Breadfruit

by Célestine Vaite

  “When Mama comes back I run to her. She doesn’t hold me and she kisses my forehead like it’s an obligation. It’s like she’s not happy to see me. So I go hide in the bush. I hide there for a long time. Mama calls me and I don’t answer. She calls me again and I answer, ‘Yeah!’ She comes after me with the broom and beats me. Teva’s grandmother runs to save me. Mama tells her good friend to mind her own business. And the good friend shouts, ‘It’s not Loana’s fault that titoi Tahitian husband of yours wants to divorce you!’”

  Loana drinks her wine and tears well in her eyes.

  “I’m fourteen years old when Mama leaves me.” Loana’s voice is trembling. “We’re both in Tahiti this time, staying at a relative’s house in Faa’a—Rita’s grandmother. We are in Tahiti to pay a visit to my stepfather, who’s sick at the Mamao Hospital.

  “I’m asleep when Rita’s grandmother comes to wake me up. It’s about twenty past six. I open my eyes. She whispers, ‘Loana, come to the kitchen.’ I go to the kitchen and I see my mama lying on the kitchen table, her hands clutched in prayer, with coins pressed on her eyelids. I don’t understand. Rita’s grandmother says, ‘Loana, say adieu to your mama, she’s dead.’

  “I open my mouth to shout, but the relative puts her hand on my mouth. She says, ‘Don’t cry now, your mother’s soul is still in the kitchen, hold your tears for another hour.’ She goes on about how it’s good Mama died in Tahiti and not in Rangiroa. Yes, it’s good she died here alone, without her second man. That way, her dead body will be allowed into the church. Here, she’s Madame Mahi, whereas there—she’s ‘Mito’s woman.’ The relative says, ‘We’re going to give your mama a grand funeral, the choir is going to sing for her, and we’ll play the accordions. Don’t be too sad.’”

  The tears are now streaming down Loana’s face and Materena hugs her mother.

  “I miss my mama,” Loana cries. “She’s been dead for over thirty-eight years but I still miss my mama.”

  Materena doesn’t say anything. She just hugs her mother real tight.

  Loana gently pulls away and wipes her eyes with the back of her hands. “Fill my glass, girl.”

  Materena doesn’t really want to give her mother more wine, because in her opinion wine and sadness don’t go together. “Mamie,” she says softly, “maybe you’ve had enough to drink, eh? You want me to make you some coffee?”

  “You want me to stay up all night?” Loana grabs the flagon of wine and fills her glass. She savors the wine and sighs. “You know, my parents’ separation traumatized me.” She looks up. “Yes, that’s the word. Traumatized.”

  “Ah oui,” Materena agrees. “It’s hard on the children, but sometimes separation is for the best.”

  “It’s not the separation that traumatized me the most. It’s my… it’s my mama.” Loana bites her quivering lips. “It’s my mama not wanting to be a divorcée. Today, there are so many people who are divorced that to be a divorcée is normal. Nobody cares.”

  Materena slowly nods.

  “But in my mama’s days,” Loana continues, “nobody divorced. You were supposed to stay married for life. It was expected. You know, when my father left my mama for another woman, my mama’s confirmation wreath was taken down from the wall of the church. It was like a condemnation.”

  “But it wasn’t Grandmother who left her husband,” Materena says.

  “That didn’t matter.” Loana shakes her head. “My mama died with her wedding ring on her finger. Her wedding photograph was glued in her suitcase and I caught her looking at it so many times… so many times. She was obsessed.”

  “With her husband?”

  Loana looks at Materena in the eyes. “With being married.” She sighs a long sigh filled with sadness. “Marriage,” she says. “It’s . . .” But Loana doesn’t continue. She gets up.

  She’s going to the cemetery to talk to her mama. Materena proposes to go with her but Loana doesn’t want any other company except the company of her mama.

  “We’ll continue taping another night,” she says. “I’ll see you at the cemetery on Saturday morning.”

  “Sure, Mamie.” Materena hugs her mother one more time.

  In two days it will be Kika’s birthday. She would have been eighty-one years.

