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It always strikes me, standing over the sink, how the kitchen windows look across a courtyard into other kitchens. One above the other, all the shades open. A modern one with sleek dark colored woods and long silver fixtures lining the bottoms, above a white one that looks like something out of a country house, all carved wood and pinkness. You can see into the maids quarters as well, which I’ve learned are always near the kitchens. The decorations impersonal, they remind me of a cheap hostels. Painted Salmon or Lavender. Dollar store art work. There isn’t so much as a jacket carelessly hung over a chair back. The comforters remind me of the ones my grandmother used to by, quilted diamond patterns on top, some ungodly scratchy material on the bottom. The reason I’ve always loved top sheets. I watch, as the party lulls, a brown face going from one room to the next. I’ve gotten used to that face, wonder if I’d recognize her on a subway train or at a grocery store.
It’s a different world.
Some of the women, the ones I see most often, are nice. They learn your name, and greet you warmly when they arrive. They’ll grab your arm and lean close to whisper some aside. They have kind eyes and ask what you want to be when you grow up. They’re all older. Grandmotherly and soft around the edges. They assume that you are worth more than whatever it is you happen to be doing.
It’s the ones with pinched faces that give attitude and everyone in the kitchen makes faces behind their backs. It is not an overstatement to say that if a plate of food dropped, it might be gathered back up and served to those women, with their tight smiles.
To the young ones, the ones just barely older than us, mostly we are invisible. Nonexistent. They look through you but rarely, unless something is needed, at you. I wonder if they’ll grow up to be soft and grandmotherly, to smile more naturally and less self aware. They mostly wear wedding rings but all have long hair.
We come from different stratospheres.
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