“Look after her, Tamatoa,” she says. “Don’t fail your daughter’s trust in you.”
Raising Daughters
When his daughter grows up, Tamatoa tells his father — actually, as soon as she’s six years old, perhaps even sooner — he will get her into kung fu classes. Father and son are sharing a beer at the kitchen table, in between drinking their required glasses of water.
“Kung fu?” Pito cackles. “Why? You want your daughter to be the next Bruce Lee?”
“Heh, and why not, eh?” Tamatoa sees no reason to set limits on his little girl; but for now, non, Tamatoa has no intention for Tiare to be a martial arts expert. He just wants her to be able to defend herself against idiots. This is worrying him a bit, he admits, having a daughter, a pretty daughter, so it’s best she knows a few self-defense tricks. “There are too many idiots running around who are after only one thing,” he says.
“Like you?” Pito teases.
“I never forced a girl,” Tamatoa says seriously, to show his father the kind of man he is. “If a girl is not interested, it’s not the end of the world for me.”
“That’s good.”
“But I get girls easily.” Tamatoa is not showing off here, he’s just stating the truth. He’s got the eyes girls (and women) love looking into, the body girls (and women) can’t have enough of, and a smooth tongue that can whip out a charming conversation.
“What about boys who can’t get girls easily?” Tamatoa goes on. “They’re the boys I’m worried about, they don’t always take no, those animals. If one of them hurts my daughter, I tell you, Papi, I’m going to slice his throat. I’m going to taparahi him until he dies, until he chokes on his blood and vomit —”
Pito takes a sip of water.
“My daughter isn’t going to be a victim,” Tamatoa says. “She’s not going to be a statistic, because she’s going to know how to defend herself.” His daughter won’t need to call out for help, Tamatoa continues, she won’t need to pray either, she won’t panic or cry for mercy, non.
She will surprise her assailant with a powerful punch in his gut and a sharp kick in his couilles, and then she will run and not look over her shoulder. Her assailant will run after her, cursing his head off, but he will not catch up to her because she will run like the wind.
Oui, that’s why Tiare will be joining an athletics club as soon as she’s five. Tamatoa has just decided this. His daughter will be a Tahitian gazelle, and she will have iron fists too. Nobody will be pushing her around, ah-ha no way.
“I remember a girl,” Tamatoa says, “she was about nine and I was ten, it was at school, she had a packet of Twisties in her hand, and I told her, ‘Give me the Twisties or I’m going to taparahi you.’ She started to cry and gave me her Twisties. This is not going to happen to my daughter. Someone tries that trick on her, she’s going to laugh and say, ‘You want two black-buttered eyes?’”
Well, maybe Tiare won’t have to do that, Tamatoa elaborates, because she will already have a reputation, she will be known as that girl who takes merde from nobody, not even bossy boys who steal Twisties. She will have muscular arms, and eyes that fear nothing. She’ll never cry because a boy took all her marbles — nobody will be touching her marbles, it’s simple.
She won’t ever cut a lock of her hair to give to a boy who doesn’t even like her, and she will NOT follow a boy into the school toilets to show him her private parts just because he wants to see and she thinks he’ll like her after she does what he wants. If a boy ever asks Tiare to show him her private parts, she’ll laugh and say, “Ah, you want to see my private parts, eh? Well, here’s my private parts.” Bang, she’ll knock that stupid boy’s teeth out.
Pito is starting to wonder how much of this is coming from Tamatoa’s personal experience, but his son is not finished. Tiare, he announces, will not be wasting time doing a boy’s homework just because he said, “You’re so pretty, can you do my homework?” She’ll be doing her own homework and get good marks like her Auntie Leilani. And she will be strong like her Auntie Leilani. She will say what Leilani used to tell boys: “I’m not a servant in my own house, why should I be in yours?”
So this is Tamatoa’s plan. He will never ask his daughter to get him a beer out of the fridge and turn her into a servant. He will never tell his daughter that she’s ugly, like the father of one girl he knew, who was willing by seventeen years old to do anything (and by anything Tamatoa means anything) a boy asked her in return for a small compliment. He will never tell his daughter that she can’t do this, she can’t do that, because she’s a girl . . .
