Danielle Reyes
Professor Sidibe
Enw 210
5/6/2019
Ivory bones
[enters marisol, a 35 year old woman who has just came back from her seven am to eleven pm work shift at the theodore Roosevelt nursing home on Gun Hill with piles of fresh mail in her hands and a empty stomach. her apartment is a small one meant for two but is housing six. Her three daughters, Their father, his son and herself. The two men of the house are gone for their late shift jobs as drivers. The house is quite yet the lights are on in the kitchen, she sees a pot of white rice and eggs with an envelope with the words ‘mommy’ written on top and sighs with a smile and heads straight to the living room to pull the curtain to the girls room to give the each a goodnight kiss. As she heads back to the kitchen she places her stuff down and spots the first letter sender, con Edison, her appetite magically disappears and she puts the pot in the fridge to take to work tomorrow]
Marisol: Alright let’s see what we got….”Marisol Cordero we are informing you that due to review of your financial aid that your total balance now is…” ‘hey it’s con Edison your monthly bill is “ smile your on cricket and because you on cricket we are here to inform you-you owe” “ Hey Marisol, Happ-” no, no , no , no no no no, fuck * goes to the bathroom mirror cabinet to pat down the blood and place a bandaid * ain’t that a bitch, you biting the hand that feeds you. I work for more than forty hours standing up all day by Thursday, yet all I have to show for it are these thin fingers. Chipped, scrawny….ashy. And they expect me to carry 200-pound people… I expect myself to carry that… Nah it’s alright, I work I pay the bills, the light, the rent, the school, the water, the food, the medicine, i work for that so I don’t need anyone to come and think they need to save me from that. Or that they need bto take care of me even though all i got to show for it are these sunken eyes and bony fingers. I can pay for everything myself, aint no one gonna call me a housewife.
[ as she smiles to herself at the mirror her phone vibrates. She reaches over it reads ‘David Miller’, her employer. He is emailing her on a work report in which he has stated that her work this week is unsatisfactory to the companies liking. According to 2 of the 10 patients she watched this week since last Thursday. She breathes in and out recalling how there were two patients who decided that they had the right to touch her because she looked like their favorite movie star and refused their advances but only able to repeat “not today sir” In bold were the letters“step it up” saying she needs to fulfill the needs of the patients if she wants to stay at what she’s doing. She wrote back “I’m very sorry sir”]
Marisol. You are fine. Marisol, you are fine…for these bony hands are powerful. They are not the same bony hands of your mother for unlike hers, yours are the skeleton of this house, your house. The limbs and nerves that allow those inside of you grow and move. To move up from this, because this shit ain’t it. To work and work till your bones feel like their about to deteriorate inside your skin. Just to kiss up to some man…some men who feel that no sirs yes sirs are all that I should say. In that case im no better then my own mother, walking up and down to please the men in the house dropping everything to smile and go “ what can i get for you sir”. To listen and obey to those who think of me as nothing but prey. But i do not work to please a man i work so my daughters do not feel they have to. I work so our son can see the strength of a woman. I will work and work and work until these fingers sharpen themselves into weapons, to cut a deep enough a hole in which my girls, my family could crawl, no heavenly ascend through and make it to the other side of the fogged glass that separates our dream from reality. That white haze in which weekends are spent on a porch and a bill from con edison will be the least of our worries. these bony figures will not, and should not be passed onto my future generation. To these abusive hunters, I am the last elephant, whose tusk where not taken away by man,I will not allow it, but transformed for the thriving for her family My bones will become the ivory to the piano keys that creates the sound of my legacy in which every generation after celebrates me.and whether that piano is 200 pounds or more i will push and push till it makes some noise.That is the pain that these hands and this heart goes through for a future of three . So Fuck David! Fuck those two old men! Fuck anyone who questions the ability in these hands in making a living that not only supports me but my entire family. For these ivory bones know their way to gold. And I will use them to stomp a permanent path in which my daughters and theirs will know