When Pema thinks of the woman she imagines a Fanta bottle. Liquid pouring over her head, pooling like rain water in her shoes. Her teeth are barred. She lights up like a match.
Brenda is a cynic. Nothing will change.
Pema is only half-listening to the conversation. It’s in the background with the cutlery and the steel pan. A thought, unguarded, makes its escape. I hate the Chinese!
Ling-Mei puts down her sandwich. Excuse me? Amanda is sitting beside Pema. She shifts away. Pema’s heart beats a little faster. She has turned the corner and stumbled upon this conversation by accident and now it is too late to back away unnoticed. Her face feels hot. The Chinese government, she says.
Ling-Mei leans across the table. There is dirt under her nail. You hate the Chinese?
That’s not what I meant, Pema says. Was it? Was it what she meant? She tries to explain: If they would just give us back our homeland…the censorship…
You hate the Chinese. You said it. Now stand by it.
Ling-Mei looks ready to launch herself across the table. Pema leans back. A group of old white men in crocheted rasta caps turn to watch.
Brenda puts a hand on Ling-Mei’s shoulder. Pema, she says. I think you should apologize.
Amanda looks at her watch. It’s time to go back.
Pema works quietly at her desk and tries not to look at Ling-Mei, who shares her cubicle. They sit with their backs to each other, clacking at their keyboards. Pema tells herself she does not hate Ling-Mei. Ling-Mei has nothing to do with inflation in Lhasa. Ling-Mei wasn’t the one who beat Pala’s parents to death. Ling-Mei does not know where the Panchen Lama is hidden. Pema wants to go home and hold Sophia.
At four ten the elevator doors split open. The manager of human resources is so big she needs a cane to walk. Pema has never seen her on the first floor before. She pretends to work, typing nonsense numbers into cells and staring at the computer. Has Ling-Mei said something?
The HR manager passes by Pema but stops in their cubicle. Pema tries to eavesdrop but hears only sibilant esses. Chair wheels drag backward across the carpet and then Ling-Mei and two others are following the cane to the elevator.
Pema deletes the row of numbers she has just typed and starts again. Her Dilbert calendar, the carpet-like texture of the half-wall where it hangs. Filing cabinets, inter-office envelopes, the rough shine of the key that sticks out of the drawer under her desk. All the drab grey things that surround her every day have been made unfamiliar. Pema waits and waits, but Ling-Mei does not come back.
—
The subway chime announces the stops in three dull tones like an unfinished melody. Pema wonders how Ling-Mei can afford to live in the Annex. When she had asked her boss, her fingers tangling and untangling, if she should be worried about the cutbacks, he’d said, You? You don’t make enough money to worry. Then he’d given her Ling-Mei’s files and told her: These are priority.
The balconies on the fifth floor of Ling-Mei’s building jut out several inches, like a pouting lower lip. Pema has not told anyone about this visit. Something could happen and no one would know.
The wind turns her umbrella inside out. She struggles with it and follows a man with a stroller through the front door. At apartment 507 she knocks, feeling nervous. The elevator door is still open. She could jump back in, frantically press at all the buttons.
Ling-Mei wears jeans and a sweater. It’s a quarter to six. If Pema was unemployed she’d still be in her pyjamas.
What are you doing here? The question is more bewildered than accusatory.
It occurs to Pema that she should have prepared a statement. What is she doing here?
Come in, Ling-Mei says, finally.
She does not offer Pema a drink or a seat. Pema doesn’t unbutton her raincoat.
The office is a gong show, Pema says. I can’t believe they let you go.
Ling-Mei stands with her arms crossed in front of her, all her weight cocked on one hip. She doesn’t say anything and Pema feels compelled to throw a blanket over the silence: I wanted to explain about the other day, about what I said at lunch.
So explain.
Ling-Mei, so confident and sure of herself. Can she see that Pema’s hands are trembling?
Pema says: The thing is…I’m sensitive about China.
You’re sensitive about China?
I’m not explaining properly. Pema begins to sweat. Look, China…the Chinese government has done terrible things to us.
Ling-Mei has an underbite that gives her the look of a piranha. She says, You know I don’t have anything to do with that, right? I haven’t even given it much thought. China and Tibet. Who’s right or wrong.
