Frangipani

by Célestine Vaite

  She hears the click noise, meaning the call is from overseas.

  “Ah,” she says out loud, “it’s my son finally remembering to call his mamie. I thought it was impossible.”

  “Impossible is not French, Mamie.” Tamatoa’s voice is getting deeper and deeper every time he calls. He can’t talk for long, he says, but he promises to call again soon. He just wanted to wish his mother a happy birthday—to say “and may all your wishes come true.”

  Walking back to the kitchen, Materena chuckles. “May all your wishes come true . . .” What wishes?

  As she has done for the past twenty years, Madame Colette has bought Materena a birthday present.

  “Oh, Colette,” Materena says, taking the small parcel wrapped in silver paper, “you didn’t have to.” In private, Materena calls her boss by her name, but for Materena’s children and relatives, that woman is Madame Colette.

  The two women embrace each other, with Materena making sure not to mess Colette’s impeccable and complicated chignon.

  “Open your present!” Colette says, all excited.

  Materena eagerly opens her birthday present, even if she already knows what it is.

  “Colette!” And yes, it’s another box of chocolates.

  Materena thanks her boss profusely. Colette invites her to sit at the table while she makes some coffee.

  That has been the ritual for the past twenty years—but only on Materena’s birthday.

  On the other days of the year Materena jumps into her chores straightaway, ticking Colette’s list as she goes. On the other days of the year, Colette has already left for her office by the time Materena arrives. The only day they meet is Friday afternoon, to recapitulate.

  But on Materena’s birthday, Materena has coffee and chocolate and a ten-minute chat with her friend.

  “So,” Colette is saying, pouring fresh coffee into the cups, “how does it feel to be forty years old?” Colette will be forty years old in five months, so she’s very interested.

  “Oh, I feel the same, Colette,” Materena replies.

  “Really?” Colette sits at the table with the cups. Taking a quick sip she adds, “No midlife crisis?”

  “Midlife crisis? Colette, what are you talking about?”

  Colette explains. A midlife crisis is like feeling lost. Midlife crises are like wanting more.

  “Ah.” Materena nods in agreement. “That . . . well . . .”

  Colette is waiting, but the words are stuck in Materena’s throat. How do you tell your boss you don’t want to clean her house anymore? You want to do something else with your life. Here, Materena is going to take a sip of her coffee. This should give her more time to think.

  Materena drinks her whole coffee and she still can’t tell Colette what she’s rehearsed since three o’clock this morning, straight after Leilani left. Words were flying out of Materena’s mouth then, in the comfort of her kitchen. Materena had it all figured out. She was going to say, “Colette, here’s the situation. After twenty years as a professional cleaner, I feel —”

  Colette interrupts Materena’s train of thought. “Materena . . . we’ve known each other for twenty years . . . you shouldn’t have to weigh your words when speaking to me.”

  “Okay then, Colette, here’s the situation. After twenty years as a professional cleaner, I feel like a change.”

  “A change?” Colette asks, sounding worried. “What do you mean?” Before Materena has the chance to explain what she means, Colette, speaking with her I’m-so-stressed voice, is telling Materena that she can’t abandon her, not now, not with that mountain of work she has at the office. Not now, with the children still living at home. Not now, with Colette so close to being promoted to company director. Not now, with the networking dinners her husband throws three times a week in their house.

  Not now.

  “I need you, Materena,” Colette says as she puts a hand on Materena’s hand. “I’ll be lost without you.”

  Aue, this conversation is so hard for Materena. She loves Colette, but sometimes you’ve got to love yourself more. “Colette,” Materena says, “I’ve been cleaning houses for more than twenty years, and I choose to do something else with my life now.”

  On Air with Materena

  The word in the neighborhood is that everybody who can help Materena is to meet at Loana’s house at six thirty tonight. And people are to put their political beliefs aside, because this is not a political meeting, just a family-helping-family meeting. But please arrive before six thirty so that Rita can go through a few things with everyone.

