Xhenet Aliu - Brass

“How old are you, Elsie? You look like you could be one of my daughter’s friends,” Rini said.

“Almost twenty. I don’t really have friends, though, so.”

The three of them thought that was a hoot. Margot laughed so hard she sprayed her grape soda over a boxful of ferrules.

“You don’t need friends when you got co-workers, lady. There’s no time for anything else,” Deena said.

“Seriously, I see more of you guys than I do my husband,” said Rini.

“You’re welcome for that,” said Margot.

“All right, quiet down already. Let’s not scare her off. Let’s let the job itself do that,” Deena said.

Deena wasn’t just giving me credit when she said I could figure out the job on my own—either the threads on the ferrules were right or they weren’t, they either screwed in or didn’t, and there was a box for the did s and a box for the didn’t s. So long as I could twist my wrist and remember which box was on the right and which on the left, I could be Helen Keller and pass my performance review.

“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.