Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

Начало книги

I am boiling inside a kettle with five other people. Our limbs are bound and our intestines and mouths are stuffed with herbs and garlic, but we can still speak. We smell great despite the pain.

The guy next to me resembles Elvis because of his fluffy, vaguely-pubic black hairdo. It may be the humidity.

Across the kettle a man is trying to cry, but his tears keep mixing with his sweat and instead of looking sad he just seems extra warm. For a moment, I have the romantic thought that maybe we are actually boiling in tears, hundreds of thousands of them, the sweetest-true tears of infants and children instead of a yellowy, chickenish broth.

I am the only woman in the kettle, which strikes me as odd. I’m voluptuous and curvy; I can understand why someone would want to gobble me up. The men do not look so delicious. One, a very old man across the kettle from me, keeps drifting in and out of a semi-conscious state. His head droops down towards the broth then suddenly, just as the tip of his nose touches one of the surface’s bubbles, he snaps upright and utters a name. “Stanley” is the first. The second, “David.” We think he is saying the names of his children; we even continue to humor him after he gets to the fifteenth (perhaps he’s moved on to grandchildren?), but as he yells his fortieth name it’s clear that he is not poignant but nuts.

Читать дальше →