Green, Yellow and White,-the girl wearing the waitress's uniform was a refugee, could be an Indian or a Lankan refugee; could be even Guyanese. Black skin, black eyes, black hair, black eyes..even her lipstick and nail polish were black. Her name should have been long with many vowels, she had shrunk it into 'Rathna' in her badge that she had pinned to her dress.
She stood at the right distance from the table, not too far removed to see, but not too close to hear the conversation around the table, just as the rule book of waiting at tables says.
She knew many other rules of the book.
When you serve at the table, you must serve from the left side of the seated guest - Rule No 12.
When left overs are removed from the table, you must remove them from the right side of the seated guest - Rule No 11.
While adjusting the chair before the guest eases in, you should approach from the left - Rule No 26.
If the napkin is folded and kept to the right of the plate it means the guest has finished eating - Rule No 7.
If the napkin is folded and left on the arm of the chair, it means the guest has not yet finished - Rule No 9.
The spoons, forks and other appurtenances must be arranged with the larger ones kept farthest from the plate - Rule No 19.
And many more, she knew them all.
She had no problem with these rules, but when it came to the English lessons- it was another story. They teach her only nouns in her class, no verbs. Her teacher says that at this point of time only these are necessary: Cheese, Plate, Napkin, Salad, Cucumber, Lettuce, Olives, Glam Soup..he says the verbs will splice in magically in due course of time. Unfortunately, he does not tell when this magic will happen. She has a note book full of Nouns which she written down to memorize; when the teacher says it will happen, she believes it will indeed happen, after all he can't be wrong.
Her room mate makes fun of her of style of learning English. May be she knows better. Her roommate has started to mark her calender for days she is dating her new boyfriend. She cannot come before 11 pm to the room on those days, the pristine moments of privacy between lovers should not violated , says her room mate. The boyfriend has a hollow voice, like talking through a tin pipe. When he extends his hands to shake, it hangs limp like a bunch of grapes. It would be her lot to shake it. He would not even look right into her eyes with this gaze fixed across her right shoulder.
She was assigned a table where one of the richest in Canada had invited his guests. They say they changed the curtains once a day, bed linen twice a day, bulbs 8 times a day in his home-that rich. It was well past 11 in the night. It was a wedding feast. She was being paid by the hour. She had learnt to be extra careful during birthdays , weddings and other such celebratory feasts, for her manager did not condone mistakes. When she turns out in black stockings and walks in crisply with her hands stretched like she is ready to fly , an equal volume of air is displaced from the banquet hall. It does not require an Archimedes to demonstrate that, a refugee girl is enough.
On top of this, the manager will also conduct on-the spot tests.
"What is this ?"
"Pudding".
He will use fork to put some into his mouth.
"What is this now called ?"
"Leavings"
"What should you do with them ?"
"throw into bin"
She has passed the test.
There were unwritten rules too, which her manager had laid down for her specially.
She must present a pleasant countenance to her guests. She knew it very well.
She must intuitively understand what the guests want and carry out tasks to their satisfaction. She knew it very well.
She must not do anything that annoys the guests. She knew it very well that too.
The refugee girls' English was poor. It was better for them not to talk to guests. Smile, they could do copiously in front of guests.However, this rule was quite unnecessary. Nobody understood anything if you speak only in Nouns.
The table opposite to the main table was assigned to her. The man looked like he was 50 and his wife 30; there was a son who could be 18 and a daughter 8. It was possible that the lady was his second wife and the son was born to the first. It was all her guesswork. She was good in observation and guessing.
They were a lively lot. They spoke to each other frequently and were laughing amongst themselves loudly. They could be speaking in Polish. There was lot of vowels in their language. What could be of common interest between a 50 old man, 30 old woman, 18 year old boy and an 8 year old girl,-it was amusingly curious for the refugee waitress. She smiled to herself.
That was when the boy saw her. Generally, nobody takes notice of her. This red haired white boy had not shifted eyes off her. There were many young women in the gathering there, but his followed her everywhere. What do the rule book say about it ? What will the supervisor think ? Can she return the gaze? She did not know. This self consciousness made her focus more on the job on hand.
However, something which had never happened before was happening inside her. His rapt gaze was sending in her a sensation of tingling that she has never experienced before. He had turned towards his sister laughing. When she passed by, he turned around to look at her, with the remnants of laughter still in his lips. Whenever she had an occasion to serve at their table, he followed her with her eyes till she fully retreated into the kitchen.
