Breadfruit (12 page)

That Rita, thinking her Coco has a mistress. Materena can’t imagine Coco doing the sexy loving with another woman. In fact,
she can’t imagine Coco doing the sexy loving, full stop. The thing with Coco is that he’s quite large. Not just large—he’s
massive. He must weigh over 280 pounds. His nickname, it’s Sumo. When Rita introduced Coco for the first time, Materena said
to Rita, “Have you got eyes?” But it is Rita’s affair if she wants a sumo. Plus, Rita is quite large herself. She and Coco
go well together. But it’s really funny to think about two sumos doing the sexy loving.

And that Rita, she’s always on heat.

Eh, that’s because she was thirty-two years old when she discovered the sexy loving—with Coco. Now she’s catching up for all
those years when she was a virgin and her cousins were having babies.

M
aterena bumps into her cousin Tapeta outside the Cash & Carry just as they are getting their shopping carts to go inside.
They give each other two kisses on the cheeks.

“It’s hot, eh?” Tapeta says.

“
Ah oui,
Cousin,” Materena agrees. “It’s hot.”

“And you’re going to do some shopping?”

“
Oui,
just a couple of things.”

“Ah, me too. A few corned beef cans, toilet paper, soap.”

“And how are the kids?” Materena asks.

“My Rose, she wanted to play the piano,” Tapeta says.

The piano! Materena thinks, but she best not sound too surprised about it. Tapeta might snap, “What is so surprising about
my Rose wanting to play the piano?”

“The piano?” Materena sounds interested.

“Eh, it was a shock for me when Rose told me she wanted to play the piano. Well, Rose didn’t actually say to me, ‘Mama, I
want to play the piano.’ She more said, ‘Eh, Mama, if I played the piano… eh, I like the music.’”

This is strange, Materena thinks. We don’t listen to that kind of music and there are certainly no piano people in the family,
and that’s going back one hundred years. We sing; we play the guitar and the ukulele.

Well, Cousin Mori plays the accordion. He “found” an accordion in a truck when he was about twelve years old and took it home
and taught himself to play. He’s very good at it.

But nobody plays the piano. There must be some piano-music tapes at Tapeta’s house. In Materena’s opinion, you can’t want
to play the piano if you’ve never heard the music or if you don’t have the musical instrument to play it with. Materena knows
there’s no piano at Tapeta’s house, so since when do they listen to the piano music?

“You listen to the piano music at your house?” Materena asks.

Tapeta gives her cousin a funny look. “Us? Listen to the piano music? You’re laughing!”

“How come Rose wanted to play the piano, then, if she’s never heard the music?”

“Eh, you don’t need to hear the music to want to play. Like me, when I was little I wanted to play the violin and I’ve never
heard the violin music.”

“You wanted to play the violin!” This time, Materena shows her surprise.

“Well
oui.
” Tapeta giggles. “But don’t tell anyone, eh? I’m embarrassed.”

“Ah, okay. So Rose wanted to play the piano.”

“Yes, my Rose, she wanted to play the piano. They have a piano at the school.”

Ah, well, now Materena understands.

Apparently, every lunchtime Rose would sit next to the piano-lesson room and listen to the enchanting music of the piano.
They have piano lessons at that school if you’ve got money to pay for them. So Tapeta decided that her daughter was going
to play the piano too.

“You know I’m the kind of mother who’d do everything for my kids.”

“
Ah oui,
I’m the same too,” Materena says.

She could go on about all the things she does for her kids, but the story isn’t about her kids. It’s about Rose and that piano.

“You know I don’t have much money.” Tapeta does her air of pity.

“Yes, it’s the same for me too.” Materena also does her air of pity.

“But when your kid wants—you try your best to give,” Tapeta says.

“True, you’re a good mother, Tapeta.”

“Thank you, Cousin. You too, you’re a good mother. We all know what you do for your kids.”

Materena wants to ask for some examples, but it’s up to Tapeta to list the examples. You don’t just ask… But Tapeta isn’t
going to list examples—she’s got her story to tell.

“I got all dressed up and I went to the school office to get a bit of information about the piano lessons. I wore my matching
blue long skirt and blouse. They’re my best clothes.”

“I wear my best clothes too when I go to the school office to pay the school fees,” Materena says.

“You should always wear your best clothes when you go to the school office.”

“Ah, true. It’s all about presentation.” Materena checks on her chignon.

