Breadfruit

by Célestine Vaite

  “It’s hot, eh?” Loma is lifting her T-shirt up and down to let some air get in.

  “And, Mama, she’s fine?” Materena asks.

  “Ah oui—Mama is fine. Last night she wasn’t fine. Last night, she was a bit sick. But she’s fine now.” Loma is eyeing the carpet.

  “Ah, that’s good your mama is fine,” Materena says, all the while thinking, What is it Loma wants to tell me? What’s the gossip?

  “Is this the carpet from Lily?” Loma asks.

  “Oui.”

  “Lily is getting herself new carpet?”

  “I don’t know,” Materena replies.

  Loma feels the carpet. “That carpet is like new, why does Lily want to get new carpet?”

  “Who said Lily’s getting new carpet? Eh, what if it’s new linoleum she’s getting? And that carpet is not really like new. It’s an old carpet. Some of the squares are ripped—there, at the bottom of the pile.”

  “Ah oui,” Loma says.

  Materena doesn’t want Loma to think that the carpet Lily is giving away is of good value, because Loma will put the news on the coconut radio and then cousins from everywhere will start invading Lily’s property for that carpet. At the moment, the cousins might be thinking that the carpet Lily is giving away is old and ripped. Usually when you give something away, that something is not top quality.

  “The color is a bit bizarre,” Materena says. “I mean—for a carpet.”

  “Ah yes, now that I’m looking. The carpet looks like grass, eh?”

  “But when you get something for free, you don’t complain about the color.”

  “Ah, true. You just accept the color.”

  Well, now Materena is going to get rid of Loma. It’s enough talk for today.

  “Okay, Loma, I’ll see you another day.”

  “Okay. But, Cousin, can I ask you something? Can I put my plastic bags on top of the carpet? I push the wheelbarrow.”

  Loma is already picking up her plastic bags off the ground.

  Ah, now it’s too much. What is it with cousins that they always ask you for a favor when you’re not in the mood to grant it? And how can you refuse a cousin? A cousin who’s going to tell everybody about how she was really tired that day and then she saw Materena with the wheelbarrow and then she asked Materena if she could put her bags of groceries in the wheelbarrow and then Materena said, “Ah non!”

  So Materena is pushing the wheelbarrow to Loma’s house and Loma is holding on to her bags of groceries so that they won’t fall off the wheelbarrow.

  It’s a good thing for Materena that it is Loma who’s asking her the favor and not a cousin who lives past Materena’s house.

  Materena can’t push the wheelbarrow as fast now—the groceries are heavy.

  “What’s in the bags?” she asks. “Rocks?”

  “No—cans of pineapple juice,” Loma replies. “It was on special. It’s for the punch.”

  “Ah well.”

  So Materena is pushing and Loma is babbling away about how Lily always makes her boyfriends jealous and she should be careful because one of these days a boyfriend is going to go mad on her. Already, the last boyfriend burned all Lily’s clothes. And the boyfriend before that one smashed all Lily’s expensive china bowls. What is Lily’s new boyfriend going to do?

  “I can’t believe Lily’s choice of boyfriends!” Loma is rolling her eyes.

  Materena wants to tell Loma to shut it. She’s not particularly interested in backstabbing Lily, considering the carpet. But Loma is only trying to make compensation—the babbling is to entertain Materena. That way Materena won’t think too much about the extra load, and before she knows it she’ll be at Loma’s house. Also, Loma always finds something bad to say about people, she just can’t help herself.

  They’re at Loma’s house.

  Materena unloads the bags real fast. The last thing she needs is for Auntie to decide to have a little talk with her about how her mama and the rest of the family are doing. Loma thanks Materena, but Materena is already pushing her wheelbarrow away.

  Then Loma runs after Materena. “Cousin, can I ask you something? Can I have some pieces of carpet, not many? Ten is plenty.”

  Ah, now she wants Materena’s carpet! It’s too much!

  “It’s to put in the bathroom.” Loma does her air of pity.

