A Touch of Gold

She was as beautiful as she was mysterious. She was soft-spoken with a sense of underlying tragedy. But she did her job well, and that was what she was around for. To wash our dishes and clean our clothes. It was sad, but as much as she knew about us, we knew just as little of her. The only bright thing about her was her golden locket, one she had only opened once for my mother to see. She said there was only an old, tattered emotion-less picture of the servant girl with the other half remaining empty. My mother never asked who belonged there.

She never smiled. She just worked. She never laughed or played, she only concentrated. At the end of the day, when the sun would set, she would retire to her quarters and never show her face until the next morning. Quiet sobbing would be the only sound you could hear coming from her room.

That was why it surprised my mother to see her appear out of the darkness one night, long after all of the other help had gone to sleep. My mother looked up from her book and through the mosquito net to see her slender figure approach. The servant sat down, look straight at my mother, and smiled.

"I want you to know," she told my mother, "That I've loved every moment here. You've been so good to me. But now I must go."

My mother was speechless.

The servant girl looked away. "I have to go far, far away..." At those words she smiled further.

"When will you be back?" my mother finally got out.

"I won't," she replied slowly.

Through the cryptic phrases and unusual circumstances, a feeling of understanding suddenly overcame my mother. She nodded her head slowly and the servant girl smiled again.

"Here," the servant said as she reached behind her neck and unhooked the locket. "I no longer need this."

Without objection, my mother reached through the mosquito net and held the cold piece of gold. She held it close to her as the servant left.

The next morning, my mother awoke thinking it was a dream. But lying next to her was the golden locket.

It wasn't until lunch that afternoon when she thought about the strange events again. "I'm really sorry," my grandmother told my mother. "I know she was your favorite."

"How do you know?"

"It was in the newspapers."

My mother was confused. "Why would her quitting be in the papers?"

My grandmother was confused. "Her quitting?"

"Yes. She came to me last night and said she was going far, far away."

My grandmother was astonished. "That's impossible. She was found dead early yesterday..."

My mother cried out, "No..." as she heard those words. The word still rang through her head even as she looked at the servant girl's cold dead body resting in a block of ice, awaiting family members' retrieval. But she noticed something. Through the ice, even in death, she seemed to be smiling. Then she opened the locket and saw a smiling girl next to a young man smiling the same. My mother did the sign of the cross and left her servant girl to her own happiness forever.