Woman of Light (27)

“Get your things,” Maria Josie said curtly to Luz. “You’re coming with me.”

Luz protested, said she never had any days off. “I just want to listen to the radio.”

“Listen at the shop,” Maria Josie said and stepped to Avel. She gazed upward into his face. “If you touch anything in this place besides that wall and this radiator, I’ll kill you myself. Lock the door when you leave.”

Avel grinned as though he appreciated the sentiment. He waved as they left.



* * *



—

Maria Josie had always said she found the mirror factory on an accidental turn down Larimer Street, a brick box the color of a robin’s egg, a HELP WANTED sign hanging in a window. Inside, women of all ages and sizes performed duties normally reserved for men. They cut glass, carved wood, spat blue flames from high-powered torches. Even the factory’s superintendent was a woman named Big Cheryl. She had hired Maria Josie on the spot, putting her near the dock, where recently completed dressers were shipped through the entire West. When Maria Josie asked Big Cheryl why no men worked at the mirror factory, she had said, “Only women can bear to look at themselves all day.” The truth was, the owners were some industrial family from out East who knew they could pay women much less than men.

That afternoon, Maria Josie and Luz entered through the mirror factory’s delivery entrance. Sunlight cascaded from the open garage and plunged across the concrete floor. The factory smelled of singed metal and chemical varnishes. Knives, grips, and tools hung from mounted shelves. Women in slacks and denim coverings scrambled throughout the factory, their eyes visible under black goggles, as if they were airship pilots, voyaging into space. Maria Josie walked Luz to her station and directed her to sit in an uneven chair. Mirrors were all around, stacked together on shelves, on the floor leaned against brick walls, and upright on their backs across tables and sawhorses. Maria Josie flipped on the small radio and got to work

She was finishing the edges of a square mirror, the size and length of Luz’s body, resting over two sawhorses, reflecting the ceiling lights doubly into Maria Josie’s face. Her hair was wild and poking up from her goggles. The mirror factory was a place of work, real work, without men. Maria Josie had described many accidents, a severed hand, a missing eye. Thumbs put on ice with no hope to be sewn back, just a good idea at the time. You should have seen it, she told Luz and Diego one evening over supper, a red painted thumbnail left in a cooler, white bone showing from its stem.

Luz tried to hear the radio, but the chaotic sounds of saws and torches tore throughout the space, the boss’s high clear room overlooking it all. Luz was angry, bored. She stood and walked toward her auntie, heading past hundreds of unfinished mirrors, which spliced her reflection into endless eyes and lips, edges of nose.

Luz stopped before Maria Josie. She stood there, hands on her hips.

“Big Cheryl don’t like roaming visitors, Little Light. Sit back down.”

“I can’t hear the radio,” yelled Luz, the sound of her own voice covered by saws.

Maria Josie gestured toward her ears. She continued working before sliding off her goggles, slipping her gloves into her trouser pocket. A break bell buzzed.

“Can I just go home?” Luz asked.

“No.” Maria Josie breathed. She pulled a pipe from her coat pocket and lit her tobacco with a match. The air turned sulfuric. “I’m not leaving you in the apartment with some man, a man we don’t even know.” She chuckled. Attractive wrinkles appeared around her eyes. “Are you crazy?”

Luz stared, unblinking. Her eyes watered. “What if he’s stealing from us?”

“Well, he ain’t stealing you, and you’re the most valuable.”

“I’m not a child,” Luz said sternly, and then, under her breath, “Dammit, I hate it here.”

“Don’t let Big Cheryl hear that. She prides herself on keeping this place up.”

“Not here,” said Luz. “I mean, here. Inside myself, in this life.”

“This is a gift,” said Maria Josie. “It’s all we have.” She exhaled her tobacco smoke, considering the shapes of her breath. “You don’t feel it now, but someday you’ll know. You have very much, Luz.”

“I want to feel in control of my own life now, not someday,” said Luz. “I just want to feel safe, like I can do as I please.”

Maria Josie inhaled quickly and exhaled slowly, watching her smoke turn inward on itself like time collapsing into the past. Luz watched her auntie’s breath disappear into the factory lights.

“I know, Little Light,” she said. “I want that, too.”





ELEVEN




We Should All Be as Happy as Kings





In the morning, Luz set out for the streetcar with her hair curled and her lips a soft pink. Her winter coat showed signs of wear in the elbows and collar, so Luz figured she’d draw attention upward, toward her face. She was going to look for work in the Eastside—where the money was. She waited on the corner for the Green Line, a streetcar she seldom took, as they didn’t allow her and Lizette to ride with laundry sacks.

When the car came over the hill and juddered to a halt, Luz climbed inside, avoiding eye contact with the driver as she paid her fare. She swayed down the aisle toward the Spanish and Colored section. Sometimes, if she was alone or the car seemed particularly empty, Luz stood closer to the middle. Her skin was light enough from her father. But on this morning, the car was full, and every white-dish face stared as Luz scrambled to the back, where another girl not much older than Luz sat with a sack of colorful yarn balls in her lap. She looked up when Luz stood beside her and gripped the brass handle. The girl gently pointed at Luz’s hair. “Pretty,” she said. Luz thanked her and turned toward the window for fifteen long minutes.