A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow

by Laura Taylor Namey

  “About bees, actually. But we wouldn’t have gardens without those guys. And this one’s English in origin, so, also fitting,” he says as we stare into one of the reflecting pools. “Beekeepers thought it was essential to good honey production to talk to their bees. So, telling the bees, as they called it, became a must. They’d tell them about any household events like births or marriages. And especially deaths.”

  My reflection leans its head against his shoulder.

  “Most of all, when someone died and the family dressed for mourning, you had to dress the bees for mourning too. You had to tell them.”

  “How do you dress bees for mourning?” And here’s a series of words I’d never say in my Miami life.

  Orion’s melancholy smile ripples through the water. “They’d usually drape their hives with black fabric, letting them know. Otherwise the bees would leave the hive or even die. As a penalty toward the family.”

  “Abuela would’ve loved you.” My storyteller and teamaker and the boy who could nick and knife my heart, just for living under another flag.

  “She traveled a few places, but she never went here or Europe. And I wish she’d gotten the chance to walk in a London park. I wish she’d seen Paris and Rome.” Now I look at the real him, not the blurred face swimming with lily pads and lotus flowers. “Funny because it took us an hour on the train to get here. And the whole way, I was thinking that her flight from Havana to Miami was only about thirty minutes.”

  “Is that all, really?” We move along toward Hyde Park and the giant Serpentine lake separating the park from Kensington Gardens.

  “Really. So close but a world away. She was only seventeen. My age. And so brave to leave her family… her country, alone.”

  “How did she?”

  “A special opportunity through her church and a Miami parish—like an exchange student program. It’s much harder now, of course. I’ll need more than an hour train ride to get you through Cuban-American politics. But Abuela made it a forever exchange. She lived with her host family for years after the program ended and started La Paloma with my grandfather. My mother didn’t inherit the chops to bake cakes, but she learned to decorate them early on. And still does.”

  “And your father?”

  “He was in marketing. But when my parents married, he joined the business and freed up Abuela and Mami to have more time to create. La Paloma doubled in size and they bought the shop next door, expanding the whole place. Pilar is so much like him.” We walk the footpath and watch Londoners and tourists row in pairs or trudge across the lake in pedal boat rentals.

  I take three steps before I realize Orion didn’t take them with me. I spin around; he’s looking at his phone, texting and shaking his head in disbelief.

  “What happened?” I say at his side. We’re at the same park, but the whole landscape’s changed.

  “Bloody hell. Now they’ve done it. And I’m—”

  “Who’s done what?”

  He flips to another screen and my stomach sinks. More graffiti. Only this time, both the side and back walls of Maxwell’s Tea Shop have been tagged, and with more paint than we’ve seen yet. Much of the shop exterior will need refurbishing. Thoughts swarm like the bees in his superstition. Flora. But she promised. She promised me. And tagging her own business?

  “Those fucking wankers,” Orion says. “Hold up, Dad’s texting me back.”

  My phone buzzes too.

  Flora: I swear it wasn’t me

  Before I can even respond she messages again.

  Flora: I was at Katy’s the whole night. Her mum’s name is Abigail and I’ll give you her number and you can ask her yourself. Her parents took us to a show and Katy and I crashed in the living room after. It wasn’t me

  Me: I believe you

  I write this because it’s true.

  Orion’s forehead creases with strain. “Enough with waiting to catch those arses.” He whips his head left to right. Checks his watch. “I’d never ask you to accompany me for this. I can drop you somewhere you’d love, like Fortnum and Mason, just until I handle this situation. But I’m going straight to Roth’s place. Gonna make him admit it and repair my walls. Now.”

  “No!” My pulse beats ten steps ahead of my fear.

  “What do you mean, no? They went too bloody far this time. They destroyed almost our entire exterior!”

  My skin glazes with dampness. What can I say? I promised Flora I’d keep her confidence. “But what if you’re wrong? What if it’s really not Roth and his boys. What if—”

  “Look, we’ve been dealing with that group and their antics long before you got here. We know it’s them, and the town’s sick of it. Sick of spending our time with scrub brushes and solvents.” He brings up the picture again, swearing richly. “Sick of bullies, Lila.”

