Breadfruit (10 page)

“You want to kiss the baby?” Materena asks Leilani.

Leilani lightly kisses the baby on the forehead.

“And where are you two going?” Materena asks Giselle.

“To town. Get a couple of things. I’ve just got my maternity allowance, so I’m going to spend it.”

“I’ll wait with you until you get the truck,” says Materena, and looks down at the baby again. He’s so beautiful. All babies
are beautiful. Materena’s babies were very beautiful. There was always a nurse to say, “Such a beautiful baby.”

“And what is this beautiful baby’s name?” Materena asks.

Giselle smiles a beaming smile. “Ah, Materena. I can always count on you to say nice things about my baby. You know, that
good-for-nothing James, he dared tell me that my baby looked a bit like a chimpanzee. I’m never ever going to speak to him
again. He was drunk, but that’s no excuse—he’s barred for all eternity.”

“Ah,
oui alors!
” Materena can’t believe that cousin. You don’t tell a mother that her baby looks like a chimpanzee! What an idiot!

“And what is the name of this beautiful baby?” Materena asks again.

“Isidore Louis junior,” says Giselle, looking into Materena’s eyes as if she’s waiting for a comment.

And for a second Materena thinks, Isidore Louis junior! What kind of name is this? What on earth made Giselle give that name
to her baby?

But, then, we call our babies what we want.

“It’s a nice name,” Materena says.

Giselle puffs smoke. “A good name, you say? Eh, I don’t really like that name.”

“So why did you call him Isidore Louis junior, then?”

“I had no choice.”

Materena knows she’s in for a wait to find out because Giselle always has to start at the beginning of a story.

“You’re not in a hurry?” Giselle asks.

“No. I’m just on my way home from the shop,” Materena replies.

“There’s nothing in those bags that’s going to melt?”

“Ah, you’re not going to talk for hours.”

“Mamie, I can take the shopping home,” says Leilani.

Materena discreetly widens her eyes at Leilani, meaning—
I can’t believe you!

Materena is quite annoyed with Leilani because you just don’t walk away when a mother is showing off her baby to you. You’re
supposed to admire the baby for at least fifteen minutes.

But Leilani isn’t into babies and stories about births yet, and she’s bound to get bored. And, also, the butter is going to
melt. “All right, then, girl,” Materena says. “You go home, I see you later. And put the butter in the fridge.”

After more light kisses on the baby’s forehead, Leilani escapes with the shopping bags.

“Okay, Cousin,” Giselle begins. “Now, here it is… I had my contractions at about eight o’clock.”

“Eight o’clock at night or eight o’clock in the morning?” Materena is asking this question because there aren’t many trucks
during the night and if your car breaks down or if the person who was supposed to drive you drank too much, there can be some
serious problems.

“Eight o’clock at night,” Giselle replies. “I was scrubbing the kitchen.”

Materena nods knowingly. “When you get into the scrubbing, it means the baby is coming.”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t think my contractions were the real contractions, because Isidore Louis junior wasn’t due for another
week. According to my doctor, he was supposed to be born today.”

Materena smiles at the sleeping baby. “You’re an early baby, eh?”

“When I got the contractions,” Giselle goes on, “I didn’t panic. I thought these contractions were only the contractions you
get before the real contractions come along. Eh, how was I to know they were the real contractions? It’s my first baby.”

“
Ah oui,
” Materena says. “It’s hard to know with the first baby. You don’t have the experience with the contractions.”

“Right. So I went to bed. I didn’t want these contractions to turn into real ones on me, because I was alone in the house.”

“And, Ramona, where was he?” Materena is asking, but she already knows the answer.

“Drinking with his mates.”

“And your brother?” Materena knows the answer to this too.

“Drinking with Ramona.”

“And Mama?”

“Praying at someone’s house.”

“You were all alone, then, eh-eh?”

Giselle nods. “If there was somebody at the house, I would have scrubbed the kitchen floor harder and with joy to get that
baby out. I was a bit sick of being pregnant.”

“
Ah oui,
it’s like that the last month. You just want to go have that baby.”

“You just want to see your feet again.” Giselle looks down at her thongs.

“You want to feel light,” says Materena.

“You just want to sleep on your belly.”

