Frangipani (26 page)

Leilani, facing Hotu and with her arms folded, asks him what he’s doing here.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” says Hotu.

“What do you mean, am I out of my fucking mind? It’s you who’s out of your fucking mind!”

“What the fuck did I
do?
What’s this note?” Hotu fumbles in the pocket of his jeans and reads it to Leilani. “Is this a game?” On and on the two of them go, and Materena can’t believe the language! She had no idea Leilani knew so many swear words. Plus, their voices are rising by the second and very soon there’s going to be a crowd.

“Children,” Materena says softly, “come inside the house.”

But Hotu is too busy screaming about how much effort he’s put into chasing Leilani. With all the other girls, they chased him. One even sent her father to him and he said, the father, “My daughter wants you. You’re taking her out to the restaurant tonight.” Another girl swam to the pontoon in front of his house and cried out for help, he was in the garden watering the plants. “Doesn’t this show you anything?” he screams.

A crowd is rapidly forming around the lovers. There’s nothing like a bit of cinema before breakfast and Mass. Meanwhile Hotu is still going on about how much he loves Leilani, how he was going to tattoo her initials on his hand, propose marriage . . .

Heads are shaking with disbelief in the crowd, meaning, Leilani, you’re such a coconut-head, breaking up with someone like him. Plus, he’s a dentist!

“Are you finished with your monologue?” Leilani interrupts.

“
Just tell me what I’ve done! Tell me anything! But don’t lie to me that I’m a tree, because I don’t believe you!
”

All eyes are now on Leilani. The truth is about to come out, like in detective movies when the mystery is revealed.

So here it is, for Hotu’s ears, for the crowd’s ears, for the whole world to hear.

“
You mocked my mother!
”

“Excuse me?” Hotu sounds very surprised to hear this.

Is this the reason? relatives gathered in the crowd ask each other. Everyone was expecting something bad, something cruel, like, Hotu slept with another woman.

“I mocked your mother?” Hotu asks, his eyes on Materena. And for the first time since knowing Hotu, Materena can now see that he
is
white.

Actually, he’s quite pale. It must be the shock.

“I mocked your mother?” Hotu asks again. “You’ve mocked my mother ever since you met her. It’s almost a full-time job for you.”

Hotu repeats (word for word) all the things Leilani has said to him about his mother. He even assumes Leilani’s facial mannerisms and gestures perfectly as he says:

“I’m sorry, but your mother really looks like a Christmas tree with all that jewelry she wears. She’s obviously not allergic to gold. She’s only allergic to work. She’s never worked in her whole life! What’s wrong with the woman?

“Your mother can’t change lightbulbs! I don’t believe this. What
can
she do?

“There’s something wrong with people who are always looking at themselves in the mirror. Your mother even looks at herself when she walks past shop windows! She’s a narcissist, all right.

“Why does your mother speak as if she was French? Is she ashamed to be Tahitian? But she looks so Tahitian, that’s what I don’t understand! Is she having an identity crisis?

“Has anyone ever told your mother that the reason plants die is because they never get watered? Your mother is buying plants every week! Hasn’t she cracked the code yet?

“Oh, your mother’s cleaner resigned? Well, I’m not surprised! Who wants to work for a woman like your mother? I’m sorry, but there’s something wrong with people who put other people down to get a kick. Your mother puts her cleaner down, she puts bank tellers down, salespeople, and she even puts nice old women selling flowers down. Your mother really needs to see a psychiatrist. Who will be carrying her coffin when she dies?

“Your mother only likes people if they’ve got a lot of money, even if she was a pauper herself until she caught your father. I’m not surprised she closes her eyes on your father’s infidelities. As long as she has his checkbook she doesn’t care.”

Eyes are popping out of people’s heads, and everyone is waiting for Hotu to go on with all that Leilani has said about his mother (especially the bit about her being a wronged woman), but he stops talking to look at Leilani, now very pale herself.

“Well,” she says after a while, and clearly embarrassed, “you mocked my mother too, so we’re equal.”

