The man hurried out, and the woman at the desk sent Marisol to the women's locker room to change. Moments later, the conveyor line foreman, a Chicano named Carlos, chunky with a broom-bristle mustache, strutted into the locker room as Marisol stood in her panties and blouse. She modestly turned her back to him but could feel his eyes on her. He watched silently as she stepped into a jumpsuit, then put on a chain-mail apron, armored gloves, and knee-high rubber boots. She wondered what her job would be and if this man with dried blood under his fingernails would be training her.
Carlos told her to hurry up and get her cute culo moving. His only other advice was not to drink any water, because it would be three hours before her first pee break.
'Do you want some tina?' he asked.
'Tina?'
'Crystal meth. To get you through the shift.'
She shook her head.
'First day it's free. If you're still here tomorrow, I have the best prices in the plant.'
'No, thank you.'
He stared at her in the blatant way of Hispanic men, the way a bulldog admires a lamb chop. 'Did you come north with a man?'
Another shake of the head.
His look straddled the bridge between sympathy and delight. 'Do you know what they call a woman who crosses the border alone?'
The very same thing El Tigre had asked her. Did all these pendejos belong to the same club of prehistoric men?
'La chingorda,' the foreman said. 'The fucked one.'
'I can take care of myself.'
'You're going to need a friend, chica. Now, follow me to the kill floor.'
The kill floor.
Whatever she had to do, she told herself, she could handle. She followed Carlos through a heavy metal door and was hit by three sensations at once. The noise, the cold, and the squishing of her boots through puddles of blood. Large men wielded power saws that chunked through the spines of the cows, cutting them in half. Conveyor belts whined and meat grinders whirred at such a high pitch it hurt her ears. The cold was worse than any winter she had experienced.
Hispanic men carried sides of beef on their backs and hoisted the carcasses onto hooks. Other men hacked at the corpses like serial killers, indifferent to their victims.
Men in clean jumpsuits and goggles watched from metal catwalks that crisscrossed the plant twenty feet above the floor.
Carlos led her to a table next to a conveyor belt. Two short, sturdy women with impassive Indian features stood, flanking her, not looking up from their work. Carlos grabbed a chunk of bloody meat from the passing belt, tossed it onto the table and with three swift slices trimmed the fat. In one motion, he tossed the meat back onto the moving belt and hurled the scraps onto a second, higher conveyor. That was the extent of his instruction.
He leaned close and whispered in her ear, 'I could have put you on the gut table. Ten hours pulling out intestines by hand.' He smiled and scratched his bristly mustache with a blood-sticky fingernail. 'But you're too pretty for that job.'
He wished her buena suerte by grabbing each of her buttocks, then walked away.
Three hours later, Marisol was no longer cold. Sweat ran down her neck and trickled between her breasts under the chain-mail apron. Her right forearm ached and her fingers cramped into a curled position. She tried using her left hand for cutting, but her movements were unsure. She either cut away too much meat or too little. Twice, she sliced into the armored glove of her right hand. Once, the knife flew out of her hand, barely missing the woman to her left.
In her life, she had never imagined such a place.
Again, she thought of Father Castillo. She wanted to tell the priest that hell was not an inferno of sulphuric fires and suffocating heat. Hell was an icy, metallic cold. Hell was the whine of saws chewing through flesh and the stench of torn intestines spilling across countertops.
Marisol had hammered ten-penny nails through two-by-fours for hours. She had spread tar on roofs in the blistering August sun. She had cut sheet metal with hand tools. But no physical labor ever compared with this.
Drained of energy, her jumpsuit splattered with blood, her goggles steamed, Marisol felt her knees buckle. Close to fainting, she braced herself on the table. The woman to her left pointed to the clock and told her to take a break.
Back inside the locker room, Marisol took off her hard hat, apron, and gloves. She washed her hands and blood-speckled face. She saw two women taking paper-wrapped empanadas from their lockers. Marisol could smell the pork. If she spent a full day on the kill floor, she thought, she might never eat again. Certainly not meat.
She hurt everywhere, from a dull ache between her shoulder blades to a tingling sensation down her arms. How would she make it through the day? She pulled off her bloody boots, lay down on a bench, and closed her eyes.
As she drifted off, she thought of Tino. Dreamed of walking with him along a clean stream where the water splashed over rocks with the sound of chiming bells.
Marisol awakened with the sensation that she was falling.
Her feet hit the floor, and she was moving. Being pulled by the hair. Carlos screaming at her: 'Break is ten minutes, not thirty!'
Calling her a stupid Mexican bitch. Dragging her across the tile into the shower room. Marisol yelling for help, other women sitting on benches, eating lunch, not making a move.
Carlos banged open a door to a toilet stall, pulled her inside, slammed the door behind them. His eyes wild and bloodshot. The eyes of a drogadicto.
He spoke so rapidly in Spanglish she could barely understand him. He seemed to be comparing her unfavorably to his wife, who had given him four sons and a daughter, cooked like an angel, and had an ass that smelled like roses. Whereas Marisol was a stuck-up mamey who should be begging to swallow his mermelada de miembrillo. Then he struck the side of her head with an open palm. She staggered backward and her ears rang.
'I should fire you right now.'
'Fine. Do it.'
'But I'll fuck you first.'
'You'll have to kill me and fuck a corpse.'
He slapped her again, this time across the face, blurring her eyes. He jammed his hands into her armpits, picked her up, and slammed her against the side of the stall. Once, twice, three times, her head banged the wall. She felt herself go limp.
He ripped the front of her jumpsuit open, breaking the zipper and trapping her arms in the sleeves. Slid his hand into her panties, tore through her thick pubic hair and jammed a finger inside her. She struggled, but he was too strong. He leaned close and stuck a slobbering tongue into her ear. An hour earlier, she had watched cow tongues sailing by on a conveyor, and now she thought she would puke.
He inserted a second finger into her, twisted deeper. She stiffened with pain.
'Dry as an anthill,' he complained. 'But a pretty mouth.'
He tried kissing her. He smelled like chilled blood and decaying flesh.
She swung her head back and forth, but he used his free hand to grip her jaw. In a second his tongue was in her mouth, licking her teeth. More pressure on her jaw muscles, and her mouth popped open, his tongue darting inside. He was saying something and drooling into her mouth at the same time. She gagged.
Then bit down as hard as she could.
Carlos screamed and spit blood.
Marisol spit, too. The tip of the man's tongue flew out of her mouth.
He reached for her throat, but she ducked and clawed at his face. Found his eye socket. Dug two fingers in deep as they would go-another scream-tore downward, tried to rip out the eye. The eye stayed, but the lid opened like a zipper. Blood spurted, and Carlos howled like a wounded boar.