  By six o’clock, Loana’s house is crowded with relatives, and so is her veranda and garden. Luckily Rita had the good sense to ask her husband to borrow a microphone from one of his musician colleagues.

  Anyway, here’s Rita standing on a chair, microphone in hand, addressing the audience, beginning with words of gratitude, because today is a big day for her favorite cousin.

  So here’s the plan, Rita goes on. As soon as Materena starts on air at her new job on Radio Tefana, relatives are to take turns calling the radio on Auntie Loana’s telephone to speak to Materena. But don’t give out your last name. It’s important that the director of the radio doesn’t know that the reason his radio is being inundated with calls is because Materena has a lot of relatives who like her. Just give out your first name, but you’re free to invent a last name if you want. No problems.

  “Everybody is following me?” Rita shouts into the microphone.

  “Oui!” Everybody is so excited. It’s like a spy game. “What name are you going to give?” they ask one another.

  “People! Are you listening?”

  “Oui!”

  So Rita continues with the plan’s objective, which is, of course, to help Materena get her idea approved by the director of the radio, who unfortunately is not a relative, otherwise nobody would be needed today. But at least he granted Materena one night’s trial (with Ati’s good word) to see how people all over Tahiti will respond to her program about women sharing inspiring stories with other women on the island. Inspiring, interesting stories worth listening to, stories that will make women listen and call Radio Tefana.

  “So call and say something interesting!” Rita shouts, brandishing a fist. “Can we do it?”

  “Oui . . .” This time the answer is hesitant. Something interesting? the relatives ask each other. Like what? Nothing interesting ever happens to us.

  Meanwhile, Rita is looking at the crowd, trying to find someone who has an interesting story. Ah yes, Giselle. “You, Giselle!” Rita calls out into the microphone. “You’ve got an interesting story. You’ve given birth in a car three times!”

  “Do you think it was interesting for me?” Giselle calls to Rita. “It was only interesting the first time!”

  All right, then . . . Rita needs another example. Ah yes, Auntie Tapeta. “Auntie Tapeta!” she calls out. “You’ve got an interesting story. Your daughter meets an Australian in Tahiti, he gets kicked out of Tahiti when his visa expires, your daughter visits him in Australia and marries him so that her darling boyfriend can live here.”

  “Do you think it’s interesting for me?” Tapeta is cranky. “Imagine you have a daughter, eh? She’s so clever, but then she falls in love with an Australian surfer, she leaves school to visit him in his country, she marries him (not even in the church!), then she falls pregnant and leaves Tahiti for good with her husband and your granddaughter (who’s not even ten weeks old!). Let’s see if you’re still going to think this is interesting.”

  All right, then . . . Rita needs another example, but she’s running out of time. Aue, she thinks, let’s leave it all to destiny.

  “Auntie Loana?” she calls out, looking inside the living room. Ah, she’s next to the telephone, ready to dial as soon as Ati, presenting Materena tonight, says, “Call now!” It has been agreed that the person who will make the first call to Radio Tefana will be Loana, since Materena is her daughter and this is her telephone.
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br />   Behind Loana is Auntie Imelda, then another elder, and another elder. All the elders are in the living room sitting in a line, waiting to spill their story.

  For the moment they’re just going to switch the radio on.

  “Georgette!” Rita calls. “You’re on!” Georgette, professional dancer, transvestite, and DJ, has brought her hi-fi system to propel Materena’s voice into the living room, the garden, and beyond. A reggae song is playing and a few relatives decide to do a little dance. Another song comes on, a tamure, and it’s party time on the veranda and in the garden.

  “People!” Rita calls out. “Think about your interesting story!”

  “Rita sure loves that microphone,” says a relative.

  A roar of excitement greets Ati, opening Materena’s program. All the relatives are so excited because soon they’re going to hear Materena’s voice blast from the speakers. Nothing to do with Ati, even if he’s partly responsible for Materena having a chance to test her idea.

  “Silence!” Rita herself is very excited, but there’s a need to calm the crowd a little.

