A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow - Laura Taylor Namey Page 0,78
flank our way, and when I get my Buckingham dreams fulfilled, he shows me the posh and manicured Mayfair borough and leads me into Kensington Gardens.
While I’m dreamy inside an Italian water garden, I remember the junior high plan Stefanie and I made to see London and Paris together the first time. Me, here with Orion instead of her, doesn’t feel like a loss. It feels like a change. And there’s always Paris.
Orion speaks more “things” into patches of my silence, like how in 1861, Prince Albert built this ornamental garden as a gift for Queen Victoria. We stroll around Italian urns and manicured hedges.
“It’s been a whole five minutes since I told you a superstition.”
My laugh hums; I thump his side. “Well, go on. You have to have one about gardens or flowers.”
“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?