Tiare in Bloom

by Célestine Vaite

  But being Prince Charming isn’t the reason why Pito is taking his granddaughter along on his new journey to be fit, the reason is much simpler. He just feels like taking this baby out of the house a bit, to give her some fresh air, change her ideas and everything. And there’s also the desire to appear normal.

  The way Pito sees the situation, a man walking around on his own attracts suspicion. People will say, “What is that man doing walking on his own around here, eh?” People will think that he’s plotting to steal their TVs, worse, harm their children. A baby, so Pito believes, will camouflage him, and make him walk past unnoticed. But first, a quick Iaorana to Mori sitting under the mango tree at the petrol station as usual.

  “Eh, Iaorana.” Mori stands up. “And how’s the queen today?” he asks, kissing Tiare’s feet. The queen giggles. She loves her great-uncle Mori.

  “So?” Pito says. “What’s the latest news on the coconut radio?” Although Pito already knows the news on the coconut radio, since Mori has told him the news yesterday and the day before, it doesn’t hurt to be told again how wonderful you are.

  “They say you’re wonderful.”

  “Ah bon?” Pito feigns surprise.

  “Ah oui,” Mori confirms. “You’re wonderful, you’re a champion, you’re number one.”

  “Hmm.” Pito stands up proud and tall. “So they’re not backstabbing anymore, eh?”

  “Non, Cousin, women adore you.” The women in question, of course, are the in-laws who have never thought highly of Pito until recently when he became Mr. Mama, looking after his granddaughter while Materena is at work.

  When the news that Materena had nominated Pito to be in charge of Tiare got on the coconut radio, the relatives were deeply concerned. What is our cousin doing? they asked. Trusting a man who can’t be trusted when there are so many women in the family available to help.

  But now it is a known fact that Pito can change diapers, make bottles, massage the baby’s belly to ease gas pains — he can do the whole lot, and without any supervision. And plus, he’s taking his holidays next month to help Materena with the baby! Talk about a miracle! Bon ben, since the news is still the same, Pito better go and start his exercise program. Off he goes, walking fast steps and feeling a bit healthier already.

  “Pito!” Mama Teta and her gang of six respectable-looking memes, all wearing missionary dresses (also known as mama ruau, old-woman dress), running shoes, and pandanus hats, spot Pito and hurry over.

  “Eh mea ma!” Pito calls out, thinking, Great, they’re going to talk to me for days, and then I’m never going to do my exercise. Simultaneously and with astonishing speed, the women fish out their handkerchiefs from inside their bras to wipe their faces. Nobody wants to kiss sweaty people.

  Pito greets the venerated Mama Teta with two kisses on her cheeks. He also kisses her companions because, speaking from experience, memes like to be kissed. You kiss one, you kiss the whole lot or they get sad. So, bisous-bisous multiplied by seven.

  “Where are you off to?” Pito asks.

  But nobody cares about Pito anymore, he’s already an old story. The baby in his arms is much more interesting.

  “Aue! She’s so tiny, she’s so beautiful, she looks like a doll, can I hold her for a little while?”

  But the baby hides her head in her grandfather’s shirt.

  “She’s hiding, the little coquine, come on, mistinguette, give your old Mama Teta a little smile.” After a bit more persuasion, Mama Teta finally gets her much-sought-after smile. “He-he!” she brags, “she gave me a smile, it’s because she knows I’m her blood, I’m family.”

  The other memes push Mama Teta out of the way, they want to be blessed with a baby’s smile too. They coo and coo, whisper tender words, beg with their hands joined in prayers, tickle the baby’s feet, and very soon there are about thirty relatives trying to get close to baby Tiare. Cars driving past slow down, and heads, the drivers’ included, turn to the crowd to see what’s going on. Is it a politician mixing with the people to get some votes? A celebrity who had hoped to pass incognito? Eh non, it’s just a man with a baby in his arms, keep driving.

  But it is not just a man with a baby in his arms. It is, according to the crowd of women present, a man going through the next stage of his life, the stage of enlightenment and maturity.