Leilani repeats (word for word) all the things Hotu has said (to her) about her mother:

“Your mother is constantly sweeping. I feel sorry for the broom! It never gets a minute of rest in that house.” Then Leilani looks at Hotu fiercely in the eye.

He cracks up laughing.

She cracks up laughing too.

“Come on,” Hotu says, “let’s have a coffee at home and talk about things.”

Leilani doesn’t need to be persuaded, though she says, “All right, but only to talk.” After a quick kiss for her mother, she’s on that bike holding her boyfriend tight.

And nobody is surprised.

Every day there’s a couple separating in the neighborhood, there’s a woman throwing all of her man’s clothes out the window with the words, “It’s finished! Go back to your mother!”

Then a few hours later, that same woman is picking clothes off the ground and calling out, “
Chéri!
” And life continues, eh?

Well, it’s the same with Hotu and Leilani. Life continues. Hotu is extra nice to Materena, and Leilani does not speak to Hotu’s mother.

Leilani is so in love with her man that the day after finding out she’s passed her baccalaureate exam, she walked across the road from Hotu’s surgery to Dr. Bernard’s surgery to convince the sixty-five-year-old doctor, looking for an assistant/ receptionist, that she was fit to carry out such duties. Leilani passionately sang her assistant/ receptionist attributes. “I can write very fast, I have an excellent memory, and I never assume anything. I can take secrets to the grave and I scored twenty out of twenty on biology and chemistry tests in my baccalaureate. I’m ready to start on Monday.”

Dr. Bernard must have been impressed with Leilani’s speech, because he just said, “Well, I’ll see you on Monday, then.”

So now Leilani and Hotu work across the road from each other. They can wave to each other ten times a day.

They can go to work together on the motorbike, have lunch together on a bench in the park in Papeete, swim a few laps at the swimming pool after work . . . love each other till death do them part.

This morning, on her way home from the frame shop with Leilani’s baccalaureate certificate (enlarged and mounted in a gold frame), Materena stops outside Dr. Bernard’s surgery to look at her daughter.

Just now Leilani is hanging on to every word Dr. Bernard—tall and gray, with his arm around a young woman holding a newborn—is telling her. She’s smiling and nodding in agreement in between scribbling Dr. Bernard’s words. Just being a perfect assistant/ receptionist, and an overqualified one at that.

And Materena cannot help feeling a twinge of disappointment, but then she reminds herself that Leilani only intends to be an overqualified assistant/ receptionist for one year.

Sighing, she keeps on walking, with her daughter’s well-earned degree facing the public for anyone interested to see.

At the Drive-in Cinema

T
he movie tonight at the drive-in cinema is a love movie, and Materena loves movies about love. But the love movie tonight is not the reason why Materena is here at the drive-in cinema. She’s here to help Mama Teta raise money for the church, and they’re going to do this selling
mape.

Tonight is not the first time Materena has helped raise money for the church, but tonight is her first time selling
mape
at the drive-in cinema. It’s against the law to sell things to eat at the drive-in cinema. There’s a snack for the customers to buy popcorn, packets of chips, Coca-Cola. But as Mama Teta said to Materena this morning, it’s for the church they’re going to sell
mape,
so it’s fine. With the church in a story there’s no law, because when the church needs money, it’s to do good deeds, and when you help the church do good deeds you get help from above.

Mama Teta’s car is now three cars away from the ticket office. She leans over to the glove box to get her rosary beads, which she then hangs on the rearview mirror. And Materena, half-laughing, says, “And what’s this for, Mama Teta? So they don’t suspect we’ve got about sixty bags of
mape
in the pandanus bag hidden underneath the blanket at the back of the car?”

“
Shusssh!
” That is all Mama Teta replies.

And to the young man at the ticket office, she says, smiling a friendly smile, “I hope the movie is good!” Then Mama Teta drives away. But unlike the other cars circling around the parking lot looking for the best parking spot, she parks at the first spot she sees. The parking is not an issue since Mama Teta won’t be watching the movie, being too busy selling
mape,
hopefully the whole lot. That is the goal tonight. The car is parked next to the headphones, and Materena reaches for her pandanus bag out of the back.

