Materena peeps outside from behind the curtains and shakes her head with disapproval, but what is bothering her more now is to watch her youngest son crumple onto the ground as soon as his set of ten push-ups is finished.
My poor baby, Materena thinks.
“One!” Pito and Ati call out, and the brothers go on pumping their muscles again.
Moana is red in the face, sweating and suffering, not keeping up at all with his older brother, who, to make matters worse, decides to clap his hands together as he lifts his body up. Tamatoa just has to show off that he’s unbeatable.
“Ten!”
Tamatoa keeps going as his brother sags to the ground. Pito and Ati take a couple of sips.
“One!”
Aue,
Materena can’t bear to watch. “Pito!” she calls. “I want the boys inside the house for a bit of reading.”
Pito glances at Ati and shakes his head. “What did I tell you,” he says. “She’s obsessed with her encyclopedias.”
“Well,” Ati says, “we’ve got to see beyond our nose.”
“
Merci,
Ati.” Materena smiles a sweet smile to her husband’s best friend, who smiles back, winking.
“Come on, boys, chop-chop, on your feet.”
“Mamie,” Tamatoa protests, “I just want to be strong.”
“Me too,” Moana follows.
“One!” Pito begins.
The training continues. Materena can’t believe her eyes! Where’s the respect for the mother?
“Five!”
It’s like I’m invisible, Materena yells in her head. What I say doesn’t count!
“Ten.” Pito adds that he’d like now to see sit-ups. “Go and get a towel.” The boys run into the house and are back within seconds, but Materena is not going to let her boys put clean towels on the bloody ground.
“Eh, ho,” she says, grabbing the towels off her boys. “Do you think I’m a washing machine?”
“Materena, stop annoying us. Go and dust your encyclopedias and give me those towels.” This is Pito’s order. Materena marches to the house, her clean towels safely tucked under her arm before Pito has the chance to snatch them off her, and as she puts them back where they belong, an idea comes into her mind. Well, if it’s so important for Tamatoa and Moana to be strong, they can start making their own bed, washing their own clothes, and cooking.
“So you want to be strong?” Materena asks her boys the next day when they are arm wrestling at the kitchen table.
“Yeah,” Tamatoa replies, looking his mother straight in the eye and flattening his brother’s arm on the table.
“And you?” Materena asks Moana, who’s rubbing his arm. “You want to be strong?”
He nods, grimacing a little.
So far, so good. Now to Materena’s mission, but first here’s a packet of Delta Cream cookies to make sure the boys don’t run off. They’re into those cookies in a flash, and so Materena makes herself comfortable at the kitchen table and begins. “You know how Papi always says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Well, it’s not true. It’s never too late to learn new tricks. It’s only too late when you’re dead. You understand?” Tamatoa laughs his head off and nearly chokes on his cookie.
“What’s so funny?” Materena asks.
“It’s your voice, Mamie, it’s so
serioso.
”
“Well, this is a
serioso
situation.”
Both of the boys are now laughing. “Boys!” Materena can’t stop laughing either, but she better, because the cookies are disappearing fast and once they’re gone, she’ll be talking to the chairs. “Boys . . . come on . . . I just want one minute of your time, okay . . . just one minute. The world has changed. Women are doing lots of things they didn’t do in my day, like driving trucks. So men have to change too.” Materena informs her sons that women of today are only interested in men who know how to do women’s things, like ironing, hanging clothes on the line, folding clothes, sweeping, making the bed, cooking . . . Men who know nothing about these things can’t get a woman. “And I’m telling both of you,” says Materena in her
serioso
voice, “I’m not going to be your wife, okay? As soon as you’re men, you have to look after yourselves. Mama Roti gave me a man who couldn’t cook, couldn’t do zero, and I’m not going to do this to my daughters-in-law.”
“Mamie.” Tamatoa is up. “You’re on a different planet now, I’ve got things to do.”
“Tamatoa! I haven’t finished!” But Tamatoa walks away, because the last person he fears in this world is his mother.
