“In a minute,” Tamatoa says.
“In a minute” turns into many hours later . . .
The house is packed with relatives who have come for the farewell ritual, but right this moment, Materena has her son all to herself in his bedroom. The relatives are busy eating, anyway. It’s not every day they get to eat Indonesian, Tahitian, and French dishes all at once. Materena hopes the relatives aren’t going to eat everything. She hasn’t eaten yet, and nor has Tamatoa.
Presently, he’s crying silent tears, and just looking at him is breaking Materena’s heart, but she’s not going to tell her son not to cry, that he’s a man. Crying is good for the soul, just as laughing is. You’ve got to release. If only Tamatoa also cried when he was not drunk.
Anyway, here are the rules that must be followed when you are on foreign soil and your family is on the other side of the planet.
First rule: no fighting with the locals, you don’t want to upset the wrong family. What if it’s the Mafia? And plus, it’s not nice to fight.
Second rule: no rendezvous in a girl’s bedroom, even if she tells you that her parents are fine with her having boys in their house. It’s more likely that the girl’s parents don’t know anything about it, and all you’re going to get is a gun pointed at your head, a thick piece of wood smashed across your back, or something equally horrible.
Third rule: never arrive with empty hands at a dinner even if your friend told you that his mother hates it when guests arrive with something. The reality is that hosts love surprises, and it doesn’t have to be something to eat. Flowers are great. Perfumed soaps too. Show your gratitude for the invitation. The only people hosts never expect anything from, over and over again, are the relatives.
Tamatoa nods, meaning that he’s registering the information, and Materena is very happy.
Fourth rule (still about being a guest at dinner): leave a bit of food on your plate to show the host you’re too full to have another serving. If there’s nothing left on your plate and the host can’t serve you more food because there’s no more food in the cooking pot, she’s going to be very embarrassed. She’s going to assume you’re still hungry. Eat the food even if you don’t like the taste of it, you don’t know what it is, you’ve never eaten such a dish in your whole life and it looks bizarre.
“Don’t you make anyone think I’ve been a bad mother to you,” Materena says, “that I didn’t raise you proper.”
Another nod from Tamatoa as he puts his arms around his mother.
“You’re a number-one mamie.” He sniffs.
Aue,
Materena thinks, it’s so nice when the children make such confessions, even if they are drunk. She puts her arm around her son and is about to go on with the rules when the door of the bedroom swings open.
It’s Pito, also drunk.
“Son,” he says, jovial, “come outside with the men.”
“Eh, I’m telling him about the rules,” Materena says, holding her son tight.
“What rules? What are you going on about?”
“Well, the rules! The rules when you’re a visitor, when you’re in another country!”
“Materena, it’s me who can talk about all that, okay?” With his hand, Pito summons his son to get up. “I’ve been in another country, I’ve traveled. You’ve never left Tahiti.”
“Eh, I’ve been in more countries than you, I watch documentaries!”
Pito bursts out laughing. “Come on, son,” he repeats.
And like he’s done many times before, Tamatoa abandons his mother for his father’s company.
The airport is packed. Tamatoa is the grandson of Loana, the relative who never says anything bad about anybody, and the son of Materena, the relative who is nice to everybody. By the time he’s walking through customs, he has about one hundred shell necklaces around his neck, his shoulders, in his hands. He’s less drunk than he was four hours ago (Materena made him stand under a cold shower for thirty minutes), but he still looks like he’s falling asleep. According to Pito, speaking from experience, catching a plane drunk is better than catching a plane sober. First of all you don’t get scared, and second, you sleep and so the time goes faster.
There’s crying all over the place. The grandmothers are crying, the aunties and the cousins are crying, the sister is crying, the brother is crying. The sister’s girlfriend (alias Tamatoa’s secret lover) is wailing and digging her long fingernails into Moana’s arm, scratching it too, and punching it, twisting it . . . Moana takes it all on. Anything to help his brother’s ex-girlfriend.
But everybody knows that the woman suffering the most is the mother.
Aue,
Materena needs to hold on to someone, her legs are weak, she’s going to faint in a minute. Here’s Ati on her left. No, not him, the relatives will gossip about how she held her husband’s best mate instead of her husband, even if he was closer to her than her husband, who is hiding behind a pillar several yards away.
