“So call and say something interesting!” Rita shouts, brandishing a fist. “Can we do it?”
“
Oui . . .
” This time the answer is hesitant. Something interesting? the relatives ask each other. Like what? Nothing interesting ever happens to us.
Meanwhile, Rita is looking at the crowd, trying to find someone who has an interesting story. Ah yes, Giselle. “You, Giselle!” Rita calls out into the microphone. “You’ve got an interesting story. You’ve given birth in a car three times!”
“Do you think it was interesting for me?” Giselle calls to Rita. “It was only interesting the first time!”
All right, then . . . Rita needs another example. Ah yes, Auntie Tapeta. “Auntie Tapeta!” she calls out. “You’ve got an interesting story. Your daughter meets an Australian in Tahiti, he gets kicked out of Tahiti when his visa expires, your daughter visits him in Australia and marries him so that her darling boyfriend can live here.”
“Do you think it’s interesting for me?” Tapeta is cranky. “Imagine you have a daughter, eh? She’s so clever, but then she falls in love with an Australian surfer, she leaves school to visit him in his country, she marries him (not even in the church!), then she falls pregnant and leaves Tahiti for good with her husband and your granddaughter (who’s not even ten weeks old!). Let’s see if you’re still going to think this is interesting.”
All right, then . . . Rita needs another example, but she’s running out of time.
Aue,
she thinks, let’s leave it all to destiny.
“Auntie Loana?” she calls out, looking inside the living room. Ah, she’s next to the telephone, ready to dial as soon as Ati, presenting Materena tonight, says, “
Call now!
” It has been agreed that the person who will make the first call to Radio Tefana will be Loana, since Materena is her daughter and this is her telephone.
Behind Loana is Auntie Imelda, then another elder, and another elder. All the elders are in the living room sitting in a line, waiting to spill their story.
For the moment they’re just going to switch the radio on.
“Georgette!” Rita calls. “You’re on!” Georgette, professional dancer, transvestite, and DJ, has brought her hi-fi system to propel Materena’s voice into the living room, the garden, and beyond. A reggae song is playing and a few relatives decide to do a little dance. Another song comes on, a
tamure,
and it’s party time on the veranda and in the garden.
“People!” Rita calls out. “Think about your interesting story!”
“Rita sure loves that microphone,” says a relative.
A roar of excitement greets Ati, opening Materena’s program. All the relatives are so excited because soon they’re going to hear Materena’s voice blast from the speakers. Nothing to do with Ati, even if he’s partly responsible for Materena having a chance to test her idea.
“Silence!” Rita herself is very excited, but there’s a need to calm the crowd a little.
Meanwhile, back in the Radio Tefana studio, Materena, facing Ati, is breathing deep breaths to relax. She’s so nervous. Her heart is going
thump, thump, thump.
Ati is waving one arm in front of her. “I have in the studio with me a very charming woman,” he says. “How are you, Materena?”
“Oh, I’m fine, and you, Ati?” Materena grimaces, eyeing all the people behind the glass window staring at her. They rehearsed that line yesterday afternoon, as well as speaking in front of the microphone (not too close—Ati showed Materena how), and it was also a good opportunity for Materena to get used to the earphones.
“Materena will be doing a special edition on the radio tonight,” Ati continues. “But before we go on, I must say, Materena, that tonight is quite hot, don’t you think?”
“
Ah oui,
Ati, you’re quite right about that.” Materena feels a bit more relaxed. Ati did explain to her yesterday how they’d do a bit of chitchat before beginning the program to give Materena time to relax and the audience a chance to warm up to that woman they’ve never heard about before.
“All I can say is”—Ati cackles, winking at Materena—“I hope it’s going to rain soon.”
“Oh, me too,” cackles Materena. “Rain is very good for the . . .” And for some reason Materena’s mind goes blank midsentence. For the life of her she can’t remember what she’s supposed to say now. And here’s Ati miming words at her, looking a bit worried.
Back in Loana’s house, relatives are shrieking, “The plants, Materena. Rain is very good for the plants.
Aue!
Materena, wake up!”
