My hands, after only one day of scrubbing clothes in the washtub, are swollen and red. I’ve heard of dry, cracked hands but never really knew what that meant until now. After only a few minutes of being out of the water, my palm has cracks that look like someone took a razor blade and sliced the skin. It’s freaky to see your hand all cut up, looking too dry to even bleed.
When the other laundry drudges offered me a pair of yellow rubber gloves this morning, I turned them down, thinking only prissy old people used those. They gave me such a know-it-all look when I turned them down that my pride wouldn’t let me ask for them at lunch.
Now, I’m beginning to consider getting up close and personal with the one humble bone in my body and asking for the gloves. Good thing I don’t plan on having to do this again tomorrow.
I look around, stretching my arms, wondering when this Anita person is going to attack me. I’ll be really pissed if she waits until my workday is over. What’s the point of getting into a cat fight if you can’t even weasel out of an hour of hard labor?
I take my time stretching. I stretch my arms above me and arch my back as far as it’ll go.
My neck hurts, my back hurts, my arms and hands hurt, my legs and feet hurt, even my eyeballs hurt. My muscles are either screaming from hours of repetitive motion or stiff from hours of being held still. At this rate, I won’t have to throw the fight, I’ll lose it honestly.
I pretend not to watch the latrine duty men walking toward us as I stretch my legs. There are about ten of them with Raffe hanging in the back of the group.
When they are a few steps away, they start stripping off their filthy clothes. Grimy shirts, pants and socks get tossed into the laundry pile. Some get tossed into the trash pile. Raffe dug the ditch instead of working on the truly toxic part of the latrines, but not everyone was that lucky. The only thing they leave on are their boxer shorts.
I try very hard not to look at Raffe as I realize he’ll be expected to take his shirt off. He might be able to explain away the bandages under his shirt, but there’s no way he can explain away the blood stains exactly where wings would have been.
I stretch my arms above my head, trying not to look scared. I hold my breath, hoping the men will move along and not notice Raffe lagging behind.
But instead of moving into the buildings for a shower, they grab the hose we’ve been using to fill our tubs. They line up to hose each other off. I could kick myself for not anticipating this. Of course they’ll hose off first. Who would want latrine workers to walk straight into the shared showers?
I steal a glance at Raffe. He’s keeping his cool, but I can tell by how slowly he’s unbuttoning his shirt that he didn’t see this coming either.
He must have figured he could slip away once they got into the building since the showers couldn’t take everyone at the same time. But there is no good excuse to drift away from this part of the routine and no way to do it without being noticed.
Raffe finishes unbuttoning his shirt and instead of taking it off, he slowly starts unbuttoning his pants. Everyone around him has already stripped, and he’s starting to look conspicuous. Just when I’m wondering if we should make a blatant run for it, the solution to our problem saunters toward us on long, shapely legs.
The woman who walked with Raffe to lunch tosses her honey hair as she smiles up at him.
Dee-Dum walk by at that moment. “Oh, hi Anita!” They both say with casual surprise. Their voices are slightly raised, as if to make sure I hear them.
Anita glares at them as if they’d just hawked and spat. I’ve seen that look a million times in the hallways given by a popular girl to a band geek when he gets too familiar in front of her clique. She turns back to Raffe, her face melting into a radiant smile. She puts her hand on his arm as he’s about to take off his pants.
And that’s all the excuse I need.
I grab the sudsy shirt out of the gray water and throw it at her.
It makes a plop noise when it lands on her face, wrapping around her hair. Her perfect hair clumps into a stringy mass, and her mascara smears as the cloth slides wetly down her blouse. She emits a high-pitched squeal that turns every head within earshot.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say in a sugary voice. “Did you not like that? I thought that’s what you wanted. I mean, why else would you be putting your paws on my man?”
The small crowd around us grows by the second. Oh, yeah, baby. Step right up. Come see the freak show. Raffe fades into the growing crowd, discreetly buttoning up his shirt. And I thought he looked grim at my last fight.
Anita’s enormous eyes look up helplessly at Raffe. She looks like a distressed kitten, bewildered and hurt. Poor thing. I have second thoughts about whether I can do this.