Breadfruit

by Célestine Vaite

  Loana smiles. “You know, girl… Teacher personally selected me to recite the welcoming speech to the governor of Tahiti when he came to Tiputa to inaugurate the new quay.”

  “Ah oui?” Materena is truly impressed.

  “Ah oui, girl. Teacher selected me because of my amazing memory. The village approved of the selection, except for a few mothers who believed their child was a better selection. They went to confront Teacher about that matter. He gave them two seconds of his attention, then showed them the door.”

  Materena laughs. She imagines these women in Teacher’s office, complaining and carrying on about how their kid is better than Loana. It’s a natural thing to think, and Materena understands.

  “Teacher said to me, ‘Loana, the whole village will be watching you. Don’t make me regret my decision.’

  “The welcoming speech was quite short. ‘Welcome to Tiputa, Monsieur le Governor! We are honored . . .’ More words like that and some words that didn’t make sense to me at all.

  “Days and days I lived for that speech, reciting it over and over again, morning, afternoon, and night. Mama exempted me from all duties, she wanted that speech to be planted in my head. She couldn’t help me with the speech because, your grandmother, she didn’t speak French, except for a few sentences like, ‘Is this an owl I perceive in the forest?’

  “Girl, I was shaking with nerves when I got onto the podium… then all the people disappeared—Mama, Teacher, and the governor of Tahiti included.

  “‘Welcome to Tiputa!’ I began, and before I knew it, the crowd was applauding.

  “I was the star of the inauguration. Eh, I danced with the governor! And I sat beside him at the table of honor! And you know what Teacher said to me?”

  “He said it’s good?” Materena asks.

  “He said, ‘Loana, when I retire, you’re going to replace me.’” Loana looks out the window. “But here I am, past fifty, and I still don’t have my school certificate.”

  Materena knows that Loana doesn’t have her school certificate because she left school three months before the school-certificate exam to come to Tahiti with her mother. Her mother’s man was in Mamao Hospital, very ill. But her mother ended up dying (of a heart attack) instead—and her man, he went back to his island, leaving Loana alone in Tahiti.

  And Loana has been cleaning houses ever since.

  Materena tenderly holds her mother’s hand. She remembers when she sat for the school certificate, how Loana really got involved with her studies. She pinned notes all over the house and Materena couldn’t go anywhere in the house without being confronted with a grammatical rule or mathematical formula, not even in the toilet. Those notes drove Materena crazy, and she escaped into the garden, but then Loana decided to pin the notes on the trees, the potted plants, and the wire fence.

  Loana also decided that Materena was going to sing a song for the oral exam instead of reciting a poem, and the song would of course be a church song, as, in Loana’s opinion, Materena was bound to score twenty out of twenty with a church song.

  The day of the exam results, Loana was sick with nerves, and Materena couldn’t just tell her mother the result as it was—pass or fail. Loana had to have signs—wave her pareu this way for pass and wave the pareu that way for fail. It was all so complicated.

  Well, Materena passed the exam and Loana went around the neighborhood to show off her daughter’s framed school certificate. Materena’s framed school certificate is still proudly displayed in Loana’s living room.

  Materena thinks about how her mother should be proudly displaying her own school certificate.

  “Mamie,” Materena says.

  “Yes, girl.”

  “You can get that paper now. I can enroll you. There are classes at the Pomare High School for the school-certificate exam, and you can get that paper—easy. You’re very intelligent.”

  Loana half smiles, and shrugs.

  “Eh, Mamie,” Materena goes on, “there’s no law that says you can’t sit for the school-certificate exam at fifty-two years old. Look at Mama Teta, she got her driver’s license at fifty-six.”

  “It’s thirty-eight years ago I needed that paper,” says Loana. “Not today.”

  Belief

  Poor Mamie, eh, thinks Materena, hiding the family-size packet of chocolate cookies in the fridge. Eh-eh, Mamie… Materena sits at the kitchen table. She needs to recover a little from the day—the court, her mother’s teacher. Sometimes too much happens in one day.

