I know.
I know what they’re like.
All prim and proper to the world but I see them. Oh, yeees I know. I see them. I see him like butter wouldn’t melt. Well, I can tell you a thing or two. I know. I see. They think I don’t, but I doo. I see everything.
The judge, all holier than thou. Call him ‘your honour’ they says, and curtsy when he enters the room. I know him. I see. He doesn’t fool me. ‘Oh Maria, you must wear this uniform when you work here’. Is ridiculous! Too low, too short, too frilly, too thin. And her, don’t get me started, she’s the worse. Oh yeees ma’am, no ma’am, of course, ma’am. Back home in Columbia, we know how to deal with these people, one phone call.... my cousin, he’s a good boy.
But here in Aameericaa, what can I do? I must to bow and scrape. Must to change the beds, must to scrub the floors, must to all the house jobs. And then when I am finished, his honour opens his ‘special room’. Eeduucation, he calls it. ‘It’s time for your ‘Eeduucation, Maria.’ He wants to teach me he says. She too, the bitch. To make me more diiisipl… diiisipliiined. ‘You don’t want to be deported, do you?’ ‘Think of your family Maria’. Weeell, I think of my family eevery day.
I know these. I seen their type.
...But they pay me four times the going rate, so is like I’s working four jobs at once. And by the time I cut and edit all the footage, they’ll still be paying me after I leave.
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277 words
[Task to write an opening to a novel which creates wonder or worry in the reader]
