Breadfruit (24 page)

“‘Paper is the future!’ he often said. And one of the parents would always respond, ‘Coconuts—always plenty on trees. Fish—everywhere
in the ocean. A girl, she needs to learn how to cook.’

“Teacher had a vision: to see more Polynesian teachers, so many they wouldn’t need to come from France to teach us. In his
vision, there was even a Polynesian governor, and, who knows, he could be from Rangiroa!

“People laughed at his vision. Some said, ‘The other teacher was better. He didn’t interfere with people’s lives. He didn’t
try to change us.’ And, ‘That teacher, he’s a dreamer. He should go back to Tahiti.’

“Teacher was obsessed with getting his students to pass the school certificate, but every year all he got were failures. One
year, a few years before I was in his class, he seriously considered giving up teaching, but his wife threatened to leave
him. She told him he didn’t study all these years to become a postman.

“There were only two classes in the school. One class for the little kids and one for the big kids. Teacher was my teacher
for three years, and during that time he discovered that I had—and I don’t mean to show off to you—I had an amazing memory.”

Materena hugged Loana. “Mamie, you still have an amazing memory. You always remember people’s names and words they told you,
even if it was ten years ago.”

Loana cackles, but not loud. She doesn’t want the other passengers of the truck to think she’s mocking them. They are German
tourists with sunburned noses, thongs, and cameras hanging at their necks. They just look out the window.

“Girl,” Loana says, “the reason my memory is good is because your grandmother didn’t like to repeat herself. She would tell
me her orders once and I better register them… Teacher only had to tell me a grammatical rule or mathematical formula
once for me to register, whereas with the other students, he had to repeat and repeat, and sometimes he would fall on his
chair and rest his head on the table for a while. Other times he smashed his cane on the board and left the room to go have
a cigarette outside… I can see him, eh, my teacher. His hands are white from the chalk. His face is brown-red from the
frustration. He’s having his cigarette outside, and there’s total silence in the class.”

Loana smiles. “You know, girl… Teacher personally selected me to recite the welcoming speech to the governor of Tahiti
when he came to Tiputa to inaugurate the new quay.”

“
Ah oui?
” Materena is truly impressed.

“
Ah oui,
girl. Teacher selected me because of my amazing memory. The village approved of the selection, except for a few mothers who
believed their child was a better selection. They went to confront Teacher about that matter. He gave them two seconds of
his attention, then showed them the door.”

Materena laughs. She imagines these women in Teacher’s office, complaining and carrying on about how their kid is better than
Loana. It’s a natural thing to think, and Materena understands.

“Teacher said to me, ‘Loana, the whole village will be watching you. Don’t make me regret my decision.’

“The welcoming speech was quite short. ‘Welcome to Tiputa, Monsieur le Governor! We are honored . . .’ More words like that
and some words that didn’t make sense to me at all.

“Days and days I lived for that speech, reciting it over and over again, morning, afternoon, and night. Mama exempted me from
all duties, she wanted that speech to be planted in my head. She couldn’t help me with the speech because, your grandmother,
she didn’t speak French, except for a few sentences like, ‘Is this an owl I perceive in the forest?’

“Girl, I was shaking with nerves when I got onto the podium… then all the people disappeared—Mama, Teacher, and the governor
of Tahiti included.

“‘Welcome to Tiputa!’ I began, and before I knew it, the crowd was applauding.

“I was the star of the inauguration. Eh, I danced with the governor! And I sat beside him at the table of honor! And you know
what Teacher said to me?”

“He said it’s good?” Materena asks.

“He said, ‘Loana, when I retire, you’re going to replace me.’” Loana looks out the window. “But here I am, past fifty, and
I still don’t have my school certificate.”

Materena knows that Loana doesn’t have her school certificate because she left school three months before the school-certificate
exam to come to Tahiti with her mother. Her mother’s man was in Mamao Hospital, very ill. But her mother ended up dying (of
a heart attack) instead—and her man, he went back to his island, leaving Loana alone in Tahiti.

And Loana has been cleaning houses ever since.