It seems to Pema a privileged position to be in—the luxury of ignorance. She says: You’d be angry too if it was your culture under threat, your family. My grandparents were beaten to death for nothing. For being in the wrong place.
It’s pretty unfair of you to lump us all in together. Ling-Mei puts her hands on her hips. I wasn’t even born there.
Pema is flustered. The armpits of her white button-up shirt are uncomfortably wet.
I meant the Chinese government, not the people. Not you.
Right. That’s why you put those Free Tibet stickers on my side of the cubicle.
Pema’s voice comes out louder than she intended. Are you kidding me? What about Yingying?
The Olympic mascot? Ling-Mei’s arms turn cartwheels. So now I’m not allowed to keep a stuffed toy?
It’s a Tibetan antelope. Pema uses her finger as an exclamation point, jabbing at Ling-Mei’s nose. Which China appropriated. Because that’s what you Chinese are good at—
You Chinese, you Chinese. Ling-Mei is a high-pitched parrot. We’re all the same to you, aren’t we, Pema?
Their voices rise, arguments clambering over each other to come out on top. Sheets of rain slam sideways against the windows. Pema’s heart is a percussionist beating in her ears.
Take responsibility for your actions! Ling-Mei stamps her foot. It’s so easy to play the victim!
Ling-Mei’s face grows large in Pema’s vision: her dark slitted eyes, the snub petulant nose. The flat of Pema’s hand winds back and swings forward, landing with a crack on Ling-Mei’s cheek. Nails graze eyelash. Ling-Mei yelps and cowers, hands over her face.
Pema realizes she is breathing hard. The room comes back into focus. Ling-Mei’s shoulders jerk up and for a split second, Pema thinks she’s about to laugh. The piranha lip trembles. Ling-Mei wails, Why did you come here?
The sight of Ling-Mei, shattered and sobbing, is so foreign that Pema doesn’t know what to make of it. She starts to cry too.
Ling-Mei presses her hands, hot and hard, into Pema’s forearms and screams: GET OUT.
Pema stumbles back and somehow out the door. In the hallway, the elevator is waiting. She jabs L for lobby again and again and again.
—
At home, Pema is still thinking about Ling-Mei. She leaves the mangled umbrella on the rubber mat and recalls everything they said to each other, cringing at the memories. The way Ling-Mei’s face had crumpled, her vulnerability. Pema has never raised a hand to anyone in her life. Even now she can hear the startling sound of the smack.
The TV has been left on. Victor Newman’s cratered face dominates the screen. In the kitchen, two pieces of toast stand upright, golden brown. The marmalade jar is open, a knife balanced on top. When Pema touches the toaster, the stainless steel is cold.
Moving through the silent, empty rooms, Pema has the sensation of being an intruder. The unwitting neighbour who discovers the bodies.
Karm? Pema calls her sister’s name softly. Fear is a tiny seed in her stomach. It might yet blow away, without taking root. From above, an odd sound, not quite like the dripping of a forgotten tap. She holds on to the banister and tells herself: Nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong.
The staircase is a battlefield. Soothers and burp cloths and a plush menagerie of fallen heroes. On the se
cond floor, the bathroom sits quiet and innocent. She takes the stairs to the attic two at a time, listening hard for a cry. Instead there is singing.
She turns the corner and there’s her big sister. Water slicks her hair. At her feet, the carpet darkens in a widening circle. Sophia is in her arms. The dog is close by, out of the spray, paws around his nose. When he sees Pema, he stands and barks.
Karma! What are you doing? She holds her arms out but Karma keeps Sophia to herself.
Karma sings: Just singing in the rain!
Jamal’s contraption has failed. The leaky patch of ceiling has spread and the makeshift indoor plumbing cannot contain it. Pudgy bare feet hang from the bottom of a yellow raincoat. Sophia’s hood is pulled up and Pema cannot see her face. The dog thumps his tail against the floor as Karma belts it out.
Drops of water dot the wall. They fleck the prayer table and fall into the bowls, rippling like rain on a pond.
