Chapter 8
As I had mentioned before, my first job was Breakfast. After the bell rang I would leap to my feet and pull my baseball cap over my head. It was a trial in the beginning, but soon I learned to dress in the clothes for the next day. Anything to catch a few minutes in the morning. Silently, I’d make my way in dark morning with the other girls on Breakfast duty.
The Breakfast Crew often used Morpheus—the Greek god of dreams as a pretext for running late sometimes, “Man, Morpheus wouldn’t let go of me this morning!” No matter what our job was, we were expected to keep our things in order. There were no excuses, and although we struggled with maintaining neatness when we knew the patrol wasn´t about, it wasn´t our greatest problems in comparison to others. Some of the dorm rules included leaving our laundry baskets and toiletries atop the bed instead of tucked underneath for the girls who did dormitory cleaning. In order to catch some more z´s, I learned to sleep like a mummy with mu baskets beside me on the bed, with just enough space on the narrow mattress. I would sleep with clean clothes on that I would wear for breakfast that day so I could sleep in if only a few more minutes. It seems silly now, but I used to calculate how much time I´d save by prepping for my morning routine. . . and it seemed worth it at the time!
We rotated the duties. There was an elderly man who had been serving the ministry for years already in his late seventies.
He was known by his heavenly name (literally) Brother Celestine, but as boarding students, we grew attached to him and called him Papa Celes.
His hair was still a dark grey despite his age and he had good stamina. Papa Celes would appear anywhere on campus always wearing those baseball caps he loved. He would pass us by when we least expected him as if to make sure there was no fooling around on the job.
Sometimes, when he had had a long day I would catch him sitting down with his brown colored eyelids closed for a few minutes. He was the man who organized and assigned everyone their jobs for each semester.
Every day a different girl would make him his breakfast. I was frightened when it was my first try. Rumor had it that Papa Celes was very particular about his meals though. If he didn’t like how you prepared the meal he had asked for, he wouldn’t eat it. Sometimes, he would go off skipping that meal if there was no time to give the poor girl a second chance. Older folks tend to be set in their ways like that. It happened to me once and I felt terrible of the old man going on without breakfast!
Every morning he would eat in the kitchen with us “Breakfast girls” and often laugh along with us, showing his tiny worn out teeth. I remember thinking they had looked so worn out that they seemed as if they had been filed down. We all learned to love Papa Celes though. He was a diligent
worker and was a tool that helped
students build good character and work ethic. After vacation I would even bring him a big container with my mother’s spicy sauce for his breakfast eggs. By the end of my two years I would have experienced working in every single position that surrounded the kitchen area, from cleaning its patio, cleaning and setting up the cafeteria for meal times, breakfast duty, dishwashing, serving the bar, kitchen aid for dinner and cleaning the kitchen. I have to say that each task taught me something different. As Papa Celes circulated us, I’d learn what it felt like to be in someone else’s shoes on the job which made me conscientious whenever I had the power to cause a positive effect. Each came with a pro and a con. While I was cook, I hadn’t realized how many cutting boards I had carelessly placed in the sink, but I felt the pressure from the people at the bar rushing us to hurry up with the refried black beans. When I was serving bar, I realized what it was like having to confront the hungry crowd when the food was running late, but I hadn’t noticed that I was stopping the flow of the dishwashers as I invaded the sink
to fill my thermo with more water. When I was a dishwasher…well I learned to be patient with the many interruptions and constant piling of dishes that seemed endless, to wear gloves so my skin wouldn’t peel with the Ajax soap, and to sing in harmony with the crew to make the time go faster.
There was this machinery in the kitchen we bitterly called the Animal. It was like a large rectangular pressure pot, approximately 4 feet long, 2 feet wide and one foot high. It had a large heavy cover which could be locked closed, and a handle that could tip the steel pot like a hospital bed. Anything from: tortillas, steamed plantains, quesadillas, rice, stew, and weekend pancakes and French toast were prepared there. The two people on the dishwashing crew who had to dry the dishes got to wash the Animal which was tedious as we scrubbed it from awkward angles. In order to learn to survive among the jumble of nerves waiting to cause chaos, it was imperative to learn how to coexist. This began with being conscientious of every crew working in the kitchen.
There was a girl called Mara who had been on bar duty when I had been a kitchen aid during dinner one night. She was Salvadorian with a small thin frame. Mara had dark eyes with a unique shape that gave her face a pixie look and pale skin.
I was trying to help get the food served faster by bringing the trays which was their job. The stainless steel tray which carried around 50 quesadillas was burning hot and heavy. I don’t know what game they were playing in the bar as they tossed their hats at one another. They wore them to cover their hair while they served to hide their hairnets.
Mara was running in the little space there was behind the counter and ran into me as I swerved the tray away before it could fall. Her black hair held up in a ponytail flung into my face. I was annoyed, but she simply laughed. Why are they playing their dumb games in here? What if I had dropped the food? I was annoyed because I was thinking of what could have been after having stood over the hot griddle for a long time with the spatula as I turned so many quesadillas over. I had expected an apology, but none came. This shocked me, so the next night I gave into my temptation. It seemed too easy to resist. I rushed in and out of bar to make sure they weren’t missing any items and when the time came to replace one of the empting trays I returned the gesture. Except my arm that bumped into hers wasn’t as hard as when she ran into me the previous night. So I was surprised when she turned around with a mad face.
“Hey!” she yelled. Her eyes were like sparks.
“Oh,” I turned back to look at her in mock astonishment, “excuse me.” Mmm, it hadn’t felt as good as I had planned. Maybe it was my conscience, or maybe it was because I had deliberately planned it. Whatever. Geeze, but my mind wouldn’t give me a rest. As I did my devotionals that night in the chapel with the other girls, I kept playing the scene over and over in my mind. I knew what I had to do. And I hated it.
On the third night just before serving time came around I took Mara aside from the counter to the little lobby entrance to the kitchen where we hung our personal belongings. It was next to the little mirror where some of the girls put on their eye makeup in the mornings before the boys saw them.
“Mara?” I began to admit that yesterday hadn’t been a mistake. That I had done it on purpose because I had been mad at what happened the day before. I admitted that I was wrong, something I hardly ever did at home because my family was tired of arguing me that they just gave me my own way. I was ashamed, but I was glad I got it off my chest. “I’m sorry, it was wrong of me and I just want to get along and work together with you with no problems between us.” We called it a truce and to my astonishment she stopped me from going back in.
“I’m sorry Zara, I don’t want to be fighting either. Let’s just put this in the past and from now on we’ll work together, ¿sí?”. I nodded and we gave each other a quick, but heartfelt hug as we hurried back to the scene. The show must go on. Dinner wouldn´t serve itself. Our hungry classmates waiting in line were a testament to that.
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