Kathleen Furin

Mountain Pose

The woman stood behind her, pressing her palms into her hips. The pressure felt gentle; good, even. Still she could barely breathe. She needed this job. She’d been late last week, and even though the boss hadn’t written her up he’d threatened to. If it happened again. What would she do if he walked in now? The boss had an uncanny ability to be nowhere and everywhere at once, like a slinking spider suddenly dropping down. He’d never been anything but kind to her; even when chastising her for being late, he hadn’t raised his voice. But she was terrified of him anyway. He was too calm. Underneath all that serenity there lurked a ruthlessness, she was sure of it. And here she was, a client’s hands on her hips, doing yoga when she was supposed to be cleaning.

“Deepen your breath some,” the woman said. “Relax.”

She’d come upon her in one of the private meditation rooms. She’d popped the door open, holding it with her hip, snaking the vacuum in before she realized someone was inside. She heard the whoosh of the client’s breath, watched the knobs of her spine flatten under her white shirt as she rolled up to stand. Her cheeks burned as she apologized.

“It’s not a problem,” the client said, motioning her in.

She shivered, although the room was warm, pushed her hair off her shoulders. If her hair were straighter and she were skinnier, she could be mistaken for Indian. If she were Indian, maybe she’d teach here instead of working in housekeeping. She’d headband a microphone over her ears, gentle her voice, say three breaths in… now three out. She’d be a famous yogi herself, bending, willow in a soft breeze. Her image would smile serenely from the altars she polished.

She wonders about these pictures as she wipes them clean. They’re dusted so often they’re always clean. She wonders about the statues: elephants with arms, gleaming goddesses with round breasts. She wonders about the white people, worshipping these gods as their own. The women, sipping their tea, or pressing fat beads against their collarbones as they exhale, loud puffs of air like winter dough on a radiator. They place peaceful flip-flopped feet, one and then the other, “mindful” even as they plod to the bathroom to shit out their lentils and kale. She wonders if they wonder and decides that they do not. Everything in the Universe is aligned to their desires. She heard a workshop leader say that once, not ironically. Everything in the Universe is aligned to your desire. She wondered what it would be like. To believe that.

She’s not Indian; she’s Mexican and Black, more Mexican than Black, hence her hair, “good” hair, with loose curls, like coils of green plant dangling from a woven basket. She pulls it back with a scarf. She wore a pink one her first day, but the boss said no. White only. Everything white. They gave her white elastics but not a scarf, so she went to Walmart and spent $3.89 that very night. She tried to be grateful. She didn’t want to feel what she knew she was feeling, so she convinced herself if she didn’t put words to it, it wouldn’t matter. Carmen told her to stop wearing white underwear, though. “Wear a color that matches your skin,” she said, “and no one will see it through your pants.”

They’re allowed to eat on break, however much they want, and she’s grateful for this, although even smothered in the hot sauce Joey sneaks in, the food tastes like cardboard. Here they practice something called silent breakfast and no one, staff included, is permitted to speak. It’s almost impossible for the workers to do the simple tasks that create the silent breakfast in silence, but somehow they manage. She’s watched the white women close their eyes and murmur a prayer, lips moving soundlessly. Is it an Indian prayer? Or one of their own? She’s read the sign on the table about mindful eating. The sign says to thank the hands that have prepared the food, but it doesn’t say anything about thanking the hands that clear the food away, that scrape the crusted plates, that scald their own fingers on desert-hot cups. She hasn’t been thanked yet, but to be fair she’s usually down in the laundry.

Upstairs is better. When she’s working upstairs with Joey, she doesn’t mind smiling at the occasional woman who smiles at her. It’s as if when she’s with him she’s in her world, and their world can’t get inside her. She admires the women’s clothes, but even with her staff discount, she could never afford the luxurious cottons and loose silks sold in the gift shop. The clothing looks comfortable, elegant. The women’s smiles seem real. Her paycheck is good, she gets enough hours, when Chase got sick and she had to call out, everyone understood. But. Still.

Once a year, they gather for staff retreat. She hasn’t been yet; it happens in February, when registrations are down. At staff retreat, the yoga rooms fill with different bodies, round bodies, brown bodies, golden, exhausted bodies. But even then, the workers who gather the sheets and the towels, who lift tray after steaming tray of bowls in and out, in and out, are also brown and black. She has fantasies about the white women, the women who come for peace, healing, and deeper spiritual understanding, coming instead to chop the peppers, so many peppers, rinsing, drying, then rinsing again, blotting the ten different greens for the salads. Joey sweats right into the salad and no one ever says anything. He’s a sweater, which turned her off at first, but then again, on those cold Northern nights his warmth is the best thing that’s ever happened to her. He himself is not the best thing that’s ever happened to her. He can’t be. She’s only 22 and even with everything, she still sometimes believes the best is yet to come.

