The Colour of Tea (5 page)

The doorman looks up when I get out of the lift dressed in tracksuit bottoms, T-shirt, and runners, rumpled but awake and moving. I wonder if he is surprised to see me at this time. Or at all. His gaze follows me as I walk out the glass doors.

Despite the blue sky, the air smells of exhaust fumes and is filled with the noise of brakes and horns. The morning sounds of going to work and taking the kids to day care. Two destinations to which I will not be going. I long for a quiet English park or a sandy Australian beach as I walk past a woman still in her pajamas, slurping congee off a spoon. She looks up at me with a vacant, drowsy stare, then drops her head to concentrate on her meal. I’m relieved she is not interested in me. I can feel so self-conscious here. So pale and tall. Too foreign. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been growing more and more foreign over the years. Like I’ve been taking steps away from myself. First escaping to Australia, then back to London. Now here. China. I look at the shops on either side of me. None of them is open at this time; I made that mistake early on. They don’t open till around ten, if not later, and they close late too. You can wander into a shop at ten at night and the shopkeeper will still come bounding out from a back room,
wiping rice and soup from his lips, ready to serve you. But at this time of the morning, the corrugated-iron shutters are down, like tightly closed eyelids.
SORRY, WE’RE SLEEPING
, I imagine the sign in Chinese to read.

A few blocks away there is a school, a small playground in one corner. I try not to look, but I’m drawn to it. The playground is small, concrete and sad. It has a strange assortment of miniature plaster replicas of famous landmarks. There is an Eiffel Tower, a knee-high Sydney Harbour Bridge, and a lopsided London Bridge. Little pieces of my life, as if placed there just for me. I curl my fingers through the wire loops of the fence. The playground is empty, all the children now in class. Barren—no grass, no children, no squeals of laughter. I make myself walk on quickly, one foot in front of the other, trying not to cry.

I pass the bakery on the corner, the smells hitting me before I reach the shop itself. They are thick and sweet. Cars are double-parked down our street, locals dashing from the passenger doors to pick up their breakfast. A long queue snakes from the entrance. Inside there are piles of pork buns, slices of dark honey cake, rolls topped with pork floss, bread with ham laid on top and stuck fast with melted cheese. It is a different smell from bakeries back home. I tried a loaf of bread once, but the slices were thin and sugary.

A few blocks from the school I stop and take a long, slow breath. I am not crying. The moment has passed. I look around me; as if the urge or emotion might just be standing there, ready to surprise me. But there is nothing. Warm stillness. A breeze skates around the corner and lifts hair from my forehead. A taxi sails by; an old lady with a graying bob stares out at me. I realize I am only five blocks or so from Supreme Flower City. I can see it in the distance, iris purple, skewering that cornflower sky. In front of me, there is the building site for a new international school and
a residential building in faded sage green. The sun is starting to heat up; I hear the sound of a drill making an effort. The construction site is not yet crawling with workers. There are a couple of men, but they are still rubbing their eyes, scratching their necks, and glancing around as if waiting for a supervisor to arrive.

One of the men notices me from where he is sitting up on a piece of scaffolding, swinging his legs. He is shirtless and smoking a cigarette. I know now that it is okay to stare here, but it still makes me feel nervous. Those dark eyes are unapologetic, as if asking, “What makes you so special?” Below him a dog, covered in mange, bits of rice soup stuck to his snout, gives me a canine grin, lips stretched back from his teeth and tongue hanging out to one side.

Mama might have gone to talk to the man. It wouldn’t have bothered her that he was half naked or that he couldn’t speak a word of English or that his dog looked like it was carrying a hundred different skin infections. She was a fund-raiser for Greenpeace once. She’d carry her sign-up sheets and clipboard wherever we went. She could talk for hours about harp seals or nuclear testing. She could describe a Japanese whale hunt in such gory detail it was as if she’d been standing on the deck of the ship herself. Her enthusiasm was electric—exhilarating and, under the wrong circumstances, slightly terrifying. Men signed up more often than women. It was Mama and not Greenpeace that did it. Especially in warmer weather, when she wore her hair loose and her skirts long. She looked as pretty as a fresh autumn leaf just fluttered to the ground. The kind that makes you think of days with cool breezes and walking hand in hand with someone you fancy.

