Kate Zambreno - Green Girl

She staggers through her tour, her and another girl, following their delicate managerial nymph, wearing a lacy eggplant camisole topped off by a black knit shrug, with camouflage shorts and a mess of gold chains coasting between sharp collarbones. The other new girl had thick thighs covered in rainbow tights, she wore a short ripped jean skirt, black Converse all-stars, and a black hooded sweatshirt. From the neck up she styled herself like Bettie Page with a ponytail, shiny onyx bangs framing a pale, made-up mask of scarlet lips and bright-blue lids. Her face was covered with a sheen of sweat. Ruth could hear her breathing as Alice chatted away.

They tromp after the slipping trajectory of Alice’s ballet flats as she walks around with a clipboard introducing them to the clothes, all anointed with girl’s names. Ruth tries to make mental notes. But the store music floods and fills and thickens her brain until she can’t think. And the other girl keeps on breathing heavily next to her. Name was Vienna. Face shiny like a Sacher torte.

Hello, Veronica trousers (don’t say pants) in tan or black.

Hello, Monica cords, in slate-gray or cream or burnt orange.

Hello Amanda ribbed tanks, in every color.

Hello, Kimmy Tees, Stella camisoles, Sophie military fatigues (which Alice was wearing), Katie shorts, Lynn peasant blouse.

Say hello, girls.

Hello, girls.

Alice shows them how to fold a Lynn peasant blouse using a plastic board, just go there and there and flip and there you go. Ruth and the other girl stand there and watch. The other girl emits a strange, sour scent.

Now you try it, Alice steps away.

Heart beating, Ruth tries to fold the blouse with the board. Her fold comes apart as soon as she slips the board out. The other girl manages to manipulate the blouse into a perfect square. Sorry, Ruth whispers. Alice waves her white hand, bangles a reassuring jingle. It’ll come to you, she promises.

Waiting in the station going home she sits next to a woman whose bag of crisps peek out from her purse. Ruth’s stomach grumbles. She fights the urge to snatch a crisp away.

Across from her on the train is a young girl with a blank beautiful face. Her hair done up in an updo, brown hair swept across forehead then pinned back. She wears eyeliner that springs up from the corner of her eyes like tiny alarmed cat claws. A mess of black string, in which are buried several sandwich crumbs, makes up a scarf wrapped around her shoulders and neck. She wears the prerequisite black boots tucked in painted-on dark jeans. Ruth recognizes the scarf from the store. When she stands up and jumps over the gap at the Liverpool stop, she reveals two little buttocks like a perfectly outlined heart. She pulls down her top with a self-conscious gesture, tapping away.

Up the escalator, deep down below, as if from the bowels of hell, Ruth watches a pair of girls go down the other way, wearing identical plastic sunglasses in the shape of stars.

Today is her first day of work. She will be tested, tried out. She will be tested to see if she “fits into the family,” Alice said.

She is thrown into the crush of Saturday. Mobs and mobs of assaulting femininity. A rhythm starts to build amidst all the chaos. Stagger around, pick up errant clothes, greet newcomers. Do you work here? Do you work here? Fold, fold, greet, greet. Do you work here? Do you work here? Point to your badge. Nod yes. Do you have this in another size? A different color? Nod yes, yes. Keep on moving, keep on moving. Set to a soundtrack of numbing piped-in music, bouncing while Ruth roams somnolent, staggering, mouth dry, sweaty, shaky. Counting down the clock.

The work is hellish. Piles and piles of clothes like deflated corpses. A Sisyphean task. Take a piece from the pile, insert it on a hanger, or fold it neatly, use the board. Put it away, come back, the pile grows. Scoop up trashy translucent innards from the fitting rooms. Walk out with a body of clothes, heavy, back breaking. Fold and fold and fold.

Clang of the door. Armies of heads swivel. A new one. A new one. They pour in, they leave, more come. Guarded over by Cerberus, by a team of Jamaican security guards doing systematic searches of plastic bags, This way ma’am, Can you come here ma’am, you need to be detagged. She hears them speaking to each other in a mysterious language. She locks eyes with one, tight dreadlocks, large white teeth, skinny frame lost in a billowing blue uniform shirt. She graces him with her smile.

How’s it going?

This is a nightmare.

Knowing smile, nod, the policeman stance, hands clasped in back, rocking forward.

Saturdays.

She folds and folds and the piles keep springing up. An ensemble of girls playing pick-up, The Danaids of Oxford Street, carrying water in leaky jars from the river’s edge, filling and refilling, folding and refolding. Doomed to repeat their task, over and over.

Break. A breath. She finds the employee room. Insidious smells of other people’s reheated food. Popcorn billowing in the microwave. She sits on a hardback chair, trying not to smell the jacket potato the girl next to her is eating out of tin foil. Al-u-min-ium, not a-lu-minum. That’s what they say. Everyone straining necks watching Friends on the small TV perched above. Tapes of the television show lined up next to the VCR. Seemingly every season. She sits and watches with them. She’s seen this episode before. She laughs as well. Tears spring to her eyes. She is happy to hear familiar voices.

Another episode playing. Everyone else claps along with the opening credits.

I have a question for you. Jacket Potato Girl. Her potato under siege in front of her.

What?

Why do you wear all black? The other girls at the table, previously involved with the show or their tabloid magazines or texting boyfriends on their mobiles, now look towards her. So suspicious, scrutinizing. Cast thy nighted color off.

I don’t know. Ruth examines a smudged Page Three Girl opened up on the table. I wear color sometimes.

Potato girl persists. Eyes like daggers. You’ve been here twice already, and you’ve worn black every time.

Ruth looks down at herself. She had used her employee discount to purchase a tank top from the store just for that day, and it was not black, it was a dark gray Amanda. But she doesn’t have the energy to debate the point. She looks up at the television. She feels a shock, as if she has been slapped.

I don’t know. I guess I don’t own that many clothes, still looking up at the TV, as if studying it. Phoebe is playing her guitar, long blonde ponytail swinging. All of a sudden Ruth hated Jacket Potato Girl. She hated all of them. She was never coming back. She just had to get through the day.

Navigating the mob. The Jamaican security guard laughs at her frantic expression whenever she scurries by him near the front entrance, arms full of battered clothes, looking like she’s going to run to freedom. Knowing if she came too close she’d set off a medley of warning sounds.

First day.

Can you tell.

He nods his head. Yup.

She sees Alice’s blonde head bobbing towards her in the crowd.

Are you married.

No why would I be married. I’m young.

White teeth. You’re not that young.

No, I’m not, she sighs to herself. I’m not this young. I’m not this young. Not anymore.

Alice reaches her through the crowd. Faces and faces. Ruth, I need you. She bows her head, meek, suppliant. Waves goodbye to her security guard, a wink of two fingers. Sent on a reconnaissance mission in the fitting rooms.