Tiare in Bloom (7 page)

“
Non merci!
” And the door slams shut.

Pito stands by the door, stunned. Bloody women! It doesn’t matter what we do, it’s always the wrong thing. Angry now, Pito
opens the door and heads to the kitchen. Materena is at the kitchen table, munching on a piece of bread.

“If I understand,” Pito says with a cold voice, “you don’t want me to spend my next holidays with you.”

Materena swallows her piece of bread and shrugs. “You know, Pito, I used to wish that you spent your holidays with us, with
the kids and me . . . Actually, I used to wish for a lot of things.” She brushes the bread crumbs into her hand. “Now, I wish
for nothing.”

T
his has never happened before in their life as a couple — a five-day silent treatment. Three days is the furthest Materena
has ever gone before she cracked and made some remark about the weather, giving Pito the chance to redeem himself for whatever
he did or didn’t do.

Those other times, Pito never got sad when his wife gave him the silent treatment, because he could do whatever he wanted
and she wouldn’t say a word about it. He could lie on the sofa like a statue for hours and Materena would act like he didn’t
exist. Still, by the third day Pito was always glad when it was over. It’s not much fun when your wife doesn’t speak to you.

But five days! Five days — and for what? Pito is so confused. And lately Materena has been doing a lot of sighing, not the
annoyed sighing she does with the eye rolling when she’s . . . well, annoyed.
Non.
Her sighing is deep and long like Pito’s mother used to do — a lot, in between yelling — when Pito was a child. His mother
would sigh deep and long sighs, one after another, and yell, “When the heart sighs . . . it means it doesn’t have what it
desires!”

Pito even asked Materena this morning why she was so cranky at him, and she gave him a long look, the look that says, If I
have to explain everything to you . . .

Puzzled, Pito left for work not feeling one hundred percent, and while waiting for the truck, he noticed Loma on the other
side of the road, waving a big friendly wave to him. Pito thought it was very strange, Loma waving at him like that, so he
didn’t wave back. Then she called out, “You’re still on the horizon? I thought Materena replaced you with a rich Chinese man!”
Then she laughed her head off as if it were a joke.

Luckily Pito is used to big-mouth Loma spurting out stupid remarks, otherwise he would have gotten black ideas and started
to hassle Loma for information about that Chinese man. Still, Pito’s face must have had a crushed expression, because later
on in the truck two women looked at him with pity.

As soon as Pito got to work, he put on his normal work face — the kind that reveals absolutely nothing. He never takes his
trouble to work, unlike some people he knows. As far as Pito is concerned, whatever happens at home (good or bad, especially
bad) is nobody’s onions.

Safely positioned behind the cutting machine, Pito throws himself into his work, ignoring Heifara’s miseries; each to their
own miseries
s’il vous plaît.

Now, later in the day, Pito is in the reception office to use the telephone.

“And hurry up, okay?” Josephine the receptionist says. The reception telephone is for brief messages only, not long family
legends. Pito reassures Josephine. He never talks on the telephone for more than thirty seconds anyway. He’s not a telephone
man.

“Who are you calling?” Josephine asks out of curiosity, since Pito has never used the reception telephone before.

“My wife.” That’s all Pito is going to say. Josephine doesn’t need to know that he’s calling his wife to see if she’d like
him to get her something at the market. Like taro . . . or a big juicy watermelon.

“Ah.” Josephine goes back to her typing. “Everything is all right?”

“
Oui,
of course.” Pito is firm about this.

“Ah . . . that’s good.” Josephine adds that she’s relieved to see that Materena is still her wonderful self. She hasn’t let
fame go to her head (and she’s kept her husband, who doesn’t earn much money and who’s not very intelligent, which Josephine
doesn’t say).

But, she tells Pito, Materena must have a lot of men admirers now, eh?

“Eh?” Josephine asks again.

“She’s always had men admirers.” Pito forces a chuckle. “It’s not just from today.”

“And she still cooks for you?”

“
Oui.
”

“That’s nice.” Josephine smiles. “You are very lucky. Another wife would have told you to cook your own food now that she’s
a star and she can have any man cook her any dish she likes and kiss her feet at the same time.” Josephine pauses to ponder
a little. “I hope you appreciate Materena.”

“I appreciate.” And with that statement Pito dials home.