“In short,” Tamatoa continues, “I’m going to raise my daughter like you raised my sister.”
“Eh?” As far as Pito is concerned, Materena is responsible for Leilani’s raising.
He did very little with his daughter. He never took her to a soccer match. Never took her fishing. Leilani was always stuck at home with her mother. “Like I raised your sister?” he says.
“You never treated her like she was your servant,” Tamatoa says. “And you’ve never told her that she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t do that, just because she was a girl, and look at Leilani now. She’s strong, she takes merde from nobody.”
And before Pito can say, Look, I appreciate the compliments and everything, but the person you should really be complimenting here is your mother, Tamatoa steps in. “I had a really good weekend with my daughter, Papi . . . Thank you for opening my eyes.”
He continues to talk about the girls he met and who grew up without a father, and how insecure they were. “Papi, there was this girl,” Tamatoa says, “she was mad, but my God, she was beautiful, a canon!”
Tamatoa loved walking with that girl in public. Everyone would look at her, and Tamatoa would laugh in his head, “Bad luck for you! She’s with me!” But she asked the stupidest questions. “Would you still find me beautiful if I had no toes?” Oui, Tamatoa would say. “Would you still find me beautiful if I had only one eye?” Oui. “One arm?” Oui. “No fingers?” Oui, oui, oui, shut up and take your clothes off.
“Then one night, we were at a restaurant, just about to order, and she says, ‘It’s the end of the world, and you can have only one more kiss. Who is it going to be with?’ and I said, ‘Isabelle Adjani.’”
That name flew out of Tamatoa’s mouth before he could think because . . . well, he wouldn’t mind kissing Isabelle Adjani before he dies. What a way to go! She’s more than a canon, she’s a goddess! Anyway, no sooner had Tamatoa given his answer than his mad girlfriend flicked her glass of water at him, stood up, gave Tamatoa a long look, and said, “How could you ever be the father of my children?” Then she left, just like that!
“You didn’t go after her?” Pito asks.
“Would you have gone after her?”
Pito thinks about this. “I don’t think she would have been with me in the first place.”
Tamatoa shakes his head and half cackling says, “I don’t know why I attract girls who don’t have a father. I must have a tattoo on my forehead or something.” Anyway, Tamatoa’s point for today is that daughters need a father, and he’s persuaded that the reason why Miri is crazy in the head is because she grew up without a father.
“There’s her childhood too,” Pito reminds Tamatoa. He won’t go into Miri’s childhood — well, the little he knows (and guessed) from Miri’s short letters full of self-pity.
“Ah oui,” Tamatoa admits. “She did have a . . . colorful childhood.” Meaning, drama galore.
“And you’re being careful with your seeds at the moment?” Pito asks.
“Papi, don’t worry, I’m paranoid about my seeds now.”
“Be careful,” Pito repeats.
“It’s registered, Papi,” Tamatoa says. “The last thing I want is a girl to come up to me in twenty years and say, ‘Bonjour, do you remember my mother?’ One daughter is enough for me. I don’t need more responsibilities.” Then, sighing, he whispers, “But I really feel sorry for daughters who
don’t know their fathers . . . that’s sad.”
And in that very moment Pito knows exactly what he has to do.
Pito’s Contribution
Mama Roti is out of the house, playing bingo with her sister-in-law Rarahu, so Pito (who took a day off today) has decided to use her telephone for a few hours.
Well, talk about luck! First number on the list, and bingo!
“One second, Monsieur,” the nice woman who answered the telephone said. Then, “Papa! Telephone!”
“Who is it?” A grumpy voice in the background.
“I don’t know, he just asked to speak to you.”
“Oui?” The voice is very terse.
“It’s you, Tom Delors?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Me.”
“Me who? And how did you know I was here?”
“I just called the number on the list.”
“What list? Who the fuck are you? How fucking dare you call me on my daughter’s phone?”
