The Colour of Tea (22 page)

“I thought maybe you just didn’t want them,” she whispers carefully.

“No, we do. I just can’t.” I sigh. I haven’t said it out loud to anyone else but Pete. I thought I would cry if I did. I certainly didn’t think I would be telling a young pregnant woman over
macarons.
I find myself saying more.

“I don’t have … eggs. Not anymore. It turns out we left it too late and I ran out too early. I guess you could say our timing was
off.” I take a breath through my nostrils and let it out, counting slowly. She looks at me, and I can tell she is really listening. Her eyes soften, and she seems to stare into my depths. Like she somehow knows what it feels like inside. It is the first time I can remember her looking me directly in the eye.

“That’s shit,” she declares.

I nod. It
is
shit. Who knew that the dark, tangled knot of hurt and disappointment could be explained so simply?

Gigi sits with me, letting silence fall between us. There is jackhammering in the distance and a car horn blaring. It is a beautiful, clear day. The clouds are moving slowly through the sky. We sip our tea.

“Grace?”

“Hmmm?”

“I’m sorry about that. The baby stuff.”

“Yeah. Me too, hon. Me too …”

She looks down at her hands and then up to the table. The plate in front of us is covered in sunshine-colored
macarons.
They remind me of a bunch of daisies.

Gigi lifts up the plate and holds it out.
“Macaron?”

We eat a whole plate of
macarons
together, chat and drink more tea. She even pulls my hand over to her stomach and lets me feel a few kicks. The tears don’t come, the cicadas keep singing. Some weight is lifted from me, I can feel it leaving.

*   *   *

At the end of the month we have made a good profit, even on the days I was away ill. I stand at the counter doing the quick and dirty calculations and feel like laughing out loud it makes me so proud. Rilla is in the kitchen, and Yok Lan is sipping tea in her usual spot. Gigi is standing beside Marjory chatting as the late-afternoon sun streams in the windows. Their conversation drifts
over to me. They are talking about the places Marjory has been. Gigi’s kohled eyes are wide.

“Even Paris?”

Marjory nods. “Even Paris. You know, Paris is the home of
macarons.
I’d never tried one outside France until I came here.” She lifts her eyes to me. “Grace, have you been?”

I smile. “
Mais, bien sûr.
Ladurée, Pierre Hermé, the best pastry chefs are in Paris.”

“Who are they?” Gigi pipes up, curious.

“They are the rock stars of the
macaron
world,” I explain with a wink.

I think of me and Mama lifting
macarons
from a white box as if they were jewels. Colors like precious stones—ruby red, soft turquoise blue, pale as a pearl. Letting the flavors rest on our tongues, closing our eyes to the decadent sweetness. Of course we would have no money to pay hotel bills later, but she bought Ladurée
macarons
for breakfast. For a child, no less.

“Paris has the most beautiful cafés …” Marjory sighs.

I think then of Pete. Last week he asked me out for dinner to a nearby French restaurant. A strange look crossed his face when I said I was too tired, we had such a big order of
macarons
to fill the next morning. He looked older all of a sudden, and sad.

Gigi’s voice is tinted with awe. “You’ve been everywhere,” she says to Marjory.

“We’ve moved a lot, yeah. But you’ve traveled, haven’t you?”

“Not really. Hong Kong, of course. Guangzhou. And Taipei, we had a school trip there once. I had to sell balloons in San Malo for six months to save up for it. That’s it,” she concludes. Her hands move automatically to her stomach, resting against the curvature.

“Everywhere can start to look the same,” Marjory observes wistfully. She takes a sip of her cappuccino and puts her
L’Espoir
to her lips. She pauses before taking a bite. “There are the same
things. Wealth, poverty, happiness, suffering. It’s easy to think you are better than other people because you are always leaving. You aren’t going to be caught in their nine-to-five. The humdrum. You always have the promise of someplace new.”

Gigi looks down to her hands, bangles sparkling against her wrist. “Must be amazing.”

“It is. For a while. Then you start to feel a bit … jealous? They are permanent.” Her voice fades to a whisper. “They, at least, belong somewhere.” She bites into her
macaron
and looks vacantly around Lillian’s.