  But wait a minute, Materena tells herself, did she thank her mother for having come with her to court? Non! Materena springs to her feet and hurries to her mother’s house.

  Loana is in the living room pinning patterns to a quilt. “Eh?” She cackles. “You again?”

  Materena throws her arms around her mother (she won’t bother asking her about the health this time), all the while thanking her for her support in court, for all the food she put in her stomach, for everything.

  “Chérie,” Loana says, “it’s all right.”

  More hugs, until Loana gently pulls away, she has a quilt to finish, she says.

  “Who is the quilt for?” Materena asks.

  “It’s for Father Louis. It’s a farewell gift to him from your auntie Celia. You know he’s going home to Quebec to retire?”

  “Ah oui?” Materena says. She’s sad. She likes Father Louis. He’s funny. “And who is the new priest?”

  “I don’t know, but he better not be too young and too handsome.”

  Materena nods, all the while helping her mother pin the patterns onto the quilt. The base fabric is white with patterns of green breadfruit leaves, red hibiscus flowers, yellow frangipani flowers, and light blue doves. Once all the patterns are pinned, Loana will hand stitch them. When she starts that she will require total silence—Loana can’t talk when she’s stitching her quilts. She needs 100 percent concentration. But right now she can talk.

  “We, the Polynesians, have always been a religious type of people, girl. In the old days, and I’m talking about the old days, a long time ago,” Loana insists, “we prayed before everything we did. We prayed before eating, working on the land, planting our gardens, building our houses, throwing the net, and before we began and ended a voyage. We prayed nonstop, girl.

  “We had a god, or, I should really say, gods,” she continues, “but the most important god was Ta’aroa. You know about Ta’aroa? The legend?” Loana asks.

  Materena shakes her head. She doesn’t know the legend of Ta’aroa. She only knows the story of God. God who forgives, God the greatest, Jehovah.

  “Here’s the legend, girl. You can tell the kids.”

  Loana neatly places a pattern of a dove on the fabric and straightens it a few times with the palm of her hand.

  “A long time ago,” begins Loana, “there was Ta’aroa. He was his own creator and he lived all by himself in a shell. The shell looked like an egg. This egg was in the space and there was no sky, no earth, no moon, no sun, no stars. There was nothing, girl.

  “Ta’aroa was a bit bored in his shell, so one day he broke it and got out to see what was outside. Outside was dark, outside was nothing. There and then Ta’aroa realized he was alone, all alone.

  “He shattered his shell and created the rocks and the sand. With his vertebrae he created the mountains. The oceans, the lakes, and the rivers came from his tears. He gave the fishes and the turtles scales using his nails. With his feathers he created the trees and the bushes. And Ta’aroa made the rainbow using his own blood.

  “Then Ta’aroa decided to create man . . .”

  Loana’s voice dies down to a murmur.

  “This is what the legend says, anyway,” Loana says, looking at the statues of the Virgin Mary displayed in her living room. “But it doesn’t mean the story about Adam and Eve is an invention.

  “We made to’o images of our gods. We used wood or rock, and there were feathers attached to the image, red and yellow feathers. These feathers were the emble
m of divinity.”

  Materena’s ears are wide open. She likes when her mother talks about history. Loana knows about history because when she and Imelda meet for a little chitchat, Imelda always talks about history and Loana likes to listen. Imelda’s vast knowledge of history comes from the many old people she’s befriended over the years. She always says, “You want to know about the past? Well, talk to the old people.”

  “The image was kept in the house of God,” Loana says. “And when we needed to communicate with God, we would appeal to Him to grant us His presence—by entering the to’o, His image.

  “We had to have ceremonies, and long too, I’m talking days, for God to come to us. Whereas now… all you need to do for God to listen to you is say, ‘God—I really need to talk to you.’” Loana sighs. “It’s good to believe.”

  Materena agrees with a slow nod. She thinks, Yes, it’s true, it’s good to believe—in something.