His napkin fell off his lap while was eating. She felt it was not without help from his own fingers. There is provision for such occasions in the rule book too. She bent down to pick it up and returned to him in his hand. He said “thanks”. There was an unmistakable pressure of his fingers in her palm. She grew suddenly nervous with a tremor starting in her shoes, but could walk away with a straight face as if nothing happened. She stood at the right distance from the table motionless, as if any agitation of air flow would be untoward -not far removed to see , but distant enough not to hear ( Rule 17).
By now, the dancing had started. Both the husband and wife took to the dance floor. The wife danced with gusto, while the husband , in spite of limited range of movements, provided the able foil. The daughter had moved her chair towards the dance floor and sat tight watching the dance.
Suddenly, a smile appeared on his face; he raised his hands signalling towards her. She rushed immediately without any loss of time and bent her waist to a barely noticeable degree and said “Yes” - Rule No 16. Saying “Yes” was of course allowed.
“Coffee, Decafe, two sugars”, when he said these words, it was as sweet as somebody calling her name tenderly. “Coffee, Decafe, Two Sugars”, rolled off his lips with no involvement of the tongue and she loved it.
Before the party ended, he had ordered for Coffee 3 times. It was her duty to serve whatever he asked for unquestioningly-Rule 22. Even if he had ordered 20 times the same coffee, she would have complied.
The guests started to leave. These people would also leave likewise. His mother was delving into her handbag before she wore it over her right shoulder ready to leave. He folded the napkin and placed it on the plate, all the time looking at her. And then he suddenly signalled with his eyes.
She did everything in copy book style, no breach of rules whatsoever. She calmly dealt with their plates and cups removing them one by one. When his turn came, he was looking at her intently. She removed his plate as she did the others'. When she lifted the napkin there was a 5 dollar note underneath. A telephone number was written on it. She noted the telephone no on her palm. Her palm had come in handy for the second time today.
Her roommate had not yet returned. The number in her palm had not been smudged. She called out the numbers aloud. There was a sweetness about them. Some kind of elation was sweeping through her. What the red-haired fellow would be doing now ? The room was quiet. Dare she dial his number in the middle of the night? After all nobody would lift the phone at this late hour, she thought. She dialled the digits one by one, with deliberation.
The response from the other side was immediate. She could recognize the voice to be his. The same voice that had cast a spell on her, “Coffee, Decafe, two sugars”. She shook all over-her hands shook, lips quivered and leg quacked.She kept the phone back on its cradle. In exactly one minute the phone rang. He must have pressed the button to call back the last number. She did not lift the phone to answer the call. She stood looking at it transfixed, as if it were a coiled serpent. The phone went on ringing and finally died down after recording a message from him.
When she played the recorded voice mail, she could understand only some of it. He had guessed it was she and yet his voice betrayed a doubt, a doubt if he was leaving the message for the right person. He was imploring her to call him again.
She never called him again, but ran the voice recording over and over again. It had become her daily ritual. Her room mate had somehow came to know of it. It could have been irritating to her. One day when she deleted the voice recording, the anguish it caused to the refugee girl was immeasurable.
Her pad consisted of one door, one window and one roof above the head. The space was so little between their cots that if she extended her hand, it would brush her room mate's face. This meant they always had their back towards each other and slept with their faces close to the wall. She never liked her boyfriend's sly countenance. Even when told that her room mate was not there, he would not put the phone down, but try to strike a conversion with her, quite unnecessarily.
It was a cold wintry morning, when the sun stays within shoulder height throughout. Her room mate and her boyfriend threw a party for her, much to her initial protestations. They wanted to take it out on her, so it seemed. It took some time before she understood their true intentions. They wore their spectacles above their foreheads,surreptitiously glanced at each other and laughed -laughed at her, so it seemed.
She did not like it one bit. She hated parties and the back breaking work, day after day, all days of the week. Why should they hold a party for her ?
When winged her way to her work, she had barely minutes before the roll call. Normally, she would be there in her uniform, prim and proper, 5 minutes before – Rule No 16. They could assign her to any banquet hall – Rule No 18. There were girls standing in a row, seeking employment to wait at tables like her. That day she worked non-stop for 10 hours like a girl possessed. Not a minute she rested. Her legs buckled. Her hands had gone tired lifting those heavy plates.
It was past mid-night, the dinner was not over still. Time for rare empathy from the supervisor. They are allowed to rest in a narrow room between the banquet hall and the kitchen. The old-fashioned black telephone with a dial in a corner distracted her no end. Her heart thudded like never before whenever she walked past it.