Here’s Cousin Mori on her right.
Oui,
he’ll do.
Mori puts an arm around Materena and says, “One son leaves, another son arrives, eh?”
Materena doesn’t understand. She lifts her crying eyes to her cousin. “What are you saying?”
“One son leaves, another son arrives. Your son leaves, your daughter brings home a boyfriend,” says Mori.
“What boyfriend?” asks Materena.
“But Leilani’s boyfriend, the one with the motorbike.”
“Boyfriend?” Materena says again. “Motorbike?”
“Ah,” Mori says, realizing that once again in his life he didn’t look where he was walking. He quickly moves back to the subject of Materena’s son. What a fine man he’s going to be, that one, Materena must be so proud . . .
W
hen you’re angry and you ask questions all you do is shout and demand an answer there and then. Overreact.
Well, it’s the same when you’re sad.
Materena went so close to confronting her daughter at the airport about that boyfriend who has a motorbike, but she was too sad. It felt like her heart was being crucified.
In the days after Tamatoa left on military service, Materena moped around the house with her broom like a lost soul, brooming sad, long strokes here and there. She did feel a bit better when her son called to let her know that he had arrived in France and all was well, all was fantastic. He sounded so happy, and that was a real comfort to Materena. But it still felt like her heart was being crucified. She spent hours smelling the pillow of her son and the shirt he wore the day before he left. She inhaled the sweat, she flicked through the family album and caressed every single photo of her boy Tamatoa puffing his chest and flexing his arms, doing his big eyes and poking out his tongue, with his rooster, his kite, winking at the camera.
Cheeky boy, eh.
Aue . . .
Materena could not stop the tears and she felt so guilty. How many times had she told Tamatoa, “I really can’t wait for you to move out of the house!” after he’d made a mess of the house or come home drunk and woken her up. But she only meant next door, or the next suburb. She
never
meant the other side of the planet.
Aue,
the regrets, eh. What about that time Materena yelled at Tamatoa because he ate all the cookies? She yelled, “You think you’re the only person in this house! You think you’re the only person who likes cookies in this house! Bloody selfish!”
If Tamatoa were here today, Materena would go and buy him a packet of cookies. And not the plain, cheap cookies but his favorites. Delta Cream.
Aue,
the agony, eh!
She got lots of embraces from Pito, Moana, and Leilani.
Pito’s hug was a quick embrace. He tapped Materena on the shoulder and said, “Okay, mama, we stop crying.”
Moana’s embrace was tender and cuddly. Materena felt like a teddy bear in her son’s arms. He said, “Mamie, we’re all sad.”
Leilani’s embrace was strong and positive. She said, “Mamie . . . we’re the strongest creatures on earth, don’t forget.” Materena laughed for two or three seconds and then she got sad again.
Nobody who saw Materena by the side of the road waiting for the truck to go to work dared call out a happy greeting to her, such as, “Eh! How are you today, Cousin? You’re fine?” A nod is much more appropriate in such situations. A nod that is polite and full of compassion and that says, “I’m with you in your suffering, Cousin.” Even Loma, the cousin voted most insensitive by the family, made sure to remain low-key.
Also, nobody has been visiting Materena except for Loana, herself the mother of a son who took off to the other side of the planet for military service and stayed there. Loana came by to hold her daughter’s hands, caress her daughter’s hair, cry along, and to say, “Girl, you’ve got other children to look after. Get up and walk.” By this Loana meant: Stop the crying, full stop. It’s time to cut the umbilical cord once more.
But Materena wasn’t ready to do this yet. She had to cry for a little bit longer and remember those days when Tamatoa was a sweet little boy before he turned into a cheeky boy and, later on, a hoodlum.
It is only after a week that Materena starts to feel better. She realizes that military service is good for young men. It keeps them out of trouble. Okay then, time to cut the umbilical cord once more and get on with the day.
First on Materena’s list is to find out about that boy who has a motorbike.
No more believing Leilani’s stories that she spends two hours after school comforting Vahine because she still can’t accept that Tamatoa has left to do his military service in France instead of doing his military service in Tahiti and marrying her.