  “But look, it’s two colors. Black and light gray and it’s not any of the same symbols. And none of the other instances had so much damage. It’s probably just some kid.” Orion keeps shaking his head. “You don’t know what Roth is capable of if you go over there, accusing him with no proof. You said he’s a hot head. He could snap.”

  “Fine, I’ll not go alone. Remy’s off today. He can get here soon enough. He’s got his eyes set on law school—becoming a solicitor. This will give him some cross-examination practice early on.”

  “But Orion you can’t just—”

  “I’d do it for him, any day. He’ll come.”

  My breath quickens. Would Jules go for this idea? Worse images flash: Flora’s trembling face and please don’t tell Orion, and Orion getting his face smashed in, and this whole charade going on and on and… “Wait! It’s not Roth. I… I know who’s been doing the tagging—not this one, but the others.” I hear myself, the words breaking free of their sentences, pelting me back in jumbled order. A gust between my ears.

  The disbelief in his eyes tears me from face to foot. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not Roth who did all those symbols, all those months. It’s not them, Orion. Let it go.”

  “How can you possibly know?” he asks, his voice dragged across weathered brick.

  I squint, rattling my head. “I…”

  “Lila, I appreciate why you’re trying to stop me. But I need to put an end to this and I’ll handle myself just—”

  “It was your sister,” I spit out, hating myself. “Flora. I caught her tagging.” Forgive me, Flora.

  A ragged shock, then his expression hones to hard marble as he listens to the events from that night I jogged after Remy’s pub.

  “Please don’t tell Flora I told you. Don’t tell your dad. Just let it ride. She begged me. Begged. The damage to your shop from last night couldn’t have been her. She has proof, okay? She told me she’d stop and she has.” Tears well my vision. “Promise me.”

  “Promise you? Promise… you?” Heat rolls out in waves from him. “Christ, Lila, is this why she’s working with you? Some kind of payment to buy your silence?”

  “It’s not payment. I wanted to help her. She’s hurting.”

  “You don’t think I know that? Me of all people? You don’t think I know?” His hand dashes out. “Hurt aside, she still did wrong and she needs to be held accountable.”

  “I agree.” I dig my fingers into my aching temples. “But Friday she told me she went and cleaned up the wall where I caught her. She’s doing really well working at the inn. She’s opening up. She was just desperate to be seen and heard. To be remembered. She was crying out—”

  “That wasn’t your choice to make.” One step forward. “She’s not your sister. She’s not your responsibility. This is our family. Our business. You made the choice for all of us.”

  Oh, the words. I have no more room, no place left inside to hold them. I get right up to him, setting my face into iron. “Flora’s my friend. Doesn’t that mean anything? All she wants is for things to go back to the way they were. I know how she feels, even if we’re not going through the exact same thing.” My hands slice th
e rancid air between us. “So yeah, I could’ve turned her in, but I didn’t. I decided to give her a chance for something new, just like I had.”

  He half-turns, then points at me. “You never hurt people or their private property like she did. You didn’t hurt your city.”

  “I hurt myself. And how is that any less?”

  I spin on the ball of my foot and bolt. Not once do I look back. Fury fills my veins and hurries my steps down the path bordering the Serpentine.

  Minutes later, I’m not even sure how far I’ve gone. There’s so much green, so much open space to swallow the enormous rush of me. But now I slow and stop, dropping onto one of the many benches along the water. Why did I think my half-lying plan would be different just because I was genuinely trying to help someone? Today, there was no better choice, no winning door to walk through that leads to prizes.

  Help Flora and keep her confidence, and Orion is hurt for my deceit.

  Or tell Orion, like he said I should’ve, and Flora is hurt enough to maybe find another version of paint on a brick wall. Hurt enough to be more careful and maybe even more destructive.

