The lunch lady of hollow ridge playthrough

Turn 22 of 32

Cook fried rice supper with the other Tammys as the stations rotate again. its the fired rice and orange chicken. after eating and cleaning, you ready the book and it talks about the same looking face gives kids confret as home and more stuff about lunch ladies. after that, everyone sleeps.

Supper time comes on the dot, and the wheel turns again: the fetchers step up to cook, and you find yourself at the wok station with your sleeves pushed up over your soft heavy arms. Fried rice and orange chicken, same as that first supper you all cooked together back when this kitchen was still strange. The rice thaws and fries up golden in the big pan, peas and carrot and egg folded through, and the orange chicken comes out of the oven glazed and shining, and twelve women turn the wheel without a word passing between them.

'Chicken's done, hon, pull it gentle,' the Tammy at the oven says, and you serve the line with the rest, every plate coming out the same — a fair scoop of rice, four pieces of chicken, twelve times over. You eat together at the long table and it tastes like the good years, sweet and warm and plenty, and the talk runs to the fourth-graders and whether they'll like the rice or just pick at it, and it is very good.

The kitchen gets cleaned spotless after, the pride of it shared all the way around, and then you all take up the grey books on the dormitory beds. The blank pages are not blank anymore. Page twelve says: Her face is the same face every child remembers, for a familiar face is a comfort, and a child who sees her mama's face at the serving line is home. Page thirteen says: She does not fuss about her own name, for the children call her by her work, and that is name enough. Page fourteen says: One woman serves the whole school, and the whole school is glad of it.

You read them aloud, taking turns, and every line lands like something you have known since you were a girl. You look around the dormitory at eleven faces that are your own face, lined and kind behind cat-eye glasses, and you think, of course. Of course the children should find a familiar face. 'That's just the truth,' Tammy says, and the room agrees, every one of you.

The lamps go out one at a time and twelve chests rise on the same count, and the clock ticks on at 8:30, and Tammy is content.