  And before Materena has the chance to tell Loma that you don’t put carpet in the bathroom, Loma is explaining that when she gets out of the shower and her feet touch the concrete floor, she gets cold and she’d much prefer her feet to touch the carpet.

  Materena gives Loma ten pieces of carpet and she’s off, pushing that wheelbarrow as fast as she can.

  Materena is at her house—finally. She unloads the carpet onto the terrace.

  Back for another load.

  The living room is fully carpeted now, and Materena is resting on her new floor, arms and legs stretched out. She’s tired. All that pushing, all that moving things from the living room to the terrace—from the terrace back to the living room.

  Pouf.

  But it’s all done now—everything is super. When you lie on the linoleum, you can feel the hard concrete. But you can’t feel the hard concrete when you lie on the carpet, which is on top of the linoleum. All you feel is the softness of the carpet.

  Materena is still enjoying her brand-new floor when Pito and the kids come home. They see the green carpet and they look like they can’t believe their eyes, because when they left the house this morning, there was linoleum in the living room, and now, this afternoon, there’s carpet.

  Ah yes, they’re surprised.

  “What is this?” Pito points to the green carpet.

  “My new floor,” Materena replies as she gets up.

  “Where did you get the carpet?”

  “From my cousin Lily.”

  “And where did you put the linoleum?”

  “It’s underneath the carpet.”

  Pito shakes his head. “You’re not supposed to put carpet over linoleum. You’re supposed to take the linoleum out and then put the carpet over the concrete.”

  “Eh, you know how hard it is to take the linoleum out! And we don’t care if the carpet is on top of the linoleum. I prefer the carpet on top of the linoleum.”

  “Okay,” Pito says. “But don’t come telling me later on that there’s a problem with the linoleum.”

  Materena frowns. There’s a problem when you put the carpet over the linoleum? “What problems are you talking about?” she asks.

  “Eh, the linoleum can rot,” Pito says. “I don’t know. All I know is, you don’t put carpet over the linoleum.”

  Materena shrugs. “It’s done—it’s done.”

  “It looks like grass.” Tamatoa is laughing.

  “When you get a job,” Materena says to Tamatoa, “you can buy your hardworking mother a carpet of another color.”

  “The living room looks like a soccer field.” Now Pito is laughing too.

  “I prefer a soccer field to old, ripped linoleum,” Materena snaps.

  “Me too.” Moana and Leilani are relaxing on the soft carpet, and soon Tamatoa joins them.

  “Ah well, one less room for you to mop, then, eh?” Pito goes on.

  “I didn’t think about that, but, yes, no need to mop the living room anymore—it’s good for me.”

  It has always been a nuisance for Materena to mop the living room. When she mops the living room, she has to guard it to make sure no one is walking on the linoleum until it’s completely dried, and it is a nuisance to guard the living room, because she has to stay in it. Most of the time, though, she waits until everyone is in bed to mop the living room.

  “No need to sweep either.” Pito is grinning.

  And Materena knows he’s really happy about her not sweeping the living room anymore. She knows very well that Pito thinks she’s a pain with her broom because he’ll be reading his Akim comic on the sofa and she’ll start sweeping all over the place and wanting him outsid
e.

  But how will she clean the living room now? She didn’t think about that matter when she hurried to get that free carpet. She’ll need to buy a vacuum cleaner.

  “I’m buying a vacuum cleaner,” Materena says.

  When she sees Pito’s expression, she goes on about how she’ll go to that place where you can take things today and pay later on—little by little. A vacuum cleaner can’t be that expensive. But Pito hurries to warn her that vacuum cleaners are the worst equipment, vacuum cleaners break down easily in Tahiti because of the humidity, and it’s very difficult to get the parts—you can wait up to one year for the store to get the parts from America.

  Materena is startled by that revelation. She’s thinking, and then an idea comes into her mind.

  “I can use the straw broom,” she says.

  Pito hurries to agree with her. Apparently, one of his aunties’ friends who’s got carpet in her house uses the straw broom too.

  Let’s do a test.

  Materena gets her straw broom, which she uses to sweep the terrace and the bathroom. She also gets a bit of soil from outside. She spreads the soil on the carpet and vigorously sweeps.

