The day my daughter became...
The day my daughter became an official woman by Tahitian standard - when a girl has her period for the first time - I cried my eyes out as my mother had done and sat with Turia at the kitchen table for the Welcome into Womanhood talk. It generally starts with, "Don't wash your hair during your period otherwise the blood is going to turn into ice and you're going to be mad."
When my mother told me this I was quite intrigued (Blood turning into ice? How could this be?) But I didn't say a word and listened as my mother went on. "Don't touch plants and flowers otherwise they're going to die. Make sure to rest because you lose litres of blood during your period."
The Welcome into Womanhood talk also briefly covered curtains, what to do when someone gives you something in a bowl, moving on to papers (degrees), cousin with cousin being strictly forbidden and contraception, contraception, contraception. My mother, professional cleaner with a vision and single mother of four children, didn't want a repeat of her life story.
Back to my daughter. "What?" she laughed. "Blood turning into ice? Are you mad? Litres of blood? Are you trying to be hilarious?" Turia left the kitchen table before I got to the curtains bit.
Meanwhile the same phenomenon was happening back home with my cousins and their daughters and I thought, there's a book! Excited, I began writing FRANGIPANI about a mother/daughter relationship.
The plot was: a girl becomes a woman and starts to dismiss customs, too easy! But as the writing progressed and my relationship with my daughter alias Her Majesty grew challenging, I replanned the book. It now began with the daughter's conception.
Months later I put the book on hold. It had become way too emotional to write it. It made me relive very important events of my life like the birth of my daughter with me trying my best to abide by the Tahitian giving birth rules (no crying, no yelling, no swearing). My mother buying me an encyclopaedia set because she couldn't keep up with my questions anymore: Who started the French Revolution, what is the medical terminology for the neck? Who knows! She was much more comfortable with my questions about inventions: Who invented the broom? A woman of course!
Anyway, there were emotions galore. My mother received a lot of phone calls from me thanking her for being such a good mother and sorry I criticized your favourite priest. Sorry too for all those times I dismissed you with the back of my hand which my daughter was now doing to me.
Soon it became imperative that I wrote FRANGIPANI and I was off, no holding back, writing till the early hours of the morning, pouring out all my emotions as a mother and a daughter into the novel and reminding myself that I was once the fruit that wanted to fall as far as possible from the tree.
FRANGIPANI is dedicated to Turia - my ally, my inspiration.
My daughter still inspires me in many ways.
Copyright © Célestine Hitiura Vaite
When we meet Pito in...
When we meet Pito in Breadfruit, he's in his thirties. In Tiare in Bloom, Pito is in his forties, and it's time for some serious changes.
The idea to write my third novel in the Materena trilogy from Pito's point of view came to me after one of my closest friends asked, "What's your next book about? What about Pito? Will we ever hear his voice? What's in his head? Sure, he's sexy, but what else have you got, Pito? Talk to me, Pito."
And I thought, Of course! I will put myself under Pito's skin and write from his point of view. I will redeem him. I will make him shine!
The next question was, How?
Pito likes to go out drinking with his copains, well, not anymore, Pito, because I'm breaking one of your legs. That way, you're going to be bedridden and see what a loving wife you have looking after you and everything. But I could see Pito hobbling out of the house with his other good leg, so I broke both his legs.
There.
So here was Pito, stuck in bed and talking a lot of wind talk to Materena, and after two chapters, he got on my nerves.
Time to get out of bed, Pito!
Next, I thought that a separation might work better. I wrote the chapter of the separation, with Materena banging pots and pans and chucking Pito out with his ukulele, lots of drama, as you can imagine, but I'm Tahitian, I can do drama easy.
Poor Pito, here he was, sobbing on his mother's sofa, but next he was having a party, going on, Woohoo! I escaped! Vive la liberté!
Pito's redemption looked like it wasn't going to work, so I put the idea aside, gave my house a big cleanup, and opened myself to the universe.
Not long after, I went home to Tahiti for my family injection and work, and who do I bump into by the side of the road but my cousin George with his newborn granddaughter, and what a transformed man my cousin was! Long gone was the tough coconut-head George, who wanted nothing to do with his children because beer with his copains sounded so much better and because that's what real men do.
And because our culture allowed him to. It's almost like, as a grandfather, a man is finally free to show his sensitive nature, it's culturally acceptable, people aren't going to think he's a mahu.
Cousin George wasn't the only man transformed in my neighborhood. I was, at the passionate age of thirty-eight years old, a great-auntie to a few bébés.
I came back to Australia thinking, That's it! Pito, my friend, you're going to be a grandfather.
Next question was, Okay, which one of his three children is going to have a baby?
It couldn't be Leilani, non, she was busy studying, and I had other plans for her, no way I was going to make her fall pregnant, and it couldn't be Moana, he's such a sensitive character. I just couldn't picture Moana as an absent father. This meant that Pito wouldn't have much to do at all, except say, "Here I am, give me the baby, I'm going now, here's your baby back."
Tamatoa, then? In France doing military service . . .
I was very conscious to be careful with Pito's transformation. It had to be gradual and real. None of the "he wakes up one sunny morning and he's a new man" kind of thing. It had to be believable, and that is why his granddaughter, Tiare, arrived in his life the way she did. She couldn't have arrived any other way.
And I knew, I knew in my heart, my soul, right down to my blood vessels, that I was on the right track when I burst into tears writing the scene when Pito puts his three-monthold granddaughter to bed.
That was the moment I said to myself, "Girl, you're falling in love with Pito here, keep writing . . ."
Tiare in Bloom was the easiest of the three books to write; nine months compared with three years with Breadfruit, and two with Frangipani.
And I sure had a lot of fun.
Copyright © Célestine Vaite