That’s true, I think.

They sit in silence for a few moments, until Rilla’s voice, singing, skims out from the kitchen. It slides painfully off-key, slicing through the still air. Marjory coughs on her mouthful, Yok Lan chuckles, Gigi lets out an enormous guffaw.

“Shit, she’s awful,” says Gigi, with characteristic tactlessness.

Rilla comes out, gloved hands dripping onto the tiles, and we cover our grins with our hands.

“What are you laughing about?” she says, a baffled look on her round face.

We all erupt in giggles. I look at the four women—Gigi, Rilla, Marjory, and Yok Lan—and smile.

Dearest Mama,

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had chosen something different. Married someone else. Gone to a different country. Played a different hand.

Would I be Marjory? Skipping from place to place like a stone across water. Unpacking and repacking every few years. Not making friends in case ties have to be quickly broken. Feeling like a spare part. Would I be perfect on the outside and dislocated on the inside?

Or would I be Rilla? She seems happy enough, but it’s hard to
know. Does she wonder, like I did working in restaurants all those years, whether there is more? Something with more meaning? Something she could call her own?

Maybe I could have been Gigi? Young and shattered, trying to pretend everything is okay. She’s pregnant, Mama. She’s not as young as she looks, so I shouldn’t be shocked. Early twenties? But she looks fifteen; so slight … If I had made her choices, I’d be a mother by now. I could have had a baby at her age, I guess. I was too busy taking the pill and worrying about other things. Not knowing this clock inside was always ticking, ticking, ticking. She will never have to know what it is like to have the precious possibility of motherhood snatched from her. But I think her life is not always so sweet. It is there in her face behind the boldness and arrogance; things unsaid, dreams dashed. She sometimes looks lost and lonely, like a mouse that woke up and found itself in a cage.

But even with all I do not know about her life and her burdens, I cannot help but think she will get to be Yok Lan one day. Gazing up at a grandchild taller than she is, who puts a hand against her shoulder and whispers kindnesses into her ear. She will have that. Someone to care whether she is playing mah-jongg when she shouldn’t be. Someone to notice her.

Could I have been one of these women, Mama?

Or could I have been you? A head full of red hair, stories of crickets and lollipops and flying fish. Singing at two in the morning, dancing as if drunk in the afternoon. Was it a choice I made, not to be like you were? Could I have been you? I think of you so alive your fingers and toes are glowing with it. Your eyes are sparkling and hair flying. You were never halfway anything, Mama. Always so full up.

I guess all there is, is what there is. I am who I am. There’s no changing things now.

Your loving daughter,
Grace

Saison Orageuse—Storm Season

Lemon and Ginger with Brown Buttercream Filling

T
yphoon season descends upon Macau. One moment the skies are as blue as cornflowers and the sun the color of honey falling on the pavements, the next a storm spins through, all gray and blustering. Today we have the postcard version, sunny and clear. Marjory tells me the skies are so heartbreakingly blue because all the factories have closed in China for the Olympics. They’ve also stopped granting visas into the mainland, to discourage protesters from entering. No more Zhuhai shopping trips for the expat ladies. Lillian’s is consequently chock-full of bored women. Waiting through the long, hot days for the next storm makes everyone feverish. It has tempers and morals worn paperthin. At least everyone feels at home, I try to think optimistically; Lillian’s is like a big, messy family room most days.

Today even Marjory is left without a seat. When I return from doing some shopping, she is standing behind the counter with her cup. Gigi and Rilla are laughing loudly as she bobs up and down gracefully. Her toes point and her knees glide in and out of an almost ninety-degree angle. Gigi mimics her but groans with one hand to her belly and the other on the countertop.

“What are you all doing?”

They look up and grin.

“Marjory is trying to
kill
me!” Gigi complains, but the smile remains.

“This girl never does any exercise. Did you know that?” Marjory tuts.

“What do you call them again?” Rilla asks.

“Pliés. They’ll be good for her in labor; she needs to get fit and strong.”

“Oh, she’s too lazy!”

Gigi swats Rilla with a tea towel. Rilla takes the shopping bags from my hands, and the two of them head into the kitchen to unpack them. The air-conditioning of the café cools the sweat beading along my hairline. I tie on an apron and give Marjory a refill.

