Forty Words
For three nights Elijah thought he was being told off in a language he didn’t speak.
He and Simran shared about forty words, and most of them were flour, hot and ready. On the first night he was shaping rolls, working slowly, counting under his breath, when Simran came past, said “No, no,” and lifted the tray out of his hands. Then she pointed at the ovens, said a word he couldn’t catch, and walked away.
On the second night he tried to ask. “Sorry, can you say it again? I don’t understand.”
She said it again. It sounded exactly the same.
“What does it mean?”
Simran put a hand flat on the oven door, then on her own chest, then held it out towards him. Elijah nodded, because it seemed rude not to, and understood nothing.
By four in the morning he was certain he was too slow for the shift, and that she had already told the manager so. He worked the rest of the night without looking up.
She never explained. She showed him. On the third night she stood beside him at the ovens, opened the door and closed it and opened it again, made him do it, watched him do it twice more, and then went back to her bread and left him there.
At five the manager came in with the delivery and the rota for the week.
“Simran says you’re on the ovens from Monday,” he said, not looking up from his phone. “Permanently. She said she doesn’t want anybody else on them. Her exact words were, ‘he counts.’”
Elijah stood with his hand on the oven door.
Three nights of a tray taken out of his hands. Three nights of a word he couldn’t catch, said while she pointed at the one machine in the room that could ruin four hundred loaves. She hadn’t been correcting him at all. She had been giving him something, every night, and he had been apologising for it.
When Simran came past at six, Elijah pointed at the ovens, then at his own chest, and held his hand out to her, the way she had. She laughed and said the word again. He said it back to her, badly. He still didn’t know what it meant, but he knew now what she had been telling him.