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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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Frangipani
by Celestine Vaite |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Mothering Celestine Vaite’s
debut novel, Frangipani,
is the story of a mother-daughter relationship in The newspaper is on the
kitchen table opened to page 17. The ad is below the winning numbers of last
week’s tombola It’s in a square with a postal box
address in capital letters. It’s an ad for a position as a cleaner. Materena, six months pregnant, has decided to
apply for it. She feels it’s time to get back into the workforce. “There’s going to be a
tough battle,” says Loana, who’s come to help Materena write the letter. “The whole island has seen
that ad.” Meaning Materena won’t be battling just against the relatives. That’s the problem when an
ad is in the newspapers and not taped to the front window of the Chinese
store. What’s more, the ad is below the winning numbers of last week’s tombola. There’s going to be a tough battle,
all right; but then again, Materena points out to
her mother, the position is not just for a cleaner, it’s for a professional cleaner. “Where’s the difference?”
asks Loana. “A cleaner is a cleaner. She cleans,
she scrubs, she mops.” “Oui, but
it says here Professional Cleaner.” “Professional
doesn’t mean anything,
Materena! It’s just a word.” Materena nods in agreement, but in her mind
there’s a big difference between a cleaner and a professional cleaner. She’s
not going to start an argument with her mother about the meaning of the word professional, though. She didn’t ask
her mother over to argue. She asked her mother over to help her write the
letter of application. That’s what Madame Colette Dumonnier wants. She wants a letter, a reference, an
interview. She wants a professional cleaner for two years, and there will be
a contract. This is highly unusual.
Most Frenchwomen don’t have contracts with their cleaner. They hire and fire
as they wish. And cleaners don’t mind a loose agreement. They’re free to walk
out the door the day the boss starts to be too bitchy, the day they decide
they’re flu of cleaning houses, and anyway, they prefer to clean hotel rooms
and meet tourists. All right, back to the
letter. Materena rubs her hands together. She’s never written a
letter in her life, but it doesn’t mean she can’t begin today. In her
opinion, writing is like talking, except that she has to worry about spelling
mistakes. Materena bought a dictionary today to
make sure her letter is perfect. She also bought a felt pen and nice writing
paper. “Dear Madame Colette Dumonnier?” Materena asks,
looking up to her mother. Loana gives her approval with a sharp nod
and watches her daughter neatly write it down. “Now, first sentence: I’m a
cleaner.” Materena grimaces and tells her mother that it
is such a weak first line. Why should she tell Madame Colette she’s a
cleaner? If she’s applying for the position as a cleaner it is because she is
a cleaner, non? Why tell Madame Colette Dumonnier what she already knows? “Materena,”
Loana snaps, “have you lived longer than me? How
many letters have you written in your life?” “Mamie. “Non, just
tell me.” “Zero?” “I’ve written three letters
in my life, okay?” Oui,
true, Materena thinks, but they weren’t letters to a potential
boss, they were letters to a potential lover. It’s very different, you can’t
compare. But Materena doesn’t say this to her mother, it is only going to make her cranky. “And what do you want to
say in the first line?” asks Loana. “I don’t know.” “Well, what about, How are
you today?” Loana says. How are you today? Materena thinks. Non. It doesn’t
sound professional, and it sounds too much like she’s trying to be friendly. “What about, I hope all is
well with you?” suggests Loana, seeing Materena’s reaction. Materena
isn’t happy with this suggestion either. “My name is Materena. I’m responding to an ad in the Journal?” Materena puts her pen down and thanks her
mother for all her wonderful ideas. Loana gets up. “If my ideas are so
wonderful, how come you’re not writing them down? Aue, you write your letter yourself. I’ve got plants to water.” By nine o’clock that night Materena is still searching for her first line. The first line in a letter
is as important as the first line in a story. In Materena’s
experience as a listener, when people tell her stories, the first line can
make her think, I can’t wait to hear the rest of the story, or, What am I
going to cook for dinner tonight? Then again, Materena
knows many stories that start with a weak line only to become wonderful
stories later on. You never know with stories. But when
you’re writing a letter for a job you really want, you’ve got to instantly
win over the person reading it. When you’re writing a letter for a job you
really want, you’ve got to be prepared to spend hours and hours on it. Materena wants that job. She
can clean with her eyes closed and she doesn’t mind the two-year contract. A
two-year contract means she won’t get fired the day she goes into labor. It
means Madame Colette Dumonnier understands that
when a woman has a baby, she can’t work for at least two weeks because she’s
got to recuperate from the birth and take care of all the Tahitian Welcome
into the World rituals. Madame Colette Dumonnier
is also going to understand that Materena will be
taking her newborn to work for a few months. If Madame
Colette Dumonnier understands all of this, Materena really doesn’t mind having a two-year contract
with that woman. Pito lets Materena collect his pay these days, but when your man
lets you collect his pay, he expects to eat what he likes to eat. He expects
to have razor blades available when he shaves. He expects, expects, expects.
