The Squeeze
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The workers on Marta’s shift, 6pm to midnight, were the young and the old and the feeble. Everyone else – including Mama – worked a full-length day or night shift. On Sundays – the only day she saw her mother for more than a few minutes – Marta noticed the grey skin, the harsh lines that dragged from nose to chin, and knew that soon she must offer to swap shifts. Although Mama was only forty she seemed an old woman already, the way she stooped, and sighed.
Not that Marta found the twilight shift and the queueing for food, the housework and minding Milya easy, but at least it meant she could find an hour most days to study her English books. Once she’d swapped with Mama there’d be no more time for that. Giving up her English now would feel like giving up on Tata – giving up on herself – altogether.
You couldn’t speak at work. Each side of the conveyor belts was a line of blanked faces. The heavy canvas masks, which looped behind the ears, obscured the nose and mouth. Each time she put one on, Marta wondered how much good it did – the canvas heavily saturated with the chemical dust that hung in the air and made the unprotected eyes smart – and so hot. The packers were meant to wear goggles, but the lenses were so scratched and dusty it was impossible to see through them, so the foreman ignored their flouting of the rules and was generous with eye drops when the chemicals were particularly noxious. The work – grading and packing industrial chemicals – was simple, unpleasant, tedious and Marta soon lost any curiosity about the use or destination of the chemicals.
After Tata died she’d had no choice but to offer to leave school and earn money, hoping, hoping that Mama would say no. But Mama said yes. Tata would have been so angry. Marta struggled not to feel bitter at the irony that by dying in the name of freedom, Tata had left her trapped, any hope of university gone. She’d hoped at least for an office job, sometimes one came up, but at that time there’d been no such vacancies. So here she was, packing chemicals as Tata had promised she’d never have to do. But at least it was part-time; at least she could still study. Until she had to go full time. That day was looming. Still, she hadn’t given up hope, not yet, that something better might come along. Some chance.
About the author
Lesley Glaister is the author of 13 novels, most recently Little Egypt, which won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered prize. She lives in Edinburgh and teaches creative writing at the University of St Andrews. The Squeeze is published by Salt, £14.99