Frangipani (4 page)
Materena joins Mama Roti in her desperation. She knows all about confrontations.
A confrontation is when two enemy families meet in the dark and hit out at each other until the last man falls. A confrontation usually happens because one person from one family said something nasty (or did something nasty) to a person from the other family, and before you know it cousins and uncles from both families are involved, and next thing there’s a confrontation. Anyone can participate, there’s no age limit. But most of the participants are young. The older men have better things to do.
Anything can happen in a confrontation. Well, first, you can die, and second, you can get paralyzed for life. The enemy comes behind you and snaps a thick piece of wood on your back, and the result? You’re in a wheelchair or you have a bad back for the rest of your life.
And while the men are at war, the women stay at home and pray.
Materena gets up. “Mama Roti, let’s go and save Pito.”
Mama Roti holds Materena’s hand in the truck all the way back to her house, caressing it now and then, making Materena very uncomfortable. Mama Roti has never held her hand before—Materena understands Mama Roti’s message, all right, and she’s feeling the pressure.
Mama Roti stops yards away from her house to undo Materena’s bun and run her fingers through Materena’s hair. “There, you look much better like that.” She advises Materena to let her hair out more often because hair is a woman’s greatest asset and a bun makes Materena look so old and prim.
She’s unbelievable, that woman! Materena shrieks in her head.
Pito is pumping his muscles when Materena walks in. Eyes meet eyes . . . Materena wants to run to her man, hold him tight and kiss him hard, but Mama Roti is behind her, sighing. It’s strange, but when you haven’t seen your man for a while he somehow improves. Materena has always found Pito handsome, but today she finds him irresistible. He actually looks like an actor. She can tell from the expression in Pito’s eyes that he is thinking the same about her too.
“Pito.” This is Mama Roti talking in between two long sighs. “I went to get Materena like I told you.”
Pito ignores his mother to ask Materena where Tamatoa is.
“He’s with Mamie.”
“Ah . . . and he’s fine?” Pito says.
“He’s going to have a new tooth soon, at the front.”
“
Ah oui!
” Pito exclaims, smiling. Then with pride he adds, “That’s my boy.” Then to his mother he says, “Mama, can I speak to my woman in private?”
My woman? Materena thinks to herself. Does this mean reconciliation? He’s not cranky with me anymore?
As soon as Mama Roti leaves the living room, Pito walks to Materena and Materena walks to Pito, and next minute they’re jumping on each other. In the middle of all the heat and the passion Materena urges Pito not to go to the confrontation and Pito explains that he has to because his family needs him.
“I’m your family now, Pito,” Materena says. “Me and your son . . . and I’m pregnant . . . It’s a girl . . . I did the needle test.” It all rushes out before she can think.
The first time Pito found out he was going to be a father he stood still like a coconut tree and said nothing. He does the same today. That’s just the way Pito reacts to this kind of news.
“Come home, eh?” continues Materena. She promises Pito to cook him chicken curry and to give him a massage if he comes now.
But their conversation is interrupted by a car tooting and men’s voices calling out, “Cousin! You’re ready?”
In a flash Mama Roti comes out of her hiding spot, shrieking, “Pito! You stay right where you are.” She holds on to him just to make sure.
Two young men come to the door, and Materena vaguely recognizes them. She might have met them at a baptism the previous year but she’s not 100 percent sure. The young men’s faces are covered with green and red stripes and they are dressed in a khaki military uniform. The last and only time Materena met these two young men they were dressed in their wedding-and-funeral suit and they were drunk.
“
Iaorana,
Mama Roti,” Pito’s cousins say together.
“
Iaorana,
what?” By now Mama Roti is firing angry sparkles from her eyes to her nephews. She yells at them that they look stupid with all that war paint on their face and goes on about how she looked after them when they were babies, changed their diapers, fed them the bottle. “What’s this?” Mama Roti continues. “You’ve got nothing else better to do, eh?” With giant strides she’s at the door, grabbing one of her nephews by the hair. “Mama Roti,
aita . . . ,
” he shouts. She grabs the other nephew by the hair. “Pito . . . control your mama,” the nephew shrieks. Pito heads for the door, but not before his mama catches him, a fiery look on her face. The more Pito tries to unlock himself from his mother’s mad embrace, the tighter Mama Roti holds on to her son. In the end the cousins come to Pito’s rescue. It’s three against one. Mama Roti has zero chance.
