Saturday night and it was a curious crowd she had over.
Saturday was the only day that broke my routine. On all other days, I mopped miles of tiles, vacuumed room after carpeted room, scrubbed the long granite kitchen counter, and cleaned three bathrooms, each with golden taps and marble tubs large enough to soak an elephant. I even took care of the outdoor pool, her cars, and the garage.
I didn’t normally get to bed until one in the morning. I got lost in my work and days became weeks and weeks quickly became months. I felt grateful though. While Mrs. Rao’s words were short and sharp, she didn’t slap me like Grandma.
When she had dinner guests, I had to wear a uniform. It was a short black dress and a white apron. Being only five feet tall and ninety pounds, everything was usually too large for me. But this uniform was clearly made for someone exactly one size larger and it looked used, which made me wonder if someone else had done this work before me.
Because her guests expected nothing short of luxury, Mrs. Rao opened her entire library to me. “Find me the best menus that will be the talk of the town, you hear?” she said before stalking off with Mr. Raj Kapur in tow.
Mrs. Rao never used her library, but to me it was it was a treasure trove. When I slipped my fingers along the books on that first day, I discovered dust on every shelf. No one had touched these books for months, if not for years. It was the same with the mountains of fancy magazines she left strewn over the coffee tables and floor, still in their plastic dust jackets. I ripped off the covers to these magazines—ranging from travel to home decor to fashion to gourmet cooking—and devoured them in the kitchen while waiting for a cake to rise or a broth to boil.
And this was how I discovered Chef Pierre. His baking magazines had beautiful, mouthwatering photos for every recipe, and his articles were written with so much warmth, it was like reading letters from an old friend. Chef Pierre’s magazines slowly became my baking and cooking bible, from which I tried every recipe I found.
Chef Pierre was a renowned pastry chef with luxury cafés around the world, cafés that catered to royalty—both true royalty and those of the film and fashion variety. I flipped through his glossy magazines, enthralled at the pictures of beautiful guests, red awnings, tables draped in white-and-red tablecloths, and plush red chairs. The photos of his cakes looked so genuine I felt I could lick the icing off the pages.
In the photos, Chef Pierre looked like someone I’d bump into at any corner bakery, a rotund man with a happy and friendly baker face that said, “I’m the best baker in the world. Come on in and have some sweets.” How could anyone resist? I dreamed of meeting this man who'd begun with nothing and become everything I wanted to be. Independent. Free. Appreciated for my culinary creations.
He came from a poor background, just like me. He was born into a family of coal miners in southern Belgium. His mother had died when he was born, and it was his grandmother who’d taken care of him. I wondered if she’d slapped him around like mine had. It was when Chef Pierre discovered his passion for baking and cooking, he changed his predestined path that would have led to the dirty, dank mines where his father worked.
I consumed his story, his pictures, his recipes. If he can do it, why can't I? One day, I told myself. One day. Just you wait, world.
Very soon, I began to experiment, blending my mother’s recipes with ideas from Chef Pierre’s magazines, creating blends of East and West. I sprinkled cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and nutmeg into my batter to get those earthy flavors my mother used to create. I learned to make spiced-up creations of all kinds of sweets, from maple-vanilla ice cream and strawberry-and-cream tarts to lemony cheesecake and triple-chocolate red-velvet cakes. I loved to bake. Mrs. Rao and her guests loved to eat.
Every Saturday afternoon, I designed menus, cooked, baked, prepped dishes, and set the table. When Mrs. Rao buzzed me from the dining room or the patio on warmer evenings, I’d bring out the dinner plates, two by two, for the seated guests. I lived for their oohs and aahs. I didn’t speak with anyone, no matter what they asked or how much they cajoled. “Just nod and smile,” had been Mrs. Rao’s strict instructions.
One particular guest had a nose like the proboscis monkeys of Borneo and liked to pinch my behind whenever I walked by him. “My cupcake girl,” he’d say with a glint in his eye, oozing sleaze. I always made sure to stay a foot away from him, even if it meant reaching across another guest and making them duck under my hot dishes.
Once Mrs. Rao’s guests began eating, I had nothing to do but wait in the kitchen. I browsed the foodie and travel magazines, listening to the sounds of corks popping, glasses clinking, and cutlery tinkling in the dining room. Sometimes, when three or four bottles of wine had been opened, things would get loud quickly, and I’d hear drunken laughter from the men and high-pitched giggles from the women.
I’d wait in the kitchen, poring over recipes until the second buzzer summoned me. This was the signal to have chai tea and sweets ready to serve. After dinner and dessert, the guests would retire into the massive living room, where they’d open decks of cards and bottles of whiskey, and the games would begin.
One night, while I was cleaning the dinner table, I peeked into the living room through a crack in the door. Everyone was huddled around the coffee table, some guests lounging on cushions on the floor. Mrs. Rao was pouring glasses of port for her guests and the proboscis man was smoking an expensive cigar. Everyone had cards in their hands, and there were piles of paper notes in the middle of the table. This was real money, and from the color of the bills, I could see they were not small denominations.
When I finally heard the engines of the Cadillacs, Mercedes, and BMWs rev up and pull out of the driveway, my next tasks began. I emptied the dishwasher for the third time, took out the garbage, and vacuumed the dining room, the living room, and the kitchen. By the time I’d finish, it would be two in the morning, and Mrs. Rao and Mr. Raj Kapur would be sound asleep upstairs.
This was my life now. Housework, and sticking to house rules.
Mrs. Rao had four house rules. One, I couldn’t leave the house grounds without an escort, which meant her. Two, I couldn’t speak with any of her guests even if they initiated a conversation. Three, I couldn’t pick up the phone.
Mrs. Rao had two handsets, one in her bedroom upstairs and the second in her office den near the library. The telephone rang incessantly every day, and she always ignored it. On my second day, the phone rang while I was vacuuming her bedroom, and I glanced over to see the words “West End Collection Agency” scrolling on the telephone’s display. I paused for a minute. That name sounded familiar. Then, I remembered. One of my jobs was to empty the shredding machine in the library, and right next to it had been a pile of unopened letters from the West End Collection Agency. But the ringing soon became background noise.
The fourth house rule was the strangest. I had to stay in my bedroom with my windows and curtains closed whenever Mrs. Rao asked. It took me a few months to realize she only asked me to do this once a month.
And it was always on nights when the moon was full.