The Colour of Tea by Hannah Tunnicliffe Read Free Book Online Page A

and you smelled like sugar.
    “Oh good, you’re awake. Today we really have to go to the zoo, Gracie. I don’t know how long it has been since we saw animals. Do you remember?”
    I shook my head.
    “Well, it’s polar bear weather, don’t you think?” You jumped onto the bed, squashing one of my feet as you landed. You tickled and cuddled as I bit my lip. Maybe I had dreamed it all.
    “You left me …”
    “Oh no, sweetie.”
    “Yes, you left me. Last night.” I started to cry the same hot tears from the night before, like they’d been waiting behind my eyes.
    “Shh, shh, shh … Hey, don’t you cry now,” you said. “Have this. It’ll make everything better. Mama’s promise.” A wink as you handed me the box. Inside, the prettiest cake I’d ever seen, button-round. A macaron, you told me.
    We went to the zoo that day, didn’t we, Mama? Stayed out too late, until the sun went down and I got a chill. We never talked about the bar. The jazz bar playing music from Porgy and Bess, where you were singing and dancing in that peach-colored dress. How you hadleft me in a hotel room around the corner, until you came home in the morning.
    So many mysteries, Mama, always so many.
    Your loving daughter,
Grace

La Poudre à Canon—Gunpowder
    Gunpowder Green Tea with Sweet Mandarin Buttercream
    P ete has been busy with work. Late nights and dark circles ringing his eyes. A couple of evenings he falls asleep on the couch in front of the television so I have to wake him and guide him to bed. I have run out of sleeping pills, so I spend most nights listening to him sleep with my eyes wide open in the darkness. These are the long nights when I can’t stop thinking of children. Skipping, dancing, running in after school for a warm snack. Pink babes in my arms. The smell of freshly washed hair. Feeding a small one from my own breast. This last thought is the worst; it makes my whole chest ache as if my heart is made of river stone. I cry in the bathroom with the door shut so Pete doesn’t wake up. My mind races like a cat chasing its tail. Like there is no end. I wish for sleep over and over, chewing on the bedsheet like I did when I was a kid. When it finally comes, I dream my way through the mornings till midday, half the day blissfully disappeared.
    During the afternoons the only thing that seems to hold my interest is baking. I go through my recipe books. Soft-centered biscuits, cakes slathered with icing, cupcakes piled up in pyramids on round plates. Pete doesn’t say anything, although every morninghe takes out the rubbish bags filled with stale muffins and half-eaten banana loaves. The only thoughts that seem to distract me from babies are those memories of Paris. A gray cold, tall men, black coffee, sweet pastries, and Mama laughing, with her hair and scarf streaming behind her. The smell of chocolate and bread.
    *   *   *
    On a warm Thursday night before sliding into Chinese New Year, we go to the Old Taipa Tavern. It’s an English-style pub, popular with the expats, sitting on one side of a village square next to a Chinese temple. Adults talk and drink cold beer out of sweating glasses while their kids ride their bikes around and around on the concrete. The older boys buy “throw-downs” from the local shop, tiny paper packets of dynamite or gunpowder, something explosive, which fit neatly in a small palm and make a loud snap when thrown against the ground. They lay them down where the younger ones will ride over them, frightening the color out of their cheeks when they pop, making them burst into tears.
    Pete and I sit outside, although the sun is fading, and I order my standard sausages and mash. Pete chews on his lower lip and can’t decide. His face is dark and drawn when he finally places his order. A burger.
    “Everything okay?” I ask as our waitress heads off to attend to a table of loud Aussie blokes calling for “another bucket of cold ones.”
    “Yeah, fine.” Pete slugs down a big