“It’s fine to wear your pareu when you go to the school office to pay the school fees,” continues Tapeta. “But when you go
to the school office to get a bit of information about the piano lessons, you have to look really presentable. Because, the
piano lessons, they’re not for us people, they’re for the rich, so you have to look a bit rich.”

Materena wants to say that it’s no use pretending you’re rich to the school office people, because they have information about
everyone in their filing system. They know Tapeta is a cleaner at the hospital and that her man is a good-for-nothing. But
Materena keeps her mouth shut because her cousin doesn’t like to be reminded that her man is a good-for-nothing, and she doesn’t
like to be reminded that she’s a cleaner at the hospital. As far as Tapeta is concerned, she’s a nurse.

“So, you told the school office people Rose wanted to play the piano?” asks Materena.

“
Non,
I just asked for the price.”

“And it was how much?”

“Ten thousand francs—for the month.”

“It’s not bad.”

“It’s still a lot of money. I can feed my family for a whole week with ten thousand francs. That ten thousand francs missing,
I felt it, let me tell you. We ate a lot of breadfruit.”

“Breadfruit is nice,” says Materena.

“
Ah oui,
I could eat breadfruit every day.”

“Me too.”

“It’s good to have a breadfruit tree.”

“
Ah oui,
you can always rely on the breadfruit tree when money is a bit low.” Materena knows what she’s talking about.

“I always tell the kids that when they buy a house, to check that there’s a breadfruit tree in the garden first. And even
if the kids are just going to rent—they should check that there’s a breadfruit tree in the garden first.”

“Rita and Coco did this when they were looking for a house to rent,” says Materena. “They checked the garden for a breadfruit
tree first before checking the house. There are three breadfruit trees where they live now.”

“Rita and Coco don’t need a breadfruit tree,” says Tapeta. “They’ve got money and no kids.”

“Eh, Cousin”—now Materena is on the defensive—“just because you’ve got money and no kids, doesn’t mean you can’t eat breadfruit
anymore. Rita, she loves breadfruit.”

“I like breadfruit in the stew.” Tapeta is back to her breadfruit recipes.

“Me too. I prefer breadfruit in the stew to potatoes.”

“And barbecued breadfruit—it’s nice, eh, when the butter melts on the breadfruit.”

“Fried breadfruit too, it’s nice.” Materena hopes this talk about breadfruit isn’t going to go on for hours. She’s getting
hungry.

“Baked breadfruit. I like breadfruit. It tastes nice and it fills the stomach quick. We ate a lot of breadfruit for Rose to
play the piano.” Tapeta smiles for a while.

“
Aue,
” she goes on. “My Rose, she didn’t believe me when I told her that she was going to learn to play the piano. I had to show
her the official receipt for her to believe that her piano lessons weren’t an invention.”

“She was happy, eh?”

“
Ah oui
—she said to me, ‘Thank you, Mama,’ and when she said this to me, eh, I didn’t regret the ten thousand francs anymore—because
when I found out about the price, I told myself, ‘Ten thousand francs!’ But then I told myself, ‘Eh, you’re going to be really
proud when your daughter plays the piano. And what’s ten thousand francs? Money is just money—you spend. When you die, you
can’t take money with you.’ And, Robert, he had the nerve to go cranky at me about that ten thousand francs, and you know
what I said to him?”

What could Tapeta have told Robert? Materena thinks for a few seconds. “Pack your bags and move back to your mama?”

“But
non,
I didn’t say that! I just said, ‘Shut it.’”

“Ah.”

“It’s not his affair what I do with my ten thousand francs,” says Tapeta.

“
Ah oui,
you work hard.”

But what happened with the piano lessons? Something did happen, because otherwise Tapeta would have said, and right from the
beginning, “You know what? Rose, she can play the piano!” Materena waits for her cousin to carry on with her story.

But first Tapeta has to fan her face with her hands, and after several long, annoyed sighs, she continues. “I asked Rose after
the third lesson what song she could play and she told me that she had to do a bit of study about the notes of music first.
And I said to her, ‘You tell me when you can play a song, and I’m going to come to the school to listen to you.’ And Rose
said, ‘Okay, Mama.’ I paid another month. And there was still no okay. So one day, I decided to go to school on my way to
work to listen to Rose play the piano. I stayed outside the piano-music-lesson room and opened my ears and what I heard .
. .
Ah hia hia,
let me just tell you that it wasn’t a melody. And I said to myself, ‘Twenty thousand francs for that horrible noise!’ Eh,
I wanted an explanation. I waited for the lesson to finish. When Rose got out of the piano-lesson room, I hid behind the wall.
Then I went to see the music teacher.”

