I wouldn’t be missed at Medieval ShowTimes. I knew that. Still, it was wrong to not leave behind a symbol of goodwill for my three sisters, a sign of all the miraculous things that were possible in life. I also carried a roll of sticky tape in my bag (this I was going to return to the back room at the store the next day). I had arrived mid-afternoon, in the window of time between the one thirty shift going home and the four thirty shift being already out preparing the arena. That way, I could stick the cards to the outsides of the girls’ lockers and be gone before they started arriving for the seven thirty shift. This way, I save them from having to thank me.
I had to pass by the stables to get to the locker room, past a corridor of horseshit stink, which I secretly thank for having kept my heart safe from being dashed and trampled by the long-haired knights. Not that they ever noticed my willingness to surrender, I who am twice invisible as a black wench; I didn’t exist in their country even in the real Medieval ShowTimes.
I opened the door to the locker room and found all three of my soon-to-be former co-wenches in different stages of undress. Redhead Sara had the long wench skirt on but only a bra up top. Brunette Josie was the opposite, in the wench blouse but just underwear down there. Chemical Blond Mandy was straddling the middle bench in her bra and panties. She liked to stay as nearly naked as possible until the last moment when she absolutely had to put on the costume.
The other lockers were partly closed and padlockless, with bits of the bags and whatnots of the wenches who were doing the four thirty shift peeking out. Their street shoes were under the middle bench.
“Hey,” the girls all said to me when I came in, one over the other, each sounding more bummed than the last.
“Hi!” I said back cheerfully, happy for the reminders of hope and freedom that I had in secret store for them.
“You guys are so early,” I said, walking to my locker.
“We did the lunch show. Didn’t they call you?” Mandy asked.
“No they didn’t.” I said, knowing well that it was the other way around. They probably asked for the extra shifts. (At Starcups I can get health coverage, sick pay and paid vacations.)
Mandy took a cigarette out of the open knapsack in her locker, stuck it between her teeth, and began rooting around in the knapsack for a lighter. When she bent over, her flat stomach stayed folded just like paper; the same with the other girls’. I tried to not feel the three rolls of fat that were happy to form in the place under my breasts and above my hips, even when I stood perfectly erect. Too many free apple fritters. You would think I had birthed many. I pinched the bottom of my sweater and tugged it away from my front in a single fluid motion that had become for me as automatic as blinking.
I had expected to drop this shirt-flicking habit from lack of need when I began walking the Medieval ShowTimes ringside three years ago, walking from the kitchen to the ringside, walking down and up the ringside seats, first with hundreds of garlic bread slices to put on each empty bowl before spectators came in from the Great Hall and sat down to enjoy the show, second with a gallon bucket of tomato soup to ladle into each empty bowl before spectators came in and sat down, third carrying a tray as long as my arm packed full with thirty-two roasted half chickens, and finally carrying pitchers of drinks. Then the cleanup of all that followed by dessert. By the end of the shift, we would have walked the length and depth of the ringside at least twelve times. All new girls abs’ would become hard as rocks without fail after their first month of wench work. They would chirp excitedly, as this look was exactly what they needed to get called for get’er (getting better) auditions. But my abs, though they hurt, stayed as soft as those bread chunks that I would find soggy as old dish sponges at the bottom of the soup bowls when I collected them before the chicken service.
“We’re going for a bite before the dinner shift,” Sara said, “You coming?” She was back in her street clothes, retying her hair in a ponytail (not pigtail, as I used to call them.)
I sat down on the edge of the bench and put my woven backpack on my lap. My abs hurt differently now, from lifting milk crates. “You guys go ahead,” I said, thinking up a good excuse, “I need to clean my shoes.”
Wenches were allowed to have one free meal per shift, the same meal as the spectators. But the girls said mass produced food was revolting. They pretended to gag when they poured their tray of half gnawed chicken and pig bones into the garbage barrels in the kitchen and averted their eyes from the overflowing bones for the rest of their shift. They called the soup “mop water”, since they ladled it out of what looked like a mop bucket. But I ate, sitting in a corner of the kitchen while the male Sri Lankan cooks flicked their tongues at me and called the chicken bones I nibbled at “luck lucky bones”.
The girls all got dressed and ready to go. Mandy had managed to do it all without once moving the unlit cigarette from between her teeth, very movie-like.
“Ok, later,” Josie murmured. That was a speech for her.
“Text you?” Sara said, giving me the benefit of the doubt that I’d change my mind about dinner. I nodded. I felt a cramping snag in my throat and a stinging at the back of my eyes. I still hate goodbyes.
Then they were gone and it was just the horseshit smell and I again. I was horrified that it had been on me all along. I must have stepped in it somewhere, unless it was coming from the shoes in my locker. I consoled myself with the thought that either way, the girls would have gone on their break.
