KMS Blog

HAPPY TIME TEA
A children's story for adults

 

 [illustration by Annie Waldusky ©2009] 

 Happy Time Tea is the story of Azaria Byron, a precocious and eccentric young lady who moves to Boulder, CO with her family.  Her father takes a job with Happy Time Tea Company, whose teas are renown for the restorative  and healing elements.  But Zari soon finds that Boulder is a little too bright and too happy, and that there is a dark secret hiding behind the factory walls.  A mysterious stranger named Prometheus appears to Zari and exorts her to look deeper into the town and into the company.  This is the story of what she finds.

 

[working draft, unedited]

 

There are few things in life better than a nice coming-of-age story.  An engaging central character, a hard lesson learned, and a happy ending to wrap it all up.  Stories where we find wonderful parents, well behaved children, and a challenge that keeps you turning the pages until it is solved in a satisfactory manner.  This is not one of those stories.  Here you will find betrayal, danger, manipulation, death, abandonment, and other sordid events.   

The next thing you might be wondering is just who I am.  How, after all, did I come into possession of so much detailed information?   I would, of course, love to tell you all these things, but this story is unfolding as we speak, and danger and darkness still lurk for those who are too close to exposing things to the light.   So who I am must remain a mystery.  I will tell you that I was born long ago, educated in a world free of cellular phones, global positioning systems, airbags, computers, or many other things people now take for granted.  I am considered a Luddite of sorts — the word Luddite means “someone who dislikes technology”.  It was what the followers of a fellow named Ned Ludd called themselves — Luddites.  Mr. Ludd was a 19^th Century British rebel who opposed, violently, a new machine that was being used in textiles.  Textiles are used to make fabrics, like the shirt you are wearing, your pants, your socks, your blankets, and the fabric that covers your furniture

The machine that Ned Ludd opposed was called a “Stocking Frame”, and it automated some of the more tedious elements of textile production.   Before the Stocking Frame was invented, textiles had been done entirely by hand, and textile mill owners had to employ many hundreds of workers to do even simple chores.  The Stocking Frame automated some of these tasks, so that factory owners could fire a good percentage of their workers and pocket the extra money or expand their business without hiring extra manpower.  The problem, you see, was that England in the early 1800’s was a pretty dark and dangerous place, and if you didn’t have a job, you could easily starve to death right under the noses of the police and government and family and friends.  Or you and your family would have to move into dreaded workhouses, where wives and husbands and children were separated, and hard labor was forced on everyone in exchange for food.  It was like going to prison to avoid starvation.  There was no such thing as unemployment or welfare or job training, and so losing your job could very well mean losing your life.  So Mr. Ned Ludd decided that he had to prevent the loss of his and other jobs, and so he and his followers smashed the Stocking Frame machines into pieces.  They did this at first in a disorganized fashion, but Mr. Ludd was very persuasive and passionate, and he soon had organized a large group of rebels who systematically broke into textile mills to smash Stock Frames.  His followers became know as Luddites, and the term eventually evolved to describe any “hater” of technology.  As you can imagine, the owners of the textile mills didn’t much like this, and so they convinced the members of the British Parliament to pass, in 1812, a law called the “Frame Breaking Act”.  This law made it a capital crime — punishable by death — to break these machines.   And indeed, 17 men were tried and executed in 1813 under this law.

Lord Byron, the famous English poet who was friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Shelly, William Wordsworth, and other luminary creative minds, was one of the very few prominent people to publically oppose the “Frame Breaking Act”.  He spoke publically against it, and  wrote about the immorality of the law — that a human life and property should not be put on the same playing field. 

Lord Byron’s great great granddaughter is a girl named Azaria Byron, who happens to be the central character in this story.  Although only just entering her teens, Azaria is what we would call precocious — brilliant, and far ahead of those her age in ability and wisdom.  But like her great great grandfather, Azaria too is an eccentric by temperament, by genes or environment who can say.  Lord Byon’s eccentricity was the key to his brilliance, but it also was the key to his death at the still youthful age of 36.  You could argue he died of boredom, for his phenomenal intellect grew bored with poetry, with scandal, with English society, with learning other languages, and so he sought out a war being fought in Greece to occupy himself.  Despite having no military training of any kind, he became an adept leader, and when he died of sepsis he became a Greek national hero. 