Where’s the bucket? Pema asks, looking around. We need towels and the roofer and…shut up, Fatty!
A thought stops her cold: There’s no way Sophia is asleep. Not with this racket.
Karma, Pema says. What did you do?
Karma does a body sway, bobbing the baby and her shoulders. Her eyes are closed. She hums a bar wordlessly. How does the rest of the song go?
There is a little sock on the ground, pink with white frills. In the drama with Ling-Mei, Pema has forgotten her sister. Pema starts to cry. This is all her fault.
Pema says, I’ve done something bad.
Karma opens her eyes. She becomes still. Has something happened? Is someone hurt?
The dog begins to whine, a plaintive sound. The baby hangs in Karma’s arms, unmoving.
A girl I used to…Pema cries harder, gasping out the words between her sobs. We got into a fight and I just…I slapped her.
Karma bursts out laughing. That’s it? she says between guffaws. You bitch-slapped some chick and that’s why you’re crying? She puts a hand on Pema’s shoulder. Pema. Relax. You’ll apologize. I’ll call the roofer. Your friend will live. The carpet will survive. Now do you know the words to this song or what?
Karma’s laugh—loud, almost masculine—Pema hasn’t heard it in weeks. She shakes her head. Or what, she says.
My god! Karma says. The look on your face…I thought someone had…Come here. Karma pulls her under the leak. Feel this. It’s not cold.
Pema sees that Karma is smiling, for the first time in a long time. And closer now, she sees that, incredibly, Sophia is asleep, snuffly breaths puffing out. The carpet is a sponge and then so are Pema’s socks.
Here’s a song I know. Pema thinks for a second, recalling the right key. It’s raining men!
Pema puts her arms around Karma and with Sophia a sleeping bundle between them, they sing, dancing in a circle. Hair glues itself to Pema’s cheek. Water anoints her head, tickling down the back of her neck, under her shirt. The warmth of Karma’s body. The sour odour of sweat and breast milk. But none of it matters. Because they are both singing. Madly, joyously. Elephants stamping down the stairs. Turning and turning. Faster, faster. A trinity spinning like a prayer wheel. The walls, the colours of the thangka, everything blurring. Rain pelts the roof. Fatty howls. Pema and her sister shout: Amen! Karma laughs and the baby wakes up with a yawn.
MICHAEL MEAGHER
USED TO IT
We wash and dry those big entrance mats you see slopped down inside offices and government buildings and banks. Our guys drive all over the city in cube vans, picking up those dirty mats before backing up to the bay doors. From the outside, the warehouse looks like a giant storage shed. Rusty, corrugated sheets of steel gunned into concrete. The floor’s grey and cracked, and there must be a million clean mats stacked neatly on shelves. Row after row after row. Waiting to be taken away. Rubber, carpet, studded, 6’ x 8’, 6’ x 10’, 8’ x 10’, 10’ x 12’. They all have their proper place among the barrels of chemicals and cleaning solvents.
A couple guys unload the vans, and one runs the washers, and another the dryers. When a dryer bell rings, two buttons are pressed—the first tilts the hulking machine forward, the second spins the mats into a twisted mess, spitting them onto a cart in the process. I dabble a bit, but mostly untangle. Imagine trying to straighten out a boxspring-sized pretzel made of rubber. Then doing it a hundred times. Heaving and jerking like a turtle on its back. The final—and easiest—step is folding and stacking the mats.
Before my hands hardened and withered like sun-dried tomatoes, the heat in the rubber would burn into them. Eat right through the Kevlar gloves. The work’s messed up the rest of my body too. I’m only thirty, but you’d probably guess forty, or maybe even fifty. A lifetime of steam and cancer in ten years. Battery acid seeping into all the folds and cracks of skin. My face and arms bumpy like a gourd or avocado rind. Although I’m well set and you’d be hard-pressed to find a roll of fat, you might say I’ve become ugly, or, at the very least, an acquired taste.
My shift runs noon till ten or eleven. Sometimes longer. That means a good piece of overtime with each paycheque. The idea of an extra couple hundred bucks every two weeks was nice in the beginning, but it quickly became an expectation, so it’s not so special after all.
