Frangipani (16 page)
And on and on and on . . .
Smiling through her tears, Materena admits that it is a curse. “You know, girlfriend,” she says, “when
pai
we think about it, it takes courage for a fruit to fall far from her tree.”
“True,” the woman who nearly died today replies, “but life is easier for everyone when we just fall back to our roots.”
Nobody Is Getting Married These Days
I
t’s quiet around here at the cemetery this morning. People haven’t started visiting their loved ones, and Materena can sure do with a few moments on her own weeding her grandmother’s grave, but she bumps into Mama Teta, on her way home from her husband’s grave.
“Mama Teta, at what time did you arrive at the cemetery?”
Auntie and niece hug each other tight. “Are you all right, girl?” Mama Teta asks, looking into Materena’s eyes.
“I’m fine, Mama Teta.”
“You don’t look fine to me. I’ve never seen you with
cernes
under your eyes before. What’s going on?”
“Oh, I have problems with my daughter.” Then, smiling, Materena adds, “Small ones.”
“Better small problems than big problems,” Mama Teta says, putting a comforting hand on her niece’s shoulder.
“True.”
“But better no problems full stop, eh?”
“
Aue,
Mama Teta, do you think this is possible?” Materena’s eyes fill with tears. After meeting that woman in the cathedral last week, Materena has been very easygoing with Leilani. She stopped expecting her daughter to be like her. When Leilani didn’t thank her mother for the cup of Milo she made her, Materena didn’t say anything about it. When Materena complained about her sore belly (she was having her period) and Leilani rolled her eyes, Materena didn’t say anything about it.
Anyway, lately Materena has been trying really hard to keep her cool, but last night she borrowed a pen from her daughter and said, “Thank you, girl,” and Leilani got cranky. “Mamie,” she said, “I don’t care, it’s only a pen!”
“So what if it’s only a pen!” Materena shouted. “I can’t say thank you? What? Do I have to be like you? Ungrateful?” And Leilani shouted again, “It’s only a pen!”
Next minute, Materena and Leilani were shouting at each other, and Pito told them both to shut up. “You two are driving me crazy!” he shouted for the whole neighborhood to hear.
“Do you want to do a little
parau-parau,
girl?” Mama Teta asks. “I’m not in a hurry.”
“I’m trying so hard to be a good mother, Mama Teta,” says Materena, her voice trembling. “I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m pulling my hair out. It doesn’t matter what I do, it’s always the wrong thing, you know. I’m going
taravana.
” Materena goes on about how she really can’t wait for Leilani to get married and leave.
“Girl,” says Mama Teta, “I’ve got bad news for you, nobody is getting married these days. Come, we sit in the shade and I’m going to tell you what happened to me last Saturday.”
Saturday morning and what a beautiful morning it was. It’s a good day to get married, and Mama Teta, yawning, forces herself to get out of bed. She starts the day with her usual
café,
makes herself a little something to eat, grabs her cosmetics bag out of the fridge, and heads for the bathroom.
The first thing she does is check in the mirror for the bits of gray hair that have grown during the past twenty-three days, since her last bridal driving job. No bride wants her chauffeur to look like she’s on the age pension.
She plucks her eyebrows, blow-dries her hair, puts cream on the face, blue eye shadow, eyeliner, mascara, lipstick; the hair goes up in a neat chignon, and plastic white flowers go into the chignon. There, finished. Mama Teta is an expert at transformation after years dancing at the Pitate Club, where she’d go for a bit of fun to forget about her smelly sons for a few hours. Okay, now the suit, zipper, buttons, shoes. All right, time to go.
Mama Teta hops in the bridal car, all decorated with plastic red roses. She checks that the bride’s gift is still in the glove box. Mama Teta is the only bridal-car driver on the whole island who gives brides a gift. She cares. It’s only a little something, a little something for good luck with the marriage. She reverses out of the driveway and recites a little prayer for all the lunatic drivers not to be on the road at the same time as she is, and drivers without a driver’s license, and drunk drivers, and drivers with poor eyesight, and stressed-out mothers, and cranky gendarmes.
Ouh,
it’s so dangerous on the roads.
No wonder Mama Teta hardly drives these days. She’s glad today’s bride doesn’t live too far away.