Moana stays, because the person he loves the most in this world is his mother. “Mamie,” he says, taking his mother’s hand, “I’ll listen to you . . . so women like when men cook?”
“Oh
oui
!” she exclaims. “You want me to teach you how to cook?”
“Okay.”
Later, in front of the
garde-manger,
Moana gets his first cooking lesson.
“A good cook,” Materena tells him, “can cook anything with whatever is in the
garde-manger,
but always make sure to have cans of tomatoes and coconut milk, onions, and rice in your
garde-manger.
”
And to Tamatoa, standing at the fridge snorting, Materena says, “As for you, you can change your own bed from now on. You’re going to be fourteen years old soon, and I sure don’t want to be changing your bedsheets by then.”
I
n the Mahi family you’re never going to hear a woman say about another woman that the reason she cleans houses for a living is because she’s got rocks in her head, that she’s stupid.
For the Mahi women, cleaning is one of the best jobs to have and it is as good as any job in an office, if not better.
Cleaning houses helps you be independent (you don’t have to rely on your man’s pay so much) and, what’s more, you’re your own boss. You walk into a house, you clean, and you get out. There are no papers to sign.
The only downfall is that when you’re sick, when you’re stuck in bed on your back and you can’t go to work, you don’t get paid. But the boss still gets her house cleaned because you’ve sent a cousin to replace you for the day. The boss is happy, the cousin is happy, and even you’re happy because you didn’t let your boss down. Your conscience is clear.
It’s impossible to count on the fingers how many Mahi women are cleaners. But one thing’s for sure, Materena is the champion cleaner of them all. She’s the only cleaner in the family who’s been cleaning the same house, the house of Madame Colette Dumonnier, for more than twelve years. And that is no small achievement, considering that there are more women willing to clean houses than there are women willing to pay for that service.
So that’s why Materena is always the relative that young women thinking of a career as a professional cleaner go and see.
Not only does Materena know all the tricks of the cleaning trade, but she also knows what makes a boss really happy, so happy that even if another cleaner came tomorrow to propose her services for 30 percent less pay, the boss would say, “I’ve already got a cleaner, thank you.”
In Materena’s mind, cleaning is not only about cleaning, because anyone can clean, but not just anyone can be trusted and keep secrets. You see, a cleaner is bound to see things, and find things—things that she might be tempted to take or that are so bizarre she’d want to tell the whole population about it.
With Materena, no matter how much the relatives ask her questions about her boss, the boss’s family, the boss’s husband, the boss’s house, she has only one answer to give: “It’s not your onions.”
Other relatives aren’t so discreet.
One relative, not long ago, told the whole population about how her boss was having an affair with a man she called her architect. Apparently, as soon as the boss’s husband left for work, the lover appeared to pick up the boss. The boss would say to her cleaner, “I have a meeting with my architect, I will be back at three o’clock.” But one morning the relative (who was already suspicious of her boss’s story) saw her boss and the architect kissing like crazy in the car, and she said to the whole population (right outside the church), “‘My architect,’ my eye! We kiss our architect in the car, eh? We kiss our architect on the mouth?”
Another relative also told the whole population about her boss having an affair.
Another relative told the whole population about her boss going to the hospital to have an abortion.
Another relative told the whole population about her boss writing a very mean letter to her mother.
You’re never going to hear these kinds of secrets coming out of Materena’s mouth about her boss. She’s taking every single secret about her boss and her family to the grave. Still, she agrees that some information about the boss can be passed on to the whole population.
Just like a relative passed on the information about how her boss ate only soups. Carrot soup, turnip soup, leek soup, soup after soup after soup, soup day and night. Worse than Mama George. And another relative passed on the information about how her boss hated living in Tahiti, she hated the heat, the mosquitoes, she always begged her husband to go home where they belonged. The husband would just snap, “Enough!”
Another relative talked about her two bosses who were sisters. Their house was always clean and always tidy and the relative had to try to find something to do. But most of the time, the sisters would ask their cleaner to join them around the piano and sing. The relative always accepted the invitation. Singing is less boring than pretending to be cleaning.