At the Beachcomber Hotel, Moana, outside the kitchen with one arm around his secret girlfriend, Vahine, is speaking to his mother in his mind: Mamie, the plants . . . the rain is very good for the plants.
In a house behind the petrol station, Pito, the receiver against the radio so that Tamatoa, in a phone booth outside a bar in Paris, can hear his mother doing her cinema on the radio, is saying out loud: “The plants, Materena! You always talk about the plants when it rains, and now you can’t! What’s wrong with you?”
In a house on top of a hill, Leilani, her head resting on her boyfriend’s shoulder, her radio tuned to Radio Tefana for the first time in years, is doing telepathy with her mother: Mamie, say whatever comes to you . . . You always say interesting words anyway . . . Free your mind and the rest will follow . . .
“Rain,” says Materena, “is very good for a woman’s soul.” This sentence just spilled out of her mouth.
“What?” her relatives shout in despair. “The plants, Materena!”
“You know, Ati,” Materena continues, not intimidated anymore by the microphone, the earphones, and the people staring at her from behind the glass window, “people always say rain is good for the plants, and that is true, but rain, especially when it sprinkles, is music to a woman’s ears and warms the soul.”
Totally at ease now, Materena continues to praise the rain.
When it splatters on the tin roof, it makes you feel a bit melancholic and takes you back to some happy days or to those black years you’ve had but survived because you’re a woman and
surviving
is not a foreign word to women from anywhere in the world.
Watching rain is magic. It calms the anxious spirit and the tormented soul. It gives women hope. It reminds us how strong we are. Determined. Courageous. Understanding. And with so much love to give.
Rain is a miracle. Just like a woman is.
“You know, Ati,” says Materena, thinking, I hope I’m not raving on too much—Ati’s eyes are popping out of his head—“I’m so proud to have been born a woman. And as a proud woman I’m calling on all the women listening right now to share their stories on the radio for other women to learn something and be inspired. People say, ‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ but that’s not true. Every single woman has something to say. A story. A story about mistakes, obstacles overcome, discoveries, a story. A story that will help another woman take a step forward. A story that will warn another woman before she takes a step backward. A story to reassure all of us that we’re not all alone . . .”
“
Call now
—84-27-17!” Ati, jubilant and showing Materena his thumb up, shouts into the microphone.
Back in Loana’s house an hour later, nobody can get through to the bloody radio. It’s engaged all the time and it’s making Loana very cranky.
“How many lines does that stupid radio have?” she exclaims. Some relatives have walked to the public phone, thinking that there must be something wrong with Auntie Loana’s telephone. Other relatives are quite happy just listening to all these lucky women who have managed to get through to Materena. One woman talks about visualizing her children in a tunnel of light whenever she knows they’re driving at night, to help guide them safely home.
Another woman told the story of being abandoned by her mother.
Yet another woman told about how she loves her mother with all her heart and soul, and she’ll always remember the day she had a splinter in her foot and her mother took it out with a razor blade. She remembers shouting out in pain and her mother telling her, “But stop shouting like that, people are going to think I’m hitting you! Sing a church song! And what do you want, eh? It’s hurting—it’s hurting, we’re always hurting, us women, it’s like that, it’s life, we’re born to suffer. We suffer but we don’t cry.
Au contraire,
we laugh. If we didn’t laugh, we’d be spending our time crying into our pareu. We have to be strong in life. When you fall, well, get up, go to work, clean the house, sing a happy song, go do something with your hands! And so? Do you think God is going to ask men to give birth? Do you think it’s a man who transformed himself into a breadfruit tree to feed his family? My arse! It’s not worth crying about. Let’s keep our tears for someone we love who died. Yes, then it’s worth crying.”
There are all kinds of stories on Radio Tefana tonight—funny, sad, unbelievable, so close to the truth, frightening, inspiring. It sure beats watching TV.
A woman finds her father and tells Materena all about it. Another adopts her husband’s dead lover’s baby. One confesses her fear of gendarmes (ah, Mama Teta must have gotten through). One caught the plane for the first time in her life, putting aside her fear of flying to visit her daughter living in America.