  “Ah,” sighs one of Mama Teta’s companions, “I’ve seen this lots of times in my life. When men are young they make babies as if they were free, but they don’t care, they want to stay free. Then they get old and you see them walking around with a baby in their arms, and they’re even changing diapers . . . Ah, maitai, it’s good.”

  “True,” another of Mama Teta’s companions agrees. “I think men should only become fathers when they’re mature in the head. There are too many irresponsible young fathers around, they understand nothing, not even themselves.”

  “It should be the law that our men can’t become fathers until they’re at least thirty years old.”

  “Eh, forty is better.”

  On and on and Pito is getting fiu of all of this, not counting that the way a few of his in-laws are staring at him is making him quite uncomfortable. Here, Loma for instance, she’s staring at Pito like she wants to jump on him. Lily too . . . Lily, who’s never given Pito a second glance before because he’s married to her cousin and he’s not her type, but this morning for some reason she’s openly admiring Pito like he’s a hero, a fireman with a medal for bravery or something. She gazes at the baby in his arms with longing and smiles at Pito.

  Pito smiles back, turns his head to one of Mama Teta’s companions, the eldest one, she must be close to being eighty years old, and she’s also looking at Pito like she wants to jump on him.

  With brief excuses, Pito escapes his fans, walking as fast as he can past the Chinese store, the fibro shacks, and making a right turn towards the international airport. Voilà, at last, nobody knows him here. Pito’s plan is to walk around the carpark ten times, twenty times if Tiare doesn’t whine, thirty if he’s up to it. Okay, then, let’s go for the first lap with fast steps to make the heart beat faster. Go, go, go — allons-y!

  “Oh, the beautiful baby!” a pretty young woman exclaims, getting out of her car. “How old is he?”

  “Four months,” Pito replies, looking straight ahead. He’s not going to bother rectifying that woman’s mistake about the baby’s gender. He’s seen many women get all upset when people misjudge their baby’s sex — It’s a girl! or It’s a boy! — but who cares about things like that? Pito tells himself. It’s not the end of the world if people think your baby is a boy when it’s a girl, and vice versa. They are only strangers. They don’t count.

  And now, let’s have a little tour at the airport, let’s count the tourists, eh? There are three young women, tanned with sun-bleached hair, slouched on the benches with surfboards and backpacks at their feet. They give Pito the biggest, friendliest smile, as if they know him well. He gives them a friendly smile too. Further away, two thirty-something black women dressed in jeans, white tops, and high-heel shoes openly admire Pito and the baby in his arms. They are so beautiful that Pito’s eyes pop out of his head. They ask, in sign language, if they could touch the baby. “Absolutely!” Pito replies in sign language. “Touch the baby for as long as you want.”

  The black women go ahead, caressing the baby’s arm very softly, talking to the baby in their language, smiling at the baby smiling at them, breathing their mint-scented breath all over Pito, making his head spin with their heavy perfume.

  Pito is in paradise. These women, top models for sure, would never in a million years have given Pito a second glance without this baby in his arms. Actually, they wouldn’t have given him a first glance. Ah, if only Pito had known this earlier, he would have taken his children for lots of walks when they were babies. He would have been more popular, instead of pretty-boy Ati getting all the attention.

  But the beautiful black women have to go now and, adopting a sad face, they bl
ow the beautiful baby a kiss, and another. The grandfather too gets a kiss blown his way, and he’s still smiling minutes later, long after the angels have gone.

  When he comes out of his reverie, he’s in front of the airport café, and who does he see sitting right out the back? Ati — on his own.

  That’s strange, Pito tells himself. Ati usually has company, and plus, he’s looking quite gloomy today. It’s a change from smiling-with-all-his-teeth Ati. Smiling-with-all-his-teeth (because he has the apartment in town, the flashy car, the speedboat, the women, the whole lot) Ati has occasionally gotten on Pito’s nerves. It’s nice to see Ati looking a bit normal. But still, Pito hopes his best friend isn’t going through a depression.

  “Copain?” Pito gently taps Ati on the shoulder, counting the empty coffee cups on the table. Eight.

  “Eh copain!” Ati exclaims, smiling, but by the time Pito is sitting with his granddaughter on his lap, Ati’s face is long again.

  “You’re fine?” Pito asks.

