Pito makes a brief appearance one Friday morning very early to inform Materena he’s leaving her, and she can keep his sofa, but he’s taking his shorts, his shirts, and his thongs. Materena, half awake and standing still like a coconut tree in the living room, wants to shout, “Stay! I’m pregnant and I love you! I’m never going to pick up your pay again! I swear it on top of my grandmother’s grave!” But she just looks at Pito from under her eyelashes as he turns around and leaves.
She remembers herself with him in the shower and they’re embracing like they’re under the rain. She pushes the soap away with her foot. The last thing she needs right now is to slip on the soap and crack her head open.
She’s with Pito under the frangipani tree behind the bank and he rips her sexy black underpants with his teeth before she has the chance to tell him that they’re not her underpants, they’re her mother’s from a long time ago when she wasn’t religious.
Pito busts a wall to install a shutter so that more light and fresh air come into the bedroom. Materena passes him the nails. He doesn’t know what he’s doing and she tells him what she thinks. He gets cranky and yells at her. She yells back at him.
Pito is gone now, and Materena walks to the kitchen to get her broom. She starts sweeping long, sad strokes.
She doesn’t know what else to do.
Breadfruit Page 31