Chapter 19
Nineteen
It would be presumptuous and entirely fallacious to attribute the calm of our second official union meeting to yesterday’s
trip to the movies. It’s not like Efraín and I suddenly started a beautiful friendship after sitting in the dark for four
hours watching Dr. Strangelove and X-Men: First Class back-to-back.
I’m so used to solo screen time that I’d forgotten I’m a talkative viewer, desperate to editorialize and fanboy over everything.
I kept leaning over to whisper trivia, cinematic commentary, and sundry to Efraín. He kept shushing me, but that didn’t stop
him from arguing politics under his breath. During XMFC, I swear to God, Efraín would’ve been throwing popcorn at the screen if he weren’t worried about making extra work for a
minimum-wage employee.
We argued afterward, too, about whether peace is always an option, whether there’s such a thing as “Good Germans.” Okay, we
didn’t always disagree, but then Efraín pushed and insisted there’s no such thing as good bosses.
If bosses couldn’t be reasoned with, if peace wasn’t an option, then why would we be sitting here working over the details of petitioning our bosses?
The thing is, we are ninety minutes in, Punch Bowl’s bar is packed, and we still don’t have a petition subject.
“Can we just go down the list again?” Lola asks, chin in her hands. “There has to be something spicier than parking spaces.”
“It doesn’t have to be sexy,” Efraín says. “It needs to be—”
“Practical,” I finish.
“—realistic.”
I scan the Google Doc. We’ve compiled all the grievances we heard during our one-on-ones; the complaints ranged from apples
to oranges to giant pumpkins. My personal, hesitant contribution—pronoun buttons—is a grape. Other people have real problems.
The trouble is, the realer the problem, the less realistic it is to solve.
“Well,” I say, “after we eliminate—”
“Table,” Efraín corrects me.
“—institutional problems and everything related to money, we’re basically left with handbook line items. The two most practical
options are water bottles and stools. They both have a medical component and affect every member of the staff.”
“So, water bottles,” Efraín decides.
Lola groans.
“Allowing floor staff to have water throughout the museum is important,” Efraín says.
“As is allowing floor staff to sit down,” I counter.
“I understand that, but—”
“Nah, you really don’t, Ef,” Lola adds.
“What am I missing?”
Lola and I exchange a glance. She shakes her head. I preemptively regret it even as I tell Efraín: “You have legs of steel.”
“What?”
“You bike. Everywhere.”
“So? It’s good exercise and good for the planet. Win-win.”
“You said it. Good exercise.”
Naomi explains, “Your quadriceps, hamstrings, and calf muscles are well developed.”
I thank every star in the sky that my sister failed to list the gluteus maximus. “Your standing endurance is above average.”
Efraín studies me with the strangest expression, not quite accusatory, but curious.
Is it weird that I have Opinions on Efraín’s objectively well-developed leg muscles? It’s no state secret that Efraín’s objectively
attractive. Under prohibited-by-the-Geneva-Conventions torture, I’d concede that I, personally, find him attractive. Admittedly,
that inscrutable look he’s leveling at me is its own form of torture.
Help, I mouth at Stanley, who, let the record reflect, told me not one week ago that I should ask for help when I need it. Now
he just chuckles.
“Can we adjourn this meeting early?” I ask. “Or can we just stipulate that stools are important—”
“Who brought them up during the one-on-ones?” Efraín asks, suddenly serious.
“Blake,” Lola answers. “Not for herself, but—it was a recurring theme, actually?—all her complaints circled back to Jaime
and how he never complains, even when he should. You’ve all seen his knee brace, yeah?”
“He tore his ACL last year,” Naomi notes.
Lola nods. “He’s mostly fine. No soccer scholarship, but medically, he’s okay. His knee just gets sore after standing all
day, every day, so Blake tried to convince Jaime to talk to HR about getting a stool. He wouldn’t, so she did. The HR guy
said he needed documentation, so Blake badgered Jaime to get a doctor’s note, but then the HR guy demanded an X-ray? No way
was Jaime going to hand over his medical files to some HR rando, so he just wears the brace.”
“Is that normal?” Naomi asks, lips puckered like she’s just been force-fed applesauce.
“Normal for NSX,” Stanley answers. “If Billy had it his way, our personnel files would be thicker than our FBI dossiers.”
One thing I’ve learned tonight is that Stanley has some conspiracy theorist tendencies; then again, most old-school NS fans do.
“Standing eight hours a day takes a toll on the body. Maybe not at your age, but after twenty-five years . . . Who’s to say if it’s an occupational hazard or normal wear and tear?
