Factory Job

There was the coming and going, gliding inon my bicycle as the farm women pulled upin their trucks, punching our time cards in the early

cool, passing onto the floor where we becamemoving parts among moving parts, trained,broken in, timed. All women, except

for the foreman and the boy my age who camearound with a wheelbarrow or a broomand trays of throttle bodies. All women

at the drill presses. That's right, said Dad.Women have smaller hands; they don't havethese meat hooks, and he held up his hands.

But I had watched his hands, large and deft,reaching into an opened animal to find the uterus,sewing it closed again, or fashioning a cast.

He'd taught me to hold a small animal, to pullboth ears back with one hand to keep the facetaut and the animal distracted while he

inserted a needle or a thermometer.And my mother had taught me the sewingmachine, and the piano teacher wrote

in my notebook every week: PracticeR.H. scales and L.H. scales and thenR.H. and L.H. together. At the factory

stand facing the drill press. With L.H,reach and take a throttle body out of the tray,fit it into the fittings on the press; it will

turn and latch like a bobbin in its case.And meanwhile R.H. is pulling the drill leverdown and toward you, just the right amount

of pressure, just the right speed to glidethe bit down into and back up. L.H. releasesthe throttle body from the fitting, passes it

into R.H. which places the body into the trayon the right while L.H. reaches for anotherfrom the left. A dance from the waist up.

Pink lubricant running over the fittings,under my latex gloves, soaking my jeans.The heat. A rough fan near a broken window.

Outside the summer bloomed and faded,the season passed. Inside there was no timefor a long thought, no speech but nods,

nothing but how to fit our bodies into narrowslices of time and place, trying to catch the rhythmof the din, always chasing a train already

running at full boil. The body as piston and wheel.At lunch a sandwich in my paper bag, seated at longtables with the other women. I was the young one,

the college student, marked and shy. I putmy thirty-five cents into the vending machinebut the candy bar caught, hanging behind

the dirty glass. Marlene, the women said,and Marlene clasped the machine in a bear hug,rocked it until the candy thunked down.

It was our life but it was not our lives. Our liveswere elsewhere. There was little to say. At 3:30,the farm women got into their trucks and drove off,

and I took up my bicycle for the ride homein the heat, my jeans as soaked and heavyas in the pool at swimming class, learning how

to save myself when I was weighed down,as heavy as possible, that same feeling. ClammyT-shirt, the absence of thought, the dull pressof my legs pedaling up the long hill.