6. Hot Yellow Peaches and Holes in the Sky

When Scarlet first started her Saturday job at the Colour Patch Café, she had to wash dishes. Amber thought it was odd that Scarlet got a job washing dishes when she tried to get out of doing them at home whenever she could. But then Anik came and Scarlet got a promotion. Mr Kadri taught her how to make raspberry spiders and banana splits and clear the tables while Anik washed the dishes. Anik was fifteen and lived with his grandmother, two aunties and his uncle above Mr Kadri’s Colour Patch Café. Anik walked gracefully, watchfully, like the herons that waded between ribbons of sunlight in the shallows of Cameron’s Creek. Anik took his first steps in a faraway land where children walked as lightly as shadows, as cautiously as cats, for fear of disturbing buried bombs.

Mr Kadri had once lived in a village like Anik’s. He had once wondered if he would ever see his family again. He knew how it felt to be a painter of pictures, putting pig meat in plastic bags, hosing blood off concrete floors. He understood what it was like to be surrounded by words he didn’t understand and faces he didn’t know.

Because of all these things, Mr Kadri wanted Anik and his family to have someone to come home to at night. Someone who understood how they felt and who would try to fill the empty places in their lives.

So that is why the Kadris shared their small upstairs home with Anik and his family. That is why they paid for Anik’s Advanced English lessons and why Anik so willingly washed mountains of dishes in the kitchen of the Colour Patch Café. It is why Mrs Kadri cooked for them while Anik’s grandma bounced the babies on her knees and sang them lullabies. And because every child is born filled with magic, the Kadri’s curly-haired babies understood Anik’s granny’s songs before they had words of their own. They laughed and smiled and sucked and slept and Anik’s grandma closed her eyes and imagined she was young again. She dreamt the babies she sang to were her own and that wishes sometimes came true.

Scarlet shared a seat with Anik on the bus that took them to school. She wanted to know things about Anik. Small things like the sound of his laughter, middle-sized things like his favourite poem and big things like where his mother and father were. But the bus was filled with the sound of other people’s conversations. Their words were quick and loud and strange to Anik’s ears. And his English words seemed slow and clumsy. So he kept them mostly to himself. In the afternoons Anik went to Advanced English lessons and afterwards passed the words he had learnt on to his grandmother and aunties and uncle. And in the evenings, when the Colour Patch Café was closed and its neon sign stained the street with all the colours of paradise, Anik and Mr Kadri and their families squeezed around the old green laminex table in the kitchen and shared words and signs, laughter and food and friendship.

Scarlet wanted to share these things with Anik, too. So when she worked at the Colour Patch Café she took tray-loads of used sundae dishes, coffee cups, soup bowls, silver teapots and spider glasses for Anik to wash and words for him to listen to. And each week when she came he talked more often and sometimes laughed.

 

On the Saturday when everyone at the Kingdom of Silk was doing their Christmas cooking and while Scarlet filled salt cellars, sauce bottles and pepper-mills, she asked Anik about before.

Anik’s arms stayed deep and still in the washing-up water and his eyes stared blindly at the bubbles. For as long as it took Scarlet to fill all the salt cellars Anik stayed silent. Then he said, ‘My father is a fisherman. My mother weaves baskets. I have two small sisters. Our country is at war for many years. But we are fishers and weavers and children. We are not soldiers. We have no weapons. Then one day I go to school and when I come home …’

Anik paused and Scarlet wished she could turn back time and ask only the small things. She was afraid of what Anik might say. But she said nothing to stop him and Anik went on.

‘When I return there is no home. There is only smoke and fire and soldiers. My village is burning. My house is gone. I hear guns and I run very fast. I run two days and then I am at my grandmother’s house.’

Anik’s words spilled out like hot soup. Scarlet passed him a paper napkin to sop his tears. She didn’t know what else to do, what to say. She couldn’t imagine coming home to nothing, no one. Her only comforting thought was that there had been a grandmother for Anik to run to.

 

All the way to the Kingdom of Silk, Scarlet thought about Anik and his family and about other fishermen and basketmakers and children who have never lived in peace.

It was dusk when Scarlet reached home. The sun was a hot yellow peach in a sea of strawberry sauce and the moon was a paper doily tossed up high. When she was very small Scarlet thought the moon was a hole in the sky and if she could only get up there and go through, she’d find another shiny universe inside it. The rusty gate squealed shut behind her and she trudged up the long gravel driveway, closer to the yellow lights of home, closer to the moon.

Delicious aromas wafted from the open windows: cinnamon and nutmeg, oranges and cloves. From the veranda Scarlet looked through the screen door and saw the galaxy of twinkling tart-tin stars turning slowly on tinsel threads. She heard the sound of a soup-pot snare drum and singing. To Scarlet’s left the kitchen door was open. She saw her daddy standing on a ladder and Mama handing him fat cloth-wrapped puddings to hang from the rafters.

No-one heard Scarlet arrive. No-one saw her standing at the door in the dusky light, caught between two places. She had reached her hole in the sky, the safe and shiny universe of the Kingdom of Silk where the only danger was imaginary pirates. Children ran carelessly fast here and laughed out loud and danced the Spanish Fandango and wishes sometimes came true. Scarlet wondered if children on the other side of the world ever looked at the moon and imagined a better place. A place like hers.

There is a poem painted on the door of the house at the Kingdom of Silk. It’s Nell’s favourite because it helps her stay calm in the storms of life. Annie painted it for her when Ben first brought them there to live. Scarlet had read the poem many times before that night, but hadn’t thought much about its meaning. There were other poems she liked better.

But on Saturday night, Scarlet wanted to feel calm, so she read Nell’s poem again. It seemed to be about opposites. Things like crying and laughing, finding and losing, loving and hating. Scarlet knew very well about all these things, but when she reached the words, A time for war and a time for peace she wondered, ‘Did this mean forever? Would there always be wars?’

Scarlet turned her back on the moon and marched into the kitchen. She slammed her bag and her black apron on the table and shouted, ‘That’s a stupid poem. I hate it!’

Then she stormed down the hallway to the bedroom she shared with Amber, leaving the Caroline Elliott galaxy shivering in her wake.