“So you went to bed,” prompts Materena.

“Yes, and I closed my eyes to sleep,” Giselle says. “I thought, If I sleep, the contractions are going to go away. But I couldn’t
sleep.”

“The contractions were hurting too much.” Materena grimaces. Even though it has been years since she last had contractions,
she still remembers them. Not the actual pain but the fact that she was moaning, and she was moaning because the contractions
were hurting.

“
Ah oui,
they were hurting,” Giselle says. “But that wasn’t the reason I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep because I got thinking about
the baby’s name.”

“Ah, you didn’t have a name for the baby organized?” This is a shock for Materena. In Tahiti, you’ve got to have a name for
your baby organized before the birth. There are many women giving birth at the Mamao Hospital at the same time as you—ten,
sometimes fifteen. You’re in this big room and the only thing that separates the women giving birth is a curtain. It can get
confusing. Once, Materena was on the delivery bed with her legs apart, waiting for the doctor, and a strange man came into
her room. She shrieked, and he quickly retreated. He got confused because Materena was wearing the same color socks as his
woman.

It’s the same confusion with the newborns. They are put into this room to get washed and if there’s no name on your baby’s
tag, you can get another woman’s baby by mistake. With Materena, as soon as she gave birth, Loana followed the nurse holding
her baby.

You’ve got to have a name organized.

Well, Giselle had a name organized—sort of. Her mama wanted to call the baby this. Ramona wanted to call the baby that. And
then there was the
maman
of Ramona, who wanted the baby to be named after one of her ancestors.

“And you—what did you want to call the baby?” Materena asks.

Giselle lovingly looks down at her beautiful baby. “I wanted to call my baby Michel.”

Materena thinks how the name Michel is so much nicer than the name Isidore Louis junior, but there are circumstances when
you’ve got to give your baby a name you don’t like.

“So, you were in the bed trying to sleep,” Materena says.

“Yes, and the contractions got stronger and stronger. I turned this way, and I turned that way. Then there was a popping noise.”

“Your waters broke.” Materena remembers the popping noise.

“
Ah oui,
the bed was all wet,” says Giselle. “I cursed Ramona because he was drinking with his mates. I cursed my brother because
he was drinking with Ramona, and I cursed Mama too because she was praying at someone’s house.”

Giselle was in a lot of pain by then, and when you are in pain like this, curses just fly out of the mouth.

“I got out of bed to call somebody,” Giselle goes on. “But then I remembered that the phone was disconnected because my brother
spoke to a mate who’s doing military service in France, and, that brother of mine, he spoke on the phone for two hours and
seventeen minutes! The telephone is still disconnected. He wanted me to pay the telephone with my maternity allowance and
I told him to go to France to see if I’m there.”

“Ah,
oui alors,
” Materena says. “The maternity allowance, it’s not to pay telephone bills.”

“
Ah non,
it’s to buy yourself a couple of nice things, like a new dress… So here I was, I couldn’t telephone anyone, and I was
panicking, so I went into the kitchen to look for that coconut Mama bought for me a few days before.”

“To drink the juice to make the baby come out easily,” Materena says.

“
Oui.
Did you drink the coconut juice with your births?”

“
Oui.
”

“And it helped you with the pushing?”

Materena thinks about this for a moment. She’s not sure that drinking the coconut juice actually made her babies slide out
easily, because it never seemed to her that any of her babies slid out easily when she was pushing them out. But you’re expected
to believe in the powers of the coconut juice because thousands of women before you have.

“Yes, it helped a bit,” Materena says. “And with you, it helped?”

“I couldn’t find the coconut. I looked in the fridge, I looked in the pantry, I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find it.
I didn’t know Mama had put the coconut in the baby’s suitcase.”

So in desperation Giselle drank half a bottle of cooking oil because, in her opinion, oil makes things slide.

Materena laughs, but she can’t laugh her hysterical laughter because of the baby sleeping in her arms. Her laughter is more
a snort.

“Eh, Cousin,” Giselle says, “I was desperate… I drank my oil, then I went outside. I looked at the sky and I cried, ‘God,
Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ—please help me. I don’t want to give birth all by myself. I’m afraid. Please send someone my way.
Send me an auntie who’s an expert at giving birth to help me.’”

