Authors: Célestine Vaite
“Unbelievable.” Pito finishes his beer, thanks Mori, and gets up. “Your family can say what they want, I don’t care.”
“Maybe you should, Pito.” Mori’s smile drops.
“A man can congratulate his wife in other ways. There’s no need to go to the restaurant.”
“True, Cousin,” Mori agrees, feeling friendly towards Pito again. “A bouquet of flowers, a —”
“I congratulate my wife in my own way,” Pito goes on, with a smirk that tells long stories. “And no complaints so far.”
Pito walks home, his head held up high.
You talk of a congratulation, Mori says to himself, and, picking up his accordion, he attacks a love song, the one about Rosalie
and how she left.
“
Rosalie,
” sings Mori. “
Elle est partie
. . .”
He doesn’t know why that song came into his mind. It just did.
“
And if you see her, bring her back to me.
”
W
ith her first driving lesson fresh in her mind, Materena opens her radio program at eight p.m. on the dot, straight after
Ati’s love song dedication program.
“
Iaorana,
girlfriends!” comes Materena’s cheerful greeting, followed by a special thank-you to all the women who called last night
to share their stories on the radio, moving on to the necessary technicalities such as the radio’s two telephone numbers.
Then she jumps straight into her opening story.
“Girlfriends,” Materena laughs into the microphone, “I had my first driving lesson today and let me tell you . . .
Aue
. . . this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but I didn’t have the confidence to do it until today . . .”
In fact, Materena’s foot was jumping on the clutch, she was so nervous. But she got through the lesson, managing to change
gears seven times and stall only five, and with one satisfactory reverse park in front of a snack filled with people eating
sandwiches.
Well anyway, this is Materena’s story and she now appeals to her listeners to share their own stories of overcoming fear,
their stories of moving forward and getting confident. “Let’s inspire ourselves, eh? And thank you in advance, girlfriends.”
Materena used to appeal to the male listeners too but has since given up on the masculine sex. Never once has a man picked
up the phone to ring her, in fact Materena wouldn’t be surprised if men didn’t even listen to her program.
She plays a soft song to give the listeners an opportunity to grab their telephone, then she leans back and anxiously looks
at her two assistants behind the glass, thinking, as always, What if nobody calls? She often has nightmares of this happening.
She’s in the studio waiting and waiting but nobody is calling because the movie on TV is much more interesting.
But tonight, as usual, all is fine. Her two assistants are giving her the thumbs-up, meaning, We have calls.
The first caller confesses to Materena that three months ago she got confident enough to set her ex-husband’s snack on fire,
as she’d been dreaming to do for years. She didn’t do this out of revenge and hatred, she insists. She just wanted to show
her ex how well their son had turned out. It was her way of telling him, “Do you remember what you told me when you left with
that skeleton woman who can’t cook? That my son was going to be a good-for-nothing? My son is a fireman, he has medals and
he has letters of recommendation! Who saved your snack today, eh? It’s not my son by any chance?”
Another caller got
fiu
of complaining to her husband about her Christmas present from his mother. “A cheap bottle of shampoo! Is this all I’m worth
in her eyes? Me, the mother of her grandchildren? The woman who cooks, picks up, washes, who does everything?” And the husband
would say, “
Aue,
it’s the thought that counts,” but for Materena’s listener, most of the time it’s the thought that’s the problem. So she
finally got the courage to give the mother-in-law a bottle of cheap shampoo on her birthday, her way of saying, “
Voilà,
this is how much you’re worth in
my
eyes: less than three hundred francs, one and a half packets of rice.” This past Christmas the caller got some very nice
pearl earrings.
More stories follow. These are stories of women getting themselves a new job, whiter teeth, a business, new shoes, a child,
a checkbook, a new meaning in life.
“
Iaorana,
Juanita!” The calls are still coming in. “And what’s the big change in your life?”
“I’m divorcing my husband.”
“Juanita,” Materena says as if she were speaking to a friend, “what made you decide to divorce your husband? Tell us your
story.” Materena leans back in her chair and listens.
