Brass Read online

  “The trouble is, when they move you up onto one of them machines, they think you already learned everything you need to know by sitting here plugging screws into holes. No training, you know? That’s why I’d rather just stay here at this table—my husband, Scotty, lost the tip of his thumb his first time running a lathe machine.”

  “My mom’s missing half of two of her fingers,” I said.

  “My husband got the tip of his middle finger chopped off,” Rini said. “Now when he flips someone off it’s like he’s missing a letter or something. ‘ ’Uck you!’ ”

  “My husband got cut off from my vagina after he refused to recaulk the goddamn bathtub like I told him to three years ago,” Margot said.

  Turned out that all the brainpower you had left over from inspecting ferrules was funneled into hating men, and if their productivity on the job was near as high as their productivity in coming up with punch lines, those ladies would have been able to get a whole day’s work done in three hours. I caught on quick. After a couple of generations the immigrant work ethic Uncle Eddie had stepped off the boat with had faded, and by the time lunch was over I was right there with them telling jokes, the ones I’d overheard back in high school at the neighboring lunch tables that I wasn’t invited to sit at.

  “So this guy is walking along the beach,” I said, “and sees this woman with no arms and no legs crying in the sand. He says, ‘What’s the matter?’ and she says, ‘I’ve never been hugged by a man before.’ So he picks her up in his arms and hugs her, but when he puts her back down she’s still crying. So he goes, ‘Why are you still crying?’ and she goes, ‘I’ve never been kissed by a man before.’ So he picks her up in his arms and kisses her, but when he puts her back down she’s still crying. So he goes, ‘Why are you still crying?’ and she goes, ‘I’ve never been fucked by a man before.’ So he picks her up and throws her into the ocean and goes, ‘There, you’re fucked.’ ”

  The ladies all laughed the way the kids at the lunch table at Crosby High had, only this time I wasn’t waiting to be surrounded in the locker room by them and kicked in the crotch like a boy. Deena, Rini, and Margot were Mamie’s age, but their hearts weren’t near as hard as their helmeted hairdos made them look. They all had guys they called their kids’ fathers and different guys they called their husbands. They all had a decade or two on me, but they didn’t treat me like a snotty teen at the mall. For a minute I almost wondered what I was doing wrong with my life, because I was kind of having fun doing the thing in the world that was supposed to rob the most joy from you.

  “Everything is going okay here, yeah?” Uncle Eddie said. Nobody heard or saw him coming over because we were hee-hawing over whatever Rini just said, everything just a little funnier than it should’ve been because of her French Canadian twang.

  “Oh yeah, she’s picking it up just fine,” Deena said. “A chip off the ol’ block.”

  “I hope she’s better than the block she was chipped from. Her father was a sonofabitch,” Uncle Eddie said and walked away, clicking the metal button of a pen behind his back over and over again, the metronome that kept all the machines on that floor running in perfect time.

  “I’m surprised he’d hire you when you’re pregnant, even if you are his niece,” Deena said.

  “How did you know I was pregnant?” I’d worn my baggiest T-shirt in—INSPECTED BY 39—and was hoping I passed for just chubby.

  She whipped a styrofoam peanut at my belly. “If that’s all gas, I recommend laying off the franks ’n’ beans for a while.”

  “I didn’t think I was showing that much,” I said.

  “You’re showing enough.”

  “No ring on your finger,” Margot said.

  “I’m not married.”

  “You gonna get married?”

  I shrugged. “Not anytime soon.”

  “Guy still in the picture? Not one of those cut-and-run types?”

  It had been a good week since I’d seen Bashkim, but he was still in whatever picture I had in my mind. On the edges, maybe, a little blurry, but he was there.

  “He’s around,” I said.

  “I tell you, you girls need to be more particular about who you let in there,” Rini said, shaking her head.

  “It’s not like he’s some loser,” I said. I surprised myself, sounding as defensive about Bashkim as he sounded about himself.

  “Is he a winner? Because there’s a big gray space between winner and loser and I don’t think you should settle for it.”

  “All right, leave her alone already,” Deena said. “Listen, they might look like washed-up old hags but they were young sluts once, too. They’re only saying it because we’ve all been in your shoes.”

  “Yeah, maybe exactly those shoes,” Rini said. “I think I donated them. You get them at the Goodwill?”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “Hey, I got one for you,” Deena said. “Why is a toilet better than a woman?”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Because a toilet doesn’t keep calling you up after you use it. Another one: What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?”

  “Nothing, you already told her twice,” Margot answered.

  “The one I heard goes, ‘You don’t listen!’ ” I said.

  “How long does it take for a man to get dinner?” Rini said. “As long as it takes for him to take off his belt.”

  “Stop already,” Deena said.

  Rini didn’t. “Why did the woman cross the road? That’s not the point, what’s the bitch doing out of the kitchen?”

  “I don’t like these,” Margot said.

  “Okay, what’s the fastest way to a man’s heart? Through his chest with a knife.”

  “Better.”

  “Why is it so hard to find a good-looking, sensitive man? Because those guys already have boyfriends.”

  “What do you call a woman who knows where her husband is every night? A widow,” Margot added.

