— Call your mother to pick us up, he begged.
— She’s not with us anymore.
— Is she alright?
I didn’t feel like answering him. Eventually we were picked up. I gave the driver my address, and this is how Ledric Mayo came into my home.
24
I joined Clean Up that evening because even after bringing Ledric back, after explaining his predicament to Grandma then arguing with her over allowing him inside, after setting him on the living room couch and going to the grocery store for items Nabisase expected Ledric would need, I still wasn’t tired.
Anyway, I couldn’t ask Nabisase to get a job. She’d already missed school one day and I wasn’t planning to let her pass another. Grandma had some savings, but we’d need income. I didn’t mind any of this. It’s not that I wanted to discover my manhood, I was going to invent it.
Clean Up was a twilight shift that paid twice as much as day cleaning. It was clandestinely run by Sparkle’s assistant manager, Claire. She told me not to bring any identification when meeting her in front of the office at nine. Thought I’d be alone, but there were twenty people waiting. Carrying no green cards, visas, credit cards; we weren’t even allowed to use last names.
At nine-thirty Claire drove up in her green van. It wasn’t even as nice as the gypsy vans, which have four rows of padded seats. She had two long benches soldered down in the cargo hold so some sat on them. When those filled we sat on the floor between the benches. Like all Queens drivers Claire stood on the accelerator and the rocking in the back made for bruised butts. I’m too educated for this, I thought each time my tailbone banged.
The factory was only one floor, but very wide. We had crossed from the mall in Long Island back to Laurelton. Metal grates were closed over loading bays. A man in the shape of an ostrich egg was waiting at the only open door. He didn’t let us in until Claire returned from parking the van blocks away. Once she took us in he locked the door from outside.
We were led through the staff offices, more cubicles than closed rooms. Through a rectangular area with table, tea bags, coffee machines. We couldn’t walk fast enough for Claire who had on hiking boots and baby-blue jeans. She didn’t speak with us except to yell, — Let’s go! Do you people know how much I’ve got to do tonight?
Then we came to a room where boxes of furniture were in stages of being packed or unpacked. Lights hung from the ceiling. Seven red hand trucks against a wall. Claire took off her coat to reveal one of those thin upper bodies that is the opposite of good nutrition. Her arms were as stiff as the chicken wings I’ll bet she bought through bulletproof Chinese restaurant glass. She was running a nefarious, illegal labor scheme wearing a white Old Navy T-shirt.
— The important thing for you to understand about Clean Up is that I’m always busier than you. While you’re clearing a room I’m doing four or five other jobs. So don’t bother me. If you see me smoking a cigarette don’t come asking for more hours, because I’m doing inventory in my head.
She expected some reaction, maybe an ovation.
She said, — I’d give anything for one American. Then she yelled, If any one of you spoke English I’d pay $100 an hour.
— I speak it pretty well, I said.
She was surprised. — How did you get in here?
— You called me. We spoke on the phone.
Claire had a notepad in her back pocket and opened it. — You’re not Esmeralda. Anthony?
— Yes.
— Anthony, I’m a very busy woman. I don’t want you interrupting me again.
With that Claire led us to our workroom. I’d thought this was just going to be a bigger sweeping job. Gather factory dust, shine flanges and get twice my daytime Sparkle rate. You’ve got to realize how much energy I had; the coming work didn’t daunt. I’d just driven for seven hours that morning, we’d been in Virginia twenty-four hours ago. I’d saved Ledric from his landlady and took him home to recuperate. Now what else, Clean Up? That’s nothing. Six hours of work. I had the fuel.
We left the main floor by going through a thick door with four locks. There was an open dark stairway and I forgot where I was. For eleven seconds I had a waking dream that we were being taken to the basement so they could shoot us in the head and keep the blood. I know that seems stupid but besides me the other twenty women looked El Salvadorian so what child of the eighties wouldn’t think of death squads? A feeling of nauseous exhilaration was in my sternum because I thought I was going to be killed, but then reality returned as I gripped the handrail and we were led downstairs by Claire.
The basement was twice as long as the factory space upstairs, but only half as high, eight feet maybe. Sometimes Claire covered her mouth down here. Like whenever she breathed.
She had a King Kullen bag full of white mouth guards. We put them on, but the rubber wire of the face masks scratched our cheeks so badly they left scuff marks. Claire walked to the top of the stairs leading to the first floor then addressed us.
— You grab those big pink sheets then put them in the barrels. When one is full you cover it tight. Jam those sheets down hard to fit plenty. If any dust comes up put on your air filtration units.
She shut the door then we listened to four locks click. I swung the surgeon’s mask, was this the air filtrator? I’d seen sturdier toilet paper.
We rolled the long pink dry sheets; this worked for the top layer. Half the basement floor had stacks of these pink mats laid out.
Once we had mastered the right speed, one that kept the asbestos dust out of our air, the curling up was easy. We stacked the rolls on their sides next to the barrels.
A woman said, — We stop. We done too fast.
Two of the twenty women were sisters. They wore clean white sneakers that they’d been brushing with their open hands whenever a smudge appeared. Now on break they sat and took the shoes off, blew on them then used the bottoms of their shirts to wipe the heels. Pay Less sneakers probably, cheap, but I admired anyone who worked hard on her wardrobe. I rubbed at the dust stains on my purple suit.
Turning their shoes over both women cleared grains from the soles by running pens in the grooves. The green ink made the bottoms of their sneakers the dull color of an unripe olive. We rested for half an hour and watched the sisters maintain their beauty.
What a disappointment to find out later that this basement had flooded recently. It was obvious because the next layer of pink sheets were stiff but wrinkled like dried washcloth. These sections broke apart while being rolled so there was no way to avoid the dust. Below that was a layer still so wet it couldn’t be curled. I paced the room looking for tin or flat steel to use as a shovel.
I found the lower end of a broom so I tried to sweep portions toward the barrels, but the pink molasses came apart under the bristles. Soon the whole room was a tableau of crouched figures scooping wads of asbestos into their arms, balancing the bundles as they walked across the long room to drop them into bins.
Every twenty minutes half a dozen people stopped to stretch their lumbar regions in the corner of the room not beset with pink dust devils. When the floor was clearer we tracked through puddles of grainy water as yet undried on the concrete floor.
The soles of those sisters’ sneakers leaked ink into the puddles when they got wet. The pools were already cloudy, but they turned faintly green.
One woman pointed, saying, — It is the color of dollars bills.
We were punch drunk. We were half twisted off.
We’d been down there four hours so excuse our grogginess.
The general state was so bad that one of the sisters rashly splashed through the green puddle just because it was like money.