To begin the story, Juanita would like to inform Materena and the other women listening that she’s been married for six years
and has been planning to divorce her husband for the past three years. But she kept thinking about what people were going
to say — her family, his family, their friends. And what about her marriage vows? To love and obey her husband and stay with
him no matter what, in sickness and in health, till death, et cetera. But she never said it was acceptable for her husband
to treat her as if she had the word
idiot
tattooed on her forehead.
“He’s only my husband on paper,” says Juanita. “If he was really my husband, he wouldn’t leave me at home with the kids all
the time to go surfing. Sometimes I feel that his surfboard is his wife. He tells me, ‘Surfing is my religion,’ but when he
gets his needs, it’s me that’s his religion. Get lost! And he never helps me with the house, the kids . . .
rien de quelque chose.
It’s like I’m his slave.”
Two months ago in bed, the day before Juanita’s husband went for yet another surfing holiday, Juanita told him that she wanted
to talk to him about their marital problems. Next second, he was shouting at her, “
Merde!
You are a real boil, you know? Stop masturbating your mind!” Then he kicked the quilt and turned his back on his crying wife.
So Juanita is divorcing her husband. She knows her mother will be very disappointed because she’s from the generation that
doesn’t expect much from their husband. But this is Juanita’s
life.
She wants a real husband, a real man, not a living room doll. Juanita keeps on talking and Materena keeps on saying
oui.
Her
oui
says, “I hear you, girl, go on, give me more information.” Meanwhile Materena’s two assistants behind the glass window are
slicing their throats with their fingers, meaning, Cut! Cut now!
Ah hia hia,
this is the hardest part of the job for Materena. Cutting people off, especially cutting off a woman pouring her heart out,
but Materena has to be fair to the other women calling, she can’t keep them waiting for too long. Otherwise, they’ll hang
up and switch to another station.
Ati explained when she started working at the radio that the time limit for someone to be on air is forty-five seconds because
that’s how long it takes to tell a good yarn. More than that and it’s just blabbing. Juanita has been talking for nearly one
minute and a half. Materena leans forward and softly, diplomatically, says, “Juanita, let’s see if our next caller has a story
that might help you. Keep listening to Radio Tefana, we need to help each other.”
“Pardon,” Juanita cackles. “I talk too much, Heifara always says that.”
Ouf,
Materena is so relieved Juanita didn’t get cranky, unlike one of her callers, an old woman who went on and on about how these
days old people are not respected when Materena told her (diplomatically) that her time was up.
Eh well, you can’t make everybody happy.
Materena thanks Juanita, presses the button, and is immediately connected to the next caller, who doesn’t want to give her
name and who only has one thing to say to Juanita.
“Life is not a fairy tale, the Prince Charming doesn’t stay charming forever, he turns back into a frog.”
The following caller urges Juanita not to throw the pillow out of the window and to remember what attracted her to Heifara
at the beginning of their story. Wasn’t it his surfing? The salt on his skin? Didn’t she brag to her girlfriends, “Guess what!
My boyfriend is a surfer!”?
“It happens,” the caller continues, speaking with a maternal voice, “that the thing that attracts us at the beginning is the
thing that annoys us later on, but it doesn’t mean we should divorce, my
chérie.
”
The next caller has a solution. “Speaking of pillows, I’ve been married for eleven years, and my husband is a real husband,
not a work in progress. He sweeps the floors, he hangs the clothes on the line, and he’s a father hen with the children, it’s
like he’s the one who gave birth to them!” The woman sighs like she can’t believe how lucky she is. “As soon as he does his
parara,
” she continues, “like go out with his friends, waste his money, tell the children to go away, mock my war wounds —”
“War wounds?” Materena wants to know.
“Well, my stretch marks,” the caller explains, cackling, with Materena joining in.