  “Come on, Elsie, don’t you know any more?” Rini asked.

  I shrugged. “I’m newer at this than you,” I said. “I know some dead baby jokes.”

  “Oh, Christ, don’t you dare, not in your condition.” Rini made the sign of the cross over her chest. “God will listen to those and it will come back to you somehow.”

  “So God doesn’t listen to all the sexist jokes?”

  “He doesn’t have to. The baby isn’t here yet, so it still stands a chance. Men and women together? Ha.”

  “You guys have listened to too much Jackie Mason,” I said.

  “We’ve listened to too much everything. Don’t listen to us bitter old broads. Don’t listen to your uncle Eddie, don’t listen to your mother, don’t listen to your husband or boyfriend or whatever he is. Take care of you and everybody else around you will be better off,” Deena said.

  “Oh, Dear Abby chiming in over here,” Margot said.

  “It’s just a theory. Why don’t one of you gals give it a try and see how it works out for you?”

  “I’m perfectly happy,” Rini said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Me too, ’cause it’s quitting time,” Margot said.

  “That’s happiness, right. It’s all about what you’re not doing, it has nothing to do with what you are doing,” Deena said.

  “Somebody’s ragging it today,” Rini said.

  Deena sighed. “Yeah, I guess I am. The monthly visitor, the curse. The curse of being able to let out for three days what I feel on all the rest of them.”

  I didn’t want the day to end on that low note, so I pretended I didn’t hear her over the hydraulic huff and puff of the machines all around us. “Good night, ladies,” I said. “See you all tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow, and for years and years after that,” Rini said.

  Deena slapped her hand down on the table. “Goddammit, I said be nice to the girl.”

  —

  I wished I had Deena, Rini, and Margot as my cavalry after work, when, after too many
days in the same recycled pair of underwear, there was no putting off going back to the apartment I hadn’t even had a chance to get used to calling home. Bashkim wouldn’t be there in the flesh, but he would be there in essence, his tank tops draped over the shower rod to dry, the smell of Brut in the air like some musky macho tree in bloom. I was bracing myself so hard against him that I didn’t even think about Yllka, at least until she intercepted me on the stairway on my way up.

  “Elsie, you’re home,” she said.

  Sometimes I felt like English was my second language, too, because coming up with the right words could be so damn hard. Home didn’t seem quite right, but I was coming up blank otherwise. My things were in there, my pillow and the drool on my pillowcase, even Bashkim’s scent, which he emitted but I was the recipient of. It was homelike. It was home enough.

  “I need some stuff,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “Are you not staying?”

  “I’m not sure. I wasn’t planning to,” I said. It wasn’t in the plan, but since when had I been known to stick with plans? Now that I was there, my legs were twitchy to get up those stairs, into a space that I’d half-paid for with money that I’d earned myself. It wasn’t much to speak of, but it was all I could speak of. I was thirsty for tap water from my own foggy Burger King Star Wars collectible glasses, not the identical set at Mom’s.

  “Oh,” she said again. When I started climbing the steps upstairs, she called out, “He didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Of course he did. That’s what fists do,” I said.

  “I mean he didn’t mean to hurt you forever.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “What I mean is.” She sighed. “Does it still hurt?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Are you being literal?”

  “Being what? No, I just mean, are you still sore?”

  I paused a second. “I guess I’m fine.”

  “What I mean is that he was very angry and he meant it at the time, but that was just a little moment, and now he’s feeling sorry all of the time.”

  “He hasn’t said he’s sorry. I haven’t heard from him at all.”

  “He’s scared. He thinks you’re gone forever. It’s hard for him to say sorry, but even harder for him to say he’s scared.”

  “So you have to say it for him instead? Uh-uh. I don’t accept that kind of apology.”

  I waited for her to remind me that it was my own big mouth that started the trouble in the first place, but Yllka just sighed and turned away. “Yes, well, that is your choice. I have to learn to stay out of these things,” she said.

  It was the last thing I expected to hear from Yllka, and I wondered if she’d gotten into her own trouble with Bashkim. She didn’t look bruised anywhere, and I couldn’t imagine Bashkim laying down any law with her. Probably she just didn’t want to talk to me anymore. Probably she figured she shouldn’t block my exit.

  “Yeah, well. I’m going to go upstairs,” I said.

  “And you’re not coming back to work?” she asked.

  “No, I got another job,” I said. “Tell Cheryl and Janice I said sorry for having to cover my sections, will you?” I didn’t like those ladies at first, but in the end it turned out they weren’t really that bad. They were like everyone else, broken things stuck back together with a kind of epoxy that ensured they would never be shattered again.

  “You want me to say you’re sorry for you?” she said. “No, that’s the kind of thing I shouldn’t do, you’re right.”

  “Fine, I’ll let them know myself sometime then.”

  “That would be nice,” Yllka said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Bye.” And we turned our backs to each other without waving, as if we both knew we weren’t really saying goodbye.

