How to Pronounce Knife - Souvankham Thammavongsa Page 0,39
cleaned, he stood behind the workers on the line and watched them peel labels and stick them onto the nail polish bottles. It didn’t seem very difficult, he said. When the factory made cuts and offered the remaining workers less pay, many quit. Suddenly there were job openings on the line, and so Dad applied for one and got it. He got Mom a job there too. Even though those who worked on the line were now paid less than before, it was still more pay than what Dad had made as a cleaner. They both loved the job. The hours were long, but the work was steady and they had their weekends free.
One time, during his break, he told me that a man who worked on the line with him said something about the way he worked, mimicking his speed, scooping up everything around him. Dad thought it was a compliment so he pretended to pick things up too, agreeing that was the best way to work. He was happy someone at the factory was talking to him instead of pulling at the skin on the side of their eyes and laughing as he walked by.
It wasn’t until the foreman laid off a few more workers who couldn’t keep pace that they started to come up to him and say a word to his face that sounded like spitting. It took so much air to make that word, but the spit never arrived.
He asked me what they were calling him at the factory. “This thief thing. What is it?” I didn’t want to tell him. I wanted him to go on liking his job, to get up in the morning with a sense of purpose and pride like he did. I told him I had never heard of this word before. Then I turned away so I wouldn’t have to look at his face as he told me, “All you have to do is work hard. That’s all it is, hard work.”
RIGHT AFTER GETTING HOME from school, Katie and I would spend three or four hours on the phone with each other. With the sound of our families distant in the background, we talked about everything and nothing. We wanted to be writers then, and we liked to see how well we could describe the details of our day to one another, even though we were in every class together. We talked about the pretty girls in class—what they wore, how they styled their hair, how they laughed. And if one of them talked to us, we would go over every word they said, pick out exactly where the stress and silence and giggles fell, as if we were breaking some kind of secret code.
Eventually, our talk would turn to wondering what it would be like to be rich. We knew what rich people were like. We’d see them in the mornings on garbage day, coming out of their homes and carrying their garbage bins to the curb. We couldn’t believe they had their own bin and could walk to their own curb. We had to carry our garbage to a tiny closet at the end of the hallway and drop the plastic bags down a hole in the wall. Katie and I were afraid someone would come up behind us and push us down the hole too. Sometimes, before taking out the garbage, we would call each other on the phone just to let the other know. “If I go missing, you know what happened,” she’d say. Sometimes we would even go to the garbage chute together. For a laugh, we’d take turns pushing each other from behind toward the hole—but not too hard. Just enough for us to feel our fear and then let it go.
ON THE SECOND FLOOR of our building lived a man who didn’t have a job. He sat by the window all day and smoked. When he saw me and Katie coming home from school, he’d yell out, “Hey girls. Sexsssy,” and then he’d laugh like it was just a joke. He laughed even louder when he saw how frightened I was. Later, he dropped the “Hey girls” part and simply said, “Sexsssy.” I hated seeing the orange dot glowing in the window above us.
Katie knew how scared I was of him. She told me to ignore him, but I wasn’t like her, and I couldn’t do it. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take care of him.” I didn’t want her to do