Colette and the Silver Samovar (2 page)

One morning a tall, skinny man with a curled-up gray mustache was standing outside our apartment building when I left for school.

“Are you Colette Faizal?” he asked.

My parents taught me early on never to talk to strangers, but this man was so old, I knew I could outrun him if I had to. Besides, he was leaning on a cane.

“Yes,” I said.

He looked me over like he was deciding whether or not to buy me. I stared back at him. Staring isn't polite. Lots of people tell me that. But writers need to be observant. This man was very pale, and his skin had brown spots all over it, like giant exploding freckles. He even had exploding freckles on his scalp, which I could see because he was bald. His blue eyes reminded me of someone. And when he spoke, he said his A's exactly like my mother. That's when it hit me. He sounded just like my mother!

I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it. “You don't look like her.”

I knew what he meant. He meant I didn't look like my mother.

And this is true. My mother is tall and thin and has hair the color of honey. Her skin is very pale, and her eyes are blue. I am round, have straight dark hair and brown eyes. She is artistic like I am though. She is a painter and art teacher. She tells me that I get my creativity from her and my nosiness from my father. My father was an engineer before he moved to Canada from Iran. Now he drives a taxi.

“You look like him,” the old man said. His mouth screwed up when he said it, like he'd just sucked on a lemon. “You look foreign.”

“That's rude,” I told him. My parents make a big deal out of being polite to everyone, especially old people, but my father tells me to stick up for myself if someone is mean. After all, he says, if you don't stick up for yourself, who will?

“Don't be cheeky, girl,” the man said.

He was talking like an actor I saw in an old black-and-white movie once. I didn't like that actor, and I didn't much like the old man. I walked away, and I could feel two hot spots on my back where his eyes were burning into me.

When I got to the corner, I couldn't help myself. I turned around, but he was gone. I wondered if I'd imagined the whole thing.

I have a very active imagination. I think this is a very good thing if you are going to be a writer, but it can be a problem sometimes. I get scared easily, especially if my imagination is working overtime. That's what my father says, anyway. He says there are no ugly things under the bed. (I don't agree. I've seen them.) He says the trees in the park don't talk to me. (But they do. They whisper at me all the time.) He says the things I worry about are silly. My mother says that if they are real to me, they are not silly at all.

I love my mother.

I love my father too. He is a kind man and a good father, but he is a man of numbers and facts. I believe he is imagination-challenged. Sometimes I wonder how my mother and my father ever got together. Then I see them looking at each other, and I think I understand.

That night, when I told my mother that I'd seen the rude old man with the exploding freckles, she raised her eyebrows. “That's my grandfather,” she said. Then she sniffed a little and said, “If I could have one wish, I would wish for my family and your father's family to meet each other.”

“Why doesn't everyone just come here for a visit?” I asked her.

“It's not that simple,” my mother said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“It's just not,” she said.

It didn't make any sense to me at all. Grown-ups make things so complicated!

Imagine! I have grandparents and a great-grandfather living just up the street, and until that day, I'd never met any of them. My father's parents live in Iran. He shows me pictures of them, and they are always smiling. I hope they would smile if they met me. Not like that man who looked like he'd just sucked a lemon.

Chapter 2

I'd been so busy daydreaming that when Mr. Singh told me I needed to hurry up, I realized that I was going to be late for school.

Sometimes I'm just walking down the street and, for no reason at all, I pass right by where I'm supposed to be going and have to turn around and run all the way back. My father gets very exasperated with me when I do that and tells me I need to watch where I'm going, otherwise I could get run over. My mother laughs and tells me that she does the same thing sometimes.

It was October, and the trees looked like they were dressed for a party, in gold and red and orange. I cross a park to get to my school, and there is a community garden on one side, full of bright yellow spiky flowers. They were giving off a spicy smell, and I thought I'd pick one for my teacher so she wouldn't be too mad at me for being late, but a big dog that lives near the park chased me.

I am scared of dogs. My mother is scared of dogs too, because she was bitten by one when she was little. My father tells me that she has passed her fear on to me and that I shouldn't be afraid of dogs until I have a good reason to be. Well, if you could see the long yellow teeth and knotted black hair on the dog that lives near the park, you'd know I had all the reasons I needed. I climbed the tree at the edge of the park and looked down at him. He was drooling, I was sure of it. He was thinking about how many meals he'd get out of me, just like the troll in
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
.

“Go away, Spike,” I squeaked at him. He growled and stood on his hind legs. He was so big, he almost reached the branch I was sitting on. I squeezed my eyes shut and wished I had a magic leaf blower that was so powerful I could just blow Spike into the next street.

“Spike!” hollered the man who lived in the apartment building beside the park. “Get over here!”

Spike's ears turned toward the man's voice, but he kept his eyes on me.

“SPIKE!” the man yelled again.

Reluctantly, Spike loped off.

By the time I was really, really sure that Spike wasn't coming back and I had walked the rest of the way to school, morning announcements were over and the secretary in the office was finished handing out late slips. I had to wait until she'd come back from walking all the other late kids to their classrooms.

“Colette Faizal,” she said. “Late again, I see.”

Mrs. Muncie is actually pretty nice, but she doesn't like tardiness. She always says that there may be some things in life we can't control, but being on time isn't one of them.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. Mrs. Muncie likes being called
ma'am
.

“Don't call me
ma'am
, Colette,” Mrs. Muncie said. “I know you think I like that, but I don't.”