And when you buy yourself a tiny little thing, like a pair of cheap plastic earrings,
you worry he’s going to be cranky with you, he’s
going to ask you how much the earrings cost, etc., etc. It’s quite
nerve-racking spoiling yourself even a little with the money your man lets
you have. Well anyway, for Materena it is. She’d
like to be able to buy things without feeling guilty: lavender-scented soaps,
a two-sided vinyl tablecloth reduced by 50 percent, and so forth. Work is health, that song says. No work, eat stones. Okay then,
first line. The first line has to make Madame Colette Dumonnier
exclaim, “I don’t need to interview twenty-five people, I’ve found my
professional cleaner!” Materena thinks and thinks. . . She’s
thinking so much she gives herself a headache. It is now nine thirty. How
hard is it to come up with a line that has less than ten words? You stupid, Materena tells herself as she gets up. She grabs the
broom. She’s got to do something with her hands to help her think clearly.
She brooms, mops, scrubs the bathroom, wipes the kitchen walls . . . she
rearranges the garde-manger. It is
twenty to one in the morning when, finally, the line Materena
has been searching for comes into her mind. All excited, Materena
sits back at the kitchen table and writes: “I’ve been cleaning houses since I
was eight years old to help my mother.” That first line, the magical line,
unleashes the rest of the letter. Materena writes
away furiously. She’s going to check the spelling later on. She writes
that people can eat off her mother’s floor. She says how the cleaning of a
house always starts from the top and not the bottom, how a professional
cleaner must be able to keep secrets because she’s bound to see things, find
things, hear things, things that don’t concern anyone else but the boss. She
writes that she’s six months pregnant and all is well with her and the baby. Once she’s
satisfied with her words Materena checks the spelling
and writes a clean copy. And another. And another. Until she’s finally happy
her letter is as perfect as she can possibly make it. Next
morning, Materena kisses the envelope containing
the very important letter before posting it with the words, “Okay, letter,
off you go. Good luck.” The
waiting begins. . . One day, two days, four. A whole week. Each
day when the postman approaches, Materena’s heart
starts to go thump-thump with hope.
When the postman walks past her house Materena’s
heart goes thump-thump with
dejection. By the
second week Materena is sure Madame Colette Dumonnier threw her letter in the trash the second she
read it because it was so stupid. She didn’t care that you could eat off Materena’s mother’s floor. Loana says, “It’s God’s plan for you not to work at that woman’s house.
God always has a plan.” This isn’t
making Materena feel any better. She’s thinking, If I can’t even get an interview for a cleaning job,
what am I good for? Just as Materena is about to give up on Madame Colette Dumonnier, the postman slides a letter under the door. Materena shrieks with delight, does a little dance with
her son, rubs her belly, and tells her daughter, “Eh, girl? Guess what? Mamie has got an interview!” She smells the letter, waves
it in the air, she puts the letter on the kitchen table and looks at it for a
while. What if
Madame Colette Dumonnier has written to say thank
you, but no thank you? Ouh, that is the last time Materena is applying for a job in writing! She much
prefers the usual system. You stand in a line with all the applicants, you
talk to the woman who wants a cleaner, you get told
on the spot if you have the job or not. There’s no waiting in agony. Materena has applied for a
position as a cleaner three times that way and she was successful three
times. For some reason Frenchwomen like the look of her. They like the fact
that she dresses like a cleaner. She doesn’t wear short dresses and makeup.
She doesn’t look like a cleaner who steals rich husbands. One of Materena’s bosses went back to her country, one boss
moved to another island, and the other cried when Materena
resigned so that she could be a full-time mother. Materena opens the envelope,
sighing with anxiety. Inside is
a two-page letter. Materena wonders what Madame
Colette Dumonnier has to tell her. She glances at
the messy writing, the words crossed out with a line, the spelling mistakes,
the exclamation marks. She reads that Madame Colette Dumonnier
has been in Many
people here shouldn’t be holding a driver’s license! she
continues. Not many people here wear shoes! The cemeteries are rather
splendid! Many people here go to church! Women here have a lot of children!
Men here drink a lot! The sound of the ukulele is rather nice! The mosquitoes
here are very vicious! It is very hot here! Anyway,
she also writes that Materena was the only person
who responded to the ad. And since Madame Colette Dumonnier
is only days from going into labor with her first child, Materena’s
got the job. Congratulations. The address is. . . See you on Monday. There won’t
be any contract, as Madame Colette Dumonnier is not
sure she’ll last that long on this strange island. Vaite excels at story telling, and at
bringing characters to life. Frangipani
takes readers to a place that’s likely to be unfamiliar, and then she injects
her characters with behavior that will be familiar to readers. The strong
women characters will appeal to many readers. Steve Hopkins,
July 26, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the August 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Frangipani.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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