I look back at the man on the scaffolding as he picks a piece of tobacco from his lips and spits on the ground below. His empty-eyed stare reminds me of Mad Martha. Mad Martha who used to wander outside my high school collecting soft-drink cans and
muttering about Our Lord Jesus Christ. I don’t think anyone knew her real name. The girls teased her, threw their cans over the fence for her to chase, laughed at her woolly hair and wobbling, glassy eyes. She spooked me, and I didn’t go near where she usually was, until the day Jennifer Beasley came running up, an expression of urgency on her face.

“Your ma is down by the fence with Mad Martha,” she said breathlessly, with all her fourteen-year-old lust for gossip. I knew before I got there it was going to be a scene. Girls were bunched up along the fence line—all high socks and giggles. I could hear Mama shouting. Something about being ashamed of yourselves and what would Gandhi do. I’m not sure my classmates knew who Gandhi was, but they were clearly amused. I peered over the shoulder of a girl with a blond spiral perm. Mama was holding Mad Martha in an awkward sideways hug. Her chin was thrust forward as she spoke. Poor Mad Martha looked bewildered, squinting out from Mama’s armpit.

“If we all took an eye for an eye …” Mama declared.

Martha looked a little frightened, like Mama might be about to take one of hers.

“The whole world would end up blind!” Mama finished theatrically.

The crowd erupted in girlish laughter and twittering. Somebody actually applauded.

Perhaps Mama saw the red of my hair above the green-jersey-clad shoulders, because she called out, “Grace? Gracie, dear?”

But I had slunk back into the crowd. And then Mama was walking away, Mad Martha under her wing. The crowd cheered as another can went sailing over the fence and skittered near their feet.

“Mad Martha and her mate Barking Bertha,” some girl with dark eyeliner joked. I caught Jennifer giving me a half-pitying,
half-delighted, wide-eyed look. I ignored her. If it hadn’t been hard enough to make friends before, with my secondhand uniform and chin full of bad skin, it was near impossible now. I would spend the rest of that year in the warm embrace of the library. Surrounded by piles of French cookbooks and out-of-date travel guides to far-flung places. Africa, Greenland, Australia, China.

The building site man breaks his stare and scratches his armpit. Perhaps I should head back home to bed. The air is humid and thick, and I feel worn out. Facing me is the courtyard of an apartment complex, three apartment blocks arranged around it in a U shape, all clad with green tiles that are chipped and graying with age. Most of the windows are covered in rusting metal grilles, off which damp clothes hang. I walk into the courtyard to look at the small businesses which occupy the ground floor, though most seem to have moved on some time ago. One looks like a travel agency, posters bleached and peeling against the glass. Another is a beauty therapist called Depil House. There is a blackboard outside advertising a sale on Havaianas flip-flops, a drawing of a single flip-flop carefully executed in lime green chalk. A barber must have worked here once, but the shop is closed up, the windows silty. A striped pole still rotates drunkenly.

There is only one piece of writing in English, and it catches my eye. It is handwritten at the bottom of a fresh sheet of white paper stuck to a window, topped first with Portuguese and then little black Chinese characters.
SALE. SHOP WITH OVENS. GOOD PRICE. OR TO RENT. PHONE
: 6688 3177.

I peer through the murky glass into what might have once been a café. Cane chairs are stacked against a wall. The floor is covered in white tiles with little black diamonds in the center of each group of four. They are filthy with a sticky-looking dust. At the back of the room is a counter, a Portuguese flag hanging behind it. The top right-hand corner has come unstuck, so it sags
down from that side. I step away from the window and look back at the sign.
SHOP WITH OVENS
—there must be a kitchen back there, I think.

A sharp voice slices through my loose thoughts. Someone is yelling in Cantonese. I look up, and an old woman in floral pajamas is leaning out her window. Her face is twisted in disapproval. She jabs her finger in the air, shouting something in Cantonese. I can feel awkwardness creeping over me. Not knowing the language makes me feel clumsy and stupid.

“Sorry!” I call out in a strangled voice, raising my palm in an apologetic wave.

Taking a few steps backward, I stumble. My bum makes a thick, dull smack against the concrete.

