Frangipani

by Célestine Vaite

  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.”

  We Worry and We Expect

  When 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.

  The ten very special women, holding hands, with their packets of tissues by their sides, are now sitting in a circle around the sick tree. Tepua, red-eyed and with swollen eyelids, thanks them all for coming. They all say that it is an honor to be present.

  The prayer begins.

  The women, eyes fervently closed, sing for the little girl and her tree. Every now and then someone half opens an eyelid to see if something is happening to the tree, something like a miracle. A few times, Materena’s half-opened eye meets Rita’s half-opened eye. Other times, the half-opened eye belongs to Lily, or Mama Teta. But Georgette’s eyes are wide open. Materena thinks Georgette looks strange, staring at the sick tree as if she’s trying to hypnotize it.

  The prayer goes on for an hour until Tepua calls for a break and the women go inside the house. It’s a mess, but no one expects Tepua to have the energy to tidy up when her heart is a mess. No one pays attention to all the clothes lying around, the crushed plastic cups, and the dried grains of rice everywhere.

  Materena and Rita, with slices of chocolate cake preciously wrapped in a tissue, go and stand in the kitchen by the louvers. As they look out to the tree through the four missing louvers, they eat and sigh and shake their head.

  “I’m sure Moea is going to get better from today,” Rita whispers.

  “That is our hope, eh?” Materena replies.

  Both women are whispering the whisper of respect.

  “There’s nothing like women’s power,” continues Rita. “There’s eleven women here today and we’re all giving that tree all the love and the power within us because . . .”

  But here is Georgette now, running from her car to the tree with a bucket. Georgette, wearing her usual attire—baggy shorts, tight shirt, and tennis shoes, but this time with not one single piece of jewelry—pours the contents of the bucket on the ground. She’s on her knees now, furiously spreading what looks like dirt around the tree.

  Materena and Rita press their faces to the gap between the louvers.

  “What is that Georgette doing?” asks Rita.

  Georgette jumps to her feet, races back to her car, and comes back without the bucket to stand by the tree. She’s looking down at the tree and scratching herself between the legs.

  “But! Georgette is scratching her balls!”

  “Shussh, Rita.” Rita is all red in the face from trying to keep the laughter inside. She breathes in and out to calm herself down. But Georgette must have heard Rita’s laughter, for she swings around. She sees Materena and Rita and waves, and then walking her feminine walk, Georgette walks to the house.

  Minutes later, the prayers continue in the living room. The women sit on the ground, again in a circle, and again holding one another’s hands, and all eyes are fixed on a newborn’s name bracelet laid out on the cushion in the middle of the circle. The bracelet is closed and you can see how tiny the wrist of a newborn baby is. Smaller than a fifty-franc coin. Tepua explains how this bracelet was Moea’s bracelet, but Moea wore it for only five hours because she left the hospital six hours after her birth with her new parents and without her bracelet.

  Tepua wipes her eyes with her tissue and rests her head on her chest.

  This bracelet, this tiny bracelet that we all wear after our hospital birth, is making the women cry out in pain, and not one single eye is opened as they fervently pray and beg the Virgin Mary, Understanding Woman, to take away whatever Moea’s sickness is.

  For two long hours.

  Every now and then Materena stops thinking about her niece to think about her daughter. Following Mama Teta’s advice at the cemetery four days ago, Materena has been giving her daughter space, but first Materena explained the situation, laid all her cards on the table. “Girl,” she said to Leilani, at her desk doing her homework, “you’ve been very mean to me lately, it’s like you hate me, but I’m not going to hate you back because I love you, so I’m just going to give you space, but if you need me, you know where I am.” Leilani nodded a vague nod—yeah, whatever—and Materena left the room crying her eyes out. Since then, mother and daughter have been avoiding each other. Even Pito noticed it. He said, “What is it now? Aue, you two are fiu!” Well, at least there hasn’t been any shouting in the house.

  When the ten women very special to Tepua leave, they are all red-eyed and exhausted. As they walk back to Rita’s car, Rita says to Materena that praying with all your heart and soul is draining.