Everything in the Universe is aligned to your desire. She reads the signs that decorate the hallways – pithy sayings like be kind: everyone’s fighting some kind of battle – and wonders if people really believe this, if they get irritated at the bank teller or some asshole cutting them off and remember to be kind and bite their tongues and smile weakly.

Sometimes Joey comes with her to church. She loves feeling him next to her, smelling the faint scent of candle wax, which always helps her to believe. The best part of church is the singing, except when it’s the praying. Since she’s had her son, it’s the spaces between the words that she seeks especially. The expectant energy of the pause, like his nap on a sunny afternoon, the earth tilting a pinch more each solstice. She understands that this is what the women who come are seeking, and sometimes she understands their ohm-ing and ah-ing into their crystals, pink like her grandmother’s rosary beads. She twists the beads between her fingers when she bows her head at church.

Joey is good-looking enough that women notice him. His “difference,” his kitchen-staff-status—his family history of poverty and blueberries and corn, crossing dotted borders in dusk-dusted sweat—there are women here who’d be willing to overlook all of this, for a moment with the fierce slash of his cheekbone, the dimple in his chin. Maybe, also, they catch glimpses of what came before, his ancient history of feathers and gold and solemn processions, sleek strong sacrifice, something so deep within him that even the constraints of his current circumstances can’t quite hide it. His muscled arms as they pull the trays in and out. Those warm arms around her. Those cold Northern nights. She knows she should know she’s lucky.

She is thick and round and Joey loves this. “Thank you Jesus! a woman I can sink into,” he says. He loves to bat at her arms, to pull as much of her loping breast as possible into his mouth, to bite down hard until she giggles and gasps and begs him to stop. He says making love to her is like going swimming in a deep pool with a mud bottom, all warmth, tadpoled pulse. He says when he is inside of her, he is inside all of her and here he is reborn. She says he reads too many signs at work. When he is inside of her she feels like a hamster on a wheel that won’t stop turning, going nowhere fast. There’s something she’s supposed to feel, but all she notices is the light on his face, a deep shade of purple in his thin stubble. She wonders why her body makes other women feel ashamed. She watches them, sometimes, as she gathers towels for the wash. Most are thin and narrow, their private hair neatly trimmed or waxed, bodies angled as arrows.

Carmen got her the job. The pay is good—$1.85 per hour more than anyplace else around—but getting back and forth is challenging. The center is remote. There is no public transportation. “How will I get there?” she asked. “You ride with me,” Carmen said. “We ask for the same shifts.”

The day of her interview, Carmen was already at work. Manny, who lived with them, agreed to drive her, but he showed up forty minutes late. She was so upset that her carefully applied mascara spiraled onto her cheeks, even though she hadn’t let herself cry. Her friend Kyla was keeping Chase, but Kyla only had a month clean, so it was impossible to not check in every five minutes, and the longer Chase was with Kyla, the more her heart raced. “I’m not gonna get this fucking job now.” She glared at Manny.

“I already said sorry.” Manny shrugged. She liked Manny. He made her laugh. If they were at the bar together, he paid for her drinks, gave her cigarettes so she didn’t have to buy her own. As long as she wasn’t paying for them, she could convince herself she didn’t need them. She didn’t smoke at all, in the house around the baby. Only late at night, sneaking one on the front steps before bed. At the bar, when she could get there, two or three. “Anyway. They’re gonna hire you. No one’s gonna say no to that booty.”

“They’re not hiring me for my booty,” she snorted. “Anyway these are white people.” She pulled the cream-colored blouse down almost to her knees. The clothes were Kyla’s and they were a little big. “Better than being too tight,” Kyla said. Her resume was tucked neatly into a notebook inside Kyla’s flat purse. She’d won an award senior year in high school and that was the only thing on her resume that mattered. Best Artist. She’d won mainly for her paintings of her boyfriend. He played basketball, and she’d done a series of him in motion, making his way to the basket, slamming in the ball. She wondered sometimes if she’d only won because he was popular. But the paintings were good, she knew that. She’d included one of a deer and its baby, too, the little fawn peering around its mother’s legs. She called it “Bambi: Before.” Her teacher hated the title but loved the work. You have a beautiful sense of design and composition, the evaluation said. Sometimes when she was washing dishes or folding clothes or scraping mold out of the grout in the shower (eleven people used the one bathroom in the house where she stayed), she would say that line in her head, over and over. You have a beautiful sense of design and composition. She wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, really, but she loved the word beautiful in regard to work she’d created. Composition, putting things together. She was good at that. That line was more important than the silly things Joey said to her. They were her favorite words in the world.

