Tiare in Bloom (4 page)

After this the switchboard goes crazy, and half an hour later the calls are still coming in about identity, Tahitian identity
especially. The Tahitians who don’t speak Tahitian have their say. The Tahitians who don’t have tattoos, who don’t like raw
fish, who don’t look Tahitian, the list goes on and on. But all these confused women want to know one thing. What does make
a person Tahitian these days?

“Listen,” says one caller, “from my point of view, to be Tahitian, you must be able to talk Tahitian, that’s the most important
thing.” But other listeners insist that speaking the language means nothing, because anyone can learn a language but not everyone
can have more than fifty percent Tahitian
toto,
blood in the veins. “Oh,” an old woman snorts, “blood is just liquid, what you need is a Tahitian heart,
c’est tout.
”

“
Ah bon?
” the following listener challenges. “A Tahitian heart? I don’t think so. The heart is just an organ. For me, to be Tahitian
means fishing and growing taro . . . living like in the old days. No TV, no stereo, no car.
Aue,
be proud to be Tahitian, walk or paddle a canoe!”

Finally, one of the listeners wants to know Materena’s thoughts on this serious topic. Does she consider herself Tahitian?

Words fly out of her mouth before she can think. “
Ah oui!
My father is French, but I feel one hundred percent Tahitian because . . .” Materena stops to think for a moment. She doesn’t
want to divulge too much information about her situation on the radio. Like how she’s never met her French father and has
Father Unknown written on her birth certificate. “. . . Because I was raised the Tahitian way,” Materena says, hoping her
listener will leave it at that.

“And how are we raised the Tahitian way?” the listener asks.

Materena leans away from the microphone to weigh her words. When you work for a radio that supports independence, you’ve got
to be careful of what you say. Materena doesn’t want to sound political. She just wants to express her personal feelings.
After a quick look at her assistants behind the glass window, Materena carefully begins to explain what the Tahitian way means
for her.

It means not eating in front of people if she can’t share; showing respect to old people, to all people; remembering and honoring
the dead; not whistling at night; and not marrying a cousin. It means helping the family; planting the child’s placenta in
the earth, along with a tree; singing; nurturing the soil and the ocean; doing your best by your children. It means
belonging to
a family. It also means being strong and getting up after each fall. And loving the broom — all Tahitian people, especially
women — love their broom. With the broom a woman can get rid of unwanted guests without hurting their feelings by sweeping
under their feet, and she keeps her floor clean too. Tahitian women are proud of their clean floor. And being Tahitian means
. . . being diplomatic with the relatives, because you’re going to bump into your relatives day after day after day until
you die, so it’s important to get along. Then of course, there’s the respect for the mother.

When Materena finishes explaining herself there’s a long silence and Materena hopes her listener isn’t going to burst out
laughing, “This is not Tahitian, all this! This is Christianization!”

To Materena’s greatest relief, the woman, moved, simply whispers, “It’s very beautiful what you’ve just said.”

“
Maururu,
” says Materena, and before her listener can fire another question, she hurries on with her usual line: Let’s see what the
next caller has to say.

By eleven o’clock Materena is bewildered. She thought Tahiti was only filled with brave women who didn’t mind sharing their
wonderful stories on the radio. She didn’t know about these half-caste women confused over their identity and feeling like
they were being cut in two.

When Materena gets home, kindly driven by Cousin Mori, she tiptoes in and gets her never-to-throw-away box from under the
bed. She is careful not to wake up Pito. Being Tahitian, she thinks to herself, is also respecting people who sleep. Even
when they snore like a pig because they have been out drinking all night with
les copains.

This is the box where she keeps birth certificates and drawings by her children, along with their first tooth, their first
lock of hair, and more treasures alike. She sits at the kitchen table, opens the box, and takes her birth certificate out.
She lays it on the table, straightening it with the palms of her hands, and stares at those words Father Unknown. She looks
away, and looks back to that sentence again, all the while thinking about the French man who gave her a dimple on her left
cheek and almond-shaped eyes: Tom Delors.

