They all laugh again. I'm on top of the world. I'm a simple guy. All I need is someone to laugh at my jokes and I'm happy.
It hits me that this is the most at home I've felt since forever, even before, back when it was just my dad and me. These women don't care about my file or my crimes or my fucked up head. They treat me like a person for some reason?! It’s so weird.
By the third day of helping in the kitchen, they have me making salads, which is way better than washing dishes. Lu decides I'm ready for a promotion after watching me scrub pots without complaining, which apparently puts me ahead of the last kid they sent down here, who broke two plates and cried on his first shift.
"You're doing a good job," she tells me, handing me a cutting board and a knife. Then she pauses, stares at the knife, stares at me, and takes it back. "Actually, I'll chop. You tear the lettuce."
"You don't trust me with a knife?"
"I don't trust any of you with a knife. Last boy we had in here tried to pocket one. Idiot thought we wouldn't notice." She shakes her head. "We count every single one. Every shift."
"Damn. I wasn't even thinking about that," I say, and I mean it. She studies my face for a second, then nods, satisfied. “I wouldn’t need a knife, I don’t think I can stab someone to save my life!”
"I know. That's why you get to make salads."
Margarete is at the counter next to me, peeling carrots. She’s doing it very fast, and I wonder again how they all still have all of their fingers. She tells me she raised five boys back inMozambique before coming here, and that none of them could cook either.
"Five boys and not one of them can make rice," she says, shaking her head. "I blame their father."
"My dad can't cook either," I say. "His specialty is ordering pizza and forgetting it's coming."
She laughs. "Your father sounds like my husband. Useless… but lovable."
"That's exactly him!" I say, and something pinches in my chest, but I push it down.
Dora is at the stove again. She's making beans in this smaller pot, probably for the staff only, and the smell is so good I keep drifting over to peek into the pot, my mouth watering. The third time I do it, she smacks my hand with a wooden spoon. Not hard, but hard enough.
"Ow! I was just looking!"
She says something in Portuguese, and Margarete translates without looking up from her cutting board. "She says you’re almost drooling in her food."
"Tell her I'm sorry."
"Tell her yourself. She understands English fine, she just doesn't like speaking it."
I turn to Dora. "I'm sorry, Dora. Your food just smells incredible."
She looks at me, shakes her head with a smile, and fills a mug with beans.
“Brazilian black bean soup,” she says. “We have it like that.”
In my opinion, she speaks English just fine, and the soup is warm and perfectly seasoned and it's the best thing I've eatenin this place by far. I almost tear up, which is embarrassing, but it tastes like a real home-cooked meal, and I can't remember the last time I had one of those.
“This is how it’s really done,” Lu says. “They won’t let us do it the right way, though. The food we serve to you all has to follow nutritional guidelines, allergy-safe, and be bland enough that nobody complains. It's a crime.”
"Dora, I think I'm in love with you," I say, mouth full. “And your English is very good, I hope you start speaking to me before my detention is over at the end of the week.”
Dora blushes, waves me off, laughing. Then, she turns to Margarete again.
"She says you’re sucking up to her to get more soup, and it won’t work. Also, that you're too skinny and need to eat more," Margarete says.
“Yourememberme of my young son,” Dora says, and I love that she’s actually trying that for me, just because I asked.
"Is that a good thing?"
"He's in prison in São Paulo, so take that how you want," Lu adds, now chopping onions like a machine.
I crack up, almost choking on the soup.