Materena marches to her daughter’s bedroom. After two knocks, she walks in just as Leilani is shoving something under her shirt.
“Mamie,” she says, scribbling in a copybook, “I’ve got a lot of homework to do.”
Okay then, Materena is not going to turn around the pot, beat around the bush. “I’ve heard you’ve got a boyfriend and that he’s got a motorbike.”
Leilani’s response is an exclamation. “Who told you?”
Ah-ha, Materena thinks, now she tells me. Materena sits on her daughter’s bed. “I just hope that you’re protecting yourself. You don’t want to fall pregnant with the wrong boy, a boy who’s using you for his pleasure. Not counting the diseases and everything.”
Leilani has stopped scribbling, and an angel must be passing through, because it’s very quiet around here. Nobody is talking, nobody is moving.
“So?” Materena says to break the silence. “Who’s the boy on the horizon?”
The silence continues until Leilani turns to her mother, who is patiently waiting. She confirms that there is a boy on the horizon and he does have a motorbike, but she can’t really call him a boyfriend.
“
Ah oui?
” And why not? Materena asks herself. He’s a married man? He’s, like, thirty? “And how come you can’t really call him a boyfriend?”
Leilani informs her mother that she doesn’t really want to be his girlfriend and she’s trying very hard to resist him, but it’s so difficult.
“
Ah oui?
” And now Materena is really worried. And why does Leilani have to resist that boy? He’s a cousin, that boy? He’s a foreigner? He’s a Protestant? “And why do you have to resist him?”
Leilani sighs a long, resigned sigh. “I know I shouldn’t,” she says. “I mean, resist him . . .” She looks to the wall, her eyes squinting like she’s trying to look at something in the distance, far away. “He’s got everything on my list.”
List? Materena is intrigued. She doesn’t know anyone in the family who has lists. The only person she knows who has lists is her boss.
Madame Colette has lists for everything: appointments with her doctor, her dentist, the headmistress, her husband, people’s birthdays, her exercises, her son’s school marks, and her dinners. Madame Colette is constantly writing lists. She’s got notepads all over the place, and she’s always stressing out because of them.
Materena never writes lists. All she knows is that . . . sometimes you remember and sometimes you forget and you decide what you’re going to eat ten minutes before the Chinese store closes. You ask around, “Hey, Cousin! What are you eating tonight?” And then you run to the Chinese store to buy the ingredients. If, for example, a cousin calls back, “We’re eating a baked chicken,” and you don’t have enough money to buy a whole chicken but suddenly the desire to eat chicken comes to you, well, you buy chicken wings. Materena has never, ever heard the relatives say, “We’re eating this because it’s on my list!”
But imagine writing a list for a boyfriend. Materena has never heard of such a thing! “List?” she asks. “What list? What’s this?”
Leilani puts a hand under her shirt, fumbles for a few seconds with her bra, and now she’s holding a folded piece of paper. Hesitating, she passes it to her mother. “Here. Read.”
“You keep pieces of paper in your bra these days?” Materena asks with a cackle. She just wants to lighten up the vibes a bit. “I thought only old women kept papers in their bra. Money, most of the time,” Materena continues as she unfolds the mysterious piece of paper. “Money and handkerchiefs.”
And with that, Materena begins to read.
My boyfriend must be a reader like me.
Materena glances at her daughter for a quick second.
My boyfriend must not be an alcoholic. One beer or two per day is fine, but not ten.
Materena smiles. That boy on the horizon sounds like a very good catch.
My boyfriend must be a nice person.
Materena nods. She agrees. One hundred percent.
Being handsome is definitely optional.
Materena reads on, agreeing over and over again. And she thinks, Who would have thought of a list like this but my own daughter, eh? It’s very clever. But it’s a bit unrealistic. When you’re in love, you’re in love, you don’t see properly. Everybody could be telling you that he’s not for you, but you believe that he is and so he is. “That boy,” Materena asks just to make sure, “he’s like on your list?”
Leilani nods, her eyes twinkling with delight. “He’s got the most beautiful body.” She sighs. “He rows three days a week.”