How to Pronounce Knife

Paris

THE SKY WAS BLACK like the middle of an eye. Red revved the engine, impatient, having to wait for the truck to warm up. She never failed to make her morning shift on time. The truck was an old thing. A thing she had seen on someone’s front lawn, a For Sale sign taped to the windshield, handwritten in black marker. The make was nothing special. They call it a pickup truck, but she never picked anything up in it, just herself. It might have been the colour that drew Red to the truck. And the thought of that big red truck in the parking lot at the plant. It would be the best-looking thing there, and it would belong to her. She wanted that.

Red worked at the plant like most of the others in town. It was her job to pluck the feathers, make sure the chickens were smooth when they left her. By the time the chickens got to her, they were already dead, their eyes closed tight like they were sleeping. It was almost like what happened in the next room didn’t happen at all. Sometimes she could swear she heard the chickens—that sudden desperate flap of wing, as if flight could really take place there.

Before Red backed out onto the road, she looked at herself in the rear-view mirror. It didn’t show her whole face, just the eyes. She lifted herself up from the driver’s seat, turned her head to the right, studied the outline of her profile, and tried to imagine her face with a different nose. How maybe if her nose was different, things would be different at the plant too. Especially with Tommy. Tommy was her boss, her supervisor, married with two young boys. He was nice to her. Gave her more shifts than anyone else and complimented her work.

“You did good, Red. Keep it up. We’ve got plans for you.”

What those plans were, she never knew. Just that they had them for her. Sometimes Tommy would buy her a cola from the machine or sit at her table during her lunch breaks. It wasn’t how he behaved with the other girls who worked for him. There was no interest in her body. He didn’t notice what was there, didn’t lean in close or whisper anything. They talked. Mostly about his boys and how he was planning a trip to Paris with his wife for Valentine’s Day.

Tommy’s wife, Nicole, had a nose Red wished she could have. It was a thin nose that stuck out from her face and pointed upward. Everyone who worked in the front office had that kind of nose.

Nicole always came to the plant’s annual Christmas party wearing something fashionable, in fabric no one else’s clothes were made out of. The material fit tightly around her curves, smoothed out and pressed, not a wrinkle in sight. At these parties, Nicole always stood the whole time in a group with the other wives whose husbands ran or owned the company. This was the one occasion in the year their wives were seen, brought out for show. Sometimes one of them would come over to say hello to a couple of people who worked on the line. They would introduce themselves, shake a few hands, and then go back to stand in a corner with the other wives, as if they’d done some great charity work by breaking away from their huddle. Nicole never came over.

Every year at the party they served fried chicken. It never bothered Red that the pieces she ate could have been from one of those dead chickens that came to her to get plucked. Cut up into pieces like that, there wasn’t a face to think of. And every year, she looked forward to this party, wore her best clothes to it: a pair of jeans, a blue-and-white checkered shirt, and thick black boots from Canadian Tire. Her clothes weren’t fancy like what some of the other girls wore, and they didn’t show much, but there wasn’t much Red wanted to show.

A few years ago, one of the girls who worked on the line got a nose job. Her glasses didn’t have to be held up with an elastic band at the back of the head anymore. The girl got her hair done after that, every week. She already had a small, thin body. “Cute” was what Tommy called it. Soon, she started getting more shifts and, eventually, a job in the front office. The front office! In this town, a girl either worked at the chicken plant or the Boobie Bungalow. At least at the Boobie Bungalow you could make some quick cash and get the hell out of town, never look back, or you could get someone who could love you just long enough to take you away. Any man you met there was single or on his way to being single. At the plant, most of the men were married, and if they weren’t they would be eventually, to someone who didn’t work there.

Red knew, for her, it was going to be the chicken plant. She didn’t have much in the chest area, and couldn’t dance to music even if it had a beat. The way men never looked at her gave her the sense that the Boobie Bungalow wasn’t going to be an option for her. At the plant, you made enough money to pay for what you needed. But the big things in life, the things that could make you happy, well, you just never made enough to get all that.