“Materena!” Mama Roti shouts as Pito slips between her fingers. “Help me!” But Materena is still immobile, like a statue. She’s thinking.
She hears the car driving away and Mama Roti’s angry yell, “Pito! If you get paralyzed, don’t you come running crying to me!”
After a while Mama Roti stomps inside the house, and the first thing she does is give Materena a cranky look. “I didn’t see you try to stop my son,” she says. “If my son comes back in a wheelchair, you better look after him . . . Eh well, I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m going to pray.”
Materena nods and sets off to the nearest gendarmerie without a word. When you can’t talk people you love out of doing stupid things, you’ve got to swallow your pride and appeal to the gendarmes for help, because praying is not enough.
Materena opens the door of the gendarmerie office feeling like turning around and running. But an invisible hand is on her back, thrusting her forward. Before she knows it, she’s standing and smiling at the front desk, where a young gendarme is typing a letter.
He lifts his head and, beaming with delight, asks her how he can be of assistance.
Materena quickly realizes she’s dealing with a gendarme who’s new to Tahiti. He doesn’t have that look gendarmes who are not new to Tahiti have (frown and cranky eyes). But then again Materena understands how extremely rare it is to see Tahitians walk into the gendarmerie office of their own free will—what’s more, relaxed and smiling. Tahitians are usually dragged in kicking and cursing by French people. The young gendarme must be relieved to be dealing with a smiling Tahitian. Still smiling, he waits for Materena to let him know how he can be of assistance, and so she tells him the whole story about the confrontation.
The gendarme, smiling a bit less, asks Materena if she knows what kind of weapons the fighters would be using. Any guns?
“
Non,
” Materena reassures the gendarme. “In Tahiti people only use thick pieces of wood and machetes to fight. They don’t shoot each other. They just hit each other’s limbs.”
The gendarme thanks Materena for the information and promises to look into the matter. A very proud Materena walks out of the gendarmerie. She can’t believe her audacity! Her courage! Ah, she must not want Pito back paralyzed. Or perhaps her baby girl is playing tricks on her. People do say women change when they’re pregnant. They do things that are completely out of the ordinary.
What Materena knows from reading Pito’s newspapers is that gendarmes use
bâtonnets
and tear gas when they have to stop trouble. As far as Materena is concerned, the warriors are going to be surprised to see the gendarmes. They’ll run all over the place like chickens without a head.
That’s what happened all right, so Pito informs Materena the next morning as he walks into the house with his haggard face and puffy eyes, casually picking up his son as if he’s been away for only ten minutes. The baby cries because his father has been away for almost two weeks, a long time when you’re a baby, enough time to forget your father’s face. Pito quickly passes Tamatoa back into his mother’s arms and gives her the whole story.
Yesterday, he explains, right in the middle of the confrontation, gendarmes crept from behind the bushes, yelling, and surprised the warriors with
bâtonnets
and tear gas. All the warriors ran back to their vehicle of transportation (car, bicycle, truck, Vespa) except for Pito. He was still in shock over the news Materena had told him. That he was going to be a father again and the baby was a girl. A girl! What was he going to do with a daughter?
So he stood still and the gendarmes grabbed him and shoved him in the police wagon, direction, the police station, where he spent the night in a stinky prison cell sleeping on a concrete floor. But all is okay, Pito goes on, the gendarmes didn’t take his fingerprints, so he doesn’t have a police record. He’s not a criminal, and he’s not going to lose his job.
Anyway, Pito was released half an hour ago and he caught the truck straight to Faa’a. Materena, relieved to see him in one piece, puts her son on his mattress and cooks her man an omelet.
Less than five minutes later Pito’s best friend, Ati, arrives to visit, just as he promised Materena the previous night.