That was senior year. Her teacher encouraged her to go to art school, find a place where she could “develop her talents.” She might as well have been encouraging her to go to Saudi Arabia, a tiny Polynesian island, but at any rate she was already pregnant with the basketball player’s son. Her belly didn’t show through the white gown she wore for graduation, but everyone knew. “If you keep that baby, you’re out,” her mother said. Her mother had been sixteen when she’d gotten pregnant and her sole goal in life was to keep any of her daughters from getting pregnant until they were rich or married, whichever came first. “I’ll see you starve first,” her mother said, but she couldn’t not keep her baby.

She didn’t starve, but she came close. At the end, she was eating daily meals at a soup kitchen, leaving each night clutching a paper sack with a plastic-wrapped muffin, a banana for the morning. Had her mother seen her, she would have died of shame, but she needed to eat, for the baby if not for herself. By then her boyfriend had left for UCLA. Although he sent emails every other week or so, he had yet to send a diaper or a dime.

“Fix your make-up,” Manny said. She flipped down the visor and rubbed away the smudged mascara.

“Gorgeous,” Manny said, dropping her at the front entrance. “Good luck.”

The lady behind the desk made her wait even though she was late. Soft meditative music pulsed through the ceiling speakers. Aromatherapy oils wafted in the air. Still her heart pounded frantically as she gazed at the vase of white lilies on the lady’s desk. How wonderful, she thought. She wanted to remember them, maybe to try to paint them later. She memorized the way their petals drooped, the shadow one cast onto another.

Soon a man came and offered a flaked hand, which she shook tentatively. He led her into an office that was all white, but for a huge picture of a bright red flower on the wall behind his desk. He motioned for her to sit down. “So your work experience has been at Burger King?”

“Yes, sir. Almost four years.”

“Why did you leave?”

She wasn’t going to say the real reason. A customer. The man in the blue flannel shirt, always the same one. He wore it every day, even in the heat. He would order a coffee and three creams then sit at the table closest to her register and stare at her. If she switched registers, he would switch seats. When he finished his first coffee, he would get another, then another, until it was time to close. One night he waited for her outside. She felt his eyes on her while she walked to the car with Kyla. Chase was strapped into his little seat in the back. Her heart was pounding that he might hurt Chase. She never went back to work after that. But she was ready for this question.

“I had an opportunity to work in childcare. My own son was little at the time, so he could be with me while I worked.” While this was true, she was making it sound better than it was. She begged her cousin’s friend for the chance to watch her two girls. Anything for some money. It worked out okay, but it was exhausting, and if the mother didn’t work, she wouldn’t get paid that week. She needed something steady.

“So, some restaurant experience. We only serve vegan food here. Do you know how to cook vegan food?”

She shook her head. They usually ate rice, meat rarely, but she couldn’t imagine white people eating what she cooked.

“That’s okay. Most of our staff don’t at first. We’ll train you, of course.” He tented his fingers together and leaned forward. “That’s actually one of the benefits of working here, how we give back to the community. Here you will learn how to sustain body and soul.”

She nodded. “Okay.” She smiled. “That sounds nice.”

“Well. Carmen’s your cousin? She’s a hard worker. I think we can make this work. But the kitchen position isn’t open until May. We need somebody in the laundry now, though. Can you do laundry?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” She nodded. “I do the wash at home.” The men each gave her $3 to wash and press their clothes on Saturdays. They had a washing machine but no dryer, so she hung everything carefully on the lines in the basement.

“Great. When can you start?”

“Tomorrow? Now? Anytime, really.”

He shook her hand.

Manny was sitting in the car outside.

“They asked me to turn down my music,” he said, waiting until they were a little ways down the winding driveway before he blasted it again.

“Manny. Stop! I got the job! I don’t want to lose it because of your freaking bachatas.”

“Fine.” He turned the music down. “Here. A celebratory smoke.”

She pulled the smoke into her lungs then exhaled slowly. She thought about the vase of white lilies, so stately, crisp. Her fingers ached with urge. But she never painted anymore. For one, she didn’t have time. Also there was the matter of supplies. It was one thing when she’d been in high school; the teachers had let her use whatever she wanted from the closets filled with canvases and paints, brushes of all shapes and sizes. Now she had just a few thin tubes which were almost dry. She meant to do a portrait of Chase, but she hadn’t yet had time. Maybe she’d draw the vase instead. She traced the shape of a lily with her finger, on the inside of her arm.

