The Colour of Tea (20 page)

“I’m sixteen, Mama. I’m going to university in a few years.”

She keeps staring. “No, Gracie,” she says.

“Yes, I’m going to study geography. You remember.”

Now her face grows dark and she starts whispering urgently. “No, no, Gracie. You can’t do that. You’re too young; you need to stay here.”

“But you said …”

Mama can’t be interrupted. She carries on whispering frantically. “You can’t go, darling. You’re much too young.”

“I’m sixteen, Mama.”

“And besides, I need you here. You can see how it is.”

I look around the darkened kitchen. There’s nothing here but the two of us and a floor that needs sweeping.

Her voice grows more desperate. “You won’t go, will you, Gracie?” She takes my face in her palm and turns it toward her. “You won’t leave, will you, Gracie?”

“Mama …”

“You can’t leave your mama, Gracie. We need each other, my girl. You need to stay with me here.”

“I want …” Even in the poor light I can see the tears welling in her eyes, and her expression is so despairing I fall quiet. I look at the worn lipstick on her lips and the hollows of her cheeks. She has grown skinny in the last month; it makes her look older.

“Say you won’t leave.”

“Mama …”

“Promise me, Grace. Promise me you won’t leave.”

I take a deep breath and feel a heaviness on my shoulders.

“Gracie?”

“I promise. I promise …”

She lets go of my face and pats my knee. We sit in silence, staring out across the floor.

“Did you have lunch today?”

“Oh, I expect so,” she says absently.

“What did you have?”

“I’m not sure, darling. I was out. I had a million things to do. I found this blue bird’s egg, did I show you? It’s incredible. Nature’s art, Gracie.”

“I saw it.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty.”

She smiles and takes my hand. She holds it to her cheek, kisses it and sighs. Her cheekbone is as hard and pale as a chess piece under my fingers.

“How about I make us some quiche?” I offer.

She nods. “That would be lovely, darling.”

I stand up and then help Mama up too. I look across the countertop to the bag of onions.

I shake my head.

The kitchen of my childhood dissolves and becomes the kitchen in our apartment in Gee Jun Far Sing. My hand is full of broken glass. I shake it over the bin and let the pieces fall to the bottom. I pour myself a fresh glass of water and head to the bedroom, passing Pete’s dark, sleeping figure on the way. I fall into bed and put my head onto the pillow. Sleep comes quickly and with it hot and feverish dreams.

*   *   *

I am flying across a tenebrous sky, peppered with blinking stars. The wind draws its long, cool fingers through my hair.

I sigh, my mouth in a light smile, my eyes wide and wet. There is someone above me—no, he cradles me gently, like you might embrace a lover.

“Are you happy, Grace?” he murmurs. His voice runs right through me. Beyond the sphere of us there is silence, deep and still. I breathe him close, the scent of him, a sliver of his bare chest against my skin. It smells familiar. He smells of baking bread. I breathe it in deeply, let it fill me.

Suddenly we are arching upward, higher and higher as the air becomes lace-thin. Suspended for an instant before tumbling towards the ground in tight spirals. He holds me closer, and I melt into him, letting him control me and, at the same time, keep me
safe. Soon enough we are back to flying through the air in long, wide ovals. I feel light-headed and hot, like I have been kissed slowly and deeply. I glance up and see that he is grasping bright orange silk ribbons in his free hand, his other muscled arm still wrapped firmly around my waist.

“So?” he whispers again. That voice. Silkier than a touch. A touch I want on my body, my breasts. A hot shiver ripples over me. I close my eyes and let the moving air stream over the lids.
Touch me. Touch me,
I beg silently.

“Are you happy?”

“Mmm …” I moan. There is a pulsing in the core of me, that part that makes me a woman, desperate for him to put his lips against me.
Please.

Léon’s lips move to my ear as if he might say something, but instead he starts to kiss my neck. I hear my breath tumble out of me in a groan. His mouth is warm and wet as he breathes and kisses and whispers into the bowl of my ear. His full lips graze my cheeks. I yearn hungrily to feel him with my own mouth; I struggle to turn toward him.

“Careful,” he warns, but he is smiling at me, teeth ivory-pale. I reach for him, desperate, finally tasting his mouth with mine. It feels like I am pouring myself into him, into this kiss, drowning and disappearing into him. My body aches to be part of his, to feel him as part of me.