“Tell Materena I said
bonjour,
” adds Josephine.

Nodding, Pito waits for Materena to pick up the phone, which she does after the third ring. “
Iaorana!
” Materena sings with her good-mood voice, making Pito feel very relieved.

“Materena,” Pito whispers sweetly into the telephone, his back turned to the big-ears receptionist. “I’m calling you to see
if you —” Pito stops; something is bizarre here. Materena is still talking. “I’m not at the house at the moment, or maybe
I’m just outside watering the plants, or maybe I’m at the Chinese store, but I’m not going to be too long. Leave a message
after the beep. And don’t forget to tell me your telephone number!”

Beep.
Pito hangs up.

“What happened?” the receptionist asks.

“It was a machine.”

“Why didn’t you leave a message?” Josephine does her big eyes, shaking her head with disapproval. She also has an answering
machine, she tells Pito, and she detests it when people hang up instead of leaving a message, as if leaving a message were
like asking for the moon. Josephine continues on and on about how many of her relatives have told her off for getting an answering
machine but any Tahitian with the right mind knows that when it comes to telephones, you must be selective, otherwise nothing
would ever get done. It shouldn’t be that way, really, Josephine explains to Pito, standing still like a statue at the door.
Ah,
oui alors,
people who have telephones shouldn’t have to answer their telephone praying it is someone they want to talk to and not a
cousin who needs ears for hours, eh?

“. . . Eh?” Josephine demands.

“
Oui,
” he agrees, escaping through the door.

After work, Pito decides to visit his brother Frank, and here’s the Range Rover parked in front of the house, so he’s home.
Good. Sister-in-law Vaiana is on the veranda drinking a martini with her
copines.
She’s wearing a gigantic pandanus hat and waving one hand around to show off her rings, while the other hand is delicately
placed on her chest as if to say, “I couldn’t believe it . . . they were actually talking about
moi!
”

Pito knows where to find his brother, but when you visit Frank Tehana, you must first report to Madame, otherwise she complains,
whining for days and days about his family’s lack of respect.

“He’s in his tomato plantation,” Vaiana coldly advises her brother-in-law. She used to adore Pito and call him sweet names,
“my little cabbage, my little treasure,” until one night after a few drinks, she tried to jump on Pito for a bit of beefsteak
and he pushed her away. She’s never forgiven him.

Pito sneaks in between the row of banana trees and finds his brother comfortable on a mat smoking
paka,
a family-size packet of chips and a big bottle of Coca-Cola nearby.

“Pito!” An embrace, friendly taps on the back, and a
paka
cigarette. Frank knows how to greet family. Anyone, actually.

“Your wife still thinks you’re growing tomatoes?” Pito asks, lighting up.

“I don’t talk about my plantation with Vaiana.”

“Ah. Otherwise, all is fine?”

“All is fine, little brother, and you? All is fine?”

“All is fine,” Pito says.

End of conversation. The brothers smoke away. They’ve never been big-mouths, these two. As children, Frank, the eldest of
the tribe, and Pito, the youngest, talked to each other with hands, eyebrows, eyes, and grunts, and they always understood
each other.

“Come eat.”

“Go and get me a glass of water,
ha’aviti,
quick, I’m thirsty.”

“Shhh, not a word to Mamie about my plants, otherwise I’m going to give you one black-buttered eye.”

Despite the limited
parau-parau,
Pito has always felt very close to Frank. Pito felt the same with his other two brothers, Tama and Viri, too. But then the
sisters-in-law arrived and everything changed. If Pito wants to talk to Tama he can, but only at the gate of Tama’s wife’s
house — she doesn’t like visitors. If Pito wants to talk to Viri he can, but only on Viri’s wife’s telephone — she doesn’t
like visitors. At least with Frank, all Pito has to do is report to Madame.

“You went to see Papi?” Pito asks.

A nod meaning
oui,
a nostalgic smile meaning, I still miss Papi.

Pito sighs: Me too.

Their poor father couldn’t sit for two minutes without his woman yelling at him to go and do something. It seemed to Pito
that his mother’s mission in life was to see sweat on Frank senior’s forehead twenty-four hours a day, it wasn’t enough that
he had three jobs so that she could buy herself the beautiful things she felt she deserved.

One morning a week after Pito’s circumcision, when a boy supposedly becomes a man, Pito told his father (springing to his
feet at Mama Roti’s shout “
Frank!
”) to have a rest if he wanted.