  “When you cry a lot”—Materena sniffs into her tissue—“you get tired too. That saying—crying yourself to sleep—it’s true.”

  “I gave all my love to that baby girl.”

  “Me too.” Materena is aching all over. “I gave her all my love.”

  “And I gave her all the power within me.” Rita gets into her car.

  There’s a bit of a traffic jam in Tepua’s garden. Lily, who is riding her Vespa, has no trouble getting out. The same goes for the women who came barefoot. But no one waiting in their car is tutting the horn.

  “Cousin, I’ll walk,” says Materena.

  “Non, I’ll drive you . . . I don’t want you passing out on the highway.”

  The cousins remain silent except for frequent sighings of sadness, and they both jump with surprise when the back door opens and in sneaks Georgette.

  “I have a confession to make.”

  “Ah, oui alors,” says Rita. “What were you doing with that bucket?”

  Georgette confesses that all she did was put a bit of fertilizer around the tree. Materena and Rita, stunned, say in unison, “Fertilizer?”

  Georgette hurries to explain that it’s not that she doesn’t believe in prayers, but she thought it could just be that the tree needed a bit of fertilizer. She’s been thinking about this since yesterday.

  “Jeez, Georgette,” Rita says, “I hope you know about fertilizers! Too much fertilizer can be fatal! Ah hia hia, Georgette! What got into your head? I thought it was just dirt you put around the tree! Georgette, you stupid man!”

  Materena tenderly reaches out for Georgette’s hand. It must hurt Georgette when people refer to her as a man when she is, in her head, in her heart, in the way she dresses, a woman. A woman who is always so willing to help out because she was born with a big, giving heart. Georgette often says her penis has got nothing to do with her identity. She often adds, “I’m a woman through and through, even when I’m naked.”

  But Georgette shouldn’t have tampered with Tepua’s daughter’s tree. All women have got to know their limit.

  “Cousin,” Materena says, worried, “do you know a bit about fertilizers?”

  Georgette swears that she followed the instructions on the fertilizer packet religiously.

  On the coconut-radio news three days later, it is confirmed that Tepua’s sixth child, Moea, has bee
n cured from her illness. Her tree is beautiful and healthy again. Some say this is the result of the fervent prayers to the Virgin Mary, Understanding Woman, at Tepua’s house. Others say Madame Pietre took her adopted daughter to the doctor, because that is what mothers do. They worry and they expect.

  A Long Time Ago

  Materena fell in love with Pito a long time ago, but she still remembers those distant days when her mind would be all over the place.

  She once forgot about a chicken cooking in the oven, despite her mother reminding her about it before leaving for a family meeting.

  Loana came home to a burned chicken and a smoky kitchen. She yelled her head off, “Materena! Are you trying to burn the house down? I told you to take the chicken out of the oven at eleven o’clock! Do you think money grows on trees? Who’s going to buy me another chicken, you? Do you think a chicken is cheap?”

  Materena was in the clouds, she was in love with her secret boyfriend, Pito.

  Now, almost twenty years later, she’s in bed and Pito is snoring next to her.

  Materena puts her head under her pillow, but she can still hear Pito’s annoying snore.

  “Pito!” Materena rolls him to his side, but Pito fights, he wants to stay on his back.

  “Pito! I can’t sleep!”

  Growling, Pito rolls onto his side.

  Materena closes her eyes, enjoying the silence. Then her mind starts ticking away about this and that: tomorrow night’s dinner, Moana, who’s just turned fifteen and who left school two months ago for an apprenticeship at the five-star international Beachcomber Hotel’s restaurant as a chef, Tamatoa, enlisting for military service in France, how she needs to buy new thongs.

  Suddenly a thought pops into her head. Is there a boy on her daughter’s horizon? Lately Leilani has been so nice. (But so nice! Which makes a welcome change, Materena has to admit. Plus we’ve got singing love songs in the shower too!) And she’s got that look, that special look girls get when there’s a boy on the horizon.