Magdaragat, p.31
Magdaragat, page 31
He remembers holding the shovel, the weakness in his arms. The women, all two heads shorter than him, the oil on their face yellow from the lamppost light.
You write that story down. That one’s hot!
I can’t. That’s not me.
Bitch-ass, it fucking happened to you!
I mean, it’s not in me.
Cuz, you may not see it, but I got a Glock to your head right now. And by Glock, I mean a tweet. You think anyone who knows you doesn’t got a fuck-ton of evidence of all the stupid shit you done? Like you remember that night, two months ago? The last time you drank?
Oh no. That was —
— DO NOT say it was an accident, or a misinterpretation. You asshole. You better than that.
He picks up his Diet Coke from the ground. Heavier than before, its edges frosted with ice.
So what. I gotta do what?
Show us some love, that’s all. And you know, grow the fuck up. Quit being a fuckin’ man-child, shit. I don’t know.
And if I don’t?
Then I’ll feel real bad for your mom.
He drinks from the fizz and notices steam coming from his nose in bits of smoky pebbles. He follows them up, up to the pulsing stars. Another sketch idea comes.
In an eternal village, people begin to disappear. First one or two, then dozens, then hundreds. The villagers realize something must be happening back on Earth: someone has found a way to resurrect people, to kidnap souls from heaven and imprison them in their former bodies.
In the end, there are only a couple hundred villagers left, the ones whose bodies back on Earth were cremated upon their death. They’re more alone now, but they don’t worry. Their kin will soon return home.
José Romelo Lagman
A Day in the Life of a Meatpacker
February 9, 2001
Toronto
5:00 a.m.
Under a heavy winter blanket, Pepe stirs to the vibration of his digital watch. He presses a button on its side to stop the alarm. He disables an analog alarm clock on a high shelf by his bed that serves as his backup in case he oversleeps. God forbid that it goes off because its shrill mechanical bell is loud enough to wake up his roommates and everyone in the adjacent rooms.
He sits up and yawns. In the dim light, he sees his three roommates sleeping in their bunk beds, gently snoring. They’re all in their mid-twenties, all doing odd jobs. Though he arrived in Canada as a landed immigrant and the others arrived as refugees from Central America, he has bonded with them. He’s the most recent renter in this rooming house on Palmerston Boulevard near Bloor Street. He pays three hundred dollars a month for a bunk bed and access to a shared bathroom and kitchen.
He climbs down and pours himself coffee from a thermos. It’s Nescafé instant, nothing fancy, but it has enough warmth and caffeine to jolt him awake. Boiling water and making coffee the night before saves him a few minutes in the morning.
He walks to the bathroom to piss, wash his face, and brush his teeth. He gets dressed, puts on his winter boots and jacket, then toque, scarf, and gloves. He grabs his backpack, goes downstairs, and he’s out the door.
Toronto is bone chillingly cold in the middle of winter. The forecast is minus fifteen Celsius and minus twenty-something with the wind chill. The two-block walk to the streetcar stop on Harbord Street seems to take forever. The uneven mounds of dirty snow along the icy sidewalks present an unwelcome obstacle course.
He doesn’t see a patch of black ice; he loses his balance but quickly regains it. He grins to himself, remembering that he has managed to avoid slipping since he learned to skate at the Toronto City Hall public rink. He bought the cheapest pair of skates at Canadian Tire as a Christmas gift to himself and spent the weekends learning to skate. Hopefully he’ll soon be good enough to play shinny hockey, but for now his primary goal is to reach the streetcar stop on time. If he misses it, he’ll have to wait fifteen minutes for the next one and he’ll be late for work.
5:24 a.m.
Pepe is waiting alone at the streetcar stop as the 511 tram approaches, right on time. He steps forward as the doors chime open. He gets on and settles in the single seat opposite the middle doors.
