Breadfruit (18 page)

Materena smiles a real smile. “Mama Roti, I’m happy with your son.”

“He’s a good man, my son,” Mama Roti says.

“
Ah oui.
”

“He works.”

“
Ah oui,
that’s good,” Materena says.

“He drinks a bit every now and then,” Mama Roti goes on. “But at least he’s not violent when he drinks. He just talks a lot
of nonsense.”

Materena nods.

“I’ve raised him very well.”

Materena nods again and looks away.

M
ama Roti ended up staying for another two hours, talking nonstop about her wonderful son and boring Materena more and more
by the second.

When Mama Roti finally realized that she had taken enough of Materena’s time (five hours in total), she rose to her feet to
leave, but she had one very important question to ask.

“Girl, are you sure everything is fine between you and my son?”

“
Oui,
” Materena said firmly. “Everything is fine between your son and me.”

Mama Roti nodded but didn’t look too convinced. She left sighing.

Now, the following day, she’s back again! There’s no way Materena can handle her mother-in-law again today—plus, Pito and
the kids are home, they can look after Mama Roti.

So after a quick kiss to her mother-in-law, Materena escapes to Loana’s under the pretext that she’s giving her mother some
lemons.

Mother and daughter kiss each other, then Loana takes the plastic bag from Materena and says, “Thank you for the lemons, girl.”

“The health is good?” Materena already knows the answer, but she always inquires about her mother’s health, it is the ritual.
And Loana always says, “The legs are a bit stiff when I get up in the morning.”

But today is different. “I was about to come and see you,” Loana says, “because I signed some papers, and there’s a story
I have to tell you.” She puts the lemons away in the fridge. “It’s about your great-grandmother, how her children didn’t come
from her husband but from another man.”

Materena sits at the kitchen table, but Loana would rather tell the story in the bedroom. She needs to lie down a little.

Loana lies on the bed, a pillow under each leg. Materena sits on the floor, her back pressed against the wall, and she checks
the paint peeling off the wall.

“My mother’s mother’s name was Rarahu,” Loana begins, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. “And according to talk she was quite
a beautiful woman. It would have been good, girl, if there had been a photograph of that woman, but in the old days, people
from the Tuamotus didn’t have photographs of themselves. There was no photographer on the atoll, you had to come to Tahiti
to get a professional photograph, and, Rarahu, she never left the atoll of Rangiroa. She was born in Rangiroa, she died in
Rangiroa, she had only ever lived in Rangiroa. Anyway, her beauty has nothing to do with this story.”

Loana clears her throat. “Rarahu was sixteen years old when she married Mareco Tetu. It was an arranged marriage. She had
no choice, he had no choice, because they were both afraid of their parents. So they went to the church, did the whole ceremony.
It was a grandiose marriage. Rarahu was veiled, meaning that she was a virgin, that she’d never played hide-and-seek in the
coconut plantation.

“After the marriage, Rarahu followed her husband back to his parents’ old colonial-style house, and people expected her to
fall pregnant within three months, at least. But six months passed and Rarahu’s belly was still flat. That was because Mareco
was sleeping on the floor. He was sleeping on the floor because he wasn’t fit to love a woman. He was only fit to love a man.
Mareco himself confessed this to his wife.”

Materena arches her eyebrows. She understands now how Rarahu got children from another man.

“I know you’re thinking: No wonder the woman got herself another man
illico presto,
” Loana says. “
Oui,
Rarahu left her husband—but ten years after being married to him.

“She fell in love with Nonihe, who had come to Rangiroa from Rapa Nui to work in the copra plantation. And he fell in love
with her too. So she packed her bags and moved into a hut with him. They were poor, but they were happy, or so the talk said.
Nonihe was a good man.

“Rarahu had four children with Nonihe, but Nonihe couldn’t recognize them, since Rarahu was still married to Mareco.

“And on her deathbed, she made each one of her kids swear that they would never go after the Tetu heritage. And the children
swore that to their mama.

“And now, girl, I’ve signed the papers, and so that story is settled forever. Celia didn’t sign. She wants her kids to be
able to claim some of the Tetus’ heritage. But, I tell you, girl: when you take what doesn’t belong to you and you know about
it, you get bad luck.”