She’d been wary about starting work that next Tuesday. She’d never imagined working in such a beautiful place. But already she understood that while the peaceful experience of the guests was critical, the experience of the workers was another thing altogether. Yes, they were permitted to fill their plates after meal time, take as many leftovers as they wanted. But the food tasted bitter to her, and after working like she did she needed something sweet. In the laundry, her shift started at 5 am; much earlier than Carmen needed to be in. She could ride in with a co-worker who lived behind her, but she had nobody to look after Chase that early, so she had to pay one of the guys, usually Manny, to get him dressed, give him cereal, and drop him off at school by 8. She knew sometimes the guys overslept. Sometimes Chase wet the bed, and they didn’t always notice, know to help him change his underwear. She worried about him constantly. She asked his teachers to send her a quick text when he got in to school just so she’d know he made it in okay. It was a small preschool. One of the teachers was kind, and she’d send not just a text but a picture of Chase spooning applesauce into his mouth. Putting a block on a tall tower, standing proudly next to it. Dabbling his fingers in colored paints, smearing them on a piece of posterboard. She loved to see that. He always looked happy, and then she could breathe a little easier, turning her attention to the mounds of white towels, like mashed potato mountains, mashed potatoes in a place where no one ate carbs. She had learned about food. Wealthy people were precious about what they consumed. She wondered if they knew what it was to eat bread with mustard because that was what was there. She slapped a towel into the bin. So many towels. She watched the women using them carelessly; one for their hair, one for their body, another for the face. They would pick up a towel, wipe the creases of their face once, and toss it onto the floor, immediately picking up another and doing the same thing. This made her crazy. Her back ached from pushing the heavy wheeled bins back and forth from the sauna to the laundry room. They were supposed to push them no matter how full they were, but she wasn’t that strong. She would leave a dirty pile of towels right on the floor, hurrying down the hall with a smaller load and then racing back again. The towels multiplied like something obscene and she waited to get into trouble, but when the bin was too full she couldn’t even make it budge.

*

The best thing about going in early was that she was done at 2 every day. She’d get home and take a short nap, then put on the rice before she had to pick up Chase at 5. Carmen had told her to steal, but carefully. Every day at lunch, she took an apple or an orange for Chase. When she picked him up, she’d sit with him at his little table while he ate the fruit, pressing himself into her lap, his rough-soft curls tickling her cheeks. He had no sense of boundaries, hers or his own. His hands would wander over her body and face, his ankles pressing into her calves or kicking against her shins. She loved holding him like this, watching him chew. She’d hoped to be able to buy more fruit for him, but the extra $1.85 went to the guys who took turns watching him in the mornings, so these little pieces of fruit that she gave him made her day. Me, she would think. I earned that. You have a beautiful sense of design and composition. On the walk home, Chase would tell her things that happened. They’d get in and eat plates of rice, or tuna and cheese sandwiches with milk. If Joey was over, he’d eat with them, and when dinner was over and Chase was watching TV, sometimes she’d lie with her head in Joey’s lap and he would rub oil into her blistered hands. Sometimes she loved that; she needed it; but sometimes it was excruciating. She hadn’t told anyone about what had happened the night she’d given birth, but that was when the feeling, as she called it, started. It didn’t make sense, and she didn’t even really know how to describe it, really, but it was what it was.

The feeling. Carmen had tried to prepare her for the birth, but there are some things that are impossible to prepare for, maybe, some things that go unremembered, too visceral for mere words. The thick smear of the gel the nurse squirted onto her belly—that was not unexpected. The puff of chilled air from the vent blowing onto her bare butt as she leaned forward for the epidural, lines of sweat dripping off her cheeks and onto the mattress; she shivered as she wrestled herself still. Even her butt crack sweated. She wondered what the doctor was looking at. Hopefully not the oblong mole that wrapped around her inner thigh and sometimes sprouted long hairs. She smelled a smell like fresh bread dough, only it was rising off of her. A contraction roiled her belly. “Don’t move,” the nurse murmured. She fought the urge to rock or sway. She didn’t feel it when the needle went in but she heard a tiny pop, like a bored woman with a sharp nail, popping a piece of bubble wrap. For a minute everything was purple and velvet. Her chest felt tight. She sipped at the air. “Pressure’s dropping,” someone said, and there was beeping and the sound of rushing feet, but all she could see was striped purple fur, like a tiger dunked in Kool-Aid only the fur was in her, it was around her, she wasn’t even sure if her eyes were open or shut, fur was everywhere, on her tongue, pasted into her eyelids. Somebody pressed something cold against her forehead. Her chest hurt as she wheezed, but she couldn’t feel anything in her stomach. “My baby’s dead,” she tried to say, then louder, “my baby’s dead.” She wondered how she would tell the basketball player then thought maybe she wouldn’t have to because after all he wasn’t here anyway. He was off somewhere under a sunny sky ramming a ball through a hoop. She wished he was there to tell her, though, if everything really was purple, if the stripes were vertical? Or horizontal?…then the nurse with the orange lipstick was right in her face, saying something that sounded enough like PUSH that she knew what to do only how could she push with fur everywhere? even down there…and then there was a loud, wet sound, a sucking smack, excited voices, something wet and warm and slippery in her arms. She didn’t know it was a baby. Her baby. Her foot fell from the stirrup. She didn’t feel it clang against the metal bar. The purple faded into gold, then, so as the wriggling wailing mass was removed from her rigid chest, it looked for a moment as if he was surrounded with a halo, seeping golden light.