About two years back, the girl who worked in the front office had stood with Tommy’s wife and the other wives at the company Christmas party as if she was now one of them. All their noses looked the same, sticking out in the air like that. The wives didn’t talk to the girl or include her in their conversations. When the group laughed together, her laughter came a few seconds behind.

But the girl doesn’t work in the front office anymore. Something about Nicole and the other wives not liking her there, working with their husbands. She was asked to take her old job on the line again. She quit after that, on account of having been someplace better.

After the front office job became available again, all the women who worked on the line did what they could to get it. Some started by getting themselves nose jobs. Where they found a surgeon was something Red didn’t know. No facility around here to support that kind of thing. Maybe that’s why everyone’s nose looked different: some were slightly bent, didn’t heal properly, or scarred badly. One girl, when she talked, her nose moved in every direction that her upper lip moved. It was like her nose was attached to that lip. Most of the girls at the plant started to come to work with their hair curled and pressed and wearing heels and office clothes. They’d change into their work gear, the plastic shower cap and the matching white plastic pullover, then change right back when their shift was over. They looked so glamorous. But all of this was for nothing. None of them got the job. It was given to a girl just out of high school whose father worked in the front office.

RED DROVE HER TRUCK into the plant’s parking lot and pulled up to a spot near the entrance. There was one closer, but it was reserved for those who worked in the front office. She didn’t want to park where she did and imagined the day when she’d see her big red truck up there. She turned off the ignition and got out and walked to the entrance.

Somboun was standing outside alone, smoking. When he saw her coming, he dropped his cigarette and put it out with his shoe. Then he blew into his palm to check his breath and yelled out, “Hey, Dang!” Dang was what people who knew Red called her. It means red in Lao. It wasn’t her real name, just a nickname she got because her nose was always red from the cold. She hated that he called her by a nickname. It made things feel intimate between them in a way she didn’t want. The way he said “Dang,” it was like a light in him had been turned on and now she had to be responsible for what he could see about himself.

Wherever she was in the plant, if he was around he would head straight toward her, excited and hopeful for something to happen between them. He was there when she punched in her time card, there at the end of the day when she punched out. He followed her around as if she were carrying feed. She wondered how he never got tired of smiling so much. She would look away from him, uninterested, but he would follow her gaze. He had seen her interest in the girls who got nose jobs, had seen her taking in how everyone else was noticing them too.

“I just don’t see what the big deal is,” he had said. “Why go and do that to your face for?”

“She’s beautiful.”

“But it’s not real.”

“It’s real to her.”

“I don’t see it. I just don’t.”

“I want to get one too, you know,” Red had confessed, before she realized she should not have said that to Somboun. Now that he knew she wanted something for herself, he might think he was some kind of friend to her.

“No. Not you. Not you. No way.”

“Why not me? You think I don’t want to be beautiful?”

“Why in hell would you do that to yourself! You’re already beautiful.” Somboun said this with such sincere conviction that she was embarrassed for him. How naked and bare, his want.

“How would you know. You don’t know about girls.”

Somboun lowered his head and quietly said, “I don’t got to know anything about girls to know what’s beautiful.” He was so proud, and all for nothing. He’d worked at the plant the longest. Started when he was in high school, thinking this was something that was going to get him to college. Ten years later, he was still working at the plant doing the same thing. He was the one who slit the necks in the other room before they got to Red. He saw the chickens when they were still alive. She shuddered at the thought of doing anything with Somboun. What kind of gentleness could a man who did that for a living be capable of?

Still, after that, nose jobs were the one thing Somboun could manage to get Red to talk to him about. Who had got a nose job and when and if it was a good one. Red told him she was going to get a nose job too as soon as she saved up enough. She always said, “Next year, for sure. For sure.”

When Red saw Somboun standing at the entrance that morning, still smoking even though he often talked about quitting, and wearing the same drab uniform and the same haircut all these years, he reminded her of all the things she wanted for herself but still didn’t have. Day after day, the sight of him in the same place and in the same clothes and giving her the same greeting each morning showed that, for them, nothing had changed. Nothing had happened.

