As we leave, in our usual rush to get the buckets to the car, Holly trips in a hole in the ground and falls down and screams. I whirl around and she’s crying, her face has gone from dead-white to crimson. ‘Something’s snapped,’ she sobs, ‘I heard it snap.’ I help her up, ordering Marge, who’s been standing there with her mouth hanging open, to take her other arm. ‘We’ve got to get you to an emergency room,’ I say, ‘get it x-rayed right away.’ But no, all she’ll consent to is calling Ted from the next house, although Denise is going to have to do the driving. I keep trying in the car, blabbing about fractures and sprains as if I actually knew something, but Holly just keeps crying and talking about how she’s already missed so many days of work in the last few weeks, and the others don’t seem to be listening to either of us.

110110

“I blow. I can’t remember the exact word, but I tell him that he can’t keep putting money above his employees’ health and I don’t want to hear about ‘working through it,’ because this girl is in really bad shape. But he goes on about ‘calm down,’ and meanwhile Holly is hopping around the bathroom, wiping up pubic hairs.”

111111

“Holly… she’s going to keep going until you pry the last cleaning rag from her cold, dead hands, she's made that clear enough.”

7878

“How poor are they, my coworkers? The fact that anyone is working this job at all can be taken as prima facie evidence of some kind of desperation or at least a history of mistakes and disappointments, but it’s not for me to ask.”

7979

“But although no one, apparently, is sleeping in a car, there are signs, even at the beginning, of real difficulty if not actual misery. Half-smoked cigarettes are returned to the pack. There are discussions about who will come up with fifty cents for a toll and whether Ted can be counted on for prompt reimbursement.”

113113

“Don’t they look at the want ads? Don’t they realize that the sheer abundance of them means they’ve got Ted by short hairs, and could ask for almost anything – like, say, $7.50 an hour, reckoned from the moment they shoe up in the morning to the moment they finish processing rags at the end of the day.”

117117

“Janitors, cleaning ladies, ditch-diggers, changers of adult diapers – these are the untouchables of a supposedly caste-free and democratic society”