She tried to peer at her golden baby over on the table, but all she could make out were dots of green and gold. They started out as tiny pinpricks then grew to paint the room. First green. Then gold. She counted the dots as they spread in front of her. Her stomach felt as fat and full as it had when the baby was inside it. The doctor reached between her legs and when she put her hands onto the still-throbbing cord, the girl felt her gloved hands all the way through her body, like a vibrating string was running from her bottom all the way to her neck, her feet, like someone had just plucked her like a guitar. She couldn’t stop shaking. The doctor yanked on the cord, releasing the placenta, but still she shook. Her eyelashes burned, the solid line of her nose, the edges of her teeth, like she was a line drawing a sloppy child was scribbling away at furiously. She felt nothing down there, but everything else was on fire. The nurse brought her burrito-wrapped baby back to her and placed him on her chest. Everything in the room turned a pale dusty green then. The flames ebbed. Ice licked her fingers.

She thought things would settle down once the epidural wore off, and they did, somewhat. But when the baby put his dewy lips on her breast, limes exploded between her teeth and behind her kneecaps. The whole room swirled like pistachio ice cream. When the nurse came to check her pressure, she asked her. “Does the epidural ever make people feel…colors?” The nurse shook her head. “I’m not sure what you mean. Colors?” she scoffed. “I better check your tox screen.”

The girl never mentioned her symptoms to anyone after that because one, she had never done drugs in her life and if that’s what people would think, it was better not to say, and two, who would believe her, anyway? But ever since that night, she’d felt colors, seen textures cover a room, fill it with taste and scent, like she was an apple being dunked in caramel. She had no control over her immersion into this world of light, exquisite sensation, but it seemed to come in waves. Sometimes she was just fine. At those times she tolerated Joey’s touch, his calloused fingers squeezing her own with what other women would consider perfect pressure. Other times even the lightest touch felt agonizing, and then she pushed him away. “You got your period again already?” he’d say, hurt.

She learned how to press the pulsating colors away by staring straight ahead, or pressing hard onto the ovals of her eyes, but sometimes she was overwhelmed and had to lay in bed until everything stopped and she was normal again. It’s why she liked the whiteness of the center. When Joey’s touch was unbearable but he needed her, she’d just blow him, because the inside of her mouth was the least sensitive spot on her body and she barely even noticed as it slid around his dick. It wasn’t the touching, it was the being touched that she hated. She felt bad to hurt Joey in this way. Joey loved the way she tasted inside but usually that was impossible. Chase’s father had never done what Joey liked to do with his teeth, his tongue, and the first time Joey did it the sensation was so strange that she became that hamster, running from herself. It was better when he just fucked her, when she could widen away from him. Joey liked that too, he liked everything. I love getting lost in you. I want to stay inside of you forever, he’d sigh. You have a beautiful sense of design and composition, she’d think. The only person whose touch never bothered her was Chase’s. Every time he climbed into her lap, a dim dusty green would descend upon her, a taste of limes shimmering over her tongue, but she was used to that by now.

Summer turned to fall and still she was stuck in the laundry. Thankfully she never got the feeling when she was at work. Even so, the hot-white towel threads prickled her fingers like fine needles. Folding was unbearable sometimes, even with gloves. The same repetitive sensation on her fingers, over and over. She thought sometimes that everything the women no longer needed drained out of their pale bodies into their sheets and towels, slowly killing people like her who had to handle their toxic waste. She was exhausted from dealing with the sheets, the mashed potato mounds….it was why Joey rubbed her hands. He understood.

“The kitchen’s not much better,” Carmen said, flexing her hands, which hurt from the repetitive motions of cutting vegetables over and over. The salad bar always needed to be restocked. So many vegetables. The simplest tasks were dangerous. She learned this, when finally she was let into the kitchen one sunny October afternoon to cover for someone who was out sick. The water for tea could scald. The knives could cut deep. One of the cooks had burned the backs of his thighs, when he leaned into a tray that someone had taken out of the oven and set for a moment on a low table. The tray edges had singed right through his pants and left blank lines across his thighs, burning off the hair and leaving in its place perfect hollow spaces, empty answers on a test he’d failed. The hair never grew back.