She continues, “So, when my man is like that, I get my bottle of ylang-ylang and sprinkle a few drops on his pillow at night
while he’s asleep.” The woman swears that the scent of the ylang-ylang does something to a man’s brain, because when her husband
wakes up in the morning, he looks at her with surprised eyes and exclaims, “Who is this beautiful woman in my bed?” After
that, he’s like hypnotized, he gives her compliments and does all that she asks. Sometimes, she doesn’t even have to ask.
It’s the world in reverse!
The lucky woman has been using that trick for ten years now, and for your information, sisters, here’s the address where she
religiously buys her magic potion twice a year.
Next morning, passing the very tiny Oils and Soaps shop, Materena finds fifty women, many with babies in their arms, squeezed
against each other and spilling out onto the footpath. There are big women, little women, middle-aged women, young women,
women who’d never heard of the magic ylang-ylang until last night on Materena’s program. Materena rarely gets to see her audience.
That is the reason she’s here. She doesn’t need a potion, her kids have all grown up. For some reason, she’s also suspecting
that the woman who called last night is inside that shop, behind the counter, at the cash register.
“Eh,” Materena asks a young woman nearby, “you’re here to buy ylang-ylang?”
“
Oui,
but it’s not for me, it’s for my sister.” She takes a step forward without a glance at this woman twice her age.
“Ah, and she has children?” Materena asks.
“
Oui,
five, but it’s not the potion that’s going to save her.”
“
Ah bon?
” The next question on Materena’s lips is, And what is going to save your sister? But you can’t ask too many questions to
people you don’t know. It’s not proper. On radio it goes, but not on the streets.
“Men are like fruit,” says the young woman with her serious face like she really knows what she’s talking about. “As the French
say, there are ripe ones and there are not-ripe ones.” She glances to Materena and nods a firm nod, meaning, yes, this is
what I think. “Potions,” she spits, “are for the superstitious. Me, I believe more in the power of the head.”
T
he main story on the coconut radio in the Mahi
quartier
is still how Pito doesn’t deserve Materena. For a start, she’s very nice compared with her husband, he hasn’t been raised
well, that one. You’ll never hear “
Iaorana,
my arse” coming out of Materena’s mouth! Also, the house where Pito lives belongs to Materena — part of her heritage from
her mother — whereas Pito doesn’t have even a handful of soil to his name. Plus, Materena still looks young, you would think
she was in her thirties, but the relatives can’t say the same about her husband — he’s not aging well at all. And now Materena
is learning to drive!
The story also goes that Materena tolerated her good-for-nothing husband for years and years because she wanted a father for
her children, having grown up without her own father, only uncles. But her children are adults now, they are living their
own lives. Materena doesn’t need Pito anymore.
Ah, just as well Pito isn’t the kind to take gossips seriously. Another man would have panicked, crumbled under the pressure,
and complained to his wife about her relatives being horrible to him. But Pito has nerves of steel. It will take much more
than gossips to knock out his confidence.
And so today, with his usual confident demeanor, Pito steps down from the truck — not in Faa’a, but in Punaauia, where he’s
from — to see how his mother is and everything; to make sure Mama Roti is still alive.
Here’s the Ah-Ka Chinese store by the side of the road and Pito instantly feels at home, because he is. He bought thousands
of Chinese lollies at this Chinese store when he was a kid. It was much smaller then, and back in those wonderful days the
owners of that Chinese store trusted the little people, they gave them credit. These days, they want their money up front.
But at least children aren’t allowed to buy wine for their grandparents anymore. Pito remembers going to that Chinese store
as an eight-year-old to buy a liter of Faragui red wine for his grandfather. He’d say, “It’s for Grand-père,” and Ziou, the
Chinese man, would exclaim in disbelief, “Your grandfather is still
alive
with all that he drinks?”
Pito stood near the banana tree over there one hundred thousand times, waiting for the truck to go to school, the market,
or to see his
copain
Ati or a girl he liked. But the old man who used to drink vodka and talk to himself beside the banana tree died — in his
bed — when Pito was about ten. He was a great-uncle, a well-known singer through the whole of French Polynesia, admired for
his tenor voice. He really had extraordinary lungs, but then his woman ran away with a gardener. End of career. The singer
became a drinker.