“Was there a lot of land?” Materena asks.

“Acres.”

“In Rangiroa?”

“Rangiroa, Apataki, Tikehau too.”

Materena thinks about all those acres… “What happened to Mareco?”

“He died a lonely man.”

“Did everyone in the village know he was —”

Loana interrupts Materena before she says the word. “
Non,
only his wife and her best friend, and now us.” Materena thinks about all those acres again, that’s a lot of land . . .

And Loana repeats, “When you take what doesn’t belong to you and you know about it, you get bad luck, and not just you, but
your kids, your grandkids, your great-grandkids, on and on. I tell you, girl, we’re much better off without all those acres.
You don’t muck around with things like this. You don’t want the land to eat you.”

Materena shivers and her eyes wander to the framed black-and-white photographs displayed on the wall. There’s a photograph
of an eight-month-old baby in the arms of a young woman, and standing next to the woman are a nun and two children, boys.
The baby is Loana. Materena has asked her mother about the people in the photograph, but Loana couldn’t say who those people
were. But Loana has framed that photo because it is the only baby photo she has of herself.

Then Materena’s eyes move to another photograph—the photograph of a man. It is her grandfather Apoto. He’s tall and lean.
He’s got white skin and his nose is pointed. And next to him there’s a photograph of a plump woman, she’s brown and her nose
is large. It is Materena’s grandmother Kika.

And Materena looks at her mother.

She looks at the wide nostrils and the pointed chin. And she thinks about the story of Apoto and Kika, the story her mother
Loana has told her.

“My father left my mother when she was three months pregnant with me, but before he sneaked into the schooner
Marie Stella,
he made sure to tell the whole village that the child inside Kika’s belly wasn’t his doing. He said, ‘Someone else planted
that child—maybe the Chinese man.’ He needed an excuse to justify abandoning his pregnant wife and their five-year-old daughter
for another woman.

“And just my luck that I was born with slanted eyes.

“But I didn’t grow up thinking my father was the Chinese man; my mother, she often said to me, ‘Loana—your father is Apoto
Mahi.’

“But… when I became a woman, doubt began to bother me. I realized that it isn’t unusual for a married woman to get pregnant
by another man. I saw things, things of life. Even when my father died moaning, ‘Loana—Loana, my daughter,’ I still had that
doubt in me.

“I remembered the Chinese man. He was always nice to me, always giving me lollies behind his wife’s back, and to my mother
unlimited credit. And the Chinese man’s wife didn’t like my mother, and vice versa. They never spoke to each other.

“Things like that I remembered. And, Celia, she used to say we didn’t look like sisters, that she looked so much like Apoto,
and I, I looked like no one in the family.

“After Apoto died, I got a letter about my heritage—my land.

“I didn’t want to accept, but I was a bit tired of moving from one relative’s house to another relative’s house. Your godmother,
Imelda, used to always say to me, ‘Cousin, my house is your house. Stay as long as you want.’ But I wanted a place of my own.
My piece of land. And I kept thinking about that bad-luck thing, which I heard from Kika. She’d say, ‘That person is not allowed
to get the coconuts from this land because this land doesn’t belong to him and he knows it. Well, bad luck will come to him.’

“And, sure enough, bad luck always did. Or should I say bad crop?

“But one night, Mama came into my dream and said, ‘I’ve only ever loved Apoto and he gave me you.’

“So I accepted my heritage, and later on I found out that my slanted eyes came from an ancestor who was a Filipino.”

Loana has fallen asleep, and Materena quietly stands up. She kisses her mother on the forehead and looks at her. Then she
looks at the grainy photograph of Apoto. There is no resemblance whatsoever between Loana and Apoto. But Materena realizes
that not all children resemble their father.

Moana, for instance, he looks nothing like Pito, with his freckles, green eyes, and golden hair. And, Leilani, well, she is
very much a young version of her grandmother Loana. In fact, now that Materena is analyzing the resemblance of her children,
Tamatoa is the only one who looks like Pito. And Materena thinks about how things could have turned out different for her
if Tamatoa wasn’t the stamp of his father when he was born.

