolling backwards, she falls back to sleep.
That did the trick.
“Oh,” the relatives sigh, smiling.
Opinions have now shifted. Poor baby, the women say. Imagine not being wanted like that, and by your own mother! Very soon, a passionate discussion begins about all those unwanted babies growing up without love in their lives, what becomes of them? Eh, they turn into cranky people, cranky and sad too, because in all honesty, eh, speaking from the heart here, being unwanted would have to be the worst curse of all, worse than having no money, worse than having no roof over your head, because . . .
Pito decides to put the little one to bed. When he comes back to the living room, the discussion sounds a bit more fiery, voices have risen, and the two incorrigible old women, Meme Rarahu and Meme Agathe, are once more at each other’s throats. These two shouldn’t be sitting next to each other, Pito thinks. He’d like to send one to that corner and one to the other, but he’s never done anything like that before. Separate old women.
The telephone rings, and everyone jumps.
“Allo,” Pito says, grabbing the phone before anyone else can. “Oui, oui,” he tells the telephone operator, accepting the reverse charges.
“Mamie?” Tamatoa sounds worried.
Pito understands that Leilani must have exaggerated the urgency for Tamatoa to call home. Well, with Tamatoa, one has to exaggerate a little to get some reaction.
“It’s Papi,” Pito says.
“Papi?” Tamatoa sounds even more worried now. “Everything’s fine?”
“You know a girl called Miri?” Pito won’t be going by four paths. It’s straight to the point.
“Miri Makemo?”
That wasn’t the answer Pito had hoped to hear.
“I can’t say that I know her,” Tamatoa continues, “but oui, a little bit, I guess, but” — Tamatoa’s voice drops to a murmur. In polite sign language Pito asks his wife’s relatives to please be quiet, but they just go on ignoring him, and now Pito can hardly hear a word his son is saying, especially with the cacophony in the background, the mother-in-law being the leader of the pack. The only quiet woman around here is Materena. As usual, she’s the one to be polite, the one showing respect to people on the telephone.
“What did you say?” Pito asks his son. “Speak louder, I can’t hear.”
“I said, why are you asking if I know Miri?”
“Ah, I’m glad you’re asking, do you know that —” Pito turns to his rude relatives-in-law. “Eh!” he shouts. “Mamu!”
Jaws drop, and eyes widen in stupefaction, meaning, did Pito Tehana just dare tell us Mahis to be quiet? Who does he think he is? This is not his house! The talking continues, louder, if only to put Pito back in his place.
So Pito tells his son to wait, and puts the telephone down. “Allez!” he shouts, louder. “Rapae! Outside!” He waves them away towards the door. “Allez!”
Bodies hesitantly stand up, and eyes appeal to the woman of the house for her to say something.
“I need to go to the toilet.” That’s all Materena is going to say for the moment.
Pito picks up the phone and goes on. “Miri had —” he begins, then stops to advise his mother-in-law that she can stay. Loana, a big grin on her face, hurries to take her place on the sofa. “Miri had a baby, it’s a girl, and it’s yours apparently —” Pito indicates to Mama Teta with a nod that she too can stay. He knows how much Materena loves her great-auntie Mama Teta, who, a big grin on her face, also hurries and takes her place on the floor.
By the time Materena is back in the living room, her relatives, all thirty-seven of them, are still where they were when she left, and they’re quiet as mice, and looking at Pito with admiration.
“Oui, I hear you,” Pito tells his son, defending his cause. He only slept with Miri once, well, three times, but it was all during one night, so technically it was only once, and so, technically, it’s impossible that he’s the father of that baby, it’s not like he had a relationship with that girl . . .
On and on the young man presents his side of the story, talking fast, panicking almost, blaming that girl for being so irresponsible, because . . .
“What did I always tell you about your seeds?” Pito cuts in.
Silence.
“I didn’t tell you to be careful, eh? I didn’t say, Plant your seeds into the wrong woman and your life, your whole life, is going to be ruined?”
Silence.
The baby wakes up, and Materena runs to the rescue.
“Plant your seeds in the wrong woman,” Pito repeats, “and —”
Materena is back with the baby, now crying her eyes out, crying as if someone were twisting her arm.
“And your whole life is going to be ruined,” Pito continues, raising his voice above the baby’s cries. “What? Of course the baby is with us. Miri? She’s in New Caledonia. Why is the baby crying? What do you think? She’s in the merde, in the caca.” What Pito means by this is: the baby is in a very shitty situation with a mother who’s run away, a father in denial, and an auntie who has too many babies to look after.
At this point, Materena nudges Pito and passes him the baby. She’d like to have a few words with her son. The baby settles down at once.
“Tamatoa?” Materena is ready to say her piece. Ah oui, she will talk, she will say what’s on her mind. “Imagine if Tiare didn’t have my dimple, eh? Tamatoa, you better recognize that baby. I’m not having my granddaughter with Father Unknown written on her birth certificate. You should have thought about all of this before! What? That girl tied you up to the bed? She forced you? She hypnotized you? Tamatoa . . . don’t turn me against you. I’m warning you! As soon as you finish military service, you are coming home, understand?”
And Materena bangs the telephone down. This is as good as the woman of the house yelling, “I HAVE SPOKEN!” Indeed, the woman of the house has spoken. Her “unknown” French father went back to his country after military service, and her grandfather only acknowledged Loana as his daughter on his deathbed (because, so the relatives said, he wanted to die with a clear conscience, he was afraid to be in purgatory for too long. It’s boiling hot in purgatory, all Catholics know this), but Tiare will have what is due to her. Now, today. That is why Materena banged the telephone down for the first time in her life — and what’s more, on her son she loves s
o much.
The crowd in the living room is still silent from the shock.
Then a very serious voice, belonging to the baby’s great-grandmother, once a woman of pleasure before falling passionately in love with God, mentions in passing that now that the baby’s name has been cleared, her religious education should be taken care of.
Is the baby baptized at least?
The Godfather
Catholics take the soul of a child very seriously. Enfin, it is the case in the Mahi family of Faa’a. You will never see a baby who’s not baptized in this hard-core old Tahitian Catholic family. Put it simply, a baby must be purified from the mortal sin his parents committed in order to give him life, and this as soon as possible. So there’s the baptism at the church and then the party at the house, where the relatives sing, eat, and drink until they can’t walk.
That is what you do. You make sure to mark the day a child becomes pure and innocent, and you fete the godparents. As for the parents, well, they’ve done their bit and have already been feted during the welcome-into-the-world rituals.
Anyway, there’s an unpurified child in the house. This has been confirmed by the baby’s maternal great-auntie herself, who dropped in an hour ago to bring Materena the baby’s birth certificate dated three months ago. She also brought a letter written by her friend who owns the car, stating that she was giving the baby (conceived by Tamatoa Tehana) away for familial reasons.
The situation about Tiare’s soul is about to be corrected. Not at the St. Joseph Church, though — Pito has just decided this.
“Not at the St. Joseph Church?” Materena repeats as if she didn’t hear properly the first time. “Where, then?”
“At my church,” Pito says, tapping his fingers on the kitchen table. “St. Etienne.”
“At your church?” Things are still unclear for Materena.
“Oui, at my church,” Pito maintains, explaining that he got married in Materena’s church, their three children were baptized in Materena’s church, and, well, for his granddaughter’s baptism, he’d like to give his church a go for a change.
Tiare in Bloom Page 11