  Materena labels the tape Kika, My Grandmother. Then she puts the tape in her box of things that are very important—like her children’s birth certificates.

  The Peg

  Kika is eighty-one years old today.

  “Eh, eh,” Materena whispers, making her grandmother a bouquet, “if only Grandmère was alive today. That would have been so nice for Mamie.” Materena steps back to take a good look at the bouquet, asking herself if she should move the red opuhi a bit more to the left and, perhaps, add a few more white pitate flowers. She squints.

  Something is missing in this bouquet. It’s a beautiful bouquet, made with love and affection, a bouquet consisting of flowers growing in Materena’s garden, but the bouquet is not yet finished. There’s a missing ingredient. So Materena continues to study the bouquet until she notices her eldest son waving a hand in front of her face.

  “You’re dreaming or what, Mamie?” he asks.

  “Non, I was —”

  Tamatoa interrupts his mother to deliver the strange news. “Leilani has a peg on her nose. She’s in her bedroom. I saw the peg on her nose with my eyes.” Tamatoa shows his mother his eyes to show her that he’s speaking the truth here.

  What is that girl doing with a peg on her nose? Materena is concerned. The idea that comes into her mind is that Leilani is playing a game that has to do with respiration.

  Materena goes to investigate the situation. The door is half-open and Materena barges into the bedroom. Leilani is lying on her bed—a pink peg on her nose. She sees her mother and automatically takes the peg off.

  “What is this peg-on-the-nose story?” Materena asks.

  “Nothing.” Leilani gives Tamatoa the tiho-tiho parau look.

  “Ah, so you just felt like pinching your nose with a peg today, eh?” Materena knows Leilani’s answer is going to be a yes because a yes will mean the end of this interrogation.

  Leilani’s answer is a murmur. “Yes.”

  Now, Materena accepts the fact that her kids don’t want to explain every single thing to their mamie, because some things are secret. But that peg on the nose, it is really intriguing her.

  “Just tell me about that peg, I’m not going to get cranky at you.”

  Silence. Leilani stares at the ceiling.

  Materena insists on knowing if the peg on the nose has something to do with respiration.

  “A game that has something to do with respiration?” Leilani is almost laughing.

  “So, is it or not?” Materena asks.

  “Non!”

  “Okay. What is the story, then?” Materena sits on the bed.

  Tamatoa, standing at the door, briefs his mamie on the situation. The peg has something to do with Leilani wanting her nose to be pointed.

  “Shut it!” Leilani looks like she’s going to stab her brother with her eyes.

  Materena commands Tamatoa to disappear and to close the door. She also warns him in advance that if she ever catches him listening in to a private conversation again . . .

  The door is closed.

  Materena looks at Leilani, who’s now hiding her nose behind her hands.

  Materena takes Leilani’s hands away. “Come on now, girl. There’s nothing wrong with your nose.”

  But, in Leilani’s opinion, her nose is too flat, like the nose of a boxer.

  Materena wants to laugh, but this is a serious situation. She knows lots of cousins who are sensitive about their nose. You can tell these cousins anything you want, but mention their flat nose and they’re going to give you a flat nose. Loma, for instance, once told Tapeta during Mass, “I can’t believe how flat your nose is!” Tapeta kept on singing and waited until after Mass to punch Loma on the nose.

  “How come the size of y
our nose is bothering you now, Leilani?” Materena sounds and looks serious. “You never complained about your nose before.”

  Leilani admits that she looked at her nose for a long time in the mirror this morning and realized that her nose was flat.

  “How come you decided to look at your nose for a long time in the mirror this morning?”

  Leilani doesn’t know why she felt like looking at her nose for a long time in the mirror this morning. She just felt like looking at her nose for a long time in the mirror.

  Ah hia hia . . .

  “Your nose, it’s nice to look at,” Materena says.

  “You’re not lying, Mamie?”

  “Ah non, I’m not lying. Do I look like I’m lying?”

  Leilani caresses her nose.

  “If you want to see a big nose, just look at my nose.” Materena points to her nose. Leilani is feeling much better about her nose now.