“Shit.” I don’t look up in case the woman is smirking at my fall. I stand and brush the dirt off the seat of my pants. My face burns with embarrassment, and I move away from the shops. Just before I leave the courtyard, I turn one last time to look at the sign. It stares back at me, pale as a dove’s wing on the dark, empty window. I put my head down and point my shoes toward home. A few steps on and I hear another voice. Laughing. I glance over my shoulder. Only then do I notice another woman leaning out on her balcony, in the block opposite the woman in her pajamas. She is calling back and pegging up shirts and trousers. She shakes out her wet clothes, grunting and nodding to her friend across the way. I realize then that they are just talking to each other, nothing to do with me at all.

Somewhere inside there comes the sound of Mama’s voice, laughing. “Oh, Gracie, you need some courage, girl; some of your mama’s shamelessness.”

The shamelessness that was always getting us into trouble, her and me both. The shamelessness that had us packing for Paris to make our fortunes or holding midnight picnics in Kensington
Gardens. The less I had of that the better. Or so I had always thought. I chew on the inside of my lip as I walk home. Wishing my cheeks weren’t now as red as my hair.

*   *   *

“It won’t take long.”

There is an almost imperceptible pleading in his voice as he lays a fresh shirt on the bed. I look up from my book.

“It’s a work thing. It’ll look weird if I’m there alone.”

Again,
I imagine him adding.

“They want to meet you, Grace.”

Unemployed, infertile, waitress—wife. Yes, I am sure they do. I reply: “I don’t know. I don’t have anything to wear.” It’s at least partly true. I don’t buy clothes for going out to cocktail parties, probably on purpose.

He takes a black dress from the wardrobe, runs his hand over it as if I were in it already. Down the side where my thigh would be. I haven’t worn it since the Christmas before last; I don’t even know if it will fit.

“How ’bout this?”

I turn back to my book and shrug, but feel his eyes on me.

When he goes into the shower, I stand up and touch the dress, lying next to his shirt on the bed. It’s cool, with a wet kind of sheen like a seal. I take off my clothes and slip it over my head. It fits. I run my hand through my hair and think of Mama again. Now, she had some party clothes. Her wardrobe was always filled with the brightest rainbow of silks and satins. I prefer blacks and neutrals; they go with everything. I draw in a deep breath.

“I’ll go,” I say. Not loud enough for Pete to hear over the watery roar of the shower, but loud enough to convince myself.

*   *   *

I find myself hiding in a candlelit corner as far as possible from the DJ, bar, and crowds. I can see Pete over some heads, a little gathering around him, faces thrown back in laughter or leaning in as he whispers some story. Every time the waiter with the cheese platter comes by I take two or three cracker loads at a time. I give him a polite smile, hoping he can guess I once did his job and I know his feet hurt like pins are being driven through the heels. The expensive cheeses are salty and soft against the crispness of the crackers, and I realize how hungry I am. How little I have been eating these past weeks. Perhaps the waiter can sense this too; he begins to make a beeline for me each time he comes from the kitchen with a new plate. Goat, blue, Brie. Soothingly thick and creamy in my throat. I am grateful to be ignored in this nook of the room; no one notices my feasting. They are all concentrating on saying the right things, laughing at the right times, and smiling broadly to show how interesting everything is. These banal scenes are replicated all over the room.

A slender, gentle-faced Chinese woman breaks out of the circle around Pete. She glides my way. My stomach twists as I brush crumbs from the skin of the dress. I angle my body away from her and look out the window with what I hope is a casual glance.

“Grace? Grace, ’ello, I am Celine. I just met your ’usband, Pete. He said you would be standing somewhere ’ere.” A slender hand extends into my view. The woman has such an unnervingly beautiful French accent that I am unable to resist turning to stare at her. The sound of it gives me a little jolt, like remembering something from long ago. I blink and forget to speak in return. She smiles warmly. Celine, which rhymes with
serene,
reintroduces herself with that voice as smooth as double cream. I shake her soft hand. Her round face, the color of moonlight, is pointed at the chin, making her look as innocent as a child. She chatters easily, as if she doesn’t expect me to contribute much, explaining
that her family is from China but she grew up in Paris. She is here with her husband and is working as a French teacher because, well, she is French.