Three other passengers are on the streetcar, all brown like him, all staring blankly ahead, probably wondering why they traded the forever-summer of their tropical lands for this bleak winter.
The street lights streak by the wide windows as the red tram rolls south on Bathurst Street. A few more sleepy souls get on at the following stops, none showing enthusiasm for their ungodly work hours.
5:40 a.m.
Pepe gets off on Niagara Street, one stop south of King Street. He trudges along a couple of blocks and arrives at the meat-packing plant. Looking from the outside, this three-storey industrial building looks like any other Victorian-era warehouse that is common along the rail corridor in Toronto. Except that its windows have been bricked over and its roof and walls thickly insulated.
Adjacent to it is a similar building where the hogs are slaughtered — six thousand a day — and the dressed carcasses are transported to the meat-packing plant via a covered conveyor bridge twenty feet above the ground. The owners call the slaughterhouse an abattoir; the French word does not provoke the same aversion as its English counterpart.
A slaughterhouse has existed at this site for over a century. Toronto loves its pork; in fact, one of the city’s nicknames is Hogtown. And Pepe is one of hundreds of immigrants who work here to keep the pork traditions alive.
5:50 a.m.
Pepe joins the lineup by the entrance. He shows his ID to security and walks through the revolving steel door.
He rushes to the men’s lockers; every minute counts. He opens his locker, retrieves his blue hard hat and insulated steel-toe slip-free waterproof boots, and deposits his winter boots, jacket, toque, scarf, and gloves. He sits on a long bench and slips on the specialized boots. They were supplied by the plant; their cost was deducted from his first two paycheques.
He stands and stretches. He doesn’t have to piss but he goes to the toilet anyway and waits for a free urinal. The first thing he learned here was that it’s a pain to get a pee break outside break time, so he goes to piss at every break.
He washes his hands and joins the rest of the men as they exit the lockers.
Most of the workers make a side trip to the cafeteria; it’s a wide hall with twenty long tables. Pepe leaves his backpack at the Filipino table, beside the Latino table. The four tables closest to the microwave machines are designated as the Portuguese tables. The next four are the East European tables. The others are for Africans, South Asians, Caribbeans, Chinese, and the farthest one is for Muslims. Yes, there are several Muslim workers in this pork meat–packing plant. Good jobs are hard to come by; Allah will understand.
Pepe returns to the corridor, which it is covered with non-slip rubber mats. The mats are interrupted by a shallow, sanitizing boot-bath that smells of lemony disinfectant.
He joins another lineup. Everyone picks their time card from the wall rack, inserts it on the bundy clock, then returns it to the rack. The location of this bundy clock is a source of debate among the workers as they realize that the several minutes from the entrance to the boot-bath are unpaid.
On the side of the next corridor are hangers of freshly laundered thick white butcher coats; he grabs a medium and wears it over his thick flannel jacket. Next to the coats are dispensers of plastic aprons, rubber gloves, hair nets, and face masks. He puts them on and saves extra gloves and masks in his coat pocket.
Everyone enters through the work area doors and heads to their assigned stations.
6:00 a.m.
The buzzer sounds. Work day officially starts.
The work area is impressively massive. It’s a series of cutting and trimming stations that process the whole carcass into standard retail cuts that are then forwarded to packing stations. There are hook chains, conveyor belts, elevated chutes, industrial bone saws, lots of knives, and knife sharpeners. There are large stainless steel bins for various cuts and discarded trimmings, transported by forklifts driven on the aisles between stations.
Pepe waits by his station. From where he stands, he sees the carcasses entering the queue at the far end of the work area. They move through mechanical cutting stations and the resulting primal cuts are directed to different chutes. His task is to wait for the pork legs to emerge from the chute in front of him, grab each one, and throw it into one of three bins: small, medium, large. Each leg weighs between eight and twelve kilos.