Now, there’s no harm in passing that kind of information on to the whole population. But still, you’re never going to get any information out of Materena about her boss (and boss’s family, house, etc.) because, as far as she’s concerned, everything about her boss (and boss’s family, house, etc.) is top secret. The fact is that when Materena cleans, she cleans, she doesn’t snoop around looking for secrets. She only does this with her children.
What matters more to Materena is that her boss’s house shines, the clothes are washed and ironed, the books put away, the plants watered . . . Materena really takes pride in her work. She’s the only cleaner in the family who gets Christmas and birthday presents from her boss.
That’s another reason why young women thinking of a career as a professional cleaner come to see Auntie Materena, and this is what Materena tells these young women, the future cleaners of Tahiti.
First, if the young woman has only just left school because she was too bored there, Materena tells her to forget about a career in cleaning, because there’s too many cleaners as it is. Go back to school, get your degree. But if the young woman has left school a long time ago and she’s got a couple of children and a man who doesn’t have a job, or a man who’s tight with his money, a man who wants his woman to be nice to him twenty-four hours a day before he gives her one banknote, well, this is what Materena says:
Always start from the top and work your way down to the bottom.
Look for chances to show your boss you’re more than a cleaner. For example, remind her that the food in her fridge is about to go out of date, or if you see that one of your boss’s plants is not doing too well, find out why. The plant may be a plant that needs shade and your boss has planted it in full sun. Tell your boss about it. Materena has saved many of her boss’s plants that way.
Grab every single opportunity to show your boss that you’re honest. Let’s say you find a banknote in your boss’s husband’s shirt, well, don’t you go slipping that banknote in your wallet. Slip that banknote in an envelope instead and write the boss’s name on the envelope so that the boss’s children don’t open the envelope and take the money. Write a short note to explain the situation about that banknote to the boss.
Always remember that your boss is just another woman and that she’s got feelings. If you find a love letter in your boss’s husband’s pants, don’t you go showing it to your boss. Flush the love letter down the toilet instead. When Materena gets to that rule, the nieces always ask her if she has ever done this and Materena always says, “Of course not!”
All in all . . . when it comes to being a professional cleaner, Materena is unbeatable. That is why she’s always pushed her daughter to see beyond the scrubbing brush and the broom. Cleaners never recommend their children to follow their path. You’re more likely to hear cleaners tell their children, “Don’t you dare be a cleaner like me.” Materena said this to her daughter many times, and it seems Leilani understands her mother’s message.
Today she told her mother what she’d like to do when she finishes school.
She’d like to be a pilot. Materena said, “And why not? We’re not living next to the airport for nothing!” But deep down Materena thinks, “I hope Leilani isn’t going to be a pilot. Planes are so dangerous.”
Leilani would also like to be a psychiatrist. Materena said, “Ah, that’s nice.” But deep down Materena thinks, “She’s not going to have a lot of business in Tahiti—we talk to a favorite cousin or to the priest. Tahitians who pour their troubles out to a psychiatrist don’t exist.”
Leilani would also like to be a
mutoi
(She’s going to see the worst in people as a cop, thinks Materena) and a
militaire
(What about the war?). Leilani wants to be so many things. Ideas keep on coming into her mind and she can’t decide, unlike her younger brother, Moana, whose mind is set on becoming a chef.
Then Leilani asked her mother if she always wanted to be a cleaner. She was very shocked to hear her mother exclaim, “Of course not!”
“How come you’re a cleaner, then?” asked Leilani, puzzled.
Materena didn’t feel like replying to this question. Instead she went to get the washing off the line, and now, shampooing her hair under the shower, she thinks about how it wasn’t her plan to be scrubbing and sweeping for years and years and years. She visualizes herself scrubbing walls when she’s sixty years old. Her hair, all gray, is thin and falling in her eyes. And she’s muttering under her breath with a croaky voice, “Ah, scrubbing and scrubbing, a woman’s job is never done.”
But at least it pays the bills.
A
nne-Marie Javouhey is the Catholic girls’ school facing the magnificent cathedral in Papeete. It’s hidden behind a high concrete wall with an iron-grilled gate.