Free Frangipani by Célestine Vaite

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.”

On the Subject of Cleaners
    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