He’s been assigned to this station for a month. One of the supervisors saw him at another station, he commented on his broad shoulders and transferred him here. A supervisor walks by every hour and gives him a thumbs-up. Pepe is not certain who’s who as all of them are masked, but their white hard hats distinguish them as supervisors.
The bins in front of him are supposed to be replaced by forklift operators when they’re over three-fourths full, and the operators have been mostly diligent about it. Only twice had he needed to push the big red STOP LINE button suspended from the ceiling near him. And when he did, the whole line stops until the overflowing bins are replaced with empty ones, amid much yelling and name-calling from the stressed-out supervisors.
Pepe watches the pork legs slide to him from the chute; they remind him of Christmas ham and Iberian jamón. Some people say workers at meat-packing plants become vegetarians after witnessing how meat is processed. But not him. To fend off boredom, he imagines new ways to cook the pork leg as he grips and tosses it. Maybe deep-fry it whole — crispy pierna, instead of crispy pata? Braised it for a few hours — pierna tim, instead of pata tim?
Before his two months at this plant, he worked as a shelf stocker at a supermarket, then as an assistant at a retirement home. Working at the supermarket was okay, but it was minimum wage and he hardly got full shifts. The retirement home paid more, but it was particularly, extremely difficult work. On some days he changed soiled adult diapers, on others he was subjected to racist rants from the very residents he was assisting. And then there was that one day when a creepy old man kept grabbing his crotch through his loose scrub uniform as Pepe was feeding him. He offered Pepe five dollars to cop a feel. Five dollars? That’s not even one hundred and fifty pesos, not enough for a movie and snack at Jollibee back home.
But at the same retirement home, there was one old widow who was kind to him, Doña Juana from Argentina. Initially Doña Juana was indifferent to him. One day he greeted her in Spanish, and since then, she had been friendly toward him. When he finished early with the other residents, he brought her tea and listened to her stories of her childhood in Buenos Aires. She loved to tell stories of sus años felices — her happy years.
One morning Pepe was pulled aside and told that Doña Juana had died in her sleep. The Filipina nurse attending to her knew the lady was fond of him so she let him say goodbye. He saw her serene face; he leaned into her and whispered.
“Adiós, Doña Juana. Que en paz descanse usted. Que le reúna usted con su esposo, su familia, y todos sus amigos de la infancia.” (Goodbye, Doña Juana. May you rest in peace. May you be reunited with your husband, your family and all your childhood friends.)
The nurse patted Pepe’s shoulder as he walked away from the deathbed.
“Pepe, ibinulong mo ba sa yumao ’yung mga problema mo?” (Pepe, did you whisper your problems to the deceased?)
“Huh? Naku, hindi. Nagpaalam lang ako sa kanya.” (Oh, no. I only said my farewell.)
He left that job when a friend told him about this meat-packing plant: they pay five dollars above the Ontario minimum wage, and full shifts and overtime are the norm.
8:00 a.m.
The buzzer sounds. First morning break.
Five more pork legs exit the chute. He throws them into the bins. He stretches his shoulders and arms and walks through the work station doors.
He discards his gloves, apron, and mask. He keeps his hair net and hard hat. He returns to the corridor, steps on the boot-bath, and heads toward the cafeteria.
The Portuguese tables are the busiest, the immigrants from Madeira and the Azores making up the largest ethnic group among the workers, including the supervisors and managers. They get first dibs on the microwaves to warm up their snacks.
The East Europeans are Serbians, Croatians, Albanians, Romanians, Ukrainians, and Russians, almost all men, almost all taller than six feet. Instead of snacking, they smoke and drink their coffee on the outdoor patio.
Pepe exchanges high-fives with the kababayans at the Filipino table. Most of them are recent immigrants like him. They open their bags and put their merienda in the middle for sharing: pan de sal with Cheez Whiz, ensaymada, hopia, turon. Pepe takes out his thermos and pours himself coffee. He chews on granola bars and dried fruit.