Our story begins in Philadelphia, a grand old American city with a colorful past, whose streets can take one back to simpler but darker times.  People from this city tend to be a bit darker in temperament themselves, and certainly darker then their West Coast brethren, or those from smaller, more modern cities. 

Azaria Byron was born in Philadelphia 13 years before this story begins, the sole child of her parents.  Her mother was a stay-at-home mom, and her father a mid-level manager for a company that manufactured electronics.  They never yelled at Azaria or each other, or raised their voices, or were ever cruel to her.  At worst they made the mistake of so many modern parents, which was simply that they were absorbed completely their own lives.  Perhaps this caused their daughter to be more introverted than most, perhaps that is a coincidence, but either way Azaria lived her life without friends or activities outside of her own mind. 

Azaria, known to everyone as Zari, learned to take excellent care of herself.  She made do with her friendship with her cat, Tuesday.  Zari was what people considered an “odd” child — she read strange books, wore strange clothes, thought about strange things, and spent her time in strange places.  She was almost always alone, but she didn’t know the feeling of loneliness.  To her, it was just the way she was, the way life was, and she would be puzzled if you told her you were worried about her being lonely. 

“But I like being alone,” I can imagine her telling you, cocking one of her eyebrows. 

Zari was always thinking thoughts deemed “too serious for a girl her age” and asking questions “too serious for her age”, according to her teachers.  Her choice of books more than once led to phone calls home to her parents, for Zari liked to read books on life and death, the occult, esoteric philosophies, and other strange and sordid topics.  In Zari’s eleventh year her parents, concerned that she was suffering from some unknown ailment, took to a specialist.  This man, who was sallow-skinned and bearded and wore heavy glasses that distorted his eyes, gave Zari a battery of tests.  All that was determined definitely was that she extraordinarily bright.

“Your daughter,” the doctor told her concerned parents, Ken and Barbara, “Is fine as far as I can tell.  No issues such as clinical depression or anxiety.”  He scratched at his beard, and his large, sad eyes went back and forth between them behind their glass ovals.  “She has unusual beliefs for a girl her age,” he admitted. 

Zari was in the next room, but had her ear placed up against the door, and was able to make out most of the muffled words that filtered through. 

“And no friends,” her mother interjected, hands fretting in her lap. 

“She has anti-social tendencies, yes, but Azaria seems to be making the most of them with her esoteric interests.”  The doctor sighed when he looked at the concerned face of Zari’s mother.  Himself someone who long struggled to fit in, he was sympathetic to the little girl in dark clothing.  “There is nothing wrong with being eccentric,” he informed the parents.  “Or in being shy around people, so long as it doesn’t interfere with confidence, self-esteem, or personal growth.  Azaria seems to be very self-confident, just in a way that doesn’t line up well with what we are told expect to children.  But her self-image is very strong, and very healthy.”

“So she’s okay?” her father, Ken, asked nervously, slightly confused by what seemed like contradictory talk. 

“Yes, Mr. Byron,” the sallow-skinned doctor answered.  “In fact, Azaria is likely to have a far more interesting life than most people, although she may experience hardships unique to someone with her disposition.”   

“What does that mean?” her mother asked.

“Just that the usual high school dramas are not likely to be things that Azaria will worry about.  She may very well be dealing with issues then that most of us do not face until we are nearing middle age.” 

Mrs. Byron frowned and shook her head, Mr. Byron smiled slightly, and Zari, in the next room, sat back down on a couch, her gaze on the far wall.  

 

 

“Mommm, I’m home,” Zari called out on the fateful day that would change her life forever.  She had just burst in from school, and shook off the December cold with a shudder.  Her 13^th birthday had just passed, and although her mother struggled to understand her, they got along well enough.  Barbara was, after all, an ex-cheerleader who had gone through middle school and high school in a swirl of feverish popularity, and her most enduring trials were in how to mange the demands on her time and attention by dozens adoring boys (and teachers) and jealous girls. 