  —

  Almost everything in the apartment was the same, maybe even a little cleaner than usual. I wondered if Bashkim was a better housekeeper than me, even though he never put his hand on a broom when I was around. It was probably just that he didn’t get the chance to dirty anything up. He barely had a reason to have an apartment at all, as much as he worked, and yet he’d been so happy to move out of the boardinghouse and into his own place, so he must have been just as desperate as I was to make a little home for himself. It meant something to have somewhere to put up your own ugly string art with broken frames that would never hang totally straight. It felt good to be there again. At first I didn’t want it to feel good, but then I figured I shouldn’t ever chase away a good feeling, so I pulled up a chair to the kitchen table and let myself sit with it.

  And then the good feeling faded, as good feelings do, and I remembered what I was there for. I grabbed a few of my things from the drawers and closet and shoved them into a couple of the plastic Pathmark shopping bags that seemed to procreate underneath the kitchen sink. When I had what I needed, enough clothes to get me through another week but not so many that I would never need to return, I started to head for the door, but suddenly a wave of fatigue hit that nearly crumpled my puffy, achy body in place.

  “Christ,” I said aloud. I thought for a second that I was blacking out, but then I realized that my eyes were just closed, and there was such relief that I thought how nice it must feel to be in a coma, never having to open your eyes again. I shuffled over to the mattress, so deflated by then that it was nothing more than a tarp between me and the dirty floor, and I lay down. Those early shifts were going to take some getting used to.

  Bashkim tried to be quiet when he came in early the next morning. He cracked open the door, saw me there, and went back out into the kitchen to take off his shoes and pants. Then he lay down next to me without touching me, didn’t even grab a blanket even though it was freezing in the room. I was awake for all of it, but I didn’t say anything. When his breathing got deep and heavy, which meant he was asleep, I checked my watch and saw that it was time for me to get up, and I tried to return the favor by being as quiet as I could be, feeling blindly around for my shoes and pants, which I didn’t remember taking off. His breathing halted for a second and then returned to normal, so I knew that he woke up despite my tiptoeing around, but he didn’t bother trying to find anything to say, either. I tried to ignore the feeling I had, or convince myself that I was confusing it with another, more suitable feeling, but there was no denying it: I felt glad. And I felt sorry, sorry for being away all this time, sorry for making him so mad back at the diner. I’d been waiting and waiting to hear sorry from him but instead it got trapped inside of me and it was what I felt above all things, more than love, more than anger. Shit, I thought, because it meant I was still tethered to him. I had an obligation to see it through until I was not sorry, and I wondered if that was what responsibility to other people was all about, sticking around until you made up to them whatever it was you fucked up to begin with. I touched my belly, and the girls at work were right: I was huge, and I was tethered to this baby, literally of course, what with the umbilical cord and all, but also because I already had a lifetime of making up to do before she was even born.

  I walked into the bathroom to wash up. The sun was just beginning to break outside, but there was enough light that I could make something out in the other bedroom, a little rectangle that we kept meaning to set up for the baby but that until that point had been just a storage unit for dust bunnies. I turned on the light and when my eyes adjusted to it, I saw a white crib, hollow aluminum soldered at the joints to just support the weight of an infant. A few plush animals already peeked through the bars, a miniature irradiated zoo: lime-green orangutan, purple elephant, jaundice-yellow sea turtle. There was a changing table, too, the vinyl coating on the foam mat printed with wagon wheels and daisies. The colors weren’t soothing baby colors, they were ferocious, oranges and yellows and greens and whites, but I felt the mattress and the blanket and they were soft, and I thought, Well, this is home, and it will have to do.

  There were a few less things to buy with Greta’s money, so I stashed the rest
in the rainy day tin in the kitchen. It was possible I wouldn’t need it at all, I thought. With my new job and Bashkim finally keeping some of his money at home, it was possible we might actually pull through.

  Before I left for work I tiptoed back into our bedroom. I knew he wasn’t asleep, and I whispered to him, “I’m going to work,” because I didn’t want him to think that I was leaving again just to spite him, or that I’d come back in the first place for the same reason.

  It took a few seconds for him to answer, as if he was trying to figure out whether he should still be pretending to be asleep. “I’m glad you’re back,” he eventually whispered back.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “The baby, it’s okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is good.”

  “Yeah,” I said, one last time.

  All the whispering didn’t make sense, because there was no one else in there to be quiet for, but it seemed it was all we could muster at the moment. I’d blame it on the ungodly hour, when humans aren’t meant to be awake, but I knew there wasn’t going to be any more explanation coming from either one of us later, either. There was just me closing the bedroom door behind me and the reset button of a new day.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Luljeta

  After two hours on the road, the exhilaration of having gotten more than a hundred miles from Waterbury begins to wear off. In its place, you’re left with a muted panic that manifests as arrhythmia and diarrhea and that you cannot trace back to one specific root fear. At each of your frequent bathroom breaks, you think you pinpoint its origin: at the Woodrow Wilson rest area outside of Trenton, NJ, you’re sure that it stems from your anxiety that you’ll soon be sharing sleeping quarters with Ahmet, a guy whose Spotify stations consist exclusively of rap from the nineties, contemporary R & B favorites, and some electronic stuff that sounds like it comes from a windswept, apocalyptic future.