Hot oil makes food glisten for the master and his mother and his sons. An unattractive vegetable can cost cook her livelihood, her family, her home. The young girl watches while cook sets wilted greens aside and chicken goes sizzlling into the heat. A portion of each is reserved for cook and her helpers. A servant is sent upstairs with the first course. He balances a tray at the family table and sets it down without a sound and lays out the meal in bowls that are a joy to hold and anguish to release. The girl is sent up in her turn. The tray tips like a seesaw. Hot soup moistens the rim of the bowl but holds. She panics, releases a tear, recovers. And when she hears a stair board creak beneath her foot, she comprehends what it means to serve, embraces her life then and forever, conjures the family she herself will raise in this warm home free from hunger, and enters the room fully conscious. She does not raise her eyes to the master’s sons, whose blood has always conspired to thoughtlessly destroy her. She knows the kinder son will break her heart. The crueler son will dally with but never disappoint her. The man she pleases, who pleases her, will also serve, and they will deny her even him. She knows it all, and falls in hopeless love with the world as it will be. From the stem the cook has cut while collecting fruit for the afternoon meal, a milky tear drops onto a broad leaf in the garden outside the kitchen, then another, and the process gladdens her. She watches the sap collect and run to the center vein and race into the earth, and rejoices as it races, and misses nothing.

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