literature

The Tea Party

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“Forgiveness is my sin,” she says before dragging heavily on her cigarette. “I forgave when I should have forgotten.”
She trails off, her eyes glazing over as the smoke forms a halo around her in the afternoon light, her white lace dress with the green grass stains glowing so brilliantly I half expect a chorus of angels. I look down and notice that her tea cup is still full, and some forty minutes after pouring it, that she has forgotten all about it.
“But don’t worry,” she continues, coming back to this world with an animated start. “I always forgot when I should have forgotten.”
It is now that she looks down and sees her chipped tea cup, still full but now horribly cold. She looks at it with a confused puzzlement, and then frowns. I learnt earlier that I shouldn’t ask questions, so I look to my side and admire the luscious red roses growing wildly all around us, their fragrant smell mixing with the burning leaves smell of the late afternoon and the hazy ashy smell of her cigarettes. There are origami swans in the bushes and on the ground, some complete and glittering like gems, others half done and gathering dust. Beyond the roses is a small apple orchid, the fruit ripe and adding another layer of scent to the air. Dancing among the trees are orange butterflies, their soft wins beating out a silent song that the breeze seems in a trance too.
Suddenly noticing my diverted attention, she makes an obscene huffing noise and hurls her still full tea cup at the roses, its fragile form getting caught momentarily in the thorns before crashing to the ground and shattering. I look back cautiously, only to discover her odd colored eyes brimming with tears. I reach out to touch her hand to comfort her, but she leaps up in a second animated rush and falls to her knees in front of the shattered tea cup, its contents now soaking the ground like an imitation of blood.
“Oh, the poor thing!” she wails and begins to sob, her shoulders shivering intensely. “The poor, poor thing! It lived a long life. It already had a broken heart, the poor broken soul. Help me dig a hole. It needs a proper burial.”
On our hands and knees beneath the roses we start scraping away the dirt with our fingers. Mildly confused, but secretly amused, I look up at her tear streaked face, her expression once again glazed over. Looking back at our task, I notice out of the corner of my eye that she is wearing brightly colored, yet odd socks.
She gets up and lights another cigarette, then sits backing her iron garden seat with the chipped white paint. She looks at me with an odd smile, not much different from the frozen grin I’ve worn ever since stumbling into the garden, and I realize she’s forgotten all about the funeral and all about the tea cup with the broken heart.
“You’re an odd creature,” she says slowly as I sit back at the table with the white flaking paint. “But I’ll forgive you. Or should I forget you? I don’t think I could forget about you. So I believe I’ll forgive you. Yes. You are forgiven.”
Still not daring to ask questions, I smile widely and pick up a chocolate cookie we both seem to have forgotten about. She begins pouring another cup of tea, grabbing at a pile of tea cups I hadn’t noticed by her chair and all the while she is singing a curious song about white rabbits and a royal court made of a deck of cards.
And as I’m about to take a mouthful of fresh tea, I smile and giggle to myself as I realize that she’s not wearing any shoes.
curioser
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