Ah, here’s the house of the bride’s parents, right at the end of the dirt track. Yes, it’s the only brick house around. Mama Teta parks the car and she can smell roasted pig, there’s a party in the air. She slowly gets out of the car and waits for a family member to come and greet her. But nobody is coming out of the house, and so Mama Teta walks to the brick house, all the while calling out, “The chauffeur of the bride is here!”
There’s still no response, and so she has to knock on the door. “
Ouh, ouh,
the chauffeur of the bride is here!” The door is opened but there’s nobody at the door to greet the chauffeur of the bride, and so the chauffeur of the bride stays right where she is. Finally a middle-aged woman, all done up, comes to the door.
“
Aue . . . aue,
”she says, “there’s a bit of a problem.”
Mama Teta smiles. “There’s always a bit of a problem at the last minute. I’ll go and wait in the car, okay?”
The middle-aged woman, whom Mama Teta guesses to be the mama of the bride, or she could be an aunt, looks to the crowd outside, which has doubled in size in less than a minute. “Non, it’s best you wait in the house, I don’t want anybody to know there’s a bit of a problem.” And so Mama Teta walks into the house and is greeted by a crying bride in the living room. There’s a man dressed in his funeral-and-wedding suit (the papi) standing by the crying bride and looking lost. From the living room, Mama Teta can see a whole lot of people in the backyard running around with family-size cooking pots and banana leaves and flower wreaths. She sits on the lounge next to a bunch of women of mixed ages. It seems to Mama Teta that the bride is getting cold feet.
And true, the bride is getting cold feet all right. She’s going on and on about how she doesn’t want to get married. And the middle-aged woman whom Mama Teta met at the door and who is definitely the mama is going on and on about all the food, and all the relatives, saying how so many caught the boat from Raiatea to Tahiti especially for the marriage.
“Think, girl,” the mama says. “It’s normal to be nervous, I was nervous when I married your papi.”
“Ma,” the bride says behind her tears, “I’m not nervous, okay, I just don’t want to marry that
titoi . . .
that
con . . .
that . . .” And the bride bursts into tears. Mama Teta discreetly checks the time on her watch.
“Come on, girl,” the mama says again. “I was so nervous at my wedding, I had to have a little drink to calm myself.” Then, looking at the women sitting on the couch, the mama of the bride says, “We all got nervous on the day of our wedding, eh?”
Ten heads go on nodding.
“I’m not nervous!”
The poor mama doesn’t know what else to do, and so she turns to the papi and pleads, “But say something to your daughter, you!” Then she falls on the couch next to Mama Teta.
“Daughters,” she tells Mama Teta. “I’m sure you understand.”
“I understand.”
“How many daughters have you got?”
“I don’t have daughters, I only have sons.” But Mama Teta still understands the situation. She understands it from a bridal-car chauffeur’s point of view.
“Ah, you’re blessed not having daughters.”
Mama Teta checks the time on her watch. The bride is now eight minutes late, and she’s going to need at least ten minutes for her makeup to be redone and her hair too. The bride is always late, that’s the tradition, but she can’t be too late, otherwise the priest might get cranky and walk off.
The papi is standing beside his daughter, not saying anything, and so the mama is up again. “All right, I’m sick of the comedy, okay?” She marches to the bride. “You . . .” She pokes the bride’s chest. “You’re getting into that room.” She points to a door. “And you’re going to get fixed up and then you’re going to get your behind into the bridal car.” She points a finger at Mama Teta. “And then you’re going to walk into the church and say ‘I do’!”
“
Non!
”
“
Ah oui,
you are, my dear! I made a personal loan for your wedding.” The mama points a finger at herself. “You hear? I signed some papers and your future mother-in-law gave me a carved wooden fruit bowl, and so you’re going to get married!” The mama is now shouting at the top of her lungs.
The daughter looks into her mother’s eyes. “You really want me to get married to somebody who’s sleeping around, somebody who doesn’t respect me? He’s sleeping around, you hear? My future husband is a slut!”
Mama Teta looks at the ceiling. This has never happened in her bridal-car chauffeur’s career. The living room is suddenly silent. It’s hot and stuffy and Mama Teta is hungry and she thinks she should probably excuse herself now, as she’s quite certain her services will not be required today.