The table beside them is sharing their snacks too. Several Salvadorans, Chileans, Venezuelans, Mexicans, and Dominicans. Lupita, a morena from Mexico City, sits near Pepe. She takes a sip of his coffee and tells him it’s not strong enough.
Behind them are the tables for Blacks, Indians, Islanders, and Chinese. The Muslim brothers at the end, mostly Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, keep among themselves, trying to safeguard their already compromised state of grace. Interspersed among all tables are the few white Canadians who sit wherever they want.
Though the tables are not officially reserved for any ethnic group, the workers converge along shared origin or language. Newcomers see this on their first day and gravitate toward their tribe of choice. The food and drinks on the tables reflect the diversity of the workers in this plant.
* * *
Pepe checks his watch; it’s 8:10 a.m. He stands and heads to the toilet inside the men’s lockers. There are six urinals; the first four are already occupied. The sixth has its usual pisser, Vladimir the Serb, who is always at that urinal. He opens the high window above it and he smokes while he pisses. He stands there for a while until his cigarette is finished, oblivious to the lineup behind him. There is no smoking inside the building but he persists; the others are either scared of him or simply don’t care.
Pepe checks his watch. With not a minute to spare, he walks to the fifth urinal and pisses.
Vladimir looks over to him.
“You Asians, you have small dicks.”
Pepe keeps his eyes on the wall.
“We have bigger brains though.”
“If that’s true, why are we both working in this hell hole.”
Pepe laughs. He doesn’t have a witty reply to that one. He finishes up and walks to the sink.
“See ya, Vlad. Don’t forget to wash your hands.”
“See ya, man.”
Everyone here is “man,” “mate,” “buddy,” or “friend.” Except among tablemates, no one really asks for names. With the high turnover among workers, people don’t invest personal time in getting to know others.
Still, the Filipino guys know Vladimir because of his smoking habit at the urinals. They even nicknamed him “Supot” after one of them inadvertently saw his uncircumcised penis while pissing beside him.
Pepe makes his way back to the work area and puts on a new apron, face mask, and gloves.
8:20 a.m.
The buzzer sounds. Work restarts.
Pepe has a couple of minutes free as the pig parts make their way through the line. But soon enough, the pork legs race their way toward him, one every four to six seconds, sometimes faster.
Where he is, this is the first stage. It’s physical and mechanical work. They’re all men here, and he’s one of the few Asians. The output from here goes to the second stage where they perform deboning and precise cutting and trimming by hand. The company offers a course on butchery techniques; it teaches the industry standard to prepare bacon, ribs, shoulders, loin, ham, and other retail cuts.
The output from the second stage goes to different packing lines on the third and final stage. There are different sizes of plastic bags and carton boxes. Some cuts are packed with absorbent pads. Each bag is electronically weighed and labelled before going into a box, which is likewise labelled and then carried onto a pallet. A full pallet is wrapped with industrial-strength stretch wrap and moved by forklift to a holding area before it is loaded to a refrigerated truck.
The only parts of the carcass that go straight from the first to the third stage are the head, trotters, and tail. They are accumulated in a special bin and are shipped, together with the bones and trimmings from the second stage, to another plant in Brampton, northwest of Toronto. That plant produces hot dogs, among other things.
From start to finish, the pork meat travels through the three sterile stages, all maintained at minus four degrees Celsius. All stages are scrubbed clean, power washed, and sterilized every evening.
When Pepe was hired, he started at the third stage. He picked up the boxes from the end of the packing line conveyor belt and stacked them on a pallet. It was grunt work, but he didn’t have to wear aprons, hair nets, and face masks, so it wasn’t all bad. The mostly Portuguese guys he worked with even had a boom box playing MuchMusic dance CDs.
Lupita and most of the women work at the second stage. Those who complete and pass the butchery course are paid a slightly higher hourly rate. At the first stage, the men who were trained to operate the industrial bone saws also enjoy extra pay to compensate for the risk of serious injury.
