The Colour of Tea Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 andmuttering 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