  Meanwhile, back in the Radio Tefana studio, Materena, facing Ati, is breathing deep breaths to relax. She’s so nervous. Her heart is going thump, thump, thump. Ati is waving one arm in front of her. “I have in the studio with me a very charming woman,” he says. “How are you, Materena?”

  “Oh, I’m fine, and you, Ati?” Materena grimaces, eyeing all the people behind the glass window staring at her. They rehearsed that line yesterday afternoon, as well as speaking in front of the microphone (not too close—Ati showed Materena how), and it was also a good opportunity for Materena to get used to the earphones.

  “Materena will be doing a special edition on the radio tonight,” Ati continues. “But before we go on, I must say, Materena, that tonight is quite hot, don’t you think?”

  “Ah oui, Ati, you’re quite right about that.” Materena feels a bit more relaxed. Ati did explain to her yesterday how they’d do a bit of chitchat before beginning the program to give Materena time to relax and the audience a chance to warm up to that woman they’ve never heard about before.

  “All I can say is”—Ati cackles, winking at Materena—“I hope it’s going to rain soon.”

  “Oh, me too,” cackles Materena. “Rain is very good for the . . .” And for some reason Materena’s mind goes blank midsentence. For the life of her she can’t remember what she’s supposed to say now. And here’s Ati miming words at her, looking a bit worried.

  Back in Loana’s house, relatives are shrieking, “The plants, Materena. Rain is very good for the plants. Aue! Materena, wake up!”

  At the Beachcomber Hotel, Moana, outside the kitchen with one arm around his secret girlfriend, Vahine, is speaking to his mother in his mind: Mamie, the plants . . . the rain is very good for the plants.

  In a house behind the petrol station, Pito, the receiver against the radio so that Tamatoa, in a phone booth outside a bar in Paris, can hear his mother doing her cinema on the radio, is saying out loud: “The plants, Materena! You always talk about the plants when it rains, and now you can’t! What’s wrong with you?”

  In a house on top of a hill, Leilani, her head resting on her boyfriend’s shoulder, her radio tuned to Radio Tefana for the first time in years, is doing telepathy with her mother: Mamie, say whatever comes to you . . . You always say interesting words anyway . . . Free your mind and the rest will follow . . .

  “Rain,” says Materena, “is very good for a woman’s soul.” This sentence just spilled out of her mouth.

  “What?” her relatives shout in despair. “The plants, Materena!”

  “You know, Ati,” Materena continues, not intimidated anymore by the microphone, the earphones, and the people staring at her from behind the glass window, “people always say rain is good for the plants, and that is true, but rain, especially when it sprinkles, is music to a woman’s ears and warms the soul.”

  Totally at ease now, Materena continues to praise the rain.

  When it splatters on the tin roof, it makes you feel a bit melancholic and takes you back to some happy days or to those black years you’ve had but survived because you’re a woman and surviving is not a foreign word to women from anywhere in the world.

  Watching rain is magic. It calms the anxious spirit and the tormented soul. It gives women hope. It reminds us how strong we are. Determined. Courageous. Understanding. And with so much love to give.

  Rain is a miracle. Just like a woman is.

  “You know, Ati,” says Materena, thinking, I hope I’m not raving on too much—Ati’s eyes are popping out of his head—“I’m so proud to have been born a woman. And as a proud woman I’m calling on all the women listening right now to share their stories on the radio for other women to learn something and be inspired. People say, ‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ but that’s not true. Every single woman has something to say. A story. A story about mistakes, obstacles overcome, discoveries, a story. A story that will help another woman take a step forward. A story that will warn another woman before she takes a step backward. A story to reassure all of us that we’re not all alone . . .”

  “Call now—84-27-17!” Ati, jubilant and showing Materena his thumb up, shouts into the microphone.

  Back in Loana’s house an hour later, nobody can get through to the bloody radio. It’s engaged all the time and it’s making Loana very cranky.