The bodies of the workers did not sway like trees, curl like cats. They did not press like a pigeon into the floor. You have a beautiful sense of design and composition. Once a week, staff were invited to do yoga after first shift. She had to get Chase by 5, so she never stayed. But she heard the white women discussing their workshops. She and Joey laughed about the poses named after animals. It was hilarious, a pose called Mountain Pose. When she heard that one, she yearned to invite the women down into the basement, the laundry room. That was a mountain, all right. She tried to picture them, with organic creams that stained the pillowcases and made them smell like old hippies in a cave, bending, folding, washing, pressing. The yoga of service, of trying to survive. At least here she had the dryers, but her shirt would be soaked by the time the wet towels were out of the bin and into the machines. Then she would shiver. She hated being wet. Joey told her to change her shirt, and if he stayed the night he’d tuck an extra one into her work bag for her, but what he didn’t understand was that there wasn’t time to change her shirt. Sometimes there wasn’t time to run to the bathroom. That was awful too. She would feel her heavy tampon no longer resisting gravity, making its way down towards the edges of her inside in a way which made her shudder, thinking of Joey after, sighing content as he slid out of her, how much she wanted him done. Sometimes she’d feel the damp blood. She’d glance at the clock. If it was almost time to leave she’d ignore it, hide it under her jeans. The boss never said they couldn’t just run to the bathroom when they needed to, but he hated when they got behind, and she was always behind. She was good at removing blood from her panties, good at getting the white women’s blood out of the sheets they’d ruin. She always wondered if they noticed, if they felt embarrassed, if they thought it was their God-given right to have someone else deal with whatever their own bodies no longer needed. But probably they thought the women cleaning up after them would think nothing of their blood. Probably they thought the women cleaning up after them did not feel disgust or revulsion or anything at all.

Being in the kitchen was much better than being in the laundry, and she was grateful when finally she was moved upstairs. She could work next to Joey, then, who made her laugh, even though he always seemed to want her to feel more jealous than she ever actually could. Plus in the kitchen there was some downtime. When the vegetables were chopped, it was someone’s turn to vacuum and dust the private meditation rooms. There were two on each floor, eight altogether, but since there was only one vacuum, the girls took turns doing that job. It was an important job. The boss warned all of them to keep those rooms perfectly clean. “It’s part of our hospitality. Those rooms must be serene. If ever a guest complains about the room, you’ll be written up.”

The girls were fair about making sure the room-cleaning was divided evenly, because if it wasn’t your turn, you got a little break, only twenty minutes or so before the service started, but still. It was enough time to run to the bathroom for a few minutes, shake Joey’s hot sauce over pallid quinoa, laugh with the others at the open window. No one bothered to smoke; they’d be caught for sure. The girl never complained when it was her turn to clean the rooms; Joey always saved her a plate.

That day he’d winked at her as she grabbed her dustrag and her spray bottle and tucked them under her arm. She dragged the vacuum out of the closet and lugged it into the hall. Even though there was an elevator, lugging that vacuum was a pain in the ass. Joey had taken initiative and suggested that the guys clean the rooms, but the boss didn’t want male energy in those rooms, didn’t want male hands polishing the delicate statues. Joey suggested that the boss buy a vacuum for each floor, but the boss said no. There were other, better vacuums for the guest rooms, but those were in constant use, so the staff just lugged the one they had.

The girl peered into the first meditation room. All clear.

Two hundred and eighty-four minus seventy-seven. She balanced her checkbook in her head as she vacuumed, dusted off the statues and votives, made sure the mats and pillows were stacked neatly against the walls. She’d picked up an extra shift this month and could set that money aside for Christmas. She smiled as lugged her supplies to the next room.

And that was when she encountered the woman, with long brownish hair which was just beginning to grey at the temples, the woman who was now pressing on her blade of hip, insisting in her soft voice that she relax.

“DO. YOU. SPEAK. ENGLISH?” she’d asked.

She thought about lying; she was born here, after all, why wouldn’t she; but instead nodded reluctantly. It was almost lunchtime, and these rooms were usually empty by now. “I can come back later,” she said.

But, “I often wonder about the people who make this place sparkle and shine,” the woman said, her eyes bright and moist. “You work hard, don’t you?”

The client’s eyes were a strange color, too green to be hazel, too brown to be green. She remembered that making the client happy was her top priority. With barely a sigh, she’d given a little half-nod.

