The Gift

A page by Rejieli Racule

NITA and I were making our beds when the booming of the first lali for school resounded across the school compound.

“Come on, girls! Hurry up!” the prefect called out. “Ten more minutes!”

As I spread the piece of masi on my bed, my grandmother’s face sud denly wavered in front of me.

She was sitting under the cool mango tree beside her small bare, engrossed in her work. I was sitting beside her, watching fascinated as intricate patterns appeared on the white masi in front of her. It was a lazy drowsy afternoon. The only movement was that of her gnarled fingers, now dipping into the can of black kesa, now pressing onto the banana leaf stencil on the masi.

“But what are you making that masi for?” I asked, not expecting any answer. She had been very patient with me. Ever since she had asked me to help her make the masi a fortnight before, I had asked her that question.

We had gone to her plantation and cut the masi plants, their stems so slender and smooth. We had stripped off the bark and soaked it in sea-water.

After a day we had carefully sepa rated out the soft, fine inner bark.

Then I had helped Pu set up her tapa board and watched her pound out the masi. Amazement had surged up in me as the narrow strips began to spread out, thinning and widening.

“U-U! Pu, isn’t it just like magic?”

I had laughed in delight.

Her eyes, half-blinded by cataracts, had smiled at me.

“Here, why don’t you try?” she had said, handing me the beater. 1 had pounded so hard, Pu had been moved to observe, “If that masi could cry, it would be howling by now!”

I had reluctantly relinquished the beater.

A few days later, we had boiled some cassava and used it to glue the small rectangular piece we had pounded out to make a piece of masi about six feet long.

NOW we had reached the last stage in its making. And 1 had asked the question again, more for some thing to say than anything else.

“Oi, it’s for you,” Pu said.

“For me? What for? I was startled.

“Ei, don’t spill the kesa,” she said, removing the can of dye from beside me.

“Sorry,” I said, wrinkling my nose as the acrid smell of the dye wafted towards me.

Must remember to ask Pu what she had made that dye from, 1 thought.

“You’ll need it,” Pu said. “It’s my present to you.”

“But I won’t need it!” I said.

“Oh, you will,” she assured me.

“Next year when you go to boarding school, your teachers will tell you to use it on your bed.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Pu. I don’t think I’ll pass the exam and, anyway, people don’t cover beds with masi.

They use sheets and bed-spreads. Ori just mats as we do. You only spread masi on beds if someone dies.”

Pu didn’t reply. She resumed stencilling the masi.

How does she do it? I wondered.

Those designs evenly spaced out, so perfectly geometrical. ‘‘About two months ago I had a dream,” Pu said quietly. “You will go to this school.” She looked at me for a long moment, a considering look. “I won’t be here when the news comes,” she said.

The next day Pu came home and formally presented the masi 1 6 my mother, saying it was for me.

Three weeks later Pu died. She was only 56.

The day after her funeral the letter containing the news that I had been accepted at Torocake Girls’ High School in Suva arrived.

“Hey, Kini! What’s the matter?”

Nita’s voice woke me from my reverie.

“You’re sick? No? Then come on!

“There’s the second lali. Miss Dunn will be after our hide if we’re late for maths!”