Copyright © 2006 by Célestine Hitiura Vaite
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
WARNER BOOKS
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.
First eBook Edition: June 2007
ISBN: 978-0-316-07272-4
Contents
Copyright Page
Pito’s Congratulation
All the Confidence Required
Still the Man
Breathing Like You Want
A Woman — but Not Any Woman
A Story of Arse
Bread Crumbs
Silent Treatment
Love for a Man
Calling Out the Faithful
Two Nights Ago on the Dance Floor
Man in a Suit Walking in the Rain
Getting Some but Not in Your Own Backyard
Fa’amu — to Feed
Welcome to Our Humble Neighborhood
The Man of the House Speaks
The Godfather
An All-Different Route
Love Like When You Can’t Think Proper
Magnet for Pulling Women
Her New Man
The Golden Boy
Discipline 1, 2, 3
Third Time Lucky
Precious Seeds
Old Story Disturbed
Two Ways to Plant a Seed
From Tahiti to France
How Friendship Strikes
Leilani’s Diagnosis
A Chance from the Sky
Raising Daughters
Pito’s Contribution
Three Days Later . . .
Acknowledgments
Célestine Vaite on why Pito’s voice had to be heard
About the Author
Praise for Célestine Vaite’s internationally celebrated novels
Breadfruit
A wise, enchanting tale of Tahitian-style romance, introducing Materena Mahi, whose cleverness, generosity, and appreciation of island traditions make her one of the most appealing heroines in contemporary fiction
“Like Alexander McCall Smith in his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Vaite excels at depicting the warm sense of community that pervades her Tahitian island setting. . . . In charming fashion, Vaite conveys universal truths about men and women and the mysteries at the heart of every romantic relationship.”
— Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist
“Vaite’s focus is on how one woman’s strength can affect the lives of her family and the community. . . . She writes about real people coping and caring and somehow getting along.”
— Ginny Merdes, Seattle Times
“Peppered with witty encounters between Materena and her nosy family. . . . When combined with Vaite’s light touch and the exotic setting, the result is redolent of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series — a delightful diversion.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Breadfruit is as much about the culture of Tahiti as it is about Materena and her impending marriage.”
— Rebecca Stuhr, Library Journal
. . . and Frangipani
A tale of big dreams on a small island — in which Materena Mahi, professional house cleaner and “the best listener in Tahiti,” becomes a radio talk-show host
“What a gorgeous, evocative novel! It charmed me from beginning to end.”
— Sophie Kinsella, author of the Shopaholic series
“A winning tale of mothers and daughters. . . . An engaging debut.”
— People
“This delightful novel speaks to the universal nature of the mother-daughter experience. Even though Célestine Vaite writes of Tahiti, a place I’ve never been and a culture with which I’m entirely unfamiliar, I felt as if she were writing about me, my own daughters, and my own mother.”
— Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
“Vaite takes us beyond the resort compounds into the rhythms and rivalries of a tropical culture. A novel about two strong women, Frangipani testifies to the necessity of upholding traditions and defying them too.”
— Carrington Alvarez, Elle
“I read Frangipani in one sitting, falling in love with the characters. Célestine Vaite writes about the bond between mothers and daughters with such truth and tenderness. I loved reading about the struggle between Materena and Leilani, even when it made me cry. There are no hopes and dreams like those of a mother for her daughter, and Ms. Vaite made them so real, I found myself missing my mother terribly.”
— Luanne Rice
“Vaite serves her culture well by taking us into the kitchens of those fibro shacks where we can hear the characters’ travails in a chatty narrative. Generously, Frangipani gives us Gauguin’s women in their off hours.”
— Victoria Kelly, San Francisco Chronicle
“A lovely and transcendent mother-daughter story. . . . An intriguing slice of Tahitian life.”
— Debbie Bogenschutz, Library Journal
Also by
Célestine Vaite
Breadfruit
Frangipani
For my sons: Genji, Heimanu, and Toriki.
“A happy woman means a happy household.”
Remember this, boys.
Pito’s Congratulation
Pito Tehana steps off the truck at the petrol station facing the bakery in Faa’a. His calico bag is thrown casually over his shoulder and a smile is on his lips because work is over. Still smiling, he gives a little, slow nod to one of his wife’s many cousins walking to the Chinese store, meaning, Iaorana, you’re fine?
The woman shrugs an insolent shrug, flicks her hair, and keeps on walking.
“You need something, you,” Pito mutters under his breath.
Another of his wife’s relatives walks past, but this one has already done her grocery shopping at the Chinese store. Today, that means a family-size packet of disposable diapers and ten breadsticks. Pito gives another Iaorana, you’re fine? nod. She raises an eyebrow, gives Pito a long look, and turns away.
“Iaorana, my arse!” Pito calls out, thinking, Here, now you have a reason to be rude to me.
He is puzzled, though. It’s not that he expects Materena’s relatives to be overwhelmed at the sight of him, they never are. But give him a nod at least! A little nod, where’s the politeness, eh? It’s not as if he was asking for a salutation to the sun!