Tom Delors came to Tahiti for military service and met Loana, Materena’s mother, at the Zizou Bar. That night, these two eighteen-year-olds
danced nonstop, fell in love, and moved in together not long after. The local people gave Loana dirty looks because back then,
local women who played with
popa’a
— worse,
militaires
— had a bad reputation. They were considered sluts who were only after a ticket out of Tahiti.

Pah! Loana didn’t want a ticket anywhere. She just loved Tom.

But Loana left Tom six months after they had become an official couple when he criticized her chicken with split peas in front
of their guests. She was so humiliated. Also five weeks pregnant with Materena, though she didn’t know that yet. Loana waited
for Tom to come and say
pardon
to her, and then she would have told him, I forgive you but don’t you dare ever criticize my food again.

But Tom didn’t come, and since Loana wasn’t the kind to crawl back, she got on with her life. Later, when she found out that
there was a seed growing in her belly, she cried her eyes out. But she knew there was no going back and resigned herself to
her fate as a single mother.

Materena keeps on staring at her birth certificate and declares out loud, “Papa, I’ve been longing to know you since the age
of nine years old. I’m nearly forty-one now, and I’m ready!” She even bangs a determined fist on the table.

At this precise moment Pito walks into the kitchen.

“Did I wake you?” Materena asks, ready to apologize.

“What are you doing?” he slurs, still drunk.

“Pito . . .” Two big tears plop out of Materena’s eyes. “I’m going to look for my father.”

“That
popa’a?
” Pito snorts, filling a glass with water. “You think he’s going to want to know you?”

And with this declaration, Pito drinks his water and goes back to bed, unaware that he has just hurt his wife so deep she
can’t breathe.

A
s soon as his head hits the pillow, Pito is unconscious. He wakes up the following morning fully rested and in a cheerful
mood, no hangover at all. Materena is not in bed, it means she’s in the kitchen. Pito hops out of bed. He is famished! He
wouldn’t mind a ham omelette.

“
Chérie!
” he calls out sweetly.

No answer. That’s strange.

Pito finds his wife in the living room, sitting straight like a statue on the sofa. “You’ve already eaten?” he asks, still
being sweet.

“I’m not hungry.”

Oh, Madame doesn’t seem to be in a good mood. “You got up from the wrong side of the bed?” Pito teases.

Materena shrugs.

“You’re cranky?”

Again Materena shrugs, and Pito understands that his wife is not talking to him. All of Materena’s silent treatments begin
with a shrug, and most times Pito doesn’t know the reason. He just lives with it. He understands that it is something Materena
does when . . . well, when it takes her. The best thing to do is not to insist and to leave the woman who’s not talking alone
until she feels better and starts talking. So Pito goes off to eat.

He’s at the kitchen table with his coffee and buttered Sao biscuits when Materena decides to clean the house, dragging chairs
that way, this way, with the radio switched on full blast, and Pito has one word on his mind:
escape.
He scarfs down his biscuits, gulps his coffee, delicately puts his bowl and plate in the sink, and flees out of the house
through the back door just as his best friend, Ati, arrives in his car.

“Pito!” Ati calls out, switching the engine off. “What are you doing today? You want to come for a speedboat ride?”

Pito is already in Ati’s car, fastening his seat belt.

And now, on this beautiful, sunny Saturday morning in Tahiti, two childhood friends are enjoying the smooth ride in the crystal
green lagoon, passing women sunbaking naked on a pontoon, who shriek and hurry to cover up. Pito and Ati chuckle. When they
were younger, they used to whistle and call out sweet words. Older, they might only just smile with nostalgia.

“My mama came to see me this morning,” Ati says.

“Ah, and she’s in good health?”

“She had a dream.”

Here’s the story . . .

Ati opens the door of his apartment and his mother barges in without waiting for the please-come-in invitation.

“Eh,” he says, surprised, “you’re not with your sister today?”

Saturday is the day Mama Angelina spends with her sister. It’s been like that for as long as Ati remembers.