  “How many lines does that stupid radio have?” she exclaims. Some relatives have walked to the public phone, thinking that there must be something wrong with Auntie Loana’s telephone. Other relatives are quite happy just listening to all these lucky women who have managed to get through to Materena. One woman talks about visualizing her children in a tunnel of light whenever she knows they’re driving at night, to help guide them safely home.

  Another woman told the story of being abandoned by her mother.

  Yet another woman told about how she loves her mother with all her heart and soul, and she’ll always remember the day she had a splinter in her foot and her mother took it out with a razor blade. She remembers shouting out in pain and her mother telling her, “But stop shouting like that, people are going to think I’m hitting you! Sing a church song! And what do you want, eh? It’s hurting—it’s hurting, we’re always hurting, us women, it’s like that, it’s life, we’re born to suffer. We suffer but we don’t cry. Au contraire, we laugh. If we didn’t laugh, we’d be spending our time crying into our pareu. We have to be strong in life. When you fall, well, get up, go to work, clean the house, sing a happy song, go do something with your hands! And so? Do you think God is going to ask men to give birth? Do you think it’s a man who transformed himself into a breadfruit tree to feed his family? My arse! It’s not worth crying about. Let’s keep our tears for someone we love who died. Yes, then it’s worth crying.”

  There are all kinds of stories on Radio Tefana tonight—funny, sad, unbelievable, so close to the truth, frightening, inspiring. It sure beats watching TV.

  A woman finds her father and tells Materena all about it. Another adopts her husband’s dead lover’s baby. One confesses her fear of gendarmes (ah, Mama Teta must have gotten through). One caught the plane for the first time in her life, putting aside her fear of flying to visit her daughter living in America.

  A woman gave birth in the bathroom while she was showering to be clean for the hospital, but she didn’t make it. She didn’t make it six times, actually. Her six sons just wanted to come into the world with their mother under the shower.

  A woman left her husband for true love with another woman.

  A woman calls to tell Materena and all the women listening that her husband uprooted a tree she’s planted just because it was dying. He didn’t even try to save that tree, he just got the machete out. The woman is sure that when her turn to die comes, her husband will turn the machine off without remorse. She won’t have the opportunity to die little by little. She’ll be executed, and then her husband will shove he
r dead body in a coffin and send the coffin back to her island.

  After Materena talked about her garden, a woman called to ask Materena for some help with her garden. She was particularly interested in cuttings. Materena was more than pleased to share all that she knew about cuttings with that stranger.

  Another woman wanted to talk about her beloved uncle, who died last month. She remembers there was a cane basket on top of the fridge and she’d ask him, “What’s inside the basket?” And the uncle would reply, “It’s a snake that’s inside the basket.” One day, she was about seven years old, she got a chair, dragged it to the fridge, and looked inside the cane basket. She saw a bottle of wine. She was so disappointed.

  Another woman confessed how she’s always wanted to be a detective. When she watches movies and there’s a mystery, there’s a crime, she always knows who the murderer is, and it’s a guarantee that it’s the one that nobody else suspects, the one who’s really well-off and smiles all the time, he helps old ladies cross the road and everything. And she knows all about detective tricks, like how the criminal always comes back to the scene of the crime.

  One woman gave her man a black eye because he said that her mother had a pitiful air, and so she threw a mango at her man and gave him a pitiful air. He told his friends and family that he’d been involved in a fight. Apparently, he was walking in town minding his own onions when, out of nowhere, four hoodlums appeared, etc. . . . etc. . . . And he got out his fists, leaped in the air and did a few karate chop-chops, etc. . . . etc. . . . etc.

  Within a week of Materena’s being on air, she receives a contract from Radio Tefana.

  Materena, screaming with joy and crying her eyes out, grips that piece of paper and hugs Leilani, embracing her daughter and her new life.

  Before I Leave

  The day after Materena receives her contract in the mail, Leilani invites her for lunch in town to celebrate the wonderful event and also because Leilani has an announcement to make.

  “A good announcement or a bad one?” Materena asks.