Then Pito spots Materena’s cousin Mori playing his eternal accordion and drinking his beer under the mango tree near the petrol station.
“Mori!” Pito calls out. “E aha te huru, Cousin?”
“Maitai, maitai!” Mori calls back, putting his accordion down.
Mori never ignores Pito. Enfin, Mori never ignores anybody. The two men shake hands.
“Eh?” Pito asks Mori, who sees and hears everything from his mango tree. “What’s the story with the Mahi family this time?”
Mori considers the question. “Well, it’s about you, hoa hia.”
“It’s always about me, what did I do now?”
After a moment of hesitation, Mori spills the bucket. “The family says that you don’t care about Materena’s new job because you didn’t invite her to the restaurant and she’s been at the radio for a year.”
Pito gives Mori a blank look.
“Twelve months, Cousin,” Mori continues. “And you know about Materena’s radio program, it’s a success, it deserves champagne, an invitation to the restaurant. It’s the most listened-to program
in Tahiti, Cousin!” Seeing Pito’s incredulous face, Mori asks, “You didn’t read Les Nouvelles on Tuesday?”
“Non.”
Mori shakes his dreadlocks, meaning, You don’t read the news? “There was an article, it’s official, nobody can say it’s just stories. Materena is the star of radios! But she hasn’t turned into a faaoru, a show-off, she’s still the same Materena that I know. She says good morning, she talks to you.”
There, Mori has spoken the truth.
“What else are they saying about me?” Pito wants more information. What he’s just heard isn’t enough.
“You’re a big zéro.”
“Eh oh,” Pito protests, looking wounded.
“You’re thirsty, Cousin?” Mori hurries to ask, as if to make himself forgiven for the harsh comment.
“Oui, my throat is a bit dry,” Pito admits, and sits down on the concrete. He never refuses a beer with Mori. It is so rare. It’s not that Mori is tight with his beer, but when you drink thanks to your mother’s generosity, you can’t distribute like you want.
Pito takes a few sips of his warm beer and explains his case. He doesn’t like to eat at restaurants, it’s simple, d’accord? He doesn’t want somebody coughing on his food, spitting on his food, talking over his food. When you eat at a restaurant, you don’t see what’s going on in the kitchen. And anyway, he likes to eat at home, his wife is a number-one cook . . .
“Where’s the problem?” Pito asks Mori.
“Cousin,” Mori says nicely. “Women like to eat at the restaurant now and then. It’s an occasion. They put on a beautiful dress, makeup, shoes . . . They feel special and they have a rest.”
Pito shrugs. He’d like a rest too, and not having to work eleven months of the year. Everybody would like a little rest, but it doesn’t mean people can tell stories about him.
“It really annoys me,” Pito continues, “when people talk like they know what they’re talking about and they don’t even know.”
By people Pito means women, because they’re always talking, those ones, they never shut up. “My husband did this, my husband did that. My children talk back to me. Tonight we’re going to eat breadfruit stew . . .” They talk in the truck, outside the Chinese store, inside the Chinese store, over hedges, under trees, by the side of the road, on the steps of the church, on the radio . . . Even when they have the flu and their voice is croaky, they talk and talk and talk.
Mori chuckles.
“I’m sure women are born with a special mouth,” Pito says, pretending he doesn’t see the cranky look another relative by marriage fires at him as she walks past with her breadsticks. Mori gets a friendly wave. Mori always gets a friendly wave.
“Cousin,” Pito says.
“Oui, Cousin.”
“What else are they saying about me?” Pito mentally prepares himself for another story. With the Mahi women, there’s never just one story. But Mori has said enough for today, perhaps even too much. His lips are stitched.
“Cousin?” Pito repeats.
“That’s all I know.”
Fine. Since Mori doesn’t want to speak, Pito will say a few words. In his opinion, Materena’s relatives have never liked him. He understood this during his first official visits to Materena at her mother’s house. Before that, Pito’s visits to Materena were behind the bank, under a tree, in the dark, and in total secrecy. Then Materena fell pregnant and . . . welcome into the family, eh? The moment he arrived in the neigh-borhood, the Mahi family felt they knew Pito Tehana. “I hope you’re not going to abandon Materena after what you’ve done to her,” one of Materena’s relatives would greet him. “You better recognize Materena’s baby.” “You better not make Materena cry.”
The first time Loana met Pito, her greeting was much shorter. “Ah, you’re here.” She did her little eyes at Pito as if he were a nuisance and not her potential son-in-law, the father of her unborn first grandchild. “Take your thongs off before walking into my house.”
Pito never stayed for too long back then, ten minutes was enough. He had to save a bit of energy for the journalists waiting for him by the side of the road. “You don’t care about Materena’s baby,” they said. “We see it in your eyes. Have you bought any blankets for the baby, at least? We don’t dance the tango alone, you know. It takes two.”
