Tao (2 page)

“Someday, someone is just going to stick their hand in the till and take all the money!” she’d yell, throwing her hands in the air.

But Willy would just smile in that big daft way of his and tell her to, “Chill, Kate. You’ve got to be a more trusting woman. God looks after the good people.”

And so far I had to admit he was right. Nobody had ever put their hand in the till. Still, Kate didn’t like to leave him too long on his own and that’s why I always worked there on a Saturday, which was her only day off, even though it was my birthday and Kate said that she would skip her yoga and drumming classes today if I wanted the day off. But I didn’t want the day off. I love working in The Happy Pear – looking after Willy, who is thirty, and serving all the people that I know and who always stop for a chat.

“Have you been waiting long?” I asked Mr Kelly, and started weighing his bananas.

“Oh, just about fifteen minutes or so. Willy is busy in the café and I’m in no hurry.”

I served Mr Kelly and then I went to find Willy.

“Willy!” I shouted.

“In here,” he called back from the coffee shop.

Willy was standing on top of the stepladder painting one of his “Willyisms” across the ceiling. He was just about finished.

The words were painted in blue in a spiral shape so you had to walk in a circle to read them.

Don’t be too open-minded
, I read out loud, bending my neck back,
or your brains might fall out
.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” said Willy, coming down off the ladder. “I think it’s one of my best. The customers will love it. What do you think, Tao?”

“So where did you steal this one from?” I asked.

“Tao!” said Willy in that slow drawl of his. “Of all people to think like that. A boy whose name means ‘wisdom’. Wisdom cannot be stolen, Tao, only shared. I saw it written on a T-shirt. Good, isn’t it?”

Then he ruffled my hair and said happy birthday and promised me that he’d bring me in a present tomorrow.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said.

He had said that last year too and I am still waiting. He pretended to look hurt and then he ordered me back into the shop because someone could be in there putting their hand in the till and stealing all the money while I was idling away my time in here admiring his work. I wasn’t admiring his work, but a lot of customers do come in just to read Willy’s Willyisms, which is why Kate doesn’t mind him painting them higgledy-piggledy all over the coffee shop.

“And always remember, Tao,” Willy called after me as he folded up the ladder, “better to be thirty years young than ten years old!”

Willy and I took our break before the lunchtime rush, when The Happy Pear gets busy, especially on a sunny Saturday like today.

“It is a well-known fact,” began Willy, and took a big bite out of his brown-bread-cheese-and-tomato sandwich, so that I had to wait while he finished chewing it before I could find out the “well-known fact”. Willy takes his digestion very seriously and food has to be well chewed before swallowing.

“What was I saying?” he asked when his mouth was finally empty.

“You were talking rubbish as usual,” I told him.

“No I was not, young Tao,” he said. It was my turn to take a huge bite of my bread roll. “What I was saying was that it is a well-known fact that the pet you choose is the person you are.”

“Wha—?” I said, or tried to with my mouth full. Willy brushed the crumbs that I had sprayed off his jumper.

“My personal choice of pet would be a lion,” he continued. “Now what does that say about me?”

“You own a cat,” I told him, “a fat lazy cat called Winnie.”

“Ah, but that’s the point,” smiled Willy, pointing his sandwich at me. “Cats and lions are first cousins. It is the closest you can get to owning a lion in this country.”

“So what does a lion say about you, Willy?” I asked in a sarcastic voice.

“That I am a king among men. A fierce and dangerous carnivore.”

“But you’re a vegetarian,” I reminded him.

“Don’t sweat the small stuff, Tao,” said Willy, waving his bread about. A slice of tomato went flying but he didn’t notice. “The question is, what does a mouse say about you?”

“That I’m cute and I can twitch my nose?” I answered, and twitched my nose.

Willy laughed and took a slurp of his disgusting wheatgrass and turnip juice, which is the drink of choice for lion-men, I suppose. Of course, the juice reminded him of my disaster.

“So Mouseman, have you and your friend Mr Twit destroyed any more kitchens?” he asked.

“Not this week,” I said, and wished that I had kept my big mouth shut.