  And Materena can get back to her bouquet, but she’s got a question for her daughter, and she’s only being curious. “Tell me, girl, that trick with the peg, does it really work? Is it something you learned at school? If you put a peg on your nose—the nose is going to get pointed?”

  Leilani isn’t 100 percent sure. She’s only testing her invention at this stage.

  Materena goes back to her bouquet. But first, she goes to look at her nose in the mirror. She always looks at her nose when she’s in front of the mirror, because it is in the middle of her face, but right now, she’s more than looking at her nose. She’s studying it.

  “My nose is flat.” Well, Materena has always known her nose to be flat.

  She was born with a flat nose.

  Her auntie Stella delivered her, and apparently she said to Loana, “That’s a flat nose. Quick, girl, massage your baby girl’s nose before the bones harden.” But Loana told Stella to worry about her own nose.

  Loana was proud her baby girl had a flat nose just like hers. In her opinion, a flat nose was a sign of character. And she made sure to repeat this to Materena over the years, so by the time Materena was a teenager, she was very proud that her nose was flat.

  Once Loma said to Materena, “I can’t believe how wide your nostrils are!” And Materena said, “Loma, that’s because I’ve got character, and not everybody is born with it. I love my flat nose.”

  But when Materena gave birth to Leilani and saw the flat nose, she decided to massage it before the bones hardened—as by then Materena was beginning to be a bit fiu of her flat nose—but Loana slapped Materena’s hand. She said, “I know a woman whose mother massaged her on the nose as soon as she was born, and you know what? That woman’s nose is crooked now. It’s so crooked, she’s got trouble breathing.”

  Materena lifts her nose up so that it is pointed. “Ah, now I look ridiculous!” Well, anyway, there’s more to life than worrying about the size of your nose.

  Chuckling, Materena hurries to finish her grandmother’s bouquet. Okay now, what is missing here? Tapping a finger on her nose to help her think, Materena stares at the bouquet until, at last, she has a revelation.

  All the bouquet needs is a bit of yellow!

  Eternal Sleep

  Sitting under the frangipani tree beside the whitewashed, white sand-covered grave where Kika is buried, Loana and Materena are admiring each other’s bouquets, both made with love and a dash of yellow.

  “Your bouquet is beautiful, Mamie,” Materena says.

  “Yours too, girl.” Loana takes her daughter’s hand in hers and gives it a little squeeze, meaning, maururu, thank you so much for making this beautiful bouquet for my mama’s birthday. My sister forgot, as usual.

  Leilani and Moana are playing ticktack along the paths, sometimes they stop playing to read the name of a deceased engraved on a white concrete cross. When there’s a photo, they look, and say, “Poor her—she’s dead.”

  Materena calls out, “You two, don’t step on the graves!”

  The kids call back, “Oui, Mamie!”

  It’s nice to sit under the frangipani tree. There’s shade and it smells sweet.

  Loana and Materena have cleaned Kika’s grave and they’re going to rest under the frangipani tree until Loana decides it’s time to get a move on.

  “I wanted to get sand from Rangiroa for my mama,” Loana says.

  “Ah—and did you get it?” Materena asks.

  “Non. I rang Poiro to see if he could send me a bag of sand,” says Loana. “I was going to pay him for the sand and for the time it took him to shove the sand into the bag and put it on the boat, but he’s too busy with his bungalows.”

  Materena doesn’t know Poiro, but he must be a relative.

  “I tell you,” Loana goes on, “his bungalows are not going to do well this year. Is it so difficult to shove sand into a flour bag, write my name on it, and chuck that bag on the boat? When I think of all the things my mama did for his mama, and now here’s the gratitude.

  “We’ll see who’s going to cry when nobody is going to rent those bungalows. I wanted so much for my mama to have sand from her island to make her feel a bit more at home. One of these days, I’m going to go get the sand myself.” Loana sighs. “One day—when? Every year I say I’m going home for a visit, but something else always comes up. Something to pay. Your brother rang me last night.”

  “Everything’s fine?” asks Materena. “Kids are good?”