Materena listens intently.

“I asked that woman how come, my daughter, she’s not playing good. And the woman said, ‘Your daughter must practice every
day, she must dedicate herself to the piano… playing the piano must become an obsession.’ And I said, ‘My daughter, she
must practice every day?’ ‘Absolutely,’ the piano teacher said. And I said, ‘Practice on what?’ And the piano teacher said,
‘On her piano, of course!’ I was getting more and more confused by the second. ‘What piano are we talking about here?’ I asked.”

Tapeta looks into Materena’s eyes. “You know what that Rose did?”

Materena guesses that Rose lied to her music teacher that she had a piano to practice on, but it’s best to act like you don’t
know the rest of the story. “
Non.
”

“That coconut head lied to the piano-music teacher that her grandmother bought her a piano! Ah, I tell you, I was so cranky
with Rose. When I got home from work, I went straight to her and said, ‘And how are your piano lessons?’ Rose said, ‘Everything’s
going well, Mama.’ And I said, ‘So, you’re practicing every day on the piano your grandmother bought you?’ Rose, she looked
at me and then she started to cry on me. You know how kids cry on you when there’s trouble coming their way. You haven’t even
done anything yet and they’re bawling. Eh, I slapped Rose full on the face… It’s okay now. Rose gave me some explanations.
She realized from the third lesson that you’re supposed to have a piano when you’re learning to play the piano, and she was
going to tell me that she didn’t want those piano lessons anymore, but I’d already paid for another month.

“And when the piano teacher asked Rose if she had a piano, Rose thought she better lie. She thought if she told the truth,
the music teacher was going to stop the music lessons and then my hard-earned money would be gone in the wind.”

“Kids, eh.” Materena smiles, thinking how nice Rose is, inventing that story about her having a piano so that her mother’s
hard-earned money wouldn’t be wasted.

Tapeta must get on with her shopping now. So the cousins wheel their carts into the Cash & Carry store.

But Tapeta has one more thing to add. “You can draw a piano on a piece of cardboard and practice on that… but you need
to hear the sound.”

“Ah, true, Cousin,” says Materena. “With music you need to hear the sound.”

Inside the Cash & Carry, Materena thinks about how, Tapeta, she’s by far the greatest singer at St. Joseph Church. There’s
always a bit of showing-off at Mass, with one cousin trying to sing higher and better than another one. But when Tapeta decides
to go to Mass, no one dares try to surpass her, not even their cousin Loma, who has quite a beautiful voice herself.

Tapeta’s voice is deep, powerful, and very moving. It comes from her soul and it is impossible to compare. When Tapeta sings
“Ave Maria,” mamas cry, papas cry, the priest cries, everybody gets goose bumps. As she pushes her cart, Materena hopes that
Tapeta won’t mind singing “Ave Maria” for her as she enters the church to get married. That would be a wonderful wedding present
and an honor for Materena.

And Tapeta won’t have to spend money she doesn’t have.

L
ater, waiting for the truck to get moving, with her Cash & Carry bags at her feet, Materena realizes that all of her relatives
(well, 99 percent of them, anyway) are, like herself, struggling with their finances. It’s not like they have money to spare
for a bed they’ll never sleep in.

There’s no way Materena can ask her relatives to contribute to her bed now. She can’t believe she ever thought of asking them
in the first place! How insensitive of her! It’s best she forgets about that bed completely. Or pays for it herself, though
she’ll have to ask for an extension with the payments.

In fact, Materena thinks sadly, it’s best she forgets about the whole marriage story too. No wonder only a few Tahitian people
get married. Between the gifts, the food, the drinks… forget it. Might as well keep living in sin.

Sighing, Materena looks out the window and recognizes her godmother, Imelda. Yes, that’s Imelda’s bleached pandanus hat and
her missionary dress. Materena hops off the truck with all her stuff clattering and bumping around her and starts chasing
her godmother. But another woman beats her to it. Imelda and the woman are now hugging and talking. Imelda sees Materena and
waves, and now Materena has to wait for her to be free.