“I didn’t know it was your daughter’s phone, I just called the number on the list.” Purée, Pito tells himself. No wonder I can’t stand French people. Arrogant pigs.
“What fucking list?” Tom Delors asks again with that tough-guy voice gendarmes in the movies use to intimidate people.
“The fucking list from the fucking telephone books.” That man isn’t intimidating Pito at all.
“What the fuck is this?” Now Tom Delors sounds confused.
“Oh, Papa.” His daughter has had enough, Pito can hear in the background. “Stop swearing!”
“Did you do military service in Tahiti forty-two years ago?” Pito fires away his first question. There’s no need to talk to this arrogant man any longer if he’s not the Tom that Pito is looking for.
“Who needs to know?”
“Give me your answer first and I’m going to tell you who needs to know, I’m not going to give you any information if you’re not the Tom Delors I’m looking for. My wife’s story isn’t for the whole population. Alors? Did you or did you not do your military service in Tahiti forty-two years ago?”
“Why should I answer your question?”
Pito grinds his teeth. But he can see that man’s point of view. If he ever got a call from someone asking him if he did military service in France, he’d immediately get on the defensive. He was just a kid back then, not even nineteen years old, and he did do a lot of conneries. Pito is not talking here about the (very careful) sleeping around he did; he’s talking about stealing a car, driving it around for two days, and abandoning it in the middle of a street when it ran out of petrol. Pito has more stories like that, all to do with breaking the law.
“Do you know Loana?” There, how about that question. It might be easier for Tom to answer.
“Loana Mahi?”
Bingo.
There are two queues at the Faa’a International Airport, one for the foreigners, and one for the French citizens. Tom Delors, traveling with daughter Térèse, heads to the French citizens’ line — he in front, barging; she following and struggling with her two items of hand luggage. At the counter, a friendly Tahitian customs officer stamps the Frenchman’s passport and asks him what business is bringing him to Tahiti.
“Mine.” Tom wasn’t always this way — abrupt, short, impatient. But forty years as a gendarme putting scums behind bars has changed him, and turned him into an intense, private individual, suspicious and sometimes unreasonably intolerant. He’s never had his tongue in his pocket anyway.
“Bonjour, Monsieur!” Térèse is just the opposite. Friendly, too friendly, so friendly that anyone she talks to immediately falls under her spell.
“Are you here on holidays?” the customs officer politely asks, stamping the jolie mademoiselle’s passport.
“Familial visit.”
“Ah oui? You have family here in Tahiti?”
“My big sister lives here.”
“And she’s pretty like you?”
“I can’t tell you, Monsieur, I’ve never met her, it’s —” But her father is waiting, and the story would take far too long to tell, so, thanking the customs officer profusely — that’s the only way Térèse thanks people, profusely — she moves on.
“Must you chatter to everyone?” her father complains, heading to pick up his luggage.
“Oh, Papa,” Térèse laughs. “You really regress when you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” Tom corrects. “But my patience has limits.”
She brushes her shoulder against his, he brushes his shoulder against hers, she elbows him, he elbows her back, and Tom cracks up laughing — loudly, as he always does. Heads turn to this unusual couple; the tall buffed-up intimidating-looking man with the broken nose who must be — what? — in his fifties? And the tall expensive-looking blonde, maybe twenty or twenty-two. For the record, he is sixty-two and she is thirty.
He has two pieces of luggage, she has four, he is staying for six days, she is staying for three months. He’s here to briefly meet his other daughter, she’s here to connect with her only sister. He retired two months ago, she hasn’t had a holiday for almost ten years. Mind you, she’s been planning a three-month holiday for the past four years; she has simply changed the destination from Corsica to Tahiti.
Térèse glances at her father’s golf clubs and sighs with disapproval. She’s already done this checking in at the Charles de Gaulle Airport. She still firmly believes that her father should have left his golf clubs behind. He’s not in Tahiti to play golf. He’s here to meet his daughter.
“Papa,” Térèse says, “you’re not here to —”
“They have the best golf course in Tahiti!” Tom immediately guesses what his critical daughter is criticizing. “One game, just one game.”