Ah yes, Materena remembers now how Pito scrutinized his newborn son for hours. And then Pito compared his newborn son to a
photograph of himself when he was a newborn. And Pito was happy to say, “Jeez, that fellow looks just like me when I was born.”

And only last month, Materena’s cousin Rita was saying to Materena how Tamatoa was looking more and more like Pito and how
she hoped the resemblance would only ever remain in appearance.

Materena wishes God had made Loana resemble her father, even just a tiny bit. Loana’s life would have been much easier had
Apoto accepted her as his daughter when he was alive and not just when he was dying.

But who knows with these things.

Materena quietly leaves the room and goes to the kitchen to make a pitcher of fresh lemonade. Ah, she might as well wipe the
benches too.

She’s in no hurry to head home.

A
fter two hours pottering around in her mother’s kitchen, including rearranging and cleaning her fridge, Materena goes home,
hoping Mama Roti has gone. She has.

“How come you were so long?” Pito asks. “It doesn’t take two hours to go give someone a bag of lemons.”

“Mamie wanted to talk a little,” Materena says. “And your mama? She stayed long?”

“She was only here for fifteen minutes, and she was a bit bizarre.”

“
Ah oui?
” Materena says, thinking, Your mother is always a bit bizarre.

“She asked me bizarre questions about the carpet and what it meant.”

“And what did you say?” Materena asks.

“I said, ‘It means Materena was sick of the linoleum, that’s all it means.’”

Materena cackles.

“She came to give me this.” Pito shows Materena a postcard. It has a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. “It’s from France,”
boasts Pito.

“From France?” Materena, very intrigued, reads the postcard.

Iaorana, Pito, e aha te huru? Yes, I’m still living in France. I haven’t been back to the fenua for sixteen years now. I miss
the corned beef! I miss the fenua too, but my life is here now. How are you doing, Pito? Maybe you don’t remember me. Tihoti

“Who is that Tihoti?” Materena asks Pito.

Pito doesn’t remember yet, but he’s trying to. He searches his memory, and after a whole hour of this, the name Tihoti Ranuira
finally connects.

Tihoti Ranuira. They did military service in France together.

Pito did military service in France because he didn’t want his mama embarrassing him like she embarrassed his brother Frank.
Frank did military service in Tahiti and Mama Roti would go to the barracks and call out to the guardian that she had home-cooked
food for her son and to go get him. She believed the food at the barracks was poisoned. She would also stand by the side of
the road to cheer her son as he ran past with his platoon. Pito’s brother suffered.

When Pito announced to his mama that he had enlisted himself to do military service in France, she panicked. Mama Roti tried
all kinds of tricks to make her youngest son stay. She lied that she had an incurable disease, she threatened never to speak
to Pito ever again, but at the age of eighteen, Pito felt he really needed some time away from his mama. Two years.

Materena knows the story, Mama Roti has told her many times how afraid she was that her son would fall for a
popa’a
girl and then decide to live in France. The day Pito came back from France was a very happy day for Mama Roti.

Yes, Pito came back, but Tihoti stayed in France. Pito says Tihoti felt there was nothing for him in Tahiti, no family ties,
no prospects, no woman, nothing. His future was in France, in the army. Tihoti wanted to be a colonel.

Materena is surprised Pito has never talked about Tihoti. Two years is a long time to spend with someone, how could you just
forget them? Pito insists that he and Tihoti weren’t close like inseparables—they just happened to be from the same island.
They talked Tahitian, they sang Tahitian songs, and Pito played the ukulele.

“He was a bit . . .” Pito searches for the proper word to describe Tihoti. “He was a bit… well, he wasn’t one hundred
percent normal.”

The postcard is a shock to Pito. Why would anyone contact somebody after so many years?

In Materena’s opinion that particular friend must have felt lonely for him to suddenly write to Pito. And Pito should be honored
his friend remembered him in his moment of crisis.

But, according to Pito, his friend from the military days wasn’t going through a crisis at all when he wrote the postcard.
Non,
his friend probably just drank a bottle of wine and did some remembering about the old days, or maybe he found a picture
from the military-service days and the past came back to him.