Gravity is tugging at me. Léon has only one arm around my waist. He is kissing down my neck, my body throbbing with the need to have my mouth against his once more. I want him. I want him to be mine. I bite my lip as I feel the heat and shape of him against my inner thigh and taste the salt of my own blood full of lust.

“Please …” This time I beg out loud, my voice thickened with wanting, husky and raw. As I draw myself closer to him, I slip
down against him. He catches me, his arm now tight and pressed up underneath my breasts.

“Careful,” he warns, this time a growl that makes me thirst for him even more.

But we are unbalanced, and I am falling from his grasp. I cry out, desperate for the heat and scent of his body.

“Grace!” He calls as he reaches to clasp my wrist.

Suddenly there is a rush of noise, like listening to the heart of a seashell. The sounds of a wave against a pebbled shore. Out of the darkness there comes a wall of faces with open mouths. I squint, focusing. It is a theater of people, watching me swinging from Léon’s hand. Their eyes and mouths and faces sharpen out of the darkness. A Chinese lady turns to her friend, whispering, tutting. Her face zaps into focus as she raises an arched pencil line of an eyebrow. Léon’s grip pinches, and I yelp. Then the woman is gone, disappearing into darkness. I am flooded with fear. My heart beats loudly in my ears. I beg him with my eyes,
Don’t let me go!

“Grace!” he calls from above, his accent rich and purring, his voice desperate in a way that makes me ache with need. I am falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

“Hey, hey, hey,” someone coos.

I gasp for air.

“Hey, Gracie. It’s okay. Darling?”

Pete holds on to me as I wrestle and twist. He is behind me, trying to cling on to my forearms, keep them down against my chest.

“No!” My voice is breathless and twisted.

“You just had a bad dream. It’s okay …”

It’s as though my body is electric, alive and zinging with longing. I am panting.
Léon!
my body seems to call, while I find my breath. The heaviness of my head slowly comes back to my attention, the weight and the steady thrum against my skull.

I stop thrashing and surrender to the mattress.

“What was all that about?” Pete whispers, uncurling himself from me. Blood rushes through me as if I have run a mile. I am still reeling with the spinning and tumbling of my dream, the room swinging about me in dizzying loops.
Léon.
Ribbons. Falling.
Léon.
River-blue eyes.

“Huh?”

“I’ve never seen you like that. Are you all right?”

I pull off the covers and lie on my back, naked and gasping for air. Fever rises off me, pulsing in waves. The room slows, and then settles to a comforting stillness.

I turn my heavy head to look at Pete, his brow furrowed in a frown, his eyes serious.

“I think I might be getting sick,” I answer simply. Then I swallow and turn away, my body still shivering with want, knowing that Pete’s face was not the one I had hoped to see.

Brise d’Été—Summer Breeze

Yuzu with Dark Cherry Filling

T
he air is thick and gluey with heat. It feels as though I’ve just stepped out of a scorching bath, steam clinging to the hairs on my skin. I have to blink to stop the world from slipping sideways. My head thumps with a steady drumbeat. This morning I woke up somewhere in between being completely awake and completely asleep, a place in which Mama hovered over me singing and spinning.
Paris, Paris, Paris,
she was begging.
We’ll move to Paris, Gracie. You don’t need to go, we’ll move to Paris.
The only way to shake her out of my mind was to force myself into a cold shower and then stumble out of the house.

I pass a Chinese health store and a tea shop before reaching the pharmacy. Normally I move so fast I don’t even notice my surroundings, rushing to get flour or sugar, to bank the daily takings, to drop off a cushion cover, splattered with coffee, at the dry cleaner’s. Today I can barely walk faster than Yok Lan, each step an effort that leaves me breathless. There are no bottles of vitamins in the health store, no bright posters with happy faces. Instead there are dried shark fins, the color of skin hardened to a callus, yellowy and transparent; bottles of puckered mushrooms; herbs; the smell of fish. By the front step is a miniature shrine,
red with gold writing. Incense sticks stand in an old cup, burned down to their yellow stubs. A woman inside fans herself with a magazine, staring at me blankly through the window. Her face hangs limp, bored or wearied by the heat.