They walk through the door, he pushing the luggage trolley, she lovingly brushing hair off her father’s forehead. Hundreds of people are ready to greet their loved ones (a few are already crying); two mamas, clutching onto flower wreaths, are anxiously waiting . . . Tom and Térèse detour to the right to avoid this mass of human emotion. She’s the first to notice the Tahitian man with the white flower pinned to his shirt.
“Oh, this must be Pito,” she says, waving.
Pito hurries towards them, closely followed by Ati, the best friend and, for today anyway, the designated chauffeur. Hands are shaken, introductions are made, the young, pretty woman gets her kisses (two only are required in Tahiti, not four, as they do in France — “Oops, sorry,” laughs Térèse). But welcome to Tahiti, and please accept these flower wreaths, and how are you, how was your flight et cetera, et cetera . . . The car is there, not far away, follow us.
Father-in-law and son-in-law lead the procession, not speaking a word but throwing the occasional furtive glance at each other and smiling half smiles. It must be stressed here that Pito has never had to deal with a father-in-law before, so he really doesn’t know the protocol. He didn’t have to ask that man for his daughter’s hand. He didn’t have to pass the father’s test.
For now, all Pito can do is be polite. Tom is feeling the same. Polite and calm, it is definitely not the time to get aggravated because the car is parked so far away and that damn trolley has squeaky wheels.
Behind, though, a lively conversation is unfolding with questions and answers flying backwards and forwards between the inquisitive, smiling Frenchwoman and the Tahitian man who’s made it his lifetime mission to despise French people (those wicked popa’a, those invaders, thieves, arrogant pricks, et cetera). But for the moment, Ati, gallantly carrying Térèse’s hand luggage, smiles his uh-huh half-sexy smile that he does when in the company of a woman he likes. With each step he takes in her company, each word she says, he feels drawn to her for no other reasons than pure chemistry. And the fact that she’s Materena’s sister, perhaps, too.
The drive to the Hotel Maeva Beach, where Tom and Térèse are staying for a week, goes in a flash. Two miles, it is short.
“Bon,” Tom says wit
h his serious voice, rubbing his hands. “Merci . . . alors, see you for lunch, oui?”
“Will you be coming too?” Térèse asks Ati.
“Euh . . .” Ati hasn’t been invited.
A smile. “I’m inviting you.”
Pito is taking his wife to the restaurant for lunch at the Hotel Maeva Beach, and Materena didn’t even ask the reason behind this unexpected invitation to eat. When Pito made the announcement, “Chérie, I’m inviting you to the restaurant,” Materena exclaimed, “Eeeh! That’s so nice, chéri.”
Wearing a beautiful dress, makeup, and new shoes, and with flowers in her impeccable chignon, Materena confidently reverses her car. Pito looks on, wondering if he’s done the right thing interfering like this. Perhaps he should tell Materena the news now; that way she’ll have some time to get herself prepared in her head.
And she should definitely know that her father is a pack of nerves before meeting him. Rude too, a swearer, abrupt . . . a retired gendarme, so what do you expect? But Pito is not complaining that his father-in-law used to be a gendarme. It’s a useful job, putting scums behind bars. Maybe Tom could talk to his grandson Tamatoa about that.
Tom declined Pito’s invitation to stay at the house because, well, because he doesn’t like to stay at people’s houses, and he insisted that the meeting takes place on neutral ground. But Tom, keeping his identity secret, did go to that bookshop in Paris where his granddaughter works, bought a book she recommended (“highly, Monsieur”), and bought a plane ticket for Tahiti hours later. This shows that he cares a bit, non? And the sister is very nice. Ati is already crazy about her.
Materena stops her car at the petrol station to wave to Cousin Loma walking to the Chinese store. “Iaorana, Cousin!” Materena calls out, smiling.
“Iaorana, Cousin!” Loma calls back, so happy that Materena is waving at her in such a friendly manner. “Where are you two off to?”
Tiare in Bloom Page 22