  They pin the patterns in silence for a while, humming church hymns.

  And Loana asks, “You know how we became Christians? The Mahi family, I mean. I don’t know how my family from my mama’s side became Christians. You know the story of the mango tree?”

  Materena doesn’t know that story.

  “Are you sure I’ve never told you that story?” Loana looks at Materena in doubt.

  “I’m sure, Mamie. I’m one hundred percent sure.”

  “You should know the story of the mango—and tell it to your kids… Well, here’s the story of how we became Christians.

  “Your great-grandmother was lying on the mat by her mango tree one day when the priest came to pay her a visit. She greeted him coldly because she wanted nothing to do with him, and that woman wasn’t the kind to have her resting interrupted—a bit like me.

  “The priest, well, he ignored her coldness and went on about how beautiful the day was. Great-Grandmother told him the sun was going to disappear soon—look at the sky, see the gray clouds, feel the rain coming. The priest maintained the weather was going to remain charming until the end of the week. ‘Who told you?’ she asked. ‘Your God?’ He replied, ‘Yes.’ ‘What is it you want at my house?’ she asked the priest.

  “Spread the goodness of God, was what he wanted to do. ‘Your God, it doesn’t interest me, now go your way,’ Great-Grandmother said.

  “She stood up and faced the man in the black robe. ‘You come here and burn our prayer-meeting houses, and destroy our marae, you come here and tell us our God doesn’t exist. Your God you can keep for yourself, I don’t want Him.’

  “She lifted her eyes to a mango and down it fell, onto the priest’s head. He stumbled, and for a brief moment, it looked like he was going to faint. ‘Out of my land,’ she said to him. ‘I’ve spoken.’

  “The priest lifted his eyes to the tree and said to it, ‘As of today, you will produce no more fruit.’

  “The following morning, the mango tree was ashes, and the next day, your great-grandmother, she became a Christian, a Catholic, and right until her death she blessed the day God, the real God, came into her life.”

  Materena looks at her mother, thinking that the priest probably sneaked back to the mango tree during the dark with a box of matches and some firewood.

  But she says, “It’s true?”

  “Oh oui, girl, I’m not inventing.”

  They get humming again and soon every single pattern is pinned onto the fabric. And it is time for Loana to start stitching. Materena rises to her feet, she’s going home.

  Mother and daughter hug, and kiss each other on the forehead. And on her way home, Materena thinks about God. God, and Loana.

  Loana was raised within the walls of the Church—every night she and her mother would go to Mass and then to the singing rehearsals. The whole village went to Mass and singing rehearsals, especially when it was the priest and not one of his diacres who was celebrating the Mass.

  The whole village was on its best behavior when the priest was in the village. But as soon as the priest went away to attend to the needs of other atolls, fights and arguments would break out here and there in the village. Mostly about women and coconuts. And ten-year-old Loana would help her mother wash the priest’s robe—a great honor.

  Between her twenties and her thirties, Loana forgot God as she drifted from man to man in her search for Love. But her cousin Imelda slowly drew her back to God. And since, Loana’s life has been much easier.

  She often says, “I thank my faith.”

  Nowadays Loana goes on weekend retreats with the nuns. She reads at the Mass too sometimes, when her sister asks her to. Materena usually helps her mother with the reading. She listens to Loana practice over and over again, she even records the reading so that Loana can relax, knowing her reading is perfect—that she’s got the right tone of voice and she’s not speaking too fast or too slow. And Materena goes to Mass to listen to her mother read a paragraph out of the Bible to the congregation, to show her support. Once, in the earlier days of her reading at the Mass, Loana got sick with nerves and went to hide behind the church. And so Materena read for her mother, and Celia got angry with Loana.

  She shrieked, “That is the last time I’m giving you the opportunity to read at the Mass!”

  But Celia forgot her anger with Loana because she needed her younger sister to do something for her.

  Like make that quilt.

  Materena is still thinking about God as she walks home.

  Someone toots the horn and Materena waves absently—it must be a relative.