  The straw broom works fine and Materena knows that Pito is very happy about that because, if she drives him mad with the broom, she’d drive him even madder with a vacuum cleaner.

  And now Materena is taking a lemon tart to Lily to thank her for the carpet. Materena would have got her a chocolate cake from Chocolate My Love, but Lily doesn’t like chocolate cakes. She only likes cakes with fruit in them.

  Materena knows that a lemon tart is a small thing compared to yards of carpet, but when you give a small thing the right way, it becomes a big thing. And Materena intends to give the lemon tart the right way—the only way that shows deep appreciation.

  First she’s going to give Lily a big hug, and then she’s going to say, “Ah, thank you so much for your carpet, it’s so much better than my old, ripped linoleum.” And then she’s going to give her the lemon tart and say, “I made it especially for you—my cousin.”

  Materena doesn’t want to hear on the coconut radio that Materena got all the carpet from Lily (and isn’t it a miracle how she managed to get all the carpet before we got a chance)—and what did she give Lily in return? Eh—the wind!

  There’s a BMW parked in Lily’s front yard. Lily is not alone, and Materena doesn’t know what to do next. She imagines that Lily is with her latest boyfriend and they could be doing the sexy loving. Then again, it could be just one of Lily’s friends from work.

  And Materena wants to give the lemon tart to Lily right now. If she takes it home, it’s going to disappear. Already, when Materena took the tart out of the oven, Pito and the kids came running into the kitchen. She had to shoo them away and promise she’d make them a tart when she got home.

  But, this tart in her hands, covered with a tea towel, it’s for Lily.

  Eh, she’s going to call out.

  But there’s a strange sound coming from the house. It’s a cry, it’s a moan—it’s both. Materena opens her ears and she hears Lily shout like… eh, like she’s getting strangled.

  My God, it’s the new boyfriend strangling Lily!

  Materena’s heart is pounding against her chest. She delicately puts the tart on the ground. Okay, what do we do now?

  She’s going to kick the door open and… but first she needs a weapon. Materena looks around her in panic. Ah yes, the shovel. She gets the shovel leaning against the grapefruit tree.

  What if the boyfriend has a bush knife, and he’s big, and he’s muscular? Materena hesitates. Should she go and get Mori?

  Should she assess the situation?

  Materena tiptoes to the front window. The curtains are pulled close but the window is open. Materena, very slowly, without breathing, and using one finger, makes a little space between the curtains.

  There’s Lily lying naked on a rug and there’s a woman (naked too) on top of her, and they’re both wriggling in the position sixty-nine.

  Ah well, Lily must be sick of those jealous men who always give her troubles.

  Materena is sure relieved that Lily is not being assassinated. Still, she’s annoyed Lily’s got company. She’ll have to let Pito and the kids have this tart, and come back another day to give Lily another tart.

  Or she might just get Lily a hand-printed pareu from Rita’s fabric shop and send it by the post.

  Maco and His Girlfriend

  Right after buying Lily two (not one) hand-painted pareus, Materena is on her way to see Cousin Georgette, who is the disk jockey at Club 707, to talk about music. The appointment is in fifteen minutes, so Materena walks faster. She thinks about the day when her cousin Maco introduced his girlfriend to the family.

  Maco had had lots of women before he found Georgette. He had had younger women, older women, married women, who all fell for his muscular body and his good-looking face.

  The married women gave Maco gifts, like a gold chain or a watch. But none of those women, gift or no gift, kept Maco’s interest for more than a month, because Maco always got bored. His eyes wanted to look into other eyes and his hands were eager to caress other titis.

  Then Maco met Georgette and that was the end of his Casanova career.

  Maco has been with Georgette for two years now, and he’s still very hooked on her. When they dance, Maco and Georgette are one body and one rhythm, and Georgette drives Maco crazy with her sexy moves.

  When Maco announced that there was someone very special he wanted to introduce to the family, his mama, Stella, thanked God and Jesus. There had been no formal introduction with any of the other women. In fact, few of Maco’s girlfriends even made it to his mama’s house.