She had called his number three times since the first. The phone was always picked up by a man with a rough voice. It could have been the father. She would keep the phone down immediately without speaking a word. For some reason, the urge to dial his number at least once was very strong today. She kept the plate down and dialled his number with great trepidation. Her fingers shook and her he fluttered like that of a sparrow in its final moments.
To her amazement, his voice came through from the other side, no doubt about it. A sudden dryness enveloped her, her mouth. She froze, not able to a word in reply to his continuous stream of 'hellos'. What to speak ? What words, what pitch – pitch her voice should take-she had not come prepared. He kept saying, 'hello', 'hello.
“Mozerella Salad”
“Bruschetta”
“Cup tea Vongole”
“Lettuce”
“Lasangna”
She had no verbs in her repertoire. The names of all he had ordered with her was all that she could muster. There was a laugh followed by a sound from the other side. She suddenly became conscious of her normal self, that of a waitress and immediately put the phone down.
It was now three days since this happened.She was lying in her bed with legs stretched and entwined. She was trying to bring back his face from memory and hold it in front of her. Abruptly, her friend barged into the room. She always wondered how her room mate managed to open and close the door with so much noise. She shook her foot wear free without bending even a wee bit and threw down her handbag on the bed. Her eye lashes and lips quivered in angst.
The refugee girl did not respond. She craned her neck and looked both sides as if she just woke up from sleep. What a lousy room; lousy room mate, lousy bed with its lousy smell. In a room where the wall loomed in front of you whichever way you looked, she closed her eyes and immersed herself in thoughts about him. She thought of the way the words rolled off his tongue,-
“Coffee, Decafe, two sugars”
“Coffee, Decafe, two sugars”
She slowly fell into a sleep.
He got active after the telephone conversation broke off. He did not take much time to figure out that the girl who reeled out the names of all that he had eaten in the dinner is the same girl who waited at his table. However finding where he worked too some time. He had to make enquiries in the company she worked for. He went to banquet halls one after the other where the company sent their staff to work. She had no inkling of it.
He was standing at the top of the stairs and she at the bottom. She saw him before he could see her. He also looked directly into her eyes. His look contained in it all the words he had brought from Poland. Her look had all the nouns, verbs and any other kind of word that the English language had. He wanted them all.
She was holding a plate close to her chest, looking like an angel in Green. Yellow and White uniform. When he rushed towards her two steps at a time, he saw her hands clasping a plateful that was about to be served.
She broke Rule No 27, Rule No 32 and Rule No 13 , all at once.
She stood at the right distance from the table, not too far removed to see, but not too close to hear the conversation around the table, just as the rule book of waiting at tables says.
She knew many other rules of the book.
When you serve at the table, you must serve from the left side of the seated guest - Rule No 12.
When left overs are removed from the table, you must remove them from the right side of the seated guest - Rule No 11.
While adjusting the chair before the guest eases in, you should approach from the left - Rule No 26.
If the napkin is folded and kept to the right of the plate it means the guest has finished eating - Rule No 7.
If the napkin is folded and left on the arm of the chair, it means the guest has not yet finished - Rule No 9.
The spoons, forks and other appurtenances must be arranged with the larger ones kept farthest from the plate - Rule No 19.
And many more, she knew them all.
She had no problem with these rules, but when it came to the English lessons- it was another story. They teach her only nouns in her class, no verbs. Her teacher says that at this point of time only these are necessary: Cheese, Plate, Napkin, Salad, Cucumber, Lettuce, Olives, Glam Soup..he says the verbs will splice in magically in due course of time. Unfortunately, he does not tell when this magic will happen. She has a note book full of Nouns which she written down to memorize; when the teacher says it will happen, she believes it will indeed happen, after all he can't be wrong.
Her room mate makes fun of her of style of learning English. May be she knows better. Her roommate has started to mark her calender for days she is dating her new boyfriend. She cannot come before 11 pm to the room on those days, the pristine moments of privacy between lovers should not violated , says her room mate. The boyfriend has a hollow voice, like talking through a tin pipe. When he extends his hands to shake, it hangs limp like a bunch of grapes. It would be her lot to shake it. He would not even look right into her eyes with this gaze fixed across her right shoulder.
She was assigned a table where one of the richest in Canada had invited his guests. They say they changed the curtains once a day, bed linen twice a day, bulbs 8 times a day in his home-that rich. It was well past 11 in the night. It was a wedding feast. She was being paid by the hour. She had learnt to be extra careful during birthdays , weddings and other such celebratory feasts, for her manager did not condone mistakes. When she turns out in black stockings and walks in crisply with her hands stretched like she is ready to fly , an equal volume of air is displaced from the banquet hall. It does not require an Archimedes to demonstrate that, a refugee girl is enough.