Materena tenderly holds her mother’s hand. She remembers when she sat for the school certificate, how Loana really got involved
with her studies. She pinned notes all over the house and Materena couldn’t go anywhere in the house without being confronted
with a grammatical rule or mathematical formula, not even in the toilet. Those notes drove Materena crazy, and she escaped
into the garden, but then Loana decided to pin the notes on the trees, the potted plants, and the wire fence.

Loana also decided that Materena was going to sing a song for the oral exam instead of reciting a poem, and the song would
of course be a church song, as, in Loana’s opinion, Materena was bound to score twenty out of twenty with a church song.

The day of the exam results, Loana was sick with nerves, and Materena couldn’t just tell her mother the result as it was—pass
or fail. Loana had to have signs—wave her pareu this way for
pass
and wave the pareu that way for
fail.
It was all so complicated.

Well, Materena passed the exam and Loana went around the neighborhood to show off her daughter’s framed school certificate.
Materena’s framed school certificate is still proudly displayed in Loana’s living room.

Materena thinks about how her mother should be proudly displaying her own school certificate.

“Mamie,” Materena says.

“Yes, girl.”

“You can get that paper now. I can enroll you. There are classes at the Pomare High School for the school-certificate exam,
and you can get that paper—easy. You’re very intelligent.”

Loana half smiles, and shrugs.

“Eh, Mamie,” Materena goes on, “there’s no law that says you can’t sit for the school-certificate exam at fifty-two years
old. Look at Mama Teta, she got her driver’s license at fifty-six.”

“It’s thirty-eight years ago I needed that paper,” says Loana. “Not today.”

P
oor Mamie, eh, thinks Materena, hiding the family-size packet of chocolate cookies in the fridge. Eh-eh, Mamie… Materena
sits at the kitchen table. She needs to recover a little from the day—the court, her mother’s teacher. Sometimes too much
happens in one day.

But wait a minute, Materena tells herself, did she thank her mother for having come with her to court?
Non!
Materena springs to her feet and hurries to her mother’s house.

Loana is in the living room pinning patterns to a quilt. “Eh?” She cackles. “You again?”

Materena throws her arms around her mother (she won’t bother asking her about the health this time), all the while thanking
her for her support in court, for all the food she put in her stomach, for everything.

“
Chérie,
” Loana says, “it’s all right.”

More hugs, until Loana gently pulls away, she has a quilt to finish, she says.

“Who is the quilt for?” Materena asks.

“It’s for Father Louis. It’s a farewell gift to him from your auntie Celia. You know he’s going home to Quebec to retire?”

“
Ah oui?
” Materena says. She’s sad. She likes Father Louis. He’s funny. “And who is the new priest?”

“I don’t know, but he better not be too young and too handsome.”

Materena nods, all the while helping her mother pin the patterns onto the quilt. The base fabric is white with patterns of
green breadfruit leaves, red hibiscus flowers, yellow frangipani flowers, and light blue doves. Once all the patterns are
pinned, Loana will hand stitch them. When she starts that she will require total silence—Loana can’t talk when she’s stitching
her quilts. She needs 100 percent concentration. But right now she can talk.

“We, the Polynesians, have always been a religious type of people, girl. In the old days, and I’m talking about the old days,
a long time ago,” Loana insists, “we prayed before everything we did. We prayed before eating, working on the land, planting
our gardens, building our houses, throwing the net, and before we began and ended a voyage. We prayed nonstop, girl.

“We had a god, or, I should really say, gods,” she continues, “but the most important god was Ta’aroa. You know about Ta’aroa?
The legend?” Loana asks.

Materena shakes her head. She doesn’t know the legend of Ta’aroa. She only knows the story of God. God who forgives, God the
greatest, Jehovah.

“Here’s the legend, girl. You can tell the kids.”

Loana neatly places a pattern of a dove on the fabric and straightens it a few times with the palm of her hand.

“A long time ago,” begins Loana, “there was Ta’aroa. He was his own creator and he lived all by himself in a shell. The shell
looked like an egg. This egg was in the space and there was no sky, no earth, no moon, no sun, no stars. There was nothing,
girl.

“Ta’aroa was a bit bored in his shell, so one day he broke it and got out to see what was outside. Outside was dark, outside
was nothing. There and then Ta’aroa realized he was alone, all alone.