  “I have nothing.” There, Ati has spoken.

  “You have nothing?”

  “Nothing, copain; no wife, no family, no nothing.” Ati goes on about how he used to look at men with children and think, I’m glad I’m not him. But these days he thinks, I wish I was him. Here, what about his sister’s husband with his tribe of eight children? One day, only last year, Ati’s brother-in-law came home from work while Ati was visiting his sister, and the eight children ran out to their father and jumped on him, and Ati thought, I’m so glad I’m not him. Imagine being attacked like that every day. But yesterday, Ati’s heart was full of envy for his brother-in-law. He thought, Imagine being greeted that way every day. When Ati walks into his empty apartment, all he gets is a look of reproach from his dying plants.

  “Look at what you’ve got, Pito,” Ati says with his sad voice. “A beautiful wife, three fantastic kids, and now this little princess. Look at me, I’m going to be a lonely old man who scares children.”

  “Ati, you’ve been drinking too much coffee.”

  No response from Ati.

  Pito has never seen Ati like this, but he will be the first to admit that Ati is reaping what he sowed. Pito can’t count on his fingers the women his best friend has brought to tears. Hundreds? There were quite a few nice women willing to devote their whole life to Ati, but non, Ati had to see if the next catch was better. And pretty-boy Ati is not getting any younger, though sometimes he believes he is, chasing younger and younger women. Some of them a bit too young — green, far from being ripe — because, as Ati has said, “A man is only as old as the women he’s sleeping with.”

  “I tell you, copain,” Ati declares with seriousness. “The next woman I meet is going to be my wife.”

  “Ah oui?”

  “Oui, this is my promise to you.”

  “You don’t have to promise me anything, it’s your life.”

  “The next woman I meet,” Ati repeats, “is going to be Madame Ramatui.”

  “What about one of Materena’s cousins?” Pito says for a laugh. “That way we’re going to be in-laws.”

  “Who do you have in mind?” Ati sounds interested.

  “Loma?” Pito is still joking.

  “Loma! Are you crazy?”

  Pito cackles and thinks about Rita. If she weren’t with Coco, Pito would recommend (and highly) that Ati tries his luck with her. Pito has always liked Rita. She has her feet on the ground, she’s a very nice person, and lately very pretty too. Rita has lost even more weight in her quest of falling pregnant, something like sixty pounds! Coco must be dreading the day Rita finally falls pregnant and starts eating for two again.

  “Well, what about Lily?” Pito remembers that there was a time Ati liked Lily but was too intimidated to approach her. Ati claimed at the time that Lily was out of his league, and plus, she only liked men in uniforms with medals. Ati was still tempted to try his luck, with a bit of encouragement from Pito, but then he heard that Lily was a heartbreaker. And that was it, since Ati is also a heartbreaker. You can’t have two heartbreakers breaking each other’s hearts.

  Well, maybe Lily has changed, just as Ati has.

  “Lily . . .” Ati looks up, pondering. “Oui, I could try my luck with her . . . but she doesn’t look like a woman who wants a family.”

  “See if you can get into her pants first,” Pito says, shrugging, “then ask her nicely.”

  “Can you organize something, then?” Ati asks, interested. This is Ati saying, Oui, I will try my hardest to get into Lily’s pants and then I will ask her very nicely to give me children.

  Pito nods. He doesn’t mind playing Cupid. “We’ll eat at the house next week, I’ll get Materena to invite Lily . . . leave it to me.”

  Her New Man

  Looking after a baby during your holidays can’t really be called a holiday, but it doesn’t mean that Pito is not enjoying the first day of his well-deserved break from work, even if it involves changing diapers and making bottles.

  It’s nice for a change to be the person who counts the most. Now, Pito isn’t saying that Tiare ignores her grandmother and he’s not comparing at all, there’s no comparison to be made, but let’s just say that Pito has the magic touch with Tiare at the moment. Whenever Tiare is in her bizarre mood, crying for no reason and fidgeting, Materena automatically passes the baby to Pito. Luckily, so far, anyway, Tiare only does her theatrics when her grandfather is around. Time will tell how long Pito’s magic touch will last.