On top of this, the manager will also conduct on-the spot tests.
"What is this ?"
"Pudding".
He will use fork to put some into his mouth.
"What is this now called ?"
"Leavings"
"What should you do with them ?"
"throw into bin"
She has passed the test.
There were unwritten rules too, which her manager had laid down for her specially.
She must present a pleasant countenance to her guests. She knew it very well.
She must intuitively understand what the guests want and carry out tasks to their satisfaction. She knew it very well.
She must not do anything that annoys the guests. She knew it very well that too.
The refugee girls' English was poor. It was better for them not to talk to guests. Smile, they could do copiously in front of guests.However, this rule was quite unnecessary. Nobody understood anything if you speak only in Nouns.
The table opposite to the main table was assigned to her. The man looked like he was 50 and his wife 30; there was a son who could be 18 and a daughter 8. It was possible that the lady was his second wife and the son was born to the first. It was all her guesswork. She was good in observation and guessing.
They were a lively lot. They spoke to each other frequently and were laughing amongst themselves loudly. They could be speaking in Polish. There was lot of vowels in their language. What could be of common interest between a 50 old man, 30 old woman, 18 year old boy and an 8 year old girl,-it was amusingly curious for the refugee waitress. She smiled to herself.
That was when the boy saw her. Generally, nobody takes notice of her. This red haired white boy had not shifted eyes off her. There were many young women in the gathering there, but his followed her everywhere. What do the rule book say about it ? What will the supervisor think ? Can she return the gaze? She did not know. This self consciousness made her focus more on the job on hand.
However, something which had never happened before was happening inside her. His rapt gaze was sending in her a sensation of tingling that she has never experienced before. He had turned towards his sister laughing. When she passed by, he turned around to look at her, with the remnants of laughter still in his lips. Whenever she had an occasion to serve at their table, he followed her with her eyes till she fully retreated into the kitchen.
His napkin fell off his lap while was eating. She felt it was not without help from his own fingers. There is provision for such occasions in the rule book too. She bent down to pick it up and returned to him in his hand. He said “thanks”. There was an unmistakable pressure of his fingers in her palm. She grew suddenly nervous with a tremor starting in her shoes, but could walk away with a straight face as if nothing happened. She stood at the right distance from the table motionless, as if any agitation of air flow would be untoward -not far removed to see , but distant enough not to hear ( Rule 17).
By now, the dancing had started. Both the husband and wife took to the dance floor. The wife danced with gusto, while the husband , in spite of limited range of movements, provided the able foil. The daughter had moved her chair towards the dance floor and sat tight watching the dance.
Suddenly, a smile appeared on his face; he raised his hands signalling towards her. She rushed immediately without any loss of time and bent her waist to a barely noticeable degree and said “Yes” - Rule No 16. Saying “Yes” was of course allowed.
“Coffee, Decafe, two sugars”, when he said these words, it was as sweet as somebody calling her name tenderly. “Coffee, Decafe, Two Sugars”, rolled off his lips with no involvement of the tongue and she loved it.
Before the party ended, he had ordered for Coffee 3 times. It was her duty to serve whatever he asked for unquestioningly-Rule 22. Even if he had ordered 20 times the same coffee, she would have complied.
The guests started to leave. These people would also leave likewise. His mother was delving into her handbag before she wore it over her right shoulder ready to leave. He folded the napkin and placed it on the plate, all the time looking at her. And then he suddenly signalled with his eyes.
She did everything in copy book style, no breach of rules whatsoever. She calmly dealt with their plates and cups removing them one by one. When his turn came, he was looking at her intently. She removed his plate as she did the others'. When she lifted the napkin there was a 5 dollar note underneath. A telephone number was written on it. She noted the telephone no on her palm. Her palm had come in handy for the second time today.
Her roommate had not yet returned. The number in her palm had not been smudged. She called out the numbers aloud. There was a sweetness about them. Some kind of elation was sweeping through her. What the red-haired fellow would be doing now ? The room was quiet. Dare she dial his number in the middle of the night? After all nobody would lift the phone at this late hour, she thought. She dialled the digits one by one, with deliberation.
The response from the other side was immediate. She could recognize the voice to be his. The same voice that had cast a spell on her, “Coffee, Decafe, two sugars”. She shook all over-her hands shook, lips quivered and leg quacked.She kept the phone back on its cradle. In exactly one minute the phone rang. He must have pressed the button to call back the last number. She did not lift the phone to answer the call. She stood looking at it transfixed, as if it were a coiled serpent. The phone went on ringing and finally died down after recording a message from him.