  Stella, she didn’t appreciate her son’s popularity with women. She was always saying to Maco, “You be careful with all those women. One day, one of them is going to curse you. And you stay clear of married women, you hear? You don’t need to get another man’s woman. You don’t need to be that desperate.”

  She wanted him to settle down, be serious, and give her lots of grandkids to fuss over. She had loved babies since she was a child herself, and no one was surprised when she became a midwife. She never got over that thrill of seeing a new baby . . . Eh, but lately she was a bit fiu of congratulating others on their grandchildren and not having a grandchild of her own to fuss over.

  Ah, Stella was so thrilled with her son’s serious announcement. “Ah, finally. Thank you, God and Jesus.” She said this over and over again as she cleaned her house and cooked her speciality—coq au vin.

  Over the next few days, Stella tried to get a bit of information about that special woman—information such as family, job, and physical description. But the only information Maco was willing to reveal about his serious girlfriend was the name.

  Georgette.

  “She’s pretty?” Stella asked, thinking how horrible that name Georgette was.

  “You’ll see,” Maco replied.

  Georgette made her entrance in a sleek new black Honda. Stella, and Maco’s papi, Jean, watched Georgette get out of the car, and they were more than a little shocked. Georgette was tall and muscular, and she was wearing tight pants and huge fluorescent plastic loop earrings.

  Georgette was very nervous. She was smiling the smile we smile when we’re not sure if we’re really welcome.

  Stella, being very good at hiding her true feelings, managed to hurry to hug Georgette. But deep inside she was thinking, What is this story? She looked over to Jean and he gave her the shocked look back.

  Georgette had brought some presents with her. “A few little things,” she said shyly. Two bottles of Dom Perignon, pâté de foie gras, crackers, and some expensive cheese—not the Chesdale Stella always got.

  Dinner started.

  Stella said to herself, Don’t get alarmed. Georgette will last as long as the others before her: a very short time. Her baby son was entitled to be silly now and then, although he was going a bit too far this time.


  She remembered the other women, the ones she had sometimes met in her house by accident. They had all been very pretty. She particularly liked that Leila, the one before Georgette. She was a real beauty, that one, Maco and Leila would have made gorgeous children together. But Maco must have dumped her for Georgette.

  There was no way Stella was going to let that Georgette hang around for more than a day. Tomorrow morning she’d talk some sense into her baby boy’s thick head. He had to get rid of that Georgette as soon as possible, before the relations found out about Maco’s latest girlfriend. Stella didn’t want her relations to laugh at her behind her back. Stella didn’t want her relations to laugh at her, full stop. But in the meantime she’d be her hospitable self.

  “Are you all right, darling?” said Maco, sitting next to his woman.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  “You want more rice?”

  “Yes, please. And more chicken too.”

  “You’re hungry tonight.” Maco gave Georgette a sexy wink.

  Georgette giggled. Stella blushed, and even Jean blushed a little.

  Maco looked at his mother and father. “Okay, you two, we stop the comedy, eh? Yes, Georgette is a raerae. She looks like a man, she talks like a man—because she is a bloody man.”

  Then, turning to Georgette, who was laughing, Maco said, “My family’s not usually this quiet. For example, once Papi gets talking, he doesn’t stop. When nobody wants to listen to him, he talks to the wall, eh, Papi?”

  Georgette smiled, this time a real smile. “Ah, there’s nothing wrong with talking to the wall. I talk to my pillow sometimes when I need to say words I don’t want anybody to hear.”

  “I talk to the dog. A dog never tells you to shut up,” Maco said.

  “I’ll never tell you to shut up… but don’t shit me.” Georgette was now slowly rubbing her shoulder against Maco’s shoulder.

  Stella, who was getting annoyed, felt she better say a few words to Georgette. “Ah, this one… he’s sure going to give you shit heaps of the time. Maco, he’s a lazy bugger. I always say to him, ‘I hope you’re going to find a woman who’s not going to mind cleaning up after you.’ I’m sure not going to clean up after him all my bloody life. He takes after his father. Oh well, I thought I better warn you.”