The client laughed. “Tell you what. Why don’t you let me help you? I’m sure you need a break. I’ll help you clean, then show you a pose or two. It will be good for both of us.”

“I could never…”

“I insist,” she said. “The yoga of cleaning.”

The girl offered a weak smile. What was she supposed to say?

“I’ll vacuum.”

All she could think was what would the boss say. But already the client was plugging the vacuum into the wall.

“My husband says I should do more housework,” she laughed. “This is my opportunity.”

The client turned the machine on and began to push the vacuum across the floor. The girl turned away from her, squirting organic cleanser onto her towel and running it quickly over the statues. She’d come back later, do a better job. The feeling was coming on, or maybe the woman was just making her anxious. Her white socks inside her white shoes felt like flames licking at sugar. Pink fluff clouded her vision. Hurry, she thought. All the mats and cushions were in place except for the mat the client was using. The room was done.

She turned to go when the client cut off the vacuum.

“But now,” the client said. “It’s your turn.” She pulled a mat off a hook and shook it out with a flourish. What did she do for a living? She had an air of authority which compelled obedience.

“Ma’am. I…”

“We had a deal.”

“But I have other rooms….”

“Five minutes.”

The client had her stand with her feet on the edge of the mat. Now she was sure the feeling was there. Her soles twitched and burned, and everything in the room was a royal maroon. The client told her to close her eyes, and she was too scared not to. Acid pink feathers floated over the mat, brushing against her arms.

“Stand taller,” the client said. “Shoulders down. There. Mountain Pose.”

This was mountain pose? That was it? She would have thought it would be more complicated. She opened her eyes.

“Keep your eyes closed,” the client said, “then lift your arms.” She did what the client said.

“Higher,” she said. “Like this.”

The client was behind her then, she could feel her warm breath at her back. She tugged at her elbows, making her think of Joey, putting her where he wanted her. The client lifted her arms higher.

“Shoulders down.” Her hands were warm, and as the client pressed down on the tops of her arms even just that subtle movement slowed her breathing, opened something up inside her chest. The colors began to fade. “Good, she said, “better. Now pretend you’re diving.” She stood in front of her, spread her arms wide to the side, reached for her toes. The girl did the same. It was hard to breathe in this position; her breasts fell into her tipped-over face, maybe this was why these women all wanted to be skinny; but something had opened up in her hips. She still felt the acid fuchsia flames, still felt furred and feathered, but as she breathed more deeply, the colors faded a little. The part of her that had been screaming emergency, emergency, suddenly cooled and quieted, like a midnight forest under a dark moon. The client had her stand back up again then press her hands together and pull them in towards her chest.

The client pressed her twinned thumbs into her cleavage. “Can you feel your heart beating?” she asked.

She almost laughed, shaking her head no. Her boobs were too big, too far away from the beating thing that held her together, made her who she was…but when she pressed her hands into her chest the way the client showed her the colors stopped. Everything around her grew quiet and solid, shapes stayed where they were supposed to, all she could see where the white walls, all she could feel was her breath, moving in and out of her lungs. Was this all she needed to do?

The client had her swoop her arms up again, bend forward, lift halfway up. Her knees creaked a little, but she felt her hips opening, and the constant ache in her back cooled. She followed the woman onto her hands and knees. She explained cat, she demonstrated cow. She tried to mimic her, arcing her back, tilting her chin up, thinking about laughing with Joey about this later. After a moment the client stood, looked down at her, nodded.

“Good,” she said. “Now go the other way. Round your back and look at your belly button.”

She tried to move, but she was suddenly frozen in place. The client was being kind. She was perfectly harmless. But being on her hands and knees, in front of her; it was like being a frog in the bucket of a bullied boy. She felt as paralyzed as she had at Chase’s birth. She opened her mouth, tried to say stop, but nothing came out. She tried to roll onto her bottom, but her limbs wouldn’t move. She was stuck in cow, head tipped back, mouth open, butt in the air.

She stayed there for a few minutes while the client offered patient instructions. Finally, “Are you okay?” she asked. The client’s face was in front of hers now as she crouched next to her.

“Hey, come on, just go ahead and sit back down,” the woman said. She could see the worry in her eyes. She tried to sit. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t move at all. It was like having the epidural again except instead of being paralyzed from the waist down she was paralyzed all over.

The client pushed at her with a hand that was much too soft. She shifted a bit, but still her arms and legs stayed stuck. The colors and textures had stopped, everything was normal, as it should be, but she couldn’t move. The client was frowning. “What’s wrong,” she asked, “what’s happening?” But her body, which just moments before had been pliable, had turned to iron.

