Memory Tea - short story by Lucy Chen
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'Memory Tea' is a short story by the junior category winner, Lucy Chen, of the 2008 Avondale College family story competition.
Memory Tea
by Lucy Chen
It was summer; the air was warm and scented with flowers. I was staying with my grandparents for a week. I was six years old then. We often went to the park down the road. On Sunday afternoon, my grandfather was taking a nap so Grandma asked me to join her for tea on the veranda. It was wonderful sitting in the sun and looking at all the flowers that Grandma had planted – she loved to be close to the earth. I poured some tea into my favourite cup, white and traditionally patterned with clouds and mountains. It made me feel grown up.
“Grandma,” I asked. “What was China like when you were little?”
She looked at me, and her eyes were very dark and kind.
“Well,” she said, taking a sip of tea. “it was very different to how things are now. But I do not think you would understand.”
I tried to imitate her by taking her a sip, but the tea was too hot and scalded my tongue.
“Why not?”
“Because it is a little sad.”
“Tell Me! Please, Grandma.”
Grandma told me about her childhood. I had to listen carefully, because my Chinese wasn’t very good. She lived in a rural town, and liked to look after the cattle on her family’s farm. She and her friends would have fun in the river and the woods.
“For a while life was good and simple.”
Then she talked about what happened when she was only three years older. She said that bombs fell out of the sky and strange people with huge guns decided to take over the country. That when they came her family and some others from her town escaped into the mountains.
“I was in the paddock and did not know that they were coming. When I heard them and ran, pulling my favourite cow along, because she was my friend also. It snowed in the mountains, there was hardly anything to eat, a few people did not make it. And for a week there was nothing to do except wait. Then the invaders left. We slowly crept back into the town. All the animals were gone, the houses broken into, the people who couldn’t run away were dead. The only animal left was the cow I saved.”
“But why?” I asked.
I had listened to her story, a frown etching deeper and deeper on my face. I was confused. What she told me was alien, strange. It was years later that I realized that she had not told me the whole truth, that she thought I was too young. I realised that their animals had been slaughtered, their houses burned to the ground, and their people massacred.
My grandmother smiled at my round childish face, but it was a melancholy smile; the expression that she wore was close to pity.
“I knew you would not understand.”
I pouted and picked up my cup again. The tea was cold.
Note: A true story, China was invaded in WW2.
