T-Shirt Life

Stephanie McMillan

Jeanette stands in line with the others waiting to enter the gates of the factory. Armed guards pat each woman down, looking for subversive literature or other weapons. The woman keep their faces still as the hands pass over their waists and hips. Their expressionless eyes are deflected carefully to one side, and do not meet the sullen, suspicious eyes of the guards. In everyone's mind is a recent disturbance in another factory where workers held a surprise work stoppage and demanded all sorts of improvements: bathroom breaks, clean drinking water, higher pay. The management here, where working conditions are much the same, would like to prevent a similar occurrence.

In these cavernous cement-block rooms, clothes are being assembled from pre-cut pieces for a contractor who is in turn hired by the Disney corporation. At each station a separate piece is added. Each woman performs the same act again and again and again and again and again, all day long.

Presently the cartoon character Pocahontas is the most popular image in the world. Millions of children in the United States are crazy for the animated movie and want toys and sneakers and clothes and stickers and books that remind them of its brilliantly colorful, thrilling movement. To satisfy the wishes of these children, their obsession fed to magnificent proportions by incessant tv commercials and strategic publicity campaigns, the women today in this particular assembly plant are stitching together Pocahontas T-shirts.

Jeanette is sewing side seams. No thought is required once the hands memorize the movements. Her thoughts fly in a familiar pattern to another topic: counting. Over and over, her budget for the week. Her thoughts run the same circle again and again and again. Pay coming in a few days. The amount left until then. How it will be allocated: bus fare, lunch, food for the children. No matter how many times she counts and re-figures and cuts corners, it isn't enough. Will she manage to pay for school for all of them next week, or will one have to quit going? No money from Augustin yet; did he even make it to Miami? If he sends even a little it would make such a difference. Why hasn't he contacted them yet? She had heard from family members of other passengers on that boat, that everyone had reached shore safely and no one had been caught. She has faith in her marriage and knows he will contact her. He would never abandon her. Where is he?

The foreman, Foul Dog they call him behind his back, struts around the cavernous, noisy room shouting insults at the women. He barks. Work faster, bitch. Lazy whore. Once there was a time when a man would be instantly killed by a woman's brothers or husband for uttering words like that to their sister or wife. But today? He is in control of their jobs, so he is in control of them. For the time being. No one replies to his noisy barking.

Foul Dog lingers next to Jeanette's friend Michelle and puts his lewd hands on her. He whispers in her ear and then, obscenely, pushes his tongue in her ear too. Michelle closes her eyes and carefully keeps her expression blank. Just blank. Nothing is happening. It takes superhuman strength to keep the profound disgust from boiling over and showing on her face. There will be worse to come, no matter how she responds. If she complies, at least there won't be such a hard beating to go with it. Now that he has targetted her, how can she escape? If she loses this job her kids will starve even worse than they are now.

Jeanette watches but doesn't watch, keeping herself small and invisible. Anger fills her throat on behalf of her friend, and she is ashamed to realize, also some relief that it is not herself he has his eye on right now. Her hands sweat, liquid fear soaking into the Pocahontas T-shirt.

When Foul Dog ambles away to torment others, Jeanette nudges her friend. "He is not a human being. Try to leave quickly when work ends; don't linger and maybe he will forget about you."

"Maybe he will forget today, but sooner or later he will get me. Not only me. Any of us he wants." Michelle's voice is a stone in deep water, falling down, down.

Jeanette closes her eyes, says, "I dream of one day seeing a river of his blood flowing into the gutter, of hearing his screams of hopeless agony." She whispers: "I dream of causing that agony myself." Her rage deflected, unable to annihilate its target, explodes any way it can. She slams her hand on the table. BAM!

"Anything wrong?" Foul Dog calls over menacingly. He adds a filthy word that only the worst men use on women.

"No, sir."