That shocked me. Ever since second grade, I've been calling her
ma'am
.

“
Ma'am
makes me feel old,” she said. “Just call me Mrs. Muncie from now on.”

Hey, now. Just a minute. She
was
old! I was about to point that out when I stopped and thought. This is what my father means when he tells me to use discretion. I was secretly very pleased that I'd figured that out. I was so pleased that I didn't even notice that Zain was sitting at my desk, beside my best friend Oprah, until I practically sat in her lap.

“Hey!” I shouted. “What are you doing in my seat?”

Ms. MacKenzie, our teacher, looked up from helping Lotus Liu with her math. “Colette,” she said. “I had Zain move your things to the front of the class. You missed the move because you were late. Again.”

Oprah gave me a sorrowful smile. I smiled back bravely.

“You are much too talkative sitting next to Oprah,” Ms. MacKenzie said. She pointed at an empty seat in front of her desk. “I think you might have an easier time paying attention if you sit closer to me.”

All the kids were staring at me, so I put on my biggest smile and walked to the front of the room and sat down. That's when I realized the desk was set a couple of feet away from the rest of the aisle. I was marooned!

“Thank you, Colette,” Ms. MacKenzie said. “Please take out your English homework and put it on my desk. Then get out your math.”

I got out my homework and carefully smoothed out the wrinkles. I'd written about the man with the exploding freckles, and I thought I had done a very good job. When I put it on Ms. MacKenzie's desk, I snuck a look at Oprah. She was gazing at me as if she couldn't believe we were separated. I winked at her, because that's what people do when they are trying to make someone else feel better, but from the look on her face, I guess it didn't work.

My mom usually picks me up after school. She teaches art to street people in a drop-in center near our apartment building, but she always makes sure she finishes in time to walk home with me. Once I overheard my dad telling her that she should get a real job because we could use the money, but she said she wanted to be able to meet me every day after school and walk me home and that no amount of money in the world would make up for her not being able to do that.

Today she was wearing a bright red cape that made her look like a bullfighter. Her blond hair was gathered into a ponytail on top of her head. It pointed straight up like a spear of broccoli, and there was a paintbrush sticking out of it. She was leaning on the fence talking to Zain's grandmother. She waved when she saw me, and her bangles tinkled like a wind chime. The smell of the incense that she burns in her art studio drifted across the air toward me. My father once said that my mother is a feast for the senses, and I agree with him.

“We are going out for tea,” she announced. One day after school, we had a picnic. Another day, we went to the park and painted a picture of the sunflowers, and she framed it for me. And once we took the ferry to Toronto Island just for the fun of it.

“It's a perfect day for tea,” she continued as she tugged me along the sidewalk. “Smell the smoke in the air? That's the smell of the bonfires that the fairies build to boil their special dyes. The ones they use to paint the leaves gold and crimson.”

I looked at her dubiously.
Dubious
means doubtful. I am dubious about lots of things because, after all, my father is an engineer and he tells me that everything must be analyzed. But when my mother talks about things like fairies, I don't want to be dubious. Secretly, I think that nine years, three months and ten days is too old to believe in the fairies and magic that my mother believes in. But when my mother's eyes sparkle with the fun of it all, I don't care that my father says we shouldn't believe nonsense and that things have to be proven to be real. I want her to go on and on.

“I know!” she said when she saw me looking at her. “When we get home, let's draw a picture of the fairies painting the leaves!”

“What do the fairies make the dyes from?” I asked her.

She flung her cape over her shoulder as she waved at the sky. “From colors wrung from clouds that brush up against the sunset and sunrise,” she said. She picked up a rock and pointed at the burgundy and silver glints in the stone. “And from colors distilled from rocks. And from the petals of fallen flowers or the feathers of birds.”

“Where do the fairies live?” I asked.

“Ah,” she said. “No one knows. But on crisp fall days like this, when we can smell their bonfires, we know they are somewhere nearby.”

We turned down a side street. The houses here were bigger and grander but more run-down than the other houses in the neighborhood. Many had been turned into boarding houses, and the fences along the cracked sidewalk were missing slats. A black cat sitting on a stone post watched us as we went by, its tail twitching. My mother's voice dropped to a whisper. “This is a special kind of tearoom,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You'll see.” She knocked at a bright red door covered with mysterious symbols.

“The signs of the zodiac,” Mom said when she saw me looking. I knew what the zodiac was. I'd seen the horoscope book on her bedside table.

“Superstitious hogwash” was what my father said about horoscopes.

The door creaked open. A tiny person stood there. “Hello, Alice,” she said to my mother. “Is this your little one?”

Since I was taller than she was, that seemed funny to me. The little woman grinned. She was draped in a long robe that looked like a curtain of moonbeams. As she led us up a set of narrow, creaking stairs into a small round room, she said, “Welcome to my turret.” She pulled herself up onto a seat that might have been a baby's high chair and beamed at us. A brass teapot stood in the center of a round table, and two white china cups with saucers were set out in front of two chairs, one of which had a fat cat drowsing on it.

“Sit,” the tiny woman commanded. My mother nudged the cat off the chair, and I sat on the other.

The woman poured two cups of black tea. My mother took a sip and nodded at me to do the same. Normally I don't like tea unless it has three spoonfuls of sugar and half a cup of milk in it, but this tea tasted smoky and strangely delicious. The walls of the room were dark blue, and there were paintings of stars everywhere.