Grace After Midnight_ A Memoir - Felicia Pearson [43]
Was completing my second month at the warehouse. Feeling confident. Finally settling into a routine that seemed to make sense. The guys were always complaining about sore backs and sore arms from all that lifting, but I was fine. I could do this thing.
Arrived on a Monday morning.
As usual, I was the first one there. Eager to get started. Went to the little locker where I stashed my lunch, opened it, and saw an envelope. Inside was a slip that said my services were no longer required.
Took the slip and went to the foreman.
“Why?” I asked.
“Your jail record.”
I said what I said to the last foreman. I hadn’t been asked about jail. If I had been, I would have told the truth, but it never came up.
This cat was cold.
“Tough shit,” he said. “You’re out.”
I kept trying to explain.
He cut me off and said, “We don’t want ex-cons here.”
This was the same guy who’d been telling how well I’d been working out, the same guy who saw I could outlift almost every fuckin’ man in the warehouse. I hadn’t missed a day, hadn’t gotten into a single argument, much less a fight. I was the model goddamn worker.
“Can I just say—” I began to argue.
“You can’t say shit.”
I thought about ending this job by slugging the foreman. I came awfully close, but I didn’t.
What was the point?
Here all this time I thought I had lucked up, but I was really fucked up.
In my head, I was fucked up bad.
CAR WASH
There’s a funny movie they made way back in the day called Car Wash. I watched it on TV a couple of times. Richard Pryor plays a hustling preacher. The jams are poppin’ and the story’s real good.
My story at the car wash ain’t real good.
I took the gig to get my parole office off my back. After the first two fuckups, I was bummed out. I did what I was told to do and wound up getting screwed. I not only worked, I worked my ass off. I worked until I was sore from my head to my toe. Every muscle ached. Every good feeling I’d had went bad. Positive turned to negative. Sunshine turned to shit. All my eagerness, all my go-for-it energy, all my it’s-gonna-turn-out-good energy turned rotten. I was sugar on the floor.
But I also figured I needed to do what I needed to do. Was a car wash any worse than slapping bumpers on cars or lugging around boxes of books? Besides, everyone in the movie Car Wash seemed to be having fun.
It was the end of summer. The last blast of heat was pushing through Baltimore. The radio was blasting Jay Z “Big Pimpin’.”
The line never stopped. Motors kept churning. Engines kept burning. Put me on the wash line. Slap on the soap. Soap up the windows. Soap up the hood. Soap up the doors and the fenders. Soap up the Corvette, soap up the Jag and the Lexus. Listen to the rich bitch scream that we ain’t using enough soap. Think about soaping up her big mouth. Think about the lunch break. Hear the bossman screaming, “Wash cars, hurry up, wash those fuckin’ cars.”
Do it all day Monday. Do it Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. Work a ten-hour shift on Saturday. Sleep late Sunday and when you wake up remember that all your fuckin’ dreams were about washing cars. You can’t stop washing cars.
I wanna stop washing cars. I wanna do something better with my life. I take off a day to go out on other interviews—office jobs, factory jobs, jobs at the mall, jobs in hotels. But every interview comes down to asking me about my past. In every interview I tell the truth. And in every interview I’m told they ain’t interested. See ya later. Don’t slam the door behind you. Have a nice day.
So it’s back to soaping up cars. The tricked-out pickup trucks. The big-ass Escalades. The Ferraris that cost more than twice as much as my mama’s house. Sometimes I think of getting behind the wheel of one of those motherfuckers and driving off. Up to D.C., up to New York City, up to Canada until no one can find me and the goddamn car is mine. Stupid fantasies. Just soap up the cars. Soap up my life. Soap up my brain. Wash the bad thoughts away. Thoughts of going