She heard the door opening and clicking shut, heard Joey’s voice, hey hey, what’s going on?

“I was helping her,” the client said. She sounded guilty, nervous. “I helped her vacuum and we were doing some yoga.”

Joey shook his head. “What you mean, doing yoga?” Even hearing Joey’s voice, she still couldn’t move. Joey finally came over, put his hand on her forehead. She wanted to relax. But her body had never really been hers anyway, and Joey’s touch wasn’t what was going to melt it back into elasticity.

“Miss, go get the doctor,” Joey said. “There’s a nurse, if he’s not in.” They had medical staff on alert 24/7. “But please, don’t tell them what you told me. She’ll lose her job!”

The client rushed out of the room. Joey crouched down next to the girl. “Babygirl, are you all right?” he kept asking. “Did she hurt you?” The girl stayed as still as the statues stolen, once, from their homes, everything that had been taken from Africa to Aztec and back again, mouth accusatory, wide open in horror…maybe this was how one became a statue. Always doing what somebody else wanted….

“Babygirl,” Joey said again. “You been gone a while. You got to get down there and serve, okay?” She didn’t move. “You got to get down there and serve, and then we’ll go home, a’ight? Then we’ll get Chase. Okay? He needs you, baby. Right?”

And it was that, just that simple, her son’s name. She did not have the luxury of practicing yoga or staying a statue or really doing anything she wanted so long as her son walked this earth, so long as her son needed her. She was already a better mother than her own mother had been and she would do everything she needed to to make sure Chase had the life he deserved. Just like that the tension in her body released. She pooled on the ground, her body sweating from the exertion of holding herself so rigidly, against what she thought was her own will.

The client burst in with the nurse, then.

“It’s okay,” she said, hoping the client would know to lie. “I’m okay. I was vacuuming, and I felt dizzy…” she trailed off.

The client left. The nurse examined her anyway, while Joey ran down to cover for her in the kitchen.

She drank water from the bottle the nurse held to her mouth.

“Really,” she said. “I’m much better.”

She stood on her own and walked quickly to the bathroom. She used the toilet and splashed water on her face. When she came out, the client was there, waiting for her, terrifying in the dim hallway.

“Here,” she said. She held up a bill. “I’m so sorry.”

The girl couldn’t look at her rare eyes.

“I can’t take your money.”

“I insist. A tip.”

She heard a door click open at the end of the hall, saw her boss striding towards his office. Quickly she held out her hand. What choice did she have? Whatever had just happened, whosever fault it was, even if it was no one’s fault at all…the client had paid her off. Now she never had to think of this, of her, again. With this money, she was absolved.

She shoved the bill—a hundred!—into her bra and scurried down to the dining room. She finished setting out napkins.

She passed the client on her way back into the kitchen. She sat at a table with a man who was probably supposed to be good-looking, whatever that meant, his arm draped loosely around the back of her chair, her husband, probably. She’d noticed her sparkling ring, twinkling off of her hand as she pressed into her hip. Another woman sat with them, laughing and sipping tea.

Back in the kitchen, Joey loaded bowls of soup onto the trays. Usually he carried them out. But today she stopped him.

“Joey! Wait! Don’t take that out yet. Let me?”

Joey hesitated, then set the tray down.

She pulled the bill out of her bra. She jammed it into the food processor, adding some of her spit to make it shiny and nice. She took a bowl of soup, poured it in, mixed it with the bill the woman had given her. She set her bowl on the edge of the tray.

You have a beautiful sense of design and composition.

She moved quickly around the table with the soups.

“Excuse me, Miss?” the client’s husband said. “Did you prepare this yourself? Because we’ve had such a lovely time here. The food has been delicious. I bet people don’t thank you enough, for all you do. But we know you work hard, dear.”

She nodded. “Thank you.” Her voice was sincere.

She wanted to watch the client eat the soup. She was worth way more than a hundred dollars, way more than anything that woman could ever give her, way more than all the things that had been taken from her, all the things she could barely name but lurked within her nevertheless. But already there were peppers and cucumbers, piles of them still dripping, lined up next to the gleaming knives. She picked up a knife, glanced at the clock. One hour, forty-five minutes. Then she could head home.

Joey could do whatever he wanted with her body tonight.

Kathleen Furin’s work has been published in Permafrost, Philadelphia Stories, Literary Mama, Midwifery Today, and other journals and anthologies. Her story “Body Memory” won first place in the 2023 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards competition. She is also the recipient of the 2023 Eludia award, and her story collection Last Sunrise is forthcoming from Sowilo Press. She works as a consultant and Author Accelerator-certified book coach. Her website is https://kathleenmfurin.com/.