A woman gave birth in the bathroom while she was showering to be clean for the hospital, but she didn’t make it. She didn’t make it six times, actually. Her six sons just wanted to come into the world with their mother under the shower.
A woman left her husband for true love with another woman.
A woman calls to tell Materena and all the women listening that her husband uprooted a tree she’s planted just because it was dying. He didn’t even try to save that tree, he just got the machete out. The woman is sure that when her turn to die comes, her husband will turn the machine off without remorse. She won’t have the opportunity to die little by little. She’ll be executed, and then her husband will shove her dead body in a coffin and send the coffin back to her island.
After Materena talked about her garden, a woman called to ask Materena for some help with
her
garden. She was particularly interested in cuttings. Materena was more than pleased to share all that she knew about cuttings with that stranger.
Another woman wanted to talk about her beloved uncle, who died last month. She remembers there was a cane basket on top of the fridge and she’d ask him, “What’s inside the basket?” And the uncle would reply, “It’s a snake that’s inside the basket.” One day, she was about seven years old, she got a chair, dragged it to the fridge, and looked inside the cane basket. She saw a bottle of wine. She was so disappointed.
Another woman confessed how she’s always wanted to be a detective. When she watches movies and there’s a mystery, there’s a crime, she always knows who the murderer is, and it’s a guarantee that it’s the one that nobody else suspects, the one who’s really well-off and smiles all the time, he helps old ladies cross the road and everything. And she knows all about detective tricks, like how the criminal always comes back to the scene of the crime.
One woman gave her man a black eye because he said that her mother had a pitiful air, and so she threw a mango at her man and gave him a pitiful air. He told his friends and family that he’d been involved in a fight. Apparently, he was walking in town minding his own onions when, out of nowhere, four hoodlums appeared, etc. . . . etc. . . . And he got out his fists, leaped in the air and did a few karate chop-chops, etc. . . . etc. . . . etc.
Within a week of Materena’s being on air, she receives a contract from Radio Tefana.
Materena, screaming with joy and crying her eyes out, grips that piece of paper and hugs Leilani, embracing her daughter and her new life.
T
he day after Materena receives her contract in the mail, Leilani invites her for lunch in town to celebrate the wonderful event and also because Leilani has an announcement to make.
“A good announcement or a bad one?” Materena asks.
“I’ll meet you at Chez Patrick at twelve o’clock.” That’s all Leilani is prepared to tell her mother on the telephone.
By twelve thirty, at table 7, which her daughter has reserved, Materena is still waiting and looking very much like she’s been stood up by her boyfriend. She’s drunk all the water in the carafe and eaten all the olives on the plate, and she’s getting crankier by the second.
This announcement of Leilani’s better be important, she growls in her head, smiling to the people happily stuffing themselves. Meanwhile, the waiters (four in total) are busy taking dishes to tables, and none of them notices Materena’s discreet wave. She’d like more olives if possible. She only ate a little piece of bread this morning, saving herself for the restaurant food, but the waiters are so preoccupied, she understands.
Ah, la-la,
and plus it’s so hot in here. And the jazz music is a bit too loud. But the nets on the ceiling are nice, they give the restaurant a bit of a Tahitian atmosphere. Materena makes a mental note to tell Moana about the nets. He might be interested in this idea when he opens his own restaurant.
Materena wonders what Leilani’s announcement is about.
Could it be a marriage announcement? Leilani and Hotu are still madly in love (so their neighbor is always kind enough to report to Materena). As a matter of fact, last week the neighbor saw Hotu and Leilani dance cheek to cheek on the veranda. They were dancing to “A son insu je caresse son ombre.” That woman sure has big eyes and ears. Materena is not complaining.
Now, where’s that girl of mine? Materena asks herself yet again. She hopes Leilani hasn’t forgotten the rendezvous. Leilani could be having lunch in the park with her boyfriend right now, as they’ve been doing for the past two years, leaving her poor mamie stuck in this restaurant.
But wait a minute, how long is a person allowed to wait at the table for? What’s the protocol? The man with the bushy eyebrows sitting behind the cash register doesn’t look too happy, considering the glances he keeps throwing Materena’s way. He’s not doing Materena’s cranky mood any service.