“You’re going to the Ladies’ Club tennis event next week?” she asks.

“Huh? Oh, that.”

I have a pile of flyers about it next to the counter fridge. We both glance over at them. Linda and her book club ladies have been asking me every week, and I’ve been successfully avoiding giving a straight answer. I find it harder to dodge when Marjory asks.

She gives me a hopeful smile and then laughs. “Grace, you’ve got to go ’cause I’ve got to go. Don is making me; trying to woo some people at work, I think. If you don’t go, I’ll be stuck with those snobs, trying not to end up with a mouthful of my own foot.”

Marjory has a way of putting things; I have to laugh. Gigi isn’t the only one not doing any exercise; I have eaten so many
macarons
my flesh rises up and over the waistline of my trousers like soft bread dough. Besides, Pete wants us to go, and it wouldn’t hurt to
do him one favor, especially considering the distance that’s only grown between us as Lillian’s has become successful. We’ve not done anything together in a long time.

“C’mon …”

“All right. But you owe me.” I point a wet cloth at her, and she grins.

The noises of Rilla and Gigi bickering and laughing comes out of the kitchen. They are becoming more and more like a pair of mismatched sisters.

Marjory leans on the counter. “They sound like they’re having fun in there.”

“Yup. They seem to hate and love each other in equal amounts.” I mop up some loose grains of sugar and coffee.

Marjory asks softly, “Do you ever feel like you’re on the outside looking in?” Her face is serious, like it’s a question she’s been thinking about for some time.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Living in Macau. We’re never going to be locals, never going to be Chinese. But look at Rilla; even she fits in more than we do.”

As if she senses she is being talked about, we can hear Rilla start humming and Gigi yelling at her to shut up or her ears will bleed. We look at each other and laugh.

Marjory lifts her cup to her lips and then puts it down again. She speaks pensively. “I never wanted kids, you know. I didn’t even really want a husband …”

My stomach gives that familiar little lurch, but not like it used to. Marjory blushes, as if she is embarrassed to be talking about such personal things. “Don’s girls think I am a wicked stepmother, but I’m used to girls hating my guts, so it actually doesn’t bother me too much.”

“No?”

She shakes her head. “It’s the ex-wife telling tales, and I just have to suck it up. I figure they might grow out of it. Anyway, I love Don, and he is enough for me. But sometimes I think: what next? I mean …” A deep wrinkle stretches across her tanned forehead. “Do you feel like you belong somewhere, Grace?”

I put down the cloth I am using to wipe the counter. I think of Pete first. His dark head, eyes full of unspoken talk. Mama; a flash of red hair. The cold of London and the bright sky of Australia. It’s like a series of flash cards.

Marjory is still looking at me. Behind her, women sit sipping coffees and gossiping. Yok Lan is in one corner, dozing over a half-drunk cup of tea. A child drives a toy truck into a table leg.

“I belong here?” I reply, like it’s a question, but I know it to be true.

She nods. I can see she is thinking, staring off into the distance, hands around her cup. I wonder if she thinks I mean Macau. Or maybe wherever Pete is. I can see her fondness for Don; when she speaks of him, the love radiates out of her. She may be a princess and he may be a frog, but she adores him, that much is clear. It makes me realize, with a twinge of guilt, how much I have been avoiding Pete. But what I mean is that I belong here. Right here.
In Lillian’s.
This little square of café and kitchen. My tiny world.

*   *   *

A light storm has finally broken through the series of achingly hot, clear days. The forecast says it is a category three typhoon, but in Hong Kong it has been elevated to a six. Customers are sparse. I watch Filipino maids battle the wind to hold umbrellas over children’s prams, their own heads bare. Tarpaulins billow from construction sites like ladies’ head scarves. Wind seems to come from every direction, left and right, above and below. I wonder, hopefully, if the tennis event will be canceled tomorrow. Gigi
leans over the
macaron
counter, resting her belly against the cool glass while I clean the coffee machine. She looks tired. She has finished mopping the floor.

“How’d the doctor’s visit go on Monday?”