At the tea shop, the aunties behind the counter are engaged in an animated conversation. They wear maroon aprons, leaning over the brass tops of the big tea containers, shaking their heads and sucking their teeth, gossiping. It doesn’t matter that I can’t hear or understand them, the postures and gestures of women judging other women are universal.
No, she is not a good mother. You are right, she has become fat. What about her husband, does he not see it? My God, what a busybody she is. Who can manage such a mother-in-law?
They seem full of energy, even if it is for slander and lopsided truths. I wonder if their tea would fix my cold but decide to use the more traditional route and head toward the pharmacy.

It is reassuringly light inside, and a man with thinning hair stands behind the counter in a snow-white coat. His hands are folded together; the few strands of his hair raked neatly from one side to the other like the sand of a meticulously maintained Zen garden. He does not smile at me; he is too busy nodding and listening to another customer. His face is awash with confusion as he concentrates on her moving mouth. She is as small as a child, but her body is that of a woman, hidden under a large hooded sweatshirt. She must be sweltering in it. Dark hair is flung out from the neck, satiny and long. She whispers urgently to the pharmacist, leaning toward him as though she might grab his lapels in her hands. Her voice rises and quivers, but I cannot hear what she is saying. Moving closer, focusing, I recognize her: the worry written in the lines in her forehead, the beautiful hair. It is the woman who stood outside Lillian’s talking to Rilla. The pharmacist drums his fingers impatiently against the glass counter.
Time is money. His pinkie finger has a nail longer than mine, yellowed at the tip.

“Excuse me,” I interrupt. “Can I help?”

She jumps when I put my hand gently against her arm.

“Rilla works with me; I’ve seen you at the café,” I murmur in explanation.

Her eyes grow wide with understanding, and she nods. “I … we need some cream, for burns,” she says with a pronounced Filipino accent. I have no doubt she is a maid or helper, taking care of a house and someone else’s children. She must have touched a hot pan, or perhaps it was one of those wild and unruly kids who come to Lil’s with their mums, swinging from tabletops, sprinting around chairs, roaring with a sugar rush. I feel a wave of pity for her. The pharmacist hears our English and motions to his young daughter, who sits on a stool sucking a lollipop. She skips up and removes the lolly from her mouth.

“Cream, for burn, hot, ouch …” I act out for the girl behind the counter, speaking loudly. She nods and explains to her father, who fetches a cream from the third shelf behind him. Printed red and orange flames lick the bottom of the tube, so we know we’ve been understood. The woman reaches into a coin purse. Her hair covers it for the most part, but I can see she has dozens of notes folded into tiny squares secreted inside. It doesn’t look like a few bills an employer would give her for an errand. She carefully extracts one note and hands it to the girl.

“I’m Grace.” I smile at Rilla’s friend and offer her my hand. She doesn’t take it.

She bites on her lip and doesn’t meet my eyes as she mumbles, “Ma’am. Jocelyn.”

“Nice to meet you, Jocelyn,” I reply.

She nods and exits with small, quick steps, eyes fixed on the pavement.

“How ’bout you, ladeeee?” sings the girl behind the counter. She talks through the lollipop wedged into one cheek. She looks like a squirrel, her cheek taut and round.

“Cold. Flu.”

She bugles a translation to her father in Cantonese, and he places the medication on the counter. I look at it for a few grateful seconds. If it works, I can be back at Lil’s in a couple of days. I worry about Rilla and Gigi managing without me. Of course they will be fine, Marjory will probably keep a watchful eye on the place too, but it leaves me feeling surprisingly empty and sick in my stomach. Lillian’s, my baby.

*   *   *

Eventually, after a few blurry days, the fever lifts. The first morning without it I sit up cautiously, worried it might be teasing me, lurking in a corner. But it doesn’t come back. Pete has already left for work, the mattress indented where he lay, sheets wrinkled. My nose runs and my throat still burns, but there is no fever and Mama has not disturbed my dreams. I get up and have a cool shower, lathering soap to a velvety mousse and sighing happily in between hacking coughs.

Rilla squeals when I come in, Marjory claps, and even Gigi cracks a grin. Yok Lan looks up at me with the softest, gentlest smile. Her face looks tired, but I am so happy to see her, radiating serenity. I put my hand on her shoulder, and she spontaneously lifts it and kisses my palm sweetly.