The Eighth Thing:
Last week, Kate gave me a big bag of fruit to take to Kalem’s mum, Angela, on my way to training. The fruit was a bit soft and The Happy Pear only sells the freshest of fruit, so every day the stuff that is not sold is thrown out onto the compost heap or given away free to friends. Angela is Kate’s best friend. When we go on holidays, Angela helps out in The Happy Pear.

“Kate says you might make a tart with it or something,” I told Angela when I handed her the bag of fruit.

“How about a smoothie?” suggested Kalem. “Can Tao and I make a smoothie, Mum?”

“Sure,” said Angela. “Just don’t make a mess.”

So we chucked about half the bag of fruit into the smoothie mixer, then Kalem poured in a carton of apple juice.

“Whizz her up, Tao!” he ordered. So I turned the knob to full.

“Help!” I screamed as smoothie mix exploded out of the top all over the kitchen. Juice splashed everywhere! Bits of bananas and apples and strawberries shot up to the ceiling. I tried to put my hand across the top to stop the stuff coming out, but that only made things worse – the mess squirted out of the sides all over me and Kalem.

“Help, Kalem! Helphelphelp!” I yelled.

Kalem switched off the power just as Angela came rushing in.

At first she said nothing, just looked around at her once lovely kitchen in horror. Then she said, “I thought I told you two not to make a mess!”

“I forgot to put on the lid,” said Kalem sheepishly. A strawberry had exploded on his nose.

“Sorry,” I said. “We’ll pay for the damage.” I could feel liquid banana dripping down my face. I licked it as it passed my mouth. It tasted nice, but it wasn’t the time to say so.

Well, we didn’t have to pay for any damage, but we did have to do the clean-up. Angela handed us each a roll of kitchen towel and we did our best … but in the end she did most of the work.

When we were done, Angela used the rest of the fruit to make us a “proper” smoothie. With the top on the mixer this time.

“Taa daa – delicious and nutritious!” she declared and poured me a glass. And it
was
delicious. Kalem had an orange moustache from the smoothie he was drinking, which looked really funny. I had one too.

“Thank you,” we shouted to Angela as we rushed off to our match.

“You’re welcome, men in moustaches,” she called after us.

“Lose the moustaches,” said the Head Honcho, which is what we call our coach. His real name is Bert Cartwright but nobody calls him that – not even the adults. “We want the opposition to fear us – not jeer us. To shake in their shoes, to quake in our wake!” he roared at us.

Honestly, I don’t understand half of what the Head Honcho says in his team talks but they always work and we go out “with fire in our bellies”, believing that we can win … even though we nearly always lose.

But last week we did win and it was all thanks to me. The Head Honcho said that I was “the hero of the hour”! It was completely accidental, really. Kalem crossed the ball into the box and I tripped, and as I was falling the ball bounced off my head and flew into the top corner of the net. The Head Honcho said afterwards that it was a “textbook header”. We had won our first match in ten weeks.

“All thanks to my smoothie!” laughed Angela as Kalem waved goodbye to me at his door.

“And to my great skill!” I called back as I went out the gate.

And ever since I told Willy all about our smoothie disaster, Willy has taken to calling Kalem “Mr Twit”.

The Ninth Thing:
“Brace yourself, Tao,” warned Dad when he picked me up outside The Happy Pear at two o’clock to take me to his new house. “The twins are very excited.”

The twins are always excited, so that wasn’t going to be any different from usual.

“Did she make you work on your birthday?” Dad asked then.

I didn’t like the way he said “she” instead of Kate, so I answered a bit crossly.

“No, she didn’t. I wanted to.”

“OK. Down boy!” laughed Dad. “Are you happy with the pet mouse I got you? What have you called him?”

I told him I was, of course, but I hadn’t named the mouse yet and was he sure that it was a he?

“Well, that’s what the man in the pet shop said,” Dad answered, “but apparently it’s hard to tell.” And he grinned.

Dad parked the car outside the house but I had hardly got out when Jo had opened the door and the twins had started charging down the drive, shouting, “TaoTaoTao” at the top of their voices.

“They’ve been like excited puppies all day, waiting for the birthday boy,” Jo said as Roger tried to wriggle out from under her arm and Rachel pulled me by the hand to show me the cake.