The finished T-shirt passes through many hands. A pair of hands that soothed a sick baby's brow that morning sews on the purple neck trim. A pair of hands that slapped a wailing, disobedient, hungry child sews the bottom hem. The cartoon transfer is added by a pair of hands that had nailed a flattened soda can onto a roof the night before, in a futile effort to staunch maddening trickles of rain that soaked the bed. Someone trims the loose threads. Someone attaches a colorful cardboard tag with the name of a giant department store printed on it.

The T-shirt is neatly folded by a pair of hands that throb with pain on a woman who wonders what option, besides suicide, she will have when her hands stop working. Another woman slips the shirt into a plastic sleeve and puts it in a box with ninety-nine more. Someone else tapes the box with a ripping sound and tosses it onto a stack piled on a pallet. Muscles ripple and a dull ache pounds a spine. The forklift carries the pallet back around the corner. The women do not waste their time thinking about where the T-shirts go after that.

***

Jennifer is crazy about Pocahontas. I had to buy her the doll, a coloring book, a knapsack, the shoes with fringe. I never hear the end of it, the things she wants, her endless desires. She dreams of being Pocahontas, plays endlessly with her friends. They all want to be the beautiful Indian maiden, daring and romantically feminine at the same time with her long flowing hair. I love her little Pocahontas make-up set, the clear plastic case, the miniature lipstick. The stuff they make for kids is so appealing. Adults never admit it, but don't we secretly wish our sneakers had puffy cartoons and candy-color laces that glow in the dark? Don't we wish our pens were filled with liquid glitter and had a metallic plume on the top like a magical pony's wild mane?

We're at the store and she whines 'cause she's bored. I'm frustrated, looking for a blouse in a particular kind of pink to go with the suit I want to wear at tomorrow's meeting. I don't want sissy-girly pink, or prissy old-lady pink. Definitely not garish, whorish pink. What kind of pink is corporate? What shade evokes both femininity and power? I'm not finding it.

Jennifer has had enough, starts wailing for ice cream. Going through the kids department to leave the store, she hones in on a Pocahontas T-shirt, drags me over. What the hell, it's only 12 bucks. I pick it up for her.

Jen wore that shirt constantly for a year and a half. I had to fight with her to take it off so I could wash it. Eventually she drifted from Pocahontas and gravitated, like her peers, toward Beauty and the Beast. Of course I had to get her a whole new set of accessories and knick-knacks. The Pocahontas T-shirt, worn out and faded, lay forgotten in a drawer until I cleaned out the house today. I tossed it into a big plastic garbage bag with all the other junk going to the thrift store.

***

Many hands flipping through the hangers pass over the Pocahontas T-shirt during the next months. Several hands pull it out for a closer look. Three or four little girls even try it on. They always put it back. The collar is just a bit too frayed, the bright purple trim and the image of the beautiful face too faded into pale.

"Mama, I want this one." Lark doesn't fully understand why she hadn't been allowed to see the movie. It had triggered the word "insulting" from her mother, but then practically every movie or TV show made her say that. Her classmates had never seemed to be offended by the harmless cartoon; on the contrary, they endlessly squealed about how great it was, leaving Lark feeling left out, deprived, for not having seen it. Too often Lark wasn't allowed to see the movies everyone else saw, or watch the tv shows, or play the video games. Her mother hated everything. Lark suffered with nothing to talk about with the other kids. They called her weird. If she wore the T-shirt, maybe they would include her in their games at recess.

"Mama, please?"

"Sweetie. I know you don't really understand yet, but one day you will thank me for not allowing you to humiliate yourself and our people. Like I told you before, the movie isn't historically accurate -- "

"-- But Ma, it's a cartoon; it's not supposed to be like a school history book!"

The hands firm on her shoulders, the voice tight, eyes piercing hers. "Let me finish. It glorifies a traitorous act. It promotes the fallacy that European colonization was historically positive, that we are all better off now that we've been so-called 'civilized.'" A heavy sigh. "If the colonists had been driven off back to where they came from, like they should have been, then I would not be here now buying their old second-hand cast-offs so my daughter has something to wear to school. A school they force her to attend so they can fill her head with lies!" The voice spirals out of control, trembles. "Shit! Sweetheart, I'm sorry, I can't explain it all right now. Just trust me. That T-shirt is very, very bad. You'll agree with me one day, and you'll be happy that you didn't wear it."