“He shattered his shell and created the rocks and the sand. With his vertebrae he created the mountains. The oceans, the lakes,
and the rivers came from his tears. He gave the fishes and the turtles scales using his nails. With his feathers he created
the trees and the bushes. And Ta’aroa made the rainbow using his own blood.

“Then Ta’aroa decided to create man . . .”

Loana’s voice dies down to a murmur.

“This is what the legend says, anyway,” Loana says, looking at the statues of the Virgin Mary displayed in her living room.
“But it doesn’t mean the story about Adam and Eve is an invention.

“We made
to’o
images of our gods. We used wood or rock, and there were feathers attached to the image, red and yellow feathers. These feathers
were the emblem of divinity.”

Materena’s ears are wide open. She likes when her mother talks about history. Loana knows about history because when she and
Imelda meet for a little chitchat, Imelda always talks about history and Loana likes to listen. Imelda’s vast knowledge of
history comes from the many old people she’s befriended over the years. She always says, “You want to know about the past?
Well, talk to the old people.”

“The image was kept in the house of God,” Loana says. “And when we needed to communicate with God, we would appeal to Him
to grant us His presence—by entering the
to’o,
His image.

“We had to have ceremonies, and long too, I’m talking days, for God to come to us. Whereas now… all you need to do for
God to listen to you is say, ‘God—I really need to talk to you.’” Loana sighs. “It’s good to believe.”

Materena agrees with a slow nod. She thinks, Yes, it’s true, it’s good to believe—in something.

They pin the patterns in silence for a while, humming church hymns.

And Loana asks, “You know how we became Christians? The Mahi family, I mean. I don’t know how my family from my mama’s side
became Christians. You know the story of the mango tree?”

Materena doesn’t know that story.

“Are you sure I’ve never told you that story?” Loana looks at Materena in doubt.

“I’m sure, Mamie. I’m one hundred percent sure.”

“You should know the story of the mango—and tell it to your kids… Well, here’s the story of how we became Christians.

“Your great-grandmother was lying on the mat by her mango tree one day when the priest came to pay her a visit. She greeted
him coldly because she wanted nothing to do with him, and that woman wasn’t the kind to have her resting interrupted—a bit
like me.

“The priest, well, he ignored her coldness and went on about how beautiful the day was. Great-Grandmother told him the sun
was going to disappear soon—look at the sky, see the gray clouds, feel the rain coming. The priest maintained the weather
was going to remain charming until the end of the week. ‘Who told you?’ she asked. ‘Your God?’ He replied, ‘Yes.’ ‘What is
it you want at my house?’ she asked the priest.

“Spread the goodness of God, was what he wanted to do. ‘Your God, it doesn’t interest me, now go your way,’ Great-Grandmother
said.

“She stood up and faced the man in the black robe. ‘You come here and burn our prayer-meeting houses, and destroy our
marae,
you come here and tell us our God doesn’t exist. Your God you can keep for yourself, I don’t want Him.’

“She lifted her eyes to a mango and down it fell, onto the priest’s head. He stumbled, and for a brief moment, it looked like
he was going to faint. ‘Out of my land,’ she said to him. ‘I’ve spoken.’

“The priest lifted his eyes to the tree and said to it, ‘As of today, you will produce no more fruit.’

“The following morning, the mango tree was ashes, and the next day, your great-grandmother, she became a Christian, a Catholic,
and right until her death she blessed the day God, the real God, came into her life.”

Materena looks at her mother, thinking that the priest probably sneaked back to the mango tree during the dark with a box
of matches and some firewood.

But she says, “It’s true?”

“Oh
oui,
girl, I’m not inventing.”

They get humming again and soon every single pattern is pinned onto the fabric. And it is time for Loana to start stitching.
Materena rises to her feet, she’s going home.

Mother and daughter hug, and kiss each other on the forehead. And on her way home, Materena thinks about God. God, and Loana.

Loana was raised within the walls of the Church—every night she and her mother would go to Mass and then to the singing rehearsals.
The whole village went to Mass and singing rehearsals, especially when it was the priest and not one of his
diacres
who was celebrating the Mass.