Trudy walked across the concrete floor toward her machine in the yellow-green light of the factory. Her head felt as light as a balloon. Her vision was blurry. She had spent too many days with Jules. Too many days arguing and fooling around instead of sleeping. Putting Mercy in front of the TV with her Barbies or leaving her with Mark and James for a couple of hours here and there. Pretending anything could possibly come of it all. Pretending she was someone else from somewhere else living a different kind of life altogether. She could pretend all she wanted, but most nights she still ended up here in this concrete vault, trying not to sew her fingers together.
Dream dissolved. Reality reinstated.
As she got closer to her workstation, she could see that for the third time this week someone had tampered with her machine. It was completely encased, mummified, in white thread. Like a fly in a spider web. Trudy sat down in her chair and stared at it, trying to process how much time, how much patience, must have gone into this endeavour. Winding and winding the thread around the machine — how many times? Hundreds? Thousands?
Lunatics. Fucking morons.
There were murmurs behind her, from the back rows, the cheap seats. It was both amazing and depressing how similar the set-up in the sewing room felt to every classroom she was ever in as a kid. Her, hunched over at the front of the class, trying to focus on her work while listening for a rustle behind her, waiting for something to sail through the air and hit her in the back of the head. She picked up her scissors and started cutting through the thread. She had to cut through one thin layer at a time. It made a tearing sound as the blades worked their way through. Like the sound of cutting through bandages.
Trudy knew why she was being harassed. She was being punished for the number one small-town crime: Thinking You’re Good. As in: You think you’re good, don’t you? Everybody knew that she had put her name in for the dayshift. Another fantasy. Another case of Trudy thinking she was good. But she knew she didn’t have a chance. She didn’t have the seniority, wasn’t productive enough, was always causing trouble. And then there was Mercy. Even with school starting in September, Trudy and Claire both working days would leave Mercy home alone for two hours or more. It could never work.
At the end of her shift, as Trudy was punching out, Jeannie appeared beside her. “How’s your bullshit boyfriend, Trudy?”
“Shut up, Jeannie.”
“Thinks he’s something special, eh? Thinks he’s Superman or something. Looks like a fucking loser to me.”
“You would know.”
“Because you’re so much better, right, Trudy?”
There it was. You think you’re good, don’t you, Trudy?
“Yup.”
“Because what?” Jeannie had followed her out to the parking lot, the late summer sun making the asphalt slightly soft under their shoes. Trudy kept walking, looking straight ahead. She could see her car at the end of the lot. It had been wrapped in toilet paper, streamers of it fluttering in the breeze. And someone had upended a garbage can onto the hood, its former contents scattered on and around her car: a browning apple core, a used Maxi pad, some crumpled up foil, banana peels, and pop cans.
“Why, Trudy? Why do you think you’re so much better than the rest of us? Wait. Let me guess. Is it your job? No, that can’t be right.” Jeannie feigned confusion, looking up at the sky, tilting her head to the side.
“Fuck off, Jeannie.” Trudy kept walking.
“Is it your fancy clothes, your nice house? No, can’t be that . . . your high level of education? Nope, not that either.” Jeannie threw her foot out to the side, kicking Trudy’s shin so that she tripped and lurched forward. Trudy turned her head to the side as she fell to save her face and her bare shoulder skidded painfully across the pavement.
“Oops! Sorry, Trudy!” Jeannie turned to walk away, but Trudy lunged across the pavement to grab her by the ankles. Jeannie pitched forward onto the ground, flat on her chest, the air knocked out of her lungs with a thud, a percussive hoof issuing from her mouth. Trudy was on her now, sitting on her back, using both hands to pin Jeannie’s wrists to the ground. Here we go again, she thought. She suddenly felt very tired. Her body felt like lead. She grabbed a handful of Jeannie’s coarse rusty hair in her fist and yanked her head back. She bent down, her face beside Jeannie’s cheek.
“Jeannie, please just fuck off. Or I will kill you.” Jeannie was silent, glaring sideways at her. “I don’t know why you even give a shit what I think, Jeannie. Why do you care?” She let go of her hair. “Just leave me alone, OK?”
As Trudy got up and walked toward her car, Jeannie rolled onto her back. When she finally caught her breath, she sat up and yelled, “Cunt! ”
Trudy did not turn around; she let this pass through her. Oh, Jeannie and her clever repartee.
She opened her car door and got in. She turned on the wipers, which cleared enough paper away so that she could see out of the windshield. She backed up fast so that the garbage can slid off the front of the hood. She couldn’t really see out the back window, but she didn’t care if there was anything or anyone behind her. Then she put it in drive and peeled away.