Lark's eyes are round. Her mother is usually calm water, stability itself. Abashed, Lark surrenders at once. "Okay, Mama," she whispers.

The mother sees the child's shock, put her hand comfortingly on Lark's head. "Oh baby," she sighs. "It's not your fault. I'm not mad at you. I'll try to explain it again when we get home, okay?"

She crouches down and kisses her little girl, teases a smile from her. "Now let me buy you a pretty dress."

Lark skips ahead.

The T-shirt remains on the rack.

***

Periodically the thrift store gets cleared of the oldest items, the clothes so stained, so tattered, so hopelessly out of style that even the poorest won't touch it at the cheapest sale price. Workers move systematically through the store, pulling the rejected clothes into lumbering canvas trolleys. Heaping piles of textures, colors and patterns. The unwanted clothes get shipped to foreign lands. A generous donation to those less fortunate. A tax write-off.

***

The university students are frantic, hearts torn apart by the plight of the rural people caught by the flood. Crops are destroyed, acres and acres almost ready for harvest, invested with countless hopes, tears and hard wrung sweat. Gone. All the work, the endless monotonous hours and days and weeks and months of work, vanished with one vicious storm. Gone. The people are trapped in trees, on roofs. Food stores are running low.

The students hear the bad news coming in from everywhere, from people who have somehow managed to get to the edges of the city. Many of the students have relatives affected by the high waters. Burning to do whatever it takes to ease the condition of the villagers, they persist night and day, soliciting assistance and arranging distribution of the meager resources they are able to collect. They burn through their exhaustion. More food is urgently, desperately needed. They try and try, ask here, plead there. The clothing they get through the NGO (non-governmental organization) is at least one thing they can bring to the villagers right now, at least one small thing that might ease a tiny piece of the pain, give some small morsel of comfort. A few students gather at the river and set off in a small boat to distribute the clothing. At least they can offer something.

Yasmin huddles on the thatch rooftop with her sister-in-law, father-in-law, her husband and their nine-year-old son. A few of their most necessary possessions surround them. The rest have floated away. Thank heaven that none of their small family perished in the storm. Many of the villagers have disappeared. Drowned or run away, no one knows. Yasmin sees a few people here and there across the water, miserably camped on top of their houses. They have been up there for two weeks, the most hellish time any of them had ever experienced. Fourteen days of cold, itching, stiffness, sleeplessness, anxious visions of snakes, putrid animal carcasses and rising water.

Never-ending wetness as the rains come and go. The sun appears so briefly, so intermittently, like an eye winking in jest, that nothing has a chance to dry before being drenched anew. Overpowering everything, there has been panic at the dwindling food. Despair as the last bit was swallowed. Now they have not eaten anything for three days. They have been able to drink only from the unclean waters surrounding them, and all are sick. The child is curled up into a ball of misery. Yasmin strokes his wet hair with one hand, and her cramping belly with the other.

When they see the small boat of university students, the first spark of hope in many days flares in their hearts. They stare as it moves between the rooftops where their neighbors huddle mournfully. As it drifts closer they see that what the students are handing to the villagers does not look like packets of food. Their neighbors are not putting anything into their mouths. The storm clouds of despair gather over the family once more. Listlessly they gaze at the boat as it nears their own rooftop.

The students hand each person an item of clothing. Wordlessly, the people reach for the pieces of cloth, pull them across their shoulders or wrap their heads against the cold.

They toss Yasmin a T-shirt for the boy. An old, faded rag with a barely visible cartoon drawing of a young, laughing woman. The shirt is damp, but drier than the sopping cloth he is wrapped in now. She pulls the wet cloth off her shivering son and pulls the T-shirt down over his head. She rubs his thin arms, trying to warm them.


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