“
Aue!
Look at all that
bordel!
” Mama Angelina ignores her son’s question and marches straight to the kitchen. She picks up an empty can of pork and beans
from the bench. “You ate this last night?” Next second, Mama Angelina is at the sink doing the dishes, shaking her head at
the pile of newspapers shoved in a basket. “Why do you keep all these newspapers? They attract mice. It’s not as if you’re
in the newspapers these days. How come you’re not in the newspapers anymore? You were in the newspapers all the time before.”

The dishes are done and Mama Angelina wipes the bench. “I can’t believe a good-looking man like you is still
célibataire.
Is it so hard to find a good woman in Tahiti? They’re all over the place, open your eyes. You don’t want to die without heirs.”
On and on Mama Angelina goes with her litany as she transforms her son’s kitchen with her magical motherly hands.

Then she stops in the middle of a sentence to look at her son, who still hasn’t said a word. Whispering, she asks him if he
has company. “There’s a woman in your bedroom? Who is she? I hope she’s not married. Did you meet her at the nightclub? What
did I tell you about women who go to nightclubs? What family is she from?”

Ati shakes his head. “Do you think,” he says, “I would have opened the door if there was a woman in my bed?”

“Ah.” Mama Angelina sounds disappointed. “You spent last night alone then? What did you do? Watch TV? All on your own . .
.” She looks at her son with pity. “Come on, we sit, I have to talk to you about something.”

“I’m going to see Pito soon.”

“Leave Pito and his wife to do their things,” Mama Angelina says, dragging a chair to sit on, “and think about your future.”

Ati sits facing his mother and taps his fingers on the table to pass the time.

“Don’t tap your fingers on the table like that. It’s not polite.” Ati stops tapping and leans back on the chair. “Don’t lean
on the chair like that, you’re going to fall and crack your head open.” So Ati stays still like a statue, his eyes on the
clock slowly going
ticktock.

“Mama?” he says at last. “And my future? It’s for today or for tomorrow?”

“When was the last time you watered your plants?” Mama Angelina asks, scanning the dying potted plants scattered in the living
room. “They look a bit sick to me.”

“Mama!”

“Okay . . .” Mama Angelina takes a deep breath. “
Voilà,
last night . . .”

Ati waits, feeling a bit anxious now.

“I dreamed,” Mama Angelina continues.

Ah, Ati is relieved. His mother only dreamed. She’s always dreaming. She could write a book about all her dreams.

“I know you’re thinking that I can write a book about all the dreams I have. It’s not my fault I dream a lot.” Mama Angelina
reminds her son that dreams are messages, and her dreams have been right many times. Like when she dreamed of Ati holding
a newborn, and a week later Ati was the godfather of Pito and Materena’s daughter. Then there was the dream of Ati speaking
into a microphone, and less than a week later, he got a job at Radio Tefana. Mama Angelina reminds her son, presently doing
his I’m-getting-bored expression, of how she dreamed of him packing his suitcase days before he moved out to live in this
apartment without a view.

“And last night,” she continues sadly, “in my dream, I saw your sister and her husband and —”

“She was yelling at him,” Ati says.

“
Non, non,
she wasn’t yelling at all, she was sitting under a tree with her husband and their eight children and they were smiling,
they looked very happy and you —”

“I was dancing with a pretty woman,” Ati chuckles.

“Not at all . . . you were crying.”

“Eh?”

“You were crying,” Mama Angelina repeats, teary now, “and there was nobody with you and you were old.” Mama Angelina takes
her son’s hand. “Ati, maybe it’s fun what you’re doing now, one woman, another woman, lots of women, but who is going to look
after you when you get old?”

“Myself!” Ati takes his hand away.

“How come you can’t stay with a woman for more than two weeks?”

“Mama, it’s not your onions.”

“And what about your political career?”

“What about it?” Ati snaps.

“Ati, listen to me.” Mama Angelina has her serious voice now. “We don’t vote for politicians who don’t have a wife, children.
A politician without a family can talk and promise things but nobody is going to believe him and . . . Anyway” — Mama Angelina
waves a hand in the air — “I didn’t come here to talk about your career, I came here to talk about your situation.”

“I’m very happy with my situation.”

“You’re happy now, but in a few years —” Mama Angelina sighs like she’s so stressed by her son’s situation. “Find yourself
a good woman, Ati.”