  Right now, Tiare is on her grandfather’s belly. Every now and then Pito swells his belly and baby goes up and laughs. Materena, nearby, working on a crib-size quilt for her granddaughter, cackles. “Pito, eh, you are a clown, you know.”

  Pito winks at his wife, finding her very beautiful this morning. She used to make him shit bubbles on Saturday mornings. He’d be on the sofa, trying to recuperate from a hangover, and she’d decide to do a huge cleaning, drag furniture around, sweep like a madwoman. But here she is now, quietly embroidering her granddaughter’s name on a quilt, a serene look on her face and a bit of rouge on her cheeks.

  They had a joke earlier on about names on crib quilts. Most Tahitians have a crib-size quilt with their name embroidered on it. Pito has, so does Materena, and each of their three children. And now Tiare. When they get old, Materena cackled, walking around in circles at the nursing home with their quilt on their shoulders and forgetting their own name, they will ask someone, “Pardon, do you know my name?” The person will take a quick look at the name on the quilt and say, “Well, if this is your quilt, your name is . . .”

  Ah, Pito is enjoying the new Materena. It’s fun when a man can share a joke with his woman without her getting all defensive because she thinks he’s criticizing her.

  Pito is now thinking about that night she didn’t spend in the marital bed . . . Where did she go? And with whom? They haven’t had the chance to talk about that since Tiare came into their lives, and perhaps they haven’t wanted to either. Pito hasn’t asked questions, and Materena hasn’t confessed. He knows there’s a confession. He knows his wife didn’t spend the night with her invented girlfriend Tareva. He knows because he asked her a few nights ago, and very casually, “How’s Tareva?” and Materena replied, “Who?” Well, all right, Materena was half asleep but still . . . you would remember a friend you stayed out with all night.

  Materena catches her husband checking her out. “What?” she asks.

  “I’m just looking at you,” Pito says, giving his wife the hum-not-bad look.

  “Papa, eh . . . ,” Materena cackles.

  She used to have a girlie cackle when she was young, but the high-pitched cackle (the hi-hi-hi) has been replaced by a deep cackle (the he-he-he), the cackle of a mama. Not that Pito minds, the cackle of a mama is nice to listen to, it tells many stories. Unlike the croaky cackle of a meme, which can be a bit freaky.

  Pito was so afraid that Materena would turn into a meme overnight after finding out that she was a grandmother. Pito h
as witnessed this strange phenomenon in his own family. Lots of his aunties transformed themselves into memes overnight.

  One minute they were cackling the sexy mama cackle and doing the sexy mama walk, the walk that says, I may be past forty but I’ve still got it in me, and next minute they were doing the freaky meme cackle and doing the slow walk with the dragging sound of thongs, accompanied by the long and exhausted sighs. The walk that says I’m a grandmère now, don’t even think about getting ideas.

  Luckily for Pito, Materena stayed a sexy mama. She kept on doing her fast walk, the walk that says, I may be past forty, but I’ve still got it in me: the sexy loving, the energy, the enthusiasm — the package!

  But it’s so nice when she’s sitting still instead. A man can look at his wife properly when she’s sitting still, like Pito is doing right now. He’s really happy that his wife didn’t lose those fine ankles. Pito loves fine ankles. He loves Materena’s wrists too, they’re so small, you wouldn’t believe they belong to a strong sexy mama. As for Materena’s body, well, it is a bit larger than when he first met her, there’s a bit more flesh around the waist, but she’s still a sexy mama.

  Pito feels very grateful his wife looked after herself. Many of his cousins were very cute when they were young but as soon as they popped that first baby out, they started to eat like crazy. Every dish had to be drowning in coconut milk, and every serving had to be multiplied by two, sometimes three. But Materena . . .

  “Eh, Pito,” sexy mama cackles. “Stop looking at me like you’ve never seen me before.”

  “You know when I was in France for military service,” he says. For some reason Pito feels these two missing years must be clarified today.

  “And I was crying on my pillow for you and you didn’t even send me a postcard, and you had six girlfriends, oui, I know.” Materena’s voice is not angry. She has resigned herself to the fact that it was a long time ago and she wasn’t really Pito’s official girlfriend.