Mama Teta snatches Materena’s hands off the bag. “You can’t go selling the
mape
right now, girl!” She explains that they have to wait for the movie to start, for the lights to be switched off. The selling can only take place in the dark.

“Mama Teta,” Materena says, “when people are watching a movie, they don’t want somebody annoying them with
mape.
Now is the best time.”

But Mama Teta insists that the operation be carried out in darkness. Well, not really in total darkness, since there will be a little bit of light coming from the screen, but it won’t be as bright as it is now.

“There’s a security guard, girl,” Mama Teta says. “He’s mean, he patrols with a flashlight and a baton. He used to be in the army.” Then, almost whispering, she continues, “If he catches you . . .”

A story follows, a story about the mean security guard catching a woman, a good, innocent woman selling
mape
to the people inside the cars watching the movie, because she was poor and she needed the money to feed her children. And the good woman begged the security guard to close his eyes on her illegal act, but he took her with his baton and his flashlight into his office for interrogation. He interrogated her, although she had already confessed, then he called the gendarmerie and two gendarmes arrived in their police car with the siren and took the good, innocent woman into their office for interrogation. They interrogated her, then they took her fingerprints, and that meant she got a criminal record.

Materena sighs. She’s getting Mama Teta’s message, all right, which is: You don’t think you could, by any chance, sell the
mape,
all the
mape,
by yourself? The fact is that Mama Teta is afraid of gendarmes, everybody in the Mahi family knows this.

“Mama Teta, I’m going to do the selling, you just stay in the car,” Materena says.

“
Non,
I’m going to do the selling too . . . but my legs . . .
aue,
they hurt a little tonight, I don’t know why.” Mama Teta puts a hand on Materena’s hand. “It’s okay with you if you sell the
mape . . .
all the
mape?
I’m not forcing you.”

“Of course it’s okay,” Materena replies. “I’m not really here to watch the movie.”

As soon as the movie begins, Materena is off on her mission to sell sixty packets of
mape.

Materena walks past the cars, her eyes looking for people of her age because, in her opinion, people of her age have a conscience about the church. Well, she doesn’t see many young people at the church on Sundays, but people of her age, ah yes, lots. Materena looks for those people and at the same time follows the movie—without sound. The actor is so handsome and the actress is so beautiful. Right now, the actor and the actress don’t know that they’re going to fall in love with each other. They’re too busy arguing. Materena can’t hear what they’re saying but she can see by their faces that they don’t like each other and that they’re arguing. But soon, they’re not going to want to argue. Soon, they’re going to want to be in love.

Okay, time to sell some
mape.

She stops at a car to ask an old woman if she would like some
mape.
“It’s to raise money for the St. Joseph Church,” she explains. The old woman wants to see the official paper signed by the priest, and the church’s official church stamp must be on that official paper. “How do I know you’re not lying?” she asks.

“Pardon?” Materena says. But some people! she thinks.

The old woman goes on about how she’s had lots of people asking her for money for the church and the money is not even for the church, it’s for them.

“Well, the priest didn’t give me any papers,” Materena says.

Well, no official paper means no
mape.

“Okay, thank you,” Materena says.

In the movie, the actor and the actress are now smiling at each other. Eh, eh, Materena thinks, they’re falling in love!

“
Mape?
Delicious
mape
cooked today.”

Materena sells two packets and moves on to other people of her age. “
Mape?
Delicious
mape
cooked today.”

Materena sells one packet.

“
Mape?
Delicious
mape
cooked today.”

The woman in the car asks if the
mape
are hard, she says that she likes her
mape
hard and not soggy, she can’t eat soggy
mape.

“The
mape
are very hard,” Materena says. “We don’t sell soggy
mape.
” She sells five packets.

One packet.

Two packets.

A young Frenchwoman is now asking Materena what
mape
is.

“It’s very delicious,” Materena says.

“But what is it?” The Frenchwoman turns the light in the car on and asks to see the
mape.
Materena passes her a packet and glances at the man sitting in the driver’s seat looking bored. The Frenchwoman looks at the
mape,
then she prods the
mape,
then she tries to squash it.