When she played the recorded voice mail, she could understand only some of it. He had guessed it was she and yet his voice betrayed a doubt, a doubt if he was leaving the message for the right person. He was imploring her to call him again.
She never called him again, but ran the voice recording over and over again. It had become her daily ritual. Her room mate had somehow came to know of it. It could have been irritating to her. One day when she deleted the voice recording, the anguish it caused to the refugee girl was immeasurable.
Her pad consisted of one door, one window and one roof above the head. The space was so little between their cots that if she extended her hand, it would brush her room mate's face. This meant they always had their back towards each other and slept with their faces close to the wall. She never liked her boyfriend's sly countenance. Even when told that her room mate was not there, he would not put the phone down, but try to strike a conversion with her, quite unnecessarily.
It was a cold wintry morning, when the sun stays within shoulder height throughout. Her room mate and her boyfriend threw a party for her, much to her initial protestations. They wanted to take it out on her, so it seemed. It took some time before she understood their true intentions. They wore their spectacles above their foreheads,surreptitiously glanced at each other and laughed -laughed at her, so it seemed.
She did not like it one bit. She hated parties and the back breaking work, day after day, all days of the week. Why should they hold a party for her ?
When winged her way to her work, she had barely minutes before the roll call. Normally, she would be there in her uniform, prim and proper, 5 minutes before – Rule No 16. They could assign her to any banquet hall – Rule No 18. There were girls standing in a row, seeking employment to wait at tables like her. That day she worked non-stop for 10 hours like a girl possessed. Not a minute she rested. Her legs buckled. Her hands had gone tired lifting those heavy plates.
It was past mid-night, the dinner was not over still. Time for rare empathy from the supervisor. They are allowed to rest in a narrow room between the banquet hall and the kitchen. The old-fashioned black telephone with a dial in a corner distracted her no end. Her heart thudded like never before whenever she walked past it.
She had called his number three times since the first. The phone was always picked up by a man with a rough voice. It could have been the father. She would keep the phone down immediately without speaking a word. For some reason, the urge to dial his number at least once was very strong today. She kept the plate down and dialled his number with great trepidation. Her fingers shook and her he fluttered like that of a sparrow in its final moments.
To her amazement, his voice came through from the other side, no doubt about it. A sudden dryness enveloped her, her mouth. She froze, not able to a word in reply to his continuous stream of 'hellos'. What to speak ? What words, what pitch – pitch her voice should take-she had not come prepared. He kept saying, 'hello', 'hello.
“Mozerella Salad”
“Bruschetta”
“Cup tea Vongole”
“Lettuce”
“Lasangna”
She had no verbs in her repertoire. The names of all he had ordered with her was all that she could muster. There was a laugh followed by a sound from the other side. She suddenly became conscious of her normal self, that of a waitress and immediately put the phone down.
It was now three days since this happened.She was lying in her bed with legs stretched and entwined. She was trying to bring back his face from memory and hold it in front of her. Abruptly, her friend barged into the room. She always wondered how her room mate managed to open and close the door with so much noise. She shook her foot wear free without bending even a wee bit and threw down her handbag on the bed. Her eye lashes and lips quivered in angst.
The refugee girl did not respond. She craned her neck and looked both sides as if she just woke up from sleep. What a lousy room; lousy room mate, lousy bed with its lousy smell. In a room where the wall loomed in front of you whichever way you looked, she closed her eyes and immersed herself in thoughts about him. She thought of the way the words rolled off his tongue,-
“Coffee, Decafe, two sugars”
“Coffee, Decafe, two sugars”
She slowly fell into a sleep.
He got active after the telephone conversation broke off. He did not take much time to figure out that the girl who reeled out the names of all that he had eaten in the dinner is the same girl who waited at his table. However finding where he worked too some time. He had to make enquiries in the company she worked for. He went to banquet halls one after the other where the company sent their staff to work. She had no inkling of it.
He was standing at the top of the stairs and she at the bottom. She saw him before he could see her. He also looked directly into her eyes. His look contained in it all the words he had brought from Poland. Her look had all the nouns, verbs and any other kind of word that the English language had. He wanted them all.
She was holding a plate close to her chest, looking like an angel in Green. Yellow and White uniform. When he rushed towards her two steps at a time, he saw her hands clasping a plateful that was about to be served.
She broke Rule No 27, Rule No 32 and Rule No 13 , all at once.
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