Me and Simms are always the last to take off. He runs the final loads, and I work apart the mats. “Grab the knot and tug,” he said once. “If it doesn’t work, go to the other side of the cart, try another angle. You always wanna be moving, always bucking. Like a bull. Never flatfooted. Remember that,” he said, “’cause I won’t tell you again.”
—
Jonathan Skidmore was on the job only three days. The work seemed simple enough: pour the chemical from a larger container into a smaller one. The supplier label identified this chemical as flammable and combustible. Jonathan knew that flammable and combustible means more than simply not smoking in the area. You also have to make sure that there is no equipment nearby creating sparks, flames, or heat, and to take precautions to prevent the buildup of static electricity.
Jonathan walked over to the larger container and removed the cap. Without warning, the chemical burst into flames.
The fire burned 80 per cent of Jonathan’s body.
How could this senseless tragedy have been prevented?
Jonathan’s employer should have told him that certain liquids may cause static electricity to build up while they are being poured.
The fire that burned Jonathan was started by static electricity.
To prevent static electricity from building up you must ground the larger container to a ground in the building, then you must bond the larger container you are pouring from to the smaller container you are pouring into.
Jonathan died three days later in the hospital.
The instructor got out of his chair and walked to the front of the room, where he’d been standing before the video started. He’d dabbed himself with cologne that morning, so he stunk of iodine and spruce. He wore a polo shirt with an insignia on the shoulder. A tiny knight’s helmet. Probably the mascot of the business school he graduated from. In the chest pocket, he’d tucked three pens. One each of black, blue, and red. He wore creased khakis and a pair of dress shoes. Didn’t look a day over twenty, although it’s hard to tell with men like him. Men who don’t work with their bodies.
The old guy, Art, would wear jeans and a STIHL or John Deere sweatshirt. And he never stood while he talked. He’d sit at the table with everyone while explaining how to clean a chemical spill. Then he’d take a stack of laminated pictures out of his binder. “This is the sign for flammable,” he’d say, holding up a picture of what looked like a Boy Scout’s campfire. “And believe it or not,” he’d laugh, grabbing another sheet from the pile, a drawing of a test tube or thermometer shaped like a condom, “this still means compressed gas.”
He’d turn off the lights for the video, to make the experience more cinematic. And when he related back to case studies of guys whiffing unlabelled chemicals, he
’d look at us with this puzzled expression that meant what fucking idiots. The new guy was all business, though. He even put clinical photos on the overhead. Arms covered in blood blisters, a pussing eye socket the size of a grapefruit.
“Did anyone take notes?” he said. “That’s why I keep the lights on during training videos.”
“No one took fucking notes,” Simms said.
“Easy, Charlie,” Tony said. “He’s just doing his job.”
“Just give me the fucking test.”
Charlie Simms has been working the washers for a couple decades. Right out of high school, I’ve been told. But his skin isn’t droopy like some of ours. It clings to his face like plastic wrap. Like he’s been given Botox injections. So perfect it’s off-putting. I’m sure that’s why Tony, the manager, hasn’t canned Simms—who knows what demented cells are pulsing inside, and if he’s capable of charging into the warehouse with a shotgun.
“It’s all right,” the instructor said. “I’ll be out of your hair soon.”
After he handed out the tests, he pressed a button on his watch and said, “You have twenty minutes.”
He walked to the head of the table and crossed his arms in front of his chest. He hadn’t been bothered by Simms—this wasn’t the first time a grown man had cursed at him—but the instructor still looked like a schoolboy watching a tennis match.
Maybe the test was always meant to be twenty minutes, but Art was laidback. He’d give out the tests and tell everyone to take their time, then leave the room. Go to the bathroom or down the street for a coffee. He’d knock before coming back. “Hope nobody cheated,” he’d joke.
What should you do if you spot an unknown liquid on the ground? A. Taste it to see what it is B. Smell it to see what it is C. Consult your supervisor immediately D. Put on gloves and wipe it up. Nothing differed from previous years. Questions, right answers, wrong answers. Even though Art was gone, I was relieved—maybe we all were—because the whole operation hadn’t changed.
—
The Journey Prize Stories 29 Page 3