  And now it’s done. I can’t bake around it or add any more sugar to the sour, beating it into a win for everyone. I have to accept another thing I can’t change. And then I have to go on and remember why I came here.

  So I remember: school, skills, my passion. Even if it might not be in my future, one choice I made before even hopping on the train in Winchester, I’m still choosing, for me. I’m going to get across town to Bloomsbury and visit Le Cordon Bleu. I pull out my phone. I can find my own way there and, if necessary, find my own way back to Winchester, too.

  “Lila.” The voice behind my bench is full of dust.

  Well. I tuck my lips inward, my face bent over the grass.

  He sits beside me, farther than he’s ever been.

  “I never want to lie to you. I’m sorry,” I say, then measure the next part as carefully as soufflé batter. “Do you think it hasn’t been making me sick to keep Flora’s secret? That it was some whim? Do you think it was easy to just push this away every time I was with you?” Right into his eyes.

  Hearts are not meant to be ripped in two, split between seas and skies. Split between two people I care for and…

  Orion shifts, only a few inches. “I don’t feel that way. I didn’t, even for a second.” He scrubs his face. “But I’m losing her, Lila. She’s barely around and she doesn’t talk to me anymore. She doesn’t even go to see Mum as often as she used to.”

  Losing a sister. Losing a mother.

  “But I did some thinking back there,” he adds and flattens his back against the bench. “The other day when I was with Mum and couldn’t run with you, Flora brought home a loaf of fresh bread. She was so proud of it and that means something. I haven’t seen Flora be proud of anything in so long.”

  “I know how much you love her. How you want to stay close and reach her. But she’s starting to relax. She’s fun. We have a good time even at the half crack of dawn.”

  “I know. And that means something too.” A weighty sigh. “So I’ll promise what you asked. The two of us will share her secret now.”

  Air leaks from my lungs in relief. “I’m not trying to fix her. I just wanted to be a safe place for her. Like someone else I know is for me.”

  “Safe.” He balls his fist over his mouth, sucks in a rush, nodding. “And yet I said horrible things to you. I try to take this good and right view about my life. But that doesn’t mean I always say the right thing.”

  I hold out my hand. He grabs it tightly.

  “If you did, you’d be a tea-obsessed, history buff cyborg on a too-loud motorbike. Which sounds more like a comic book character than a person. You know you can be whoever you are with me.”

  “I don’t want to be someone who hurts you.”

  “Yeah, but you will,” I say. “And I’ll hurt you. But there’s the kind of hurting that happens between… friends that makes you human. You get past those hurts.” I think of Stefanie, the ways we’ve hurt each other. Our future’s still shaded, not steady and warm like the sunlight over my bare shoulders.

  I scoot closer. “But there’s also a dangerous kind of hurting between people. You run from those hurts.”

  “You ran from me. Back there.”

  “I needed to decide how I felt without unleashing my Reyes wrath.”

  His brow arches as he jerks his thumb sideways. “That wasn’t your wrath?”

  “It’s funny you thought that was my wrath.”

  He laughs nervously, but he drops into gravity when he meets my face. “And how you feel now. Is there a part of you that’s able to accept my apology?”

  I nod. “All my parts do.”

  He cracks a smile and takes my other hand. “Do you want to go back to the inn? Or will you let me take you to Le Cordon Bleu? Show you around the neighborhood?”

  “Let’s go.”

  But instead of leaving, he rests his head on my shoulder. “I’m not the hurting kind of dangerous, Lila.” We’ll get up soon, but not yet. Right now, he’s warm as sweaters and sure as stars. And every other kind of dangerous I know.

  28

  Flora stays when I offer to brew café con leche to drink with the guava pastelitos we made. She sags into a stool and cuts thick slices of the bread we also made, watching me pour Cuban coffee shots into fat mugs of steamed milk. “It’s like a latte, then?”

  “Pretty close.” I study her. She worked hard today, making her first pastelitos on her own. And now she gets to eat them. But all through the mixing and layering and folding she was the kind of quiet most girls notice about other girls. I noticed but kept my mouth shut.

