Elizabeth Clark
Housewife, what does it mean to be a housewife? Well, I should know because that's all my parents wanted me to be.
Cook, clean, cake myself in makeup to look pretty, please the husband, and eventually, take care of the children.
At age ten I had several recipe books drilled so deep into my brain, someone could ask for a four-course meal they'd like to have for dinner and I'd be pulling out the exact amount of ingredients needed for each recipe, and if I didn't have any of the ingredients, I could go to the store and be back in less than an hour with a bicycle basket full of groceries because I knew the location of every ingredient I needed
I rarely got to leave the house for things other than school and the store, but when I got to go to my friends house, I can remember being driven to near panic attacks by the dust on their windowsills, and how messy their rooms were. My mom would scream at me if my room wasn't spotless, or if she couldn't see her reflection off the white ceramic tiles on the kitchen counter. Needless to say, I lost those friends because everyone thought I was weird.
But now? This is the best part of my life!
I wedged my arm under a set of wood planks, all the way until only my elbow was poking out, then I lifted them up and over so they could rest on my bicep, between my head and forearm. For any normal person, this would be impossible. Each plank is five-inch, by thirteen-inch, by ten feet, and there are thirty in this single stack, but I'm eight feet tall and can lift a train car with my bare hands, so I can lift these planks with one arm, but I need the three elastic bands to keep the planks together.
After I had the stack balanced in my arm, I turned around so my empty arm could grab the next set of planks, then knelt, my knee touched down on the cold, metal, carrying container. I did the same thing with the other stack of wooden planks, then stood back up
I carefully tread down the ramp, then yelled back "This is the last of them."
As I walked deeper into the building, I heard the echoes of the semi-truck being shut then driving away.
The planks I'm holding are the same kind of planks I've been unloading for a short while, so I know where I'm going. Isle five shelf ten, bottom layer. These planks have two layers, but the next layer is already full. I set the planks onto the grey concrete floor and slid them into place, the long side facing the walkway.
I made my walk back to the unloading area, where the garage was still open and there were no trucks in the way of the cloudy, yet beautiful night sky. Winds whistled through the garage, across my lightly tanned skin. The cool air felt nice on my hands, where the wood cut into my skin, and my arms, lightly dampened with sweat, where heat made from today's work was expelled, and the rest of my body which hurt with every move, but my chest and shoulders are the worst, but even that's not too bad. Let's just say I've been through worse
"Looks like I'm done for the day," I said and felt the ends of my lips rise. I went over and pressed the button to have the garage shut
I turned around and made my way through the store. When I got to the front, where the space was more open, and without towers of giant shelves reached the ceiling, where the fields of cash registers stayed. As I walked I could feel the eyes of everyone in the room lock onto me, but when I looked around at all of my coworkers, no one seemed to notice me, which is usually the case. The next thing I noticed was, there were no more customers in the building, so I figured it was past ten PM.
I made my way into the employee office, which I had to duck to get through the door. I didn't bother to go to the worn couches or sit in any of the chairs because they're all way too small and would collapse if I tried to sit in one. Instead, I went straight to the other side of the room to the rusted, blue metal lockers. I was assigned a locker on the top row since it was the easiest for me to reach, and the others couldn't reach them while keeping their feet on the floor.