Well, we had to have some cake first because the twins couldn’t wait. They blew out the candles the minute Dad had lit them and he had to re-light them and tell them to let me do it … but, of course, they didn’t. Then everyone sang, “Happy birthday, dear Tao, Happy birthday to you” and Roger stuck his fist into the cake.

“Time for presents,” announced Jo, pulling him away from the ruins of the cake.

Rachel had got me her favourite Barbie doll and she promised to mind it for me when I wasn’t there.

“That’s really nice of you,” I grinned as she took the doll out of my hands.

Roger gave me a fire engine. He showed me how to push it and squirt the water to put out the fire, but he wouldn’t let me touch it.

“They chose the presents themselves,” laughed Jo and handed me her present – a voucher for the sports shop, so I could choose a present for myself too. Then she gave me a quick hug. I made my body stiff and kept my arms by my sides. She is not my mum. Kate isn’t really either because I’m adopted, but she is the only mum I ever want. Jo gave herself a little shake and said in a kind voice that made me feel a bit bad, “I also want to give you this … if you’ll take it.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood and watched while she pulled her bracelet off her wrist, the one she always wears with all the tiny stars and angels and hearts and other little things hanging off it.

“I don’t want your bracelet,” I said.

What would I do with a bracelet?

“I know that.” She smiled and started taking a little silver wolf off the bracelet. “This is what I want to give you – it’s a charm.”

I didn’t understand what she was talking about, so she explained.

“This is a charm bracelet. All these little objects are ‘charms’ that I’ve collected since I was a little girl and each one is special in some way.”

“Is it valuable?” I asked.

“It is to me.”

Which didn’t really answer my question.

“It was given to me when I was ten by my grandmother. She got it for me on a trip she made to China. She said it would protect me and it has,” she said. “And now that you are ten, and as you are Chinese, I want to give it to you.” And she handed me the tiny silver wolf.

“Why?” I asked.

“So it can protect you.”

“Against what?”

“Oh, you never know when you might need protection,” she smiled. “Hopefully never.”

“Shouldn’t you give it to someone in your family?” I asked. I didn’t really want it.

“I am,” she said.

You are not my family, I thought, but I didn’t say it. Then she handed me a small envelope and told me to keep the charm in that so that I would not lose it.

“Thanks,” I mumbled and stuck the envelope in my pocket. It was a stupid thing to give to a boy. Maybe I should have said that, but just then Dad came into the kitchen so I let it go.

Dad clapped his hands and said, “Let’s play pass the parcel!”

That was not such a good idea. When Dad stopped the music, Rachel was holding the big messy parcel. She didn’t know what to do.

“Tear off the paper!” I told her. But as soon as she started opening the first wrapping, Roger jumped up and grabbed at the parcel and started ripping it apart. Jo had to pull it off him and Rachel started crying until we all started pulling it apart together, even Dad. There was paper everywhere when we had finished, but Jo had put in three prizes, chocolate bars, so that Roger and Rachel and I all got a prize. Then she switched on the
Mary Poppins
DVD to calm everyone down while she cleaned up the mess and I sat on the couch and watched it with Roger cuddled up on one side of me and Rachel on the other, both with their thumbs in their mouths.

Every Saturday with Rachel and Roger ends up the same – watching
Mary Poppins
. Everyone has their favourite bit. Rachel gets all excited when Mary Poppins starts taking all the things out of her bag that could not possibly fit in it and clicks her fingers. Rachel tries to click her fingers, but of course she can’t so I have to click my fingers for her and then she can’t understand why magic doesn’t happen when I do it.

Roger’s favourite bit is the penguin dance. He jumps off the couch and pulls his trousers down around his hips and joins in the penguin dance … and he is much funnier than the penguins in the film. I haven’t really got a favourite bit, but I think I know practically every word of every song off by heart now.

When
Mary Poppins
is over, it is almost seven o’clock and time for the twins to say “Nightie night” and for me to get home to meet Kalem and David for party number two.

The Tenth Thing:
SHE said that she would drive me home to get out of the house and away from the kids before she went completely out of her tiny mind, but it took ages to get going because she couldn’t find her keys. Dad just shook his head and grinned at me.