Zari threw her coat in the closet floor, ignoring the wide choice of hangers, and bounded into the kitchen.  She was dressed in a way particular to Philadelphia in the winter, and to her somewhat dark personality.  She wore a dark dress, a deep purple, with stocking sleeves that reached down from her elbows to her wrists.  Black socks were pulled up her legs to her thighs, and black boots climbed halfway to her knees.  Zari had dark hair, cut into bangs at the front and bound in two ponytails in the rear.  Her eyes were over-sized in a face that tapered down to a soft chin and small lips, and were the most striking shade of green.  Freckles dotted her pale skin, and she had defined cheekbones that stood, aloof, from the rest of her features. 

The kitchen was empty, so she darted up the stairs to her bedroom, finding Tuesday sitting comfortably on her windowsill.  The cat gave out a small meow when she saw her owner, and Zari picked the cat up in her arms, turning her over to rub her belly.  They had brought the cat home two years before, and named her after the day she had been rescued from the shelter. 

“Hi,” Zari said, sitting down with Tuesday in her lap.  “Good to see you!”  She leaned in closer to the cat, whispering conspiratorially, “Ug.  Dull day at school.  Mr. Foxx gave the most boring lecture today!  I thought I was going to fall asleep at my desk.  Seriously.”

Tuesday meowed sympathetically.  She, like Zari, had huge green eyes, and gray-and-black fur that spiraled across her face.  She liked to twitch her prominent whiskers when spoken to.

“You’re telling me,” Zari responded, “And then that boy I told you about, Bobby, well, he called me a weirdo today after math class, just like he did last week.  And Julia and Teresa both laughed.”  Zari grew more still, and Tuesday turned over, then stood up on her lap and licked her face with her thick tongue.  Zari giggled.

“Ew!  Tuesday!  Stop that!”  She giggled again.  “But then in science class we learned about Newton’s Laws, which we already knew, of course, but then how Albert Einstein’s theory changed all of that.  It was really cool!”  She thought for a moment.  “So I was thinking about what to do for my big science project that this year, but nothing has come to me.  Maybe I’ll do something on Relativity. What we learned today was so cool!  Did you know that Einstein discovered that time is actually relative?  That it isn’t set, and that time changes in relationship to gravity and to speed?  How crazy is that?”

Tuesday meowed. 

“I know!” Zari gushed.   

Zari’s room was, like her dress, a deep purple.  There were no posters of boys, or of famous girls, or of TV shows, or movies.  Her mother had twice bought her posters of popular girls, and both times Zari had put them up for a week before quietly taking them down again, and both of those girls sat in the back of her closet, their teen beauty and angst rolled up onto itself.   But Zari did have posters: there was a one of Oscar Wilde reclining in a way that suggested he was about to deliver some kind of devastating quip, and of Ralph Waldo Emerson looking serious and scholarly, and of Virginia Wolfe looking pensive and preoccupied.  

“Goodness,” her mother commented once, ‘It’s just that they’re all so ugly, Zari.  Except your father’s great grandfather.”

There was also a portrait of her great great grandfather, Lord Byron, looking devilish and handsome. 

 

A few hours after Zari returned from school, her father came home.  He had been out of work for some time, and so his days were usually spent hunting some kind of job.  Over the few months he had been out of work, his search had moved from professional jobs to any kind of job, and she knew he had been applying to jobs far below his skill and pay level.  The family dinner, usually served at precisely 6pm, had been pushed back without explanation.  Zari, now barefooted, tromped about the house, playing hide-and-seek with Tuesday, and singing her herself. 

“Hey dad,” she called, “You wanna play a game of chess?”

Her father sighed from the next room.  “Not now, kiddo.  Today’s been a wild day-o.”  Her father’s voice was gentle and melodic, and he was, when in good moods, prone to singing to himself, and Zari would sometimes join in. 

Zari ran through the kitchen, her feet sticking to the linoleum and letting her take the corners at a harrowing speed.  She saw that her parents were huddled together at the kitchen table, deep in conspiratorial talk.  She was mildly suspicious that something was afoot, but decided to keep running through the kitchen.  On her fourth pass, her mother stopped her.

“Zari!  Can’t you see your father and I are talking?  Honestly!  And what are you doing barefooted in the middle of the winter?  You’ll catch cold.”  Her mother paused.  “And darling, if you’re going to go to the trouble to paint your toes, must you paint them black?  I bought you all those nice, soft colors.” 