  Materena used to test the existence of God. If that woman there looks in my direction, God exists. If that baby there starts to cry, God exists.

  One day, she asked her mother if God really existed. Loana didn’t say yes, she didn’t say no.

  She just said, “One day, girl, you’re going to be thankful there’s a God for you to believe in.”

  And it is true, Materena is thankful there’s a God for her to believe in. But she prays to the Virgin Mary, Understanding Woman, more than she prays to God.

  In fact, Materena only prays to the Virgin Mary, Understanding Woman. Her most frequent prayer is about not outliving any of her children, because children, unlike men, are irreplaceable.

  Children, unlike men, show you that they love you.

  The Story of the Coconut

  With a quick cranky look at Pito, lying still on the sofa like a coconut tree, Materena, a coconut in her hand (for the coconut milk), greets her mother at the door.

  “Iaorana, Mamie!” Materena sings, kissing her mother on the cheeks.

  “Iaorana, girl,” says Loana, then glances toward the sofa. “Eh, iaorana, Pito.”

  “Iaorana.”

  Loana looks at her daughter and raises her eyes, meaning, does he ever do anything? Materena shrugs, meaning, non, you know your son-in-law, he likes the horizontal position.

  Allez, let’s go to the kitchen, but first Loana has to kiss her grandchildren, especially her youngest one, Moana, who hasn’t learned to answer back yet. The sweet eight-year-old follows his mother and grandmother to the kitchen.

  And now he’s looking at the coconut, which Materena is about to crack open with a machete. Loana, who has been invited for lunch, takes the coconut from Materena and holds it out in the palm of her hand.

  “Look at that coconut, Moana.”

  Moana stares at the coconut.

  “What can you see?” Loana asks.

  “I can see dots.”

  “How many dots can you see?”

  “Three.” And, pointing to each dot, Moana adds, “One here, one here, one here.”

  Loana smiles. “And do you know what these dots represent?”

  Moana shakes his head.

  “These two dots here—side by side—represent the eel’s eyes,” Loana says.

  Moana looks closer at the dots, then he lifts his eyes to his grandmother. “Eel’s eyes?”

  “Ah oui, Moana. And this dot here all by itself represents the eel’s mouth
. Do you know about the legend of the coconut?”

  No, Moana doesn’t know about the legend of the coconut.

  Loana says she is going to rectify the situation, as, in her opinion, everybody should know about the legend of the coconut. It is such a great legend.

  “A long time ago,” Loana begins, “long before the airplanes were invented and long before the television was invented, there was a princess called Hina.

  “When Hina turned sixteen years old, her father told her that she was to marry the prince of Lake Vahiria. Hina looked forward to meeting that prince, but when they were finally introduced, she saw that, as well as being ugly, the prince of Lake Vahiria was an eel. She was horrified and swore to herself that she was never going to marry that repulsive eel.

  “But the eel lost his heart to the beautiful princess within a second. He would not take no for an answer, so Princess Hina decided to have him killed. She appealed to God Maui for help. God Maui captured the eel, cut him into three slices, and wrapped the head of the eel in tapa cloth. He gave it to Princess Hina with strict instructions to immediately bury it in the familial marae.

  “But Princess Hina forgot all about Maui’s instructions and went for a swim in the river on her way home. Not long after, the earth began to tremble and a tree sprouted—a strange-looking tree resembling an eel. On her way home, a voice cried out, ‘One day, Princess Hina, you’re going to look into my eyes, you’re going to kiss my mouth. You’re going to love me.’

  “Princess Hina, she just laughed.

  “Years passed and a terrible drought hit the islands of Tahiti. People everywhere were dying from thirst. Hina went back to that strange-looking tree. One of her servants picked up one of its round fruits and peeled it. Princess Hina saw the three dots and remembered the eel’s words. The servant pierced a hole in the dot, and Princess Hina pressed her lips on the eel’s mouth and drank the sweet water. There and then she realized how much the eel had loved her, and loved her still.”