Back in the world as summer passed
through bright and gritty dog days, tethered girls
captured faceless voices and placed calls
pairing braided coiled snakes red white
gray white across the continent,
Sharon to Missoula, Pam to New York
their sad and tender fingers glittering
in the absence of their men who slept, it seemed
to the girls on second shift it almost seemed
they slept in jungles off the China Sea.
I passed them on the sidewalk outside Bell,
some college kids home on their summer break
girls in hippie dresses and peasant chic
boys in blue chambray work shirts and jeans
feigning righteousness sitting crossed-legged
(Indian-style, they thought) on the sidewalk
singing and chanting “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh!
NLF is gonna win!” A white girl
costumed ersatz Indian princess
who wore a beaded headband from Japan
looked right through me, a Native working girl
in nylons, carrying a vinyl purse.
Upstairs we plaited spiderwebs of calls.
“Solidarity forever; our union makes us free”
floated up on humid summer air
to our window and over the switchboard,
weighting the hands and hearts of anchored girls,
unseen sisters of the working class.
And sleepless girls we sang through the night
songs I remember as I remember our fright
Operator.
Your number, please?
Please deposit five cents more.
Operator.
Your number, please?
I’m sorry, ma’am, your time is up.
Remember, Bev, how very young we were?
I remember, and remember that he’d kissed your pretty face.
I remember your blue eyes and waiting face.
And Bev, remember those “casual wear days”
when operators who’d met their quotas
were rewarded with potluck lunches
and freed from polyester working clothes
for a day of being someone not ourselves?
In jeans we almost looked like college girls.
That summer day so fragile you maintained,
chilled and sweatered, gratefully talking
recipes with the older operators,
kind ladies their spreading flesh fading and
Tussy-scented inside their casual wear,
picnic “wash” dresses soft with wear and age.
Polite and frightened we spooned and swallowed
uneasy noodle salads, their intended comforts
our reward for being such good and grownup girls.
Remembering themselves in other wars
they knew, they knew how young we really were.
Summer passed; days shortened and grew cold.
Migratory birds and college kids
soared and disappeared into the sky.
Here in the world we hurried to work
in thin-soled flats light on the frosty sidewalk
to punch in and anchor to the switchboard,
bound and faceless girls weaving America
red white gray white across the continent
Duluth to Detroit, to the fire department,
to the Busy Bee Market. Business. Births. Deaths.
Bev, that January casual wear day
you were pale and thin, fragile in winter white.
Beneath the bowl held out on the palm of your left hand
your diamond ring, loose, spun and caught the light.
That day, white marble balanced on an egg
as flatly jazzed bridal lasagna sweat
unsteady beads through wedding gift Pyrex embellished
with gold roosters flaunting avocado plumes
while shivering girls tiptoed past their bloom.
Kathy’s cave rat tunneling deep in the jungle
and Sharon’s sniper in that twelve-foot boat,
in sleep, those absent boys, what did they dream
while their feet softened yellowed, damp
in heavy laced boots, near the China Sea?
And your own soldier, Bev, lost there in the fog
within the greenest of jungles woke dreaming of you.
Remember, Bev, how very young we were?
I remember, and remember that he’d kissed your pretty face.