Zari shrugged her shoulder, squeezed her toes dramatically, and then smiled when her father winked at her. 

“Wait upstairs, will you, kiddo?” her father asked asked.  “Your mom and I need to talk a bit.” 

Zari stood for a moment, hands on her hips, but then her mother added a forceful, “Now, Zari!”  Her mother had blonde hair, shoulder length that turned up at the ends.  Her face was an oval, and her eyes a soft blue.  Her lips were always painted a deep red, and her fingernails always matched her lips.  Her mother had a slight pear shape to her figure, bowing out as she reached her hips.  Zari went upstairs and pulled on one stocking, leaving the other leg bare. 

“What do you think, Tuesday?” Zari asked her cat.  “Mom and dad whispering to each other, dinner’s late, and I’m not allowed downstairs.”  The cat made a growling sound.  “Right,” Zari said, nodding her head, her a little color coming to her pale face.  “Suspicious.” 

 

 “Zaarrri,” her mother called, at quarter-past-seven, up the stairs.

“Finally!” Zari said, patting her rumbling stomach.  She took the stairs two at time down to the landing, then rounded a corner and went into the kitchen. Her mother was working over several simmering pots, and the kitchen smelled very good. 

“Hey mom,” Zari said, plunking down into a chair.  “Where’s dad?”

“He’s outside talking on the phone.” 

Zari raised an eyebrow at this.  It was freezing outside, and her father hated the cold.  Her suspicions deepened.  She spotted her father out on the back deck, smoking a cigarette and pacing back and forth, talking into his cell phone.  His face looked drawn and pale, and he looked somehow both worried and excited at the same time.  Since he lost his job, money had become a big topic in the house.  Dinners were often ground beef or chicken legs – no more pork or steak or fish or white meat.  “Zari –” her mother turned and then paused, seeing that her daughter had on one stocking.  “Young lady – go and put on another sock.  Now.”

“Aww…” Zari protested, “Mom!”

“Don’t mom me.  Go.” 

Zari took that stairs two at a time again, spun into her room, and hopping on one leg pulled on a bright red stocking.  With one leg black and one red she then skidded back down the stairs and into the kitchen. 

Zari sat down, and looked again at her father’s drawn but excited face out on the deck. 

“What’s for dinner?” she asked.

“Your favorite – roast turkey.”

“Yay!” Zari exclaimed, but then immediately narrowed her eyes.  “Wait a minute, mom – just what’s going on?”

“Oh Zari,” her mother said dismissively.  “Can you stop asking questions?  Nothing is going on except dinner.”  

Her father finally came in from the cold, shuddering.  The plates, laden with food, were put out on the table.   

“Hey kiddo,” her father said.  He sat down and eagerly attacked his plate.  Zari noticed her parents exchange some kind of look, and she put her fork down forcefully.

“Okay mom and dad,” she said.  “Out with it.  What’s going on?”

“What do you mean, kiddo?” her father said.

“Dad, you look like you’re hiding something!”

“What?” he chortled,

“Oh Zari,” her mother said, “You’re imagining things.” 

Zari folded her arms across her chest. 

“Barbara,” her father said, “This little kiddo is just too bright to keep secrets from.”

“Ken!” her mother exclaimed.  “We agreed not to tell her until we were sure.”

“Tell me what!” Zari nearly shouted. 

 “Well,” her father began, “Honey, you know I lost my job. “  Her father was a lean man with a disorganized pile of brown hair that always made him look like he had just gotten out of bed.  He had a prominent Adam’s apple that stuck out in the middle of his thin neck, and his nose and chin that jutted away from the rest of his features.  His shoulders were often bunched up around his ears, and his head sometimes seemed to float out in front of the rest of his body.  Lankly legs often looked like they were hopelessly tangled around each other under a table, and sometimes Zari expected him to go tumbling when stranding suddenly.  

Zari looked at him suspiciously. “We have to move into a hotel room,” she guessed. 

Her father shook his head.

“You’re selling the house,” she guessed again, this time more depressingly. 

Another head shake. 

“We’re moving into a shelter.”  Her third guess. 

“Zari!” her mother interrupted, “Don’t be dramatic!”  

“Mom has to join a circus to support the family,” she said. 

“Oh, ha-ha,” her mother said. 