T
he newspaper is on the kitchen table opened to page 17. The ad is below the winning numbers of last week’s
tombola.
It’s in a square with a postal box address in capital letters. It’s an ad for a position as a cleaner.
Materena, six months pregnant, has decided to apply for it. She feels it’s time to get back into the workforce.
“There’s going to be a tough battle,” says Loana, who’s come to help Materena write the letter. “The whole island has seen that ad.” Meaning Materena won’t be battling
just
against the relatives.
That’s the problem when an ad is in the newspapers and not taped to the front window of the Chinese store. What’s more, the ad is below the winning numbers of last week’s
tombola.
There’s going to be a tough battle, all right; but then again, Materena points out to her mother, the position is not just for a cleaner, it’s for a
professional
cleaner.
“Where’s the difference?” asks Loana. “A cleaner is a cleaner. She cleans, she scrubs, she mops.”
“
Oui,
but it says here Professional Cleaner.”
“
Professional
doesn’t mean anything, Materena! It’s just a word.”
Materena nods in agreement, but in her mind there’s a big difference between a cleaner and a professional cleaner. She’s not going to start an argument with her mother about the meaning of the word
professional,
though. She didn’t ask her mother over to argue. She asked her mother over to help her write the letter of application.
That’s what Madame Colette Dumonnier wants. She wants a letter, a reference, an interview. She wants a professional cleaner for two years, and there will be a contract.
This is highly unusual. Most Frenchwomen don’t have contracts with their cleaner. They hire and fire as they wish. And cleaners don’t mind a loose agreement. They’re free to walk out the door the day the boss starts to be too bitchy, the day they decide they’re
fiu
of cleaning houses, and anyway, they prefer to clean hotel rooms and meet tourists.
All right, back to the letter. Materena rubs her hands together.
She’s never written a letter in her life, but it doesn’t mean she can’t begin today. In her opinion, writing is like talking, except that she has to worry about spelling mistakes. Materena bought a dictionary today to make sure her letter is perfect. She also bought a felt pen and nice writing paper.
“Dear Madame Colette Dumonnier?” Materena asks, looking up to her mother.
Loana gives her approval with a sharp nod and watches her daughter neatly write it down. “Now, first sentence: I’m a cleaner.”
Materena grimaces and tells her mother that it is such a weak first line. Why should she tell Madame Colette she’s a cleaner? If she’s applying for the position as a cleaner it is because she is a cleaner,
non?
Why tell Madame Colette Dumonnier what she already knows?
“Materena,” Loana snaps, “have you lived longer than me? How many letters have you written in your life?”
“Mamie . . .”
“
Non,
just tell me.”
“Zero?”
“I’ve written three letters in my life, okay?”
Oui,
true, Materena thinks, but they weren’t letters to a potential boss, they were letters to a potential lover. It’s very different, you can’t compare. But Materena doesn’t say this to her mother, it is only going to make her cranky.
“And what do you want to say in the first line?” asks Loana.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what about, How are you today?” Loana says.
How are you today? Materena thinks.
Non.
It doesn’t sound professional, and it sounds too much like she’s trying to be friendly.
“What about, I hope all is well with you?” suggests Loana, seeing Materena’s reaction. Materena isn’t happy with this suggestion either.
“My name is Materena. I’m responding to an ad in the
Journal
?”
Materena puts her pen down and thanks her mother for all her wonderful ideas.
Loana gets up. “If my ideas are so wonderful, how come you’re not writing them down?
Aue,
you write your letter yourself. I’ve got plants to water.”
By nine o’clock that night Materena is still searching for her first line.
The first line in a letter is as important as the first line in a story. In Materena’s experience as a listener, when people tell her stories, the first line can make her think, I can’t wait to hear the rest of the story, or, What am I going to cook for dinner tonight? Then again, Materena knows many stories that start with a weak line only to become wonderful stories later on. You never know with stories.
But when you’re writing a letter for a job you really want, you’ve got to instantly win over the person reading it. When you’re writing a letter for a job you really want, you’ve got to be prepared to spend hours and hours on it.