Martine, 16, Framingham, MA
The shrill whistle of the tea kettle tapered off into a quiet hiss and I heard the unmistakable click of delicate china on the granite countertop. Sunlight flowed into the room, making itself seen on the white trim of the kitchen doorway and on the knees of all the ladies, legs crossed primly underneath miles of patterned fabric. It looked so heavy, gathered around their knees and pooling halfway down their legs. The sunlight even seemed heavy, its playful airiness extinguished by the harsh dining room lights. I didn’t see why they had to be on. The silence was punctured with what I knew for certain to be the milk carton bumping against the fridge door, sending its contents buzzing in a resounding rattle that carried through the archway into the dining room.
I’d been roped into enough afternoon teas to know how this part went. Underneath the meaningless wisps of conversation around the great wooden table, I heard a muffled thud and a brief pause, followed by shuffling footsteps. And then two hands emerged from the kitchen, weathered from years of tea-brewing (and surely not much else, I thought), intersected by deep wrinkled pathways, laden with patches of muddy purple and peach, as if they had been repeatedly strangled and battered. Then the wrists were elongated into arms, and, soon enough, two Bermuda short-shrouded tree trunks were sprouting from the kitchen doorway. Mrs. Hayes always led with her hands. They cut through the dining room air like a conductor’s baton, in ridiculously slow, exaggerated swoops and pauses.
My mother and all the rest of them sat around the comically formal oak wood table, draped in their swaths of pressed fabric like kings, backs straight and fingers curling gracefully around plates of stale tea cookies and baskets of muffins. They all smiled at the figure in the doorway. It was clear to everyone at the table that Mrs. Hayes had forgotten to put the milk back in the refrigerator. When this realization struck her, she was overcome with a fit of giggles that tore through her body like a swarm of butterflies, and she stood there, head thrown back, tittering like a wailing teapot. When she ambled out and back into the dining room again, they were all still smiling.
She began her onslaught, the dreaded loop around the table that started with my mother and ended with me. Mrs. Hayes’ eyebrows jumped, and her knuckles bounced. She was our marionette, our court jester, her body contorting with every “How are you taking your tea today?” A beam of light streamed through the far window and caught her between her eyes, and she reveled in it, coming alive under the glow. With my hands wringing underneath the table, I thought that with the addition of music, she might as well be dancing for us.
It was all heartbreaking, really. The way that through their smiles across the dining table and vapid pleasantries, they still resented her. She would brew the tea and we would suck it down, but our resentment would brew at the soles of our feet for the rest of the day and through all the afternoon teas to come, a rushing river that ran perpetually with contempt for her. It licked at our ankles and the grounds dirtied our toes. We’d slough off the remains under running water that evening, but they always returned to crawl into our blood and embitter our tea. As she neared my side of the table, Mrs. Hayes’ movements became erratic, limbs flailing like a machine gone haywire. She was on the offensive and I was next. Everyone at the table, even 12-year-old Emma in her gingham dress and matching shoes, hated her. They were all drowning in it, it was unmistakable. A cloud passed over the sun and only the dining room light was left to illuminate the space, turning the room’s shadows a cool gray.
To my left, Mrs. Greene, Emma’s mother, concluded her order and was silent. Mrs. Hayes settled her gaze on me. Her lips parted, and I was suddenly acutely attuned to the electricity pulsing through the walls. I felt it prickling at my fingertips and rushing inside my rib cage. The tea cookies jumped on the fine china dishes and the muffins rattled in their basket. The curtains billowed on their own. A storm was brewing, and I was a lightning rod at the center of it all. A series of electrical impulses crackled in the air, and Mrs. Hayes’ words stilled in her throat. Her pencil-rimmed eyes were glassy and empty, and her gesticulating hands froze, suspended in the air, a light tremor running through them, falling to her sides moments later. I felt the heat circulating through my limbs relinquish its hold on my frame and draw back as stealthily as it had come, seeping back into the dining room walls.
Ms. Hayes stumbled back into the kitchen on light feet, her impassioned quest for my tea order seemingly forgotten. All was still when she emerged a moment later with nine teacups on her tray, her sandy blonde hair wild from the traces of electricity still hanging in the air. My eyes bore into the garish patterned carpet at my feet. The clouds obscuring the midday sun had since dissipated, and the ladies’ knees were once again bathed in warm light. It was a beautiful day. I allowed myself to bask in the bliss of the missing space on the tea tray, in the mouthwatering taste of nothing on my tongue.