The father replied, “Son, all a man wants in life is peace.” Three months later he was dead.

After his wake, Mama Roti put their mattress next to the coffin and lay there staring at her dead husband and crying her eyes
out. She cried nonstop for two whole weeks. She sat at the kitchen table with her red wine and caressed her shiny new wedding
ring, singing the praises of her Frank
chéri
who had married her on his hospital deathbed. “My love, come back to me,” Mama Roti lamented. “I’m the sky without stars,
the tree without roots, the flower without petals.”

Pito’s ears were hurting. For him, all of this was hypocrisy. His mother was just repeating words from a song.

Pito digs a hand into the packet of chips his brother is holding out to him, thinking, what a miserable life his father had.
Then again, maybe he was just one of those men who can’t function without a woman to issue commandments and instructions.

“Huh?” says Frank, handing Pito the bottle of Coca-Cola.

Pito takes a sip, relieved he hasn’t turned out like his father. Unlike his three brothers, who can’t fart without their wife’s
permission. Ah true, he nods to himself, he can be proud. He fought hard to be where he is today as the man of the house.

But did he really? Or did he just slip into this man’s act because Materena let him? Because . . . well, because she’s not
the kind to shout and order people around like his mother.

Now that the
pakalolo
is taking effect, Pito realizes quite clearly that Materena is everything his mother isn’t. To begin with, she’s a very good
cook, and she’s tidy and neat. She smiles a lot, she’s patient . . . and she doesn’t judge people. She is, without exaggerating,
the most loving person Pito has ever known in his whole life.

Later, walking through the door of his house, spaced out a bit but very relaxed, Pito finds himself wishing his wife
would
yell at him for once. He wants to know what he’s done wrong.

M
aterena bumps into Cousin Tapeta on her way into the Chinese store; Tapeta, holding breadsticks, on her way out.

“Cousin!
E aha te huru?
” Two big kisses on the cheeks follow, with a big warm hug.

“And how is our Rose in the country of kangaroos?” Today it’s Materena’s turn to begin the interrogation about the absent
daughters.

“Kangaroo, kangaroo,” Tapeta laughs. “I tell you one thing, Cousin, the only kangaroos Rose sees are on postcards and tea
towels. Otherwise, my Rose is still walking around Sydney with baby Taina-Duke in a pram, hoping to bump into someone from
the island.”

“
Ah oui?
And?”

“So far, because our Rose is counting, she’s bumped into twenty-five Maoris and twelve Samoans.”

“Really? No Tahitians?”

“All the Tahitians live in Tahiti or in France, my poor girl, eh? But the story I wanted to tell you today, Cousin, is that
last Saturday Rose drove to the Fijian market to buy a breadfruit.”

Materena cackles. Rose used to complain about the breadfruit diet, and Materena would tell her niece, “One day, Rose, you
are going to love the breadfruit like your mama and I do.”

Well, after years growing up complaining of the breadfruit diet (even if Tapeta has always gone to great lengths to vary the
menu, alternating it from fried breadfruit to barbecued breadfruit to baked breadfruit, et cetera), Rose suddenly felt the
urge to reconnect with the food of her childhood. Her stomach yearned for breadfruit. Her mouth could even taste the warm,
soft flesh of cooked breadfruit when it melts on your tongue and you want to eat more even if you’re full.

But when she finally got to the Fijian market after the three near-miss accidents (because, so Tapeta explains, they drive
on the wrong side in Australia), Rose was very disappointed to see a yellow squashy thing that didn’t look like a breadfruit
at all. In her experience as a Tahitian, breadfruit is green and firm, and it’s round like a little soccer ball or a big mango.
It’s not yellow, and it doesn’t have a bizarre shape.

She asked the shopkeeper, “Are you sure this is a breadfruit? It’s such a bizarre shape.” Next thing, the little Fijian man
was yelling at Rose, “Of course this is a breadfruit! Do you think I don’t know what a breadfruit looks like?” In the end,
Rose bought the yellow squashy thing, baked it, ate it, and spat it out. She’s not sure if the weird taste had something to
do with cooking the breadfruit in an electric oven instead of gas, or if that breadfruit was just plain rotten. “What do you
think, Cousin?” Tapeta asks.