” He shrugs, shockingly cavalier. “I’m not lining up for a knee replacement anytime soon, but my knees do ache some days. ”
Efraín considers Stanley, a lawyer gearing up for cross. “Sounds a lot like why you never pushed HR on water bottles.”
“That’s right.”
Efraín gets that lazy smirk he gets when he knows he’s won, even when situationally inappropriate. “Are your knees aching
today?”
“A little,” Stanley admits. “More often than not. We’re lucky senior leadership agreed to put down rubber mats last year.
Luckily, the barn floor is hardwood rather than concrete, like other museums.”
“Do other museums let their workers use stools?”
“Some. I’ve heard rumors, through the grapevine, that a few others—they’ve tried this.”
“Did it work?” I ask, throat dry.
“For some of them.”
“We’ll make it work,” Efraín says, like it’s a given.
When he says it like that, with that fire in his eyes and conviction in his voice, he makes me want to believe him. I almost
do. So, I suggest a vote between water bottle and stools.
Either’s fine by me, but Lola’s advocating for Jaime, Stanley’s feeling protective of his water flask, and Efraín’s presumably
overcorrecting for some self-perceived unconscious ableism in his initial dismissal of stools. I don’t even need to decide.
“The stools have it.”
“So we have our next action: petitioning management for stools at sales locations,” Naomi recaps. “We’ve fulfilled the objective of tonight’s meeting. Can we go bowl now?”
Stanley winces when he checks his watch. “I should be getting home to Kim.”
“Wait, we still have to write a petition,” I object.
“Yeah, maybe we should table that,” Lola says.
“No.” Efraín rebuffs her before I get the chance. “If we wait, it’ll be August before we turn it in, and this will be the
union’s whole legacy. No, we need to move fast.”
“Seconded,” I agree.
“Collaborate on a Google Doc?” Stanley suggests.
“No,” Efraín refuses again. “This is how activist groups fall apart.”
“We need something polished, cogent, and concise. Google Docs get messy—” I can see where this is going, and maybe I should
think this through, but I’m already saying, “Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll write the petition.”
Surprise flashes across Efraín’s face. “You’re volunteering? For real?”
“Is that really so shocking?” I can feel my cheeks heating up, and I hug my arms over my chest. I feel so fucking conspicuous in this bowling alley bar. Not just in my body—I swapped my uniform polo and binder for an old NS T-shirt and a sports bra right after work—but also in this union.
The analogy is more salient than I’d like.
In the same way I know I don’t pass as a guy, I worry that no matter what I do, I’ll never be seen as a full member of the union.
Because I didn’t join on day one, I expressed doubts, I tried to reason with management, and I prioritized protecting my job over protecting my sister or anyone else.
Naming the sins in my head is like reciting the viddui on Yom Kippur; I can feel the rhythm in my bones as I tap my knuckles against my arm.
If Efraín still doubts my loyalty, I don’t blame him. He didn’t hold it against me when I admitted I joined the union out
of spite, but maybe he should have.
“Not shocking,” Efraín drawls, “but are you sure it’s a good idea?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I snipe. “Do you not trust me to write a simple persuasive essay? Do you have complaints about any of
the As we’ve received on group projects in the past? Were there not enough pluses?”
“It’s not about trust,” Efraín huffs. “I’m trying to make sure you’re volunteering to write the petition because you want to write it. Not because you don’t trust anyone else to do it. I don’t want you to do it if it’s going to make you feel . . .”
He glances up at the ceiling, as if he’ll find the best-choice Mad Libs adjective written in the rafters. “You shouldn’t write
the petition if it’s going to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t want you to do it just because you feel obligated, or—”
So this is what I get for telling Efraín before that I had my reasons for sitting out different actions in the past. He doesn’t believe
me when I actually volunteer of my own volition.
“If it feels like too much of a risk,” Efraín insists, “then you don’t have to—”
“I’m signing it,” I interject. “What difference does it make if I write it, too?”
Efraín’s eyes are so dark in this dimly lit bar. “It matters that you are the one writing it.”
I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. There’s some subtext underneath his intonation, but I don’t know what he’s trying
to tell me, and I can’t ask him outright when he’s going to so much trouble to not say whatever it is he isn’t saying.
What I understand is this: I’ve preemptively pledged my signature to this petition. I want it to persuade management that
we need stools. We deserve stools. We should’ve had stools since the beginning. They should pay for that knee replacement
surgery Stanley might need sometime soon due to their negligence.