  “Ah oui,” Loana replies. “Kids are good, but… money is tight.”

  Materena knows her brother rang to ask Loana for money. In fact, Tinirau only calls his mother when he’s got a money situation.

  “Eh,” Loana says. “I would have gone home a long time ago if my mama was buried there.”

  “Ah oui, Mamie. I can’t imagine you not visiting Grandmother at least three times a year.”

  “Ah oui. I wouldn’t let my mama alone like that, with weeds growing all over her grave. It’s good my mama is buried in Tahiti.”

  “Ah oui,” Materena says.

  “That way I can be buried next to my mama.”

  “Oui.”

  “I know I’ve told you before, but I’ll tell you again, you kids better bury me next to my mama.”

  “Oui.”

  “Don’t you lot bury me next to my father. You bury me next to my mama.”

  “Okay, Mamie.”

  It’s quiet at the cemetery. Leilani and Moana know that when you play ticktack at the cemetery, you don’t yell and you don’t laugh. You play quietly.

  There’s a woman crying silent tears on a baby’s tomb. There’s an old man smoking by a grave, his head down.

  And there’s Materena and Loana, sitting under the frangipani tree.

  “I pray I’m going to die old,” Loana says. “Not so old that I can’t go to the toilet by myself and one of you kids has to feed me pureed food with the spoon. Non, not so old that you kids can’t wait for me to die because I’m such a nuisance.”

  “Mamie! We’re never going to think, ‘Hurry up, you, and die.’”

  “Don’t take me to the Capa.”

  “Ah non, we’re not going to take you to the Capa.”

  “When you go to the Capa—it’s the end of you. After the Capa, it’s the cemetery. At the Capa, you just sit and wait for your family to remember to come visit you. You sit and you think and you get sad. That’s what happens when you think too much—you get all sad. It’s best to have something to do, to occupy the hands. I’ve wiped your bottoms a thousand times—don’t you lot take me to the Capa. I swear, if I die in that place, I’m not going to be happy. I want to die in my house. In my garden with my plants would be better, but I can’t demand too much of God. But I don’t want to die at the Capa.”

  Tears well in Materena’s eyes. Why is her mother talking about death? Is she sick and not telling? “Mamie, you’re not dying?”

  Loana laughs. “But non!” She straightens up her legs. “The old legs are a bit stiff when I get up in the morning, but apart from that I’m in good health. What is this
question you’re asking me?”

  “We were talking about the sand, then we were talking about my brother, and now you’re talking about death.”

  Loana shrugs. “We’re at the cemetery, so why not talk about death?”

  “Ah.” Yes, Materena understands. You don’t talk about death at the beach, you don’t talk about death in the kitchen. You talk about death at the cemetery. It makes sense.

  “It’s not like we’re never going to die,” Loana says. “It’s good to talk about your death. Like, when I die, I want to be buried the next day. Don’t put me into the freezer, I don’t want to be in the freezer. It’s horrible to be in the freezer.”

  “What if Tinirau is still living in France when you die? Then you’ll have to go in the freezer.”

  “Ah non, don’t you lot put me in the freezer. Bury me, don’t wait.”

  It is very difficult for Materena to talk about her mother’s funeral, but this story about the freezer must be resolved. “You don’t want all your kids to be at your funeral?” she asks.

  “I don’t want to be in the freezer—full stop. When I die, give me a wake and then bury me. And don’t cry over my dead body. Leave my soul free to leave this world. Don’t you lot disturb my soul with your loud crying. Cry over me when I’m alive, not when I’m dead.”

  Loana holds her daughter’s hand. “Eh, girl, it’s sad, death. But it’s not the end. We get reunited. There’s that place. And you’re going to be buried here too, girl—next to your mamie and your grandmother.”

  Materena looks at the sky but says nothing.

  “Eh, girl? You’re going to be buried next to me?”

  Materena hesitates. “Okay.”

  “What, you don’t want to be buried next to me?”

  “Yes, yes, it’s fine.”

  Yes, it’s fine for Materena to be buried next to her mother and grandmother, but what about Pito?