“I didn’t get one!” she yelled at him.

“You look fine the way you are,” he said, as if they were just picking up a conversation where they’d left off. As if the only time that counted for him were the ones they spent together, talking.

Walking quickly past him, she said, “Thanks, Sam.” Red knew he hated to be called by his English name. “Not Sam,” he would insist, “Somboun,” pronouncing the tones of the vowels the way Lao people would, refusing to make it easy. But he took what she said as if she was teasing and he smiled widely. To know someone’s dislikes was to be close to them.

“Hey, Dang?” Somboun called after her, trying to hold her attention and to keep up with her as she entered the plant.

“What is it?” Red said irritably, hoping not to encourage him further.

“Did you hear about Khet? It was cancer. Started a few months after her nose job. Might have something to do with the material they put in there.” Somboun was always coming up with reasons as to why a nose job was a bad idea. “Just something to think about,” he said, grinning as if the cancer was a blessing in disguise, opening up an opportunity for him to talk with Red.

She walked faster and he soon fell behind.

IT WAS TIME to break for lunch. They only got twenty minutes. Enough time to use the washroom and gobble down some food. Red often used the time to be alone. The smell of raw chicken flesh and loosened guts and all that killing and packaging sometimes made her forget she was alive and living in the world too. She was on her way out of the line when she saw Tommy come by and tap the shoulder of one of the girls who worked for him. This was something he often did. That girl was the one selected for that day. Red made her way outside. A short time later, Tommy and the girl came out and walked to his car, where all of it took place. Red wondered what that felt like, to be seen, to feel the mouth of someone who wanted you. It didn’t matter if what Tommy did wasn’t for forever. He did it and you got to be something to him for a little while.

Just as they were getting into the car, Tommy’s wife pulled into the parking lot.

She didn’t even bother to park properly.

Nicole wore a white fur coat, her blond curls bounced fresh from the salon. She had bright red lipstick on and rouged cheeks. She looked so glamorous and beautiful.

She was yelling at him about something. Furious.

Then Nicole grabbed Tommy by the arm. He pulled his arm back and shoved her away. She didn’t fall. She clung to a sleeve, her white heels dragging in the snow. What she wanted didn’t matter to Tommy. He shut the door and drove away with the girl in the car. The bottom of Nicole’s white fur coat was dirty with mud. If Red had not seen the whole thing, she might have thought the mud was shit. Might have asked how the shit got all over her like that.

From where Red stood, she could tell Nicole’s eyes were smeared with mascara, and her quivering lips looked a clownish red now. Women like Nicole are who the romantic movies were made for. They are always the star of their own lives and they always got their man in the end. But beauty, for all it could get you and all that fussing it took to get it, seemed so awful a burden to have to carry and maintain. There was so much to lose. In that moment, Red felt grateful for what she was to others—ugly. It’s one thing to be ugly and not know it. It’s another to know.

That public declaration of love in front of family and friends like Nicole and Tommy had—Red knew it wasn’t something that would ever happen for her. It didn’t matter what Tommy did outside of that promise. It had been made, and he would always come back to it sooner or later.

The only love Red knew was that simple, uncomplicated, lonely love one feels for oneself in the quiet moments of the day. It was there, steady and solid in the laughter and talk of the television and with her in the grocery aisles on the weekends. It was there every night, in the dark, spectacular and sprawling in the quiet. And it all belonged to her.

Nicole spotted Red and ran to her. She grabbed Red and held her like they were the closest of friends, and buried her pointy nose in Red’s neck. She could feel the poke. Nicole probably would have grabbed on to anyone standing there. Probably. They stood there together in each other’s arms. It was the first time someone had ever been that close to Red, had touched her. Both women cried, but for different reasons.

Slingshot

I WAS SEVENTY when I met Richard. He was thirty-two. He told me he was a young man, and I didn’t say anything about that because I really didn’t know what that was, to be a young man, if that was a good thing to be or a bad one. He had moved in next door to us, me and Rose, my granddaughter, in January. She was hardly home that summer. She had gotten together with a new guy and was mostly at his place across town.