“I found another job,” her father smiled.   

“You did?” Zari said, “Really?  That’s great, dad!”  But then she noticed again the excitement, nervousness, and apologetic energy of her father.  Her eyes narrowed: “But?”

Her father exchanged a look with her mother.

Zari’s stomach sank.  “There’s a but, isn’t there?”

“But,” her father added, sighing, “Yes, Zari.  I found a job, a great job that pays much more than the last one.  So we don’t have to worry about money anymore.  But,” he said, nodding at her.  “But we’ll need to move.”

“Move,” Zari said at last, “Out of this house?  Out of Philly?  Move where?  Why?”

“We can’t live without my income,” her father said.  “And the economy is pretty bad.  But I found a job in Boulder, Colorado.”

Zari looked around.  “Colorado?  The state?” 

“Yes.”

“But that’s 2,000 miles from here!  What about this house?  And my friends?  And school?  And Tuesday?”

“Slow down, kiddo,” her father said, patting her leg.  “It’s a nice town.  Very pretty.  Perfect weather.  Nice people.  Lots of things to do.  And the new company is putting us up in a house, a really nice house, including with furniture.  Bigger and nicer than this house.” 

“But I like this house,” Zari protested. 

Her father nodded sympathetically.  “I know, kiddo.  Me too.  It’s been a good house.”

“This house is small,” her mother countered.  “The new one is bigger and nicer, Zari.  Three full rooms instead of two.  A real yard.  And not a row home.  An actual home with a driveway and garage and everything.” 

Zari ignored her mother.  “So this is my last year in Philadelphia?”  Her parents again exchanged a look. Zari folded her arms across her chest again, and her knees — one red, one black, came together under the table.  “Now what?”  

“Now,” her father offered hopefully, “We have an adventure ahead of us.”

Zari didn’t take the bait.  She scowled at him.  

“We have a lot of exploring to do when we get to Boulder.  Trips to take, trails to hike, and places to visit.” 

“Oh, Ken,” her mother said.  She turned her Zari.  “Zari, we need to move in two weeks.  We’re going to rent our house here, not sell it, so we can always come home.  And we’ll move our furniture into storage so we can come back home easily if we want.“

Zari stared from her mother to her father, speechless. 

“I know, kiddo,” her father said.  “It’s really short notice.  But we were running out of money, and we didn’t have any choice.  I’m sorry,” he said.  “I wish we could have waited out the school year.” 

“Two weeks?” Zari cried at last.  “Two weeks?  Right in the middle of the school year?  But everyone will already have friends!” 

“Oh honey,” her mother said comfortingly, “You really don’t have any friends anyway.  Maybe in Boulder you’ll find kids more like you…”  Her father kicked her under the table.

“Ow,” she exclaimed.  “Ken!”

Zari stood up.  “I want to go upstairs.”

“Young lady,” her mother said, “Don’t get mad at me for being honest.  Honey, maybe in Boulder you can make more of an effort to fit in?  You know, maybe try out for cheerleading or something?”

“I am not going to stand on the sidelines and cheer boys while they play sports,” Zari stated.  “Let them cheer for me.”

Her father laughed, but her mother glowered.  

“Oh Zari.  Don’t be so dramatic.  Cheerleading is a wonderful way to get to know a lot of people.  It worked very well for me.  Besides, there are boys that are involved in cheerleading.” 

“Okay,” her father said.  “Time-out!  Honey, let her go upstairs if she wants.  It’s a big shock.  Zari, I only found out yesterday, and I spent all day today seeing if we had some other choice.”  He reached out and took her hand for a moment.  “If we had any other choice I would have taken it.  I know how hard it is to move in the middle of year.”    

 Zari let her father’s hand drop.  “But can’t you move out by yourself for six months and get set up, and then mom and I can follow you?”  She looked at her mother, and then reconsidered.  “Or you and mom move out, and I’ll just stay with friends until the year finishes out?  Me and Tuesday?  That way I can finish the year and have time to say goodbye to my friends, and then start next year with other new kids.” 

“Oh Zari,” her mother said, “That would be nice.  But that just won’t work.” 

“Why?”

“It just won’t,” her mother frowned.  “Don’t be difficult and start asking a thousand questions!”

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