Materena stops snorting. It’s not good to give birth by yourself—especially when it’s your first time.

“And an auntie arrived?” she asks, hoping for Giselle that it was their auntie Stella who arrived, she being an expert midwife.
Stella delivered Materena, and Loana was so pleased with Stella that she requested her to deliver Materena’s brother. Loana
didn’t want the doctor.

“No. It’s Cousin Mori who arrived,” replies Giselle.

“Cousin Mori!” Materena exclaims, and thinks, What help would that cousin be to a woman in labor? But Cousin Mori is better
than nobody.

“Mori arrived in his rusty clunker Peugeot,” Giselle says. “He was looking for François—to go out drinking, of course. And
I said to Mori, ‘Mori, it’s a good thing you’re here. You can drive me to the hospital.’ But first I had to ask him if he
still had his driver’s license. I just wanted to make sure that his driver’s license hadn’t been canceled. When the gendarmes
pull you over and there’s no license, they give you all sorts of troubles, you have to get into their car and go to the gendarmerie
for hours of questions.”

“Ah, they would have seen you with your big belly and driven you to the hospital—pronto,” Materena says.

“It’s not for sure,” replies Giselle. “There’s a story about how a gendarme stopped a car and the driver didn’t have a license,
so he got his woman, who was pregnant, to act like she was about to have the baby. And the woman went on moaning and complaining
about the pain. So the gendarme put his flashing red light on the roof of his car and escorted the other car to the hospital.
But the gendarme decided to escort the pregnant woman right to the delivery room. A nurse examined the pregnant woman with
the monitor, then she told the gendarme that there was no way the pregnant woman was in labor. All the gendarmes in Tahiti
know that story. And now when they see a pregnant woman acting like she’s about to have a baby, they get suspicious.”

“Ah,” Materena says. “But they would have known you weren’t acting when you started pushing that baby out at the gendarmerie.”

Giselle gives her a horrified look. “I don’t want to push no baby out at the gendarmerie. Think about it—you’re born and the
first person you see in your life—it’s a gendarme.” Giselle shakes her head. “
Ah non.
”

“So Mori had his driver’s license?” Materena asks.

“Yes, he showed it to me, and I checked the date. Then I asked him if he’d been on the booze. I didn’t want a drunk driving
me to the hospital.”

“Ah, true, it’s not sure you’re going to get to the hospital,” says Materena.

“Yes, it’s more guaranteed that you’re going to be dead. Like with Ramona, he was going to stop his drinking one week before
the birth, I made him swear on his grandmother’s head. That’s why that night he was out drinking big-time—to make up for a
whole week of abstinence.”

“And, Mori, he wasn’t drunk?”

“
Non,
Mori said he’d only drunk a miserable half glass of beer. I got him to breathe on my face and I smelled his breath. His breath
smelled more of onions than beer. I was satisfied. Then I asked him if he was sure that his car was going to get me to the
Mamao Hospital in one go.”

“How many questions did you ask Mori?” Materena is beginning to wonder if Giselle was truly in labor, because, to her recollection,
a woman in labor doesn’t think about asking questions.

Giselle only asked Mori three questions. One question about the driver’s license, one about the booze, then one about the
car.

“And what did Mori say about his car?” asks Materena.

“He said, ‘Eh, Cousin, maybe my car looks like it’s a pile of shit, but, I tell you, it’s a good car, the engine is in perfect
condition.’ Then Mori went on and on about how his car just got a complete tune-up and how he much prefers a car that can
drive around the island over one hundred times without stopping to a car that only appears to be in good condition. So I went
to get the baby’s suitcase, then I wrote a note for Mama to say that I was at the hospital—then I got into the car. It’s okay
with you to hold the baby?”

“Of course,” Materena says. He’s sound asleep, baby Isidore Louis junior.

Giselle rolls another cigarette. “Mori’s pile of shit broke down at Tipareui. First there was a clunking noise, and soon after
that there was another clunking noise, louder, then a bang, then nothing. And it was a good thing Mori got the car to stop
on the side of the road and not in the middle. I don’t like it when the car breaks down in the middle of the road. A car can
come flying into you.”