  Instead I drag over mugs, sugar, and the plate of extra pastelitos we kept back for her family. I toy with the pastry—perfectly golden and flaky, with just enough guava filling peeking out from the sides and ridge-cut tops. In my head, I’m back in London on Saturday, staring up at a classic ivory and brick building locked into a row of attached brownstones. Le Cordon Bleu.

  The school was closed, but its public café flanking the adjacent courtyard was busy with customers. We studied photos of students in their white emblemed chef coats over loose gray pants. Then we sat under a blue umbrella and shamelessly sampled four desserts and pastries. So light and airy, with carved chocolate shapes and delicate cakes filled with creams and fruits.

  “Why this school?” Orion asked over a miniature lemon tart covered with tiny puffs of toasted meringue shaped like clouds.

  “There’s not much more for me to learn in Cuban baking. But there’s so much out there—so many techniques I don’t know. How to mold sugar and chocolate and countless other tricks.” I pointed my fork at the layered torte we were sharing. How did the chef stack all those fillings so thinly? “I don’t know how to make a pastry like this. It’s artwork. Also, Abuela’s sweetness philosophy was different from what many Cubans believe, which is add sugar to your sugar.”

  Orion laughed and finished off the lemon tart.

  “By the time she opened La Paloma, she’d had some French desserts and noticed they were more rich than sweet.”

  Orion bumped me playfully. “That’s how I’d describe your pastries for sure.”

  “Right. At home, I saw no reason to learn more. But being here and getting out of my little Miami corner changed all that. It’s reminded me that the world is bigger than my neighborhood, and my skills could be bigger too.”

  “Like what you’ve been doing at the inn? Mashing everything up?”

  “Yes, only better. Like taking an intricate French dessert but subbing out some Cuban flavors. Or British flavors. Of course, I’ll always make my old recipes. But customers love eclectic pairings and interesting food. For that, I need help. Yeah, there are schools in the States, but not LCB caliber. London is the closest one where I…”

  He snaked his fingers over my wrist. “Where you have people you’re close to.”

  I nodded. �
��It’s an hour from the inn, but back home, people who work in Ft. Lauderdale drive that long too, and in the most stressful traffic you can imagine. I could relax on the train. Read or message or make calls.” Call my family? Call them while they stayed in Miami and ran my business without me? Again, there was no choice here that made everything all better. Another time, I’d have to decide who would get all the hurt. And either way, one of those hurters would be me.

  “I was never specifically told to stay put, or to stay in Miami, but that’s the pattern in my family. Most of my cousins lived at home until they got married. Some of them were pushing thirty.”

  “So this is the opposite of those unspoken ideals? Run off, not just away from your family, but to another country. Another culture.”

  “Another life.”

  Now, I leave that Saturday afternoon an hour train ride away, and catch up. Flora’s got a pastry in one hand and buttered pan Cubano in the other. I tip my cup at her. “Be careful, girl, you’re starting to turn Cuban.”

  She laughs, but it comes out weak, her eyes boring into the wooden island.

  I dunk my bread in the milky coffee. “So, anything new?”

  “Not really.”

  “ ’Kay.” I break apart my pastelito, stealing a quick glance at the last small tray browning in the oven. Butter stains my fingers and pastry flakes stick to my lip gloss as I eat.

  Gordon swoops in from outside, windblown, a knapsack hanging from one shoulder. “Ri said you’re hiding extra tins of that vanilla pudding in the fridge.”

  I snort. “Traitor. But have at it.”

  Why it takes Gordon this much time and noise to get himself one ramekin of natilla, a glass of water, a spoon, and whatever else, is beyond me. He bee-buzzes into the pantry, then through another drawer, the fridge again. “Don’t mind me.”

  We don’t. The guava filling is too good. The coffee is better.

  “Well,” Flora says when the third wheel finally leaves out the back door. “Actually. Can I ask you something weird?”

  “Besides baking at odd hours, weird is my other specialty.”