Pito couldn’t believe his ears! In his experience, a Tahitian man who does the right thing (by this, Pito means visiting the girl he got pregnant) is feted like an ari’i, a king! The girl’s relatives give the father of the unborn baby a chair to sit on, and somebody (usually the grandmother) gives him something nice to eat like cookies — fried prawns if he’s lucky. This happened to two of Pito’s brothers. But all Pito got from Materena’s family, he tells Mori, was tutae uri. Dog shit.
“I bet I could write a book on all the stories your family has told about me over the years,” says Pito.
“It’s true.” Mori smiles. Aue, if Pito only knew! He could write a whole encyclopedia!
“Unbelievable.” Pito finishes his beer, thanks Mori, and gets up. “Your family can say what they want, I don’t care.”
“Maybe you should, Pito.” Mori’s smile drops.
“A man can congratulate his wife in other ways. There’s no need to go to the restaurant.”
“True, Cousin,” Mori agrees, feeling friendly towards Pito again. “A bouquet of flowers, a —”
“I congratulate my wife in my own way,” Pito goes on, with a smirk that tells long stories. “And no complaints so far.”
Pito walks home, his head held up high.
You talk of a congratulation, Mori says to himself, and, picking up his accordion, he attacks a love song, the one about Rosalie and how she left.
“Rosalie,” sings Mori. “Elle est partie . . .”
He doesn’t know why that song came into his mind. It just did.
“And if you see her, bring her back to me.”
All the Confidence Required
With her first driving lesson fresh in her mind, Materena opens her radio program at eight p.m. on the dot, straight after Ati’s love song dedication program.
“Iaorana, girlfriends!” comes Materena’s cheerful greeting, followed by a special thank-you to all the women who called last night to share their stories on the radio, moving on to the necessary technicalities such as the radio’s two telephone numbers. Then she jumps straight into her opening story.
“Girlfriends,” Materena laughs into the microphone, “I had my first driving lesson today and let me tell you . . . Aue . . . this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but I didn’t have the confidence to do it until today . . .”
In fact, Materena’s foot was jumping on the clutch, she was so nervous. But she got through the lesson, managing to change gears seven times and stall only five, and with one satisfactory reverse park in front of a snack filled with people eating sandwiches.
Well anyway, this is Materena’s story and she now appeals to her listeners to share their own stories of overcoming fear, their stories of moving forward and getting confident. “Let’s inspire ourselves, eh? And thank you in advance, girlfriends.” Materena used to appeal to the male listeners too but has since given up on the masculine sex. Never once has a man picked up the phone to ring her, in fact Materena wouldn’t be surprised if men didn’t even listen to her program.
She plays a soft song to give the listeners an opportunity to grab their telephone, then she leans back and anxiously looks at her two assistants behind the glass, thinking, as always, What if nobody calls? She often has nightmares of this happening. She’s in the studio waiting and waiting but nobody is calling because the movie on TV is much more interesting.
But tonight, as usual, all is fine. Her two assistants are giving her the thumbs-up, meaning, We have calls.
The first caller confesses to Materena that three months ago she got confident enough to set her ex-husband’s snack on fire, as she’d been dreaming to do for years. She didn’t do this out of
revenge and hatred, she insists. She just wanted to show her ex how well their son had turned out. It was her way of telling him, “Do you remember what you told me when you left with that skeleton woman who can’t cook? That my son was going to be a good-for-nothing? My son is a fireman, he has medals and he has letters of recommendation! Who saved your snack today, eh? It’s not my son by any chance?”
Another caller got fiu of complaining to her husband about her Christmas present from his mother. “A cheap bottle of shampoo! Is this all I’m worth in her eyes? Me, the mother of her grandchildren? The woman who cooks, picks up, washes, who does everything?” And the husband would say, “Aue, it’s the thought that counts,” but for Materena’s listener, most of the time it’s the thought that’s the problem. So she finally got the courage to give the mother-in-law a bottle of cheap shampoo on her birthday, her way of saying, “Voilà, this is how much you’re worth in my eyes: less than three hundred francs, one and a half packets of rice.” This past Christmas the caller got some very nice pearl earrings.
More stories follow. These are stories of women getting themselves a new job, whiter teeth, a business, new shoes, a child, a checkbook, a new meaning in life.
“Iaorana, Juanita!” The calls are still coming in. “And what’s the big change in your life?”
“I’m divorcing my husband.”
“Juanita,” Materena says as if she were speaking to a friend, “what made you decide to divorce your husband? Tell us your story.” Materena leans back in her chair and listens.
To begin the story, Juanita would like to inform Materena and the other women listening that she’s been married for six years and has been planning to divorce her husband for the past three years. But she kept thinking about what people were going to say — her family, his family, their friends. And what about her marriage vows? To love and obey her husband and stay with him no matter what, in sickness and in health, till death, et cetera. But she never said it was acceptable for her husband to treat her as if she had the word idiot tattooed on her forehead.
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