Aue,
she feels so sorry for the young woman.
As for the mama of the bride, she’s lost for words and she must be feeling weak in the knees, because her husband has to support her. He says, “Listen, girl . . . What Teri’i has done doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you . . . All men do that . . . all men . . . it’s just for fun, it’s the heat, we forget ourselves, come on, let’s go.”
Oh my God, Mama Teta thinks, what a stupid man he is. What a fool!
“Excuse me? All men? We forget ourselves?” This is the wife talking and she’s not leaning on her husband anymore.
The husband’s face goes pale and he has to undo the top button on his shirt because the words he has just said are now choking him.
“All men? That means you too, then.” His wife’s voice is getting shriller. The husband wipes sweat off his forehead and coughs. He doesn’t feel too well.
“All men, you say?” The wife looks at her husband like she’s about to devour him raw. “I’ve had suspicions all my life, so tell me now, when you say all men, it means you too, eh?” She pushes him. “Eh?” She pushes him again. “Why are you pale, why are you sweating?”
“Angelica,” he says.
“Don’t ‘Angelica’ me, get out, get out, get out.” She pushes him, but it’s like trying to uproot a tree.
Mama Teta puts a hand over her mouth and shakes her head. What a situation!
“Get out, I say,” the wife says to her soon-to-be-ex-husband. The daughter makes one desperate attempt to bring the attention back to her. She gets up and insists they all go to the church for her to get married. But her mother pins her back to the couch with the verdict: there is to be no wedding today.
“But what about the personal loan you made?” the daughter asks with big sorry eyes for all the drama.
“Everything is off—your marriage, my marriage—and we’re going to celebrate our freedom.” Then, looking at her ex-husband, the mama of the bride adds, “I had opportunities too, you know, it’s not just you who had opportunities. I felt the heat too, but I resisted the temptations, I stayed a good wife to you even if you were a great big
zero
in bed. Get out of my house before I call my cousins.”
Mama Teta is keeping her eyes on the dirt track as she drives the father of the bride to his cousin’s house. The onlookers peer in, trying to see where the bride is. And she’s thinking, Mama Teta, that she’s definitely getting too old for this kind of business.
Anyway, this is what happened to Mama Teta last week.
“Ah,
non alors,
” Materena says, half-laughing, half-serious. “Does this mean my daughter is going to be living with me until she’s thirty years old?”
“Why don’t you stop trying so hard?” Mama Teta says. “Just give your daughter some space, that may be all she needs at the moment.”
W
hen a child is born in Tahiti, her placenta is buried under a tree and the child and the tree grow together. A healthy tree means a healthy child just as a sick tree means a sick child. When a child’s tree is sick, the mother takes the sick child to the doctor.
But Tepua cannot do this. She gave her baby girl away for adoption to a French couple and she has no idea where her daughter lives except that she is somewhere in France. What irony too that after years of praying for children to stop coming her way, Tepua would get her wish after her sixth child was born, the one she’ll never get to raise.
Relatives have told Tepua that her baby girl is not completely lost. One day she will return, they say, because the calling of a mother is louder than the calling of a land. This is a comfort to Tepua, but she would give anything to see her child grow right in front of her eyes, to give her cuddles when she’s good and smack her with the wooden spoon when she’s not
gentille.
Tepua’s sixth child is named Moea, and although that name is sure to have been changed to a
popa’a
name, she will always be Moea around here.
Moea is sick—her tree has spoken.
The news of this misfortune was on the coconut radio two days ago. And yesterday afternoon, Saturday, Tepua’s ten-year-old son came to see Materena. He had a piece of paper with him and his mother’s purse and he said, “Auntie Materena, Mamie wants to know if you can come to the house tomorrow at one o’clock for a little prayer for my sister Moea.”
Materena immediately replied, “
Oui!
Tell your mama she can count on me.”
The boy ticked his auntie Materena’s name and said, “Now I’m going to call on Auntie Georgette.” And off he went.
This morning, after Sunday Mass, Loma made a big song and dance because she’s not one of the ten women requested for the prayer at Tepua’s house when Georgette, who’s not even a woman, is. Lily gave Loma a slap across the face and someone reminded Loma that until she starts saying good words about people instead of backstabbing them, she will never be invited to special occasions.
