Memories of servants eating Javanese food in the backquarters while employers
ate Dutch food in the dining room were, for many, signature scenes of
cultural divides within the home. The sharing of food, by contrast, could be in voked as a power f~~silg n of those very differences overcome or transgressed.
Ibu Patmi had worked in her early teens for a Dutch widow and her adult daughter
whom she remembered with great affection. Her recollection of eating with
them at their dining room table was offered as evidence that she was not treated
like a servant: "I was treated the same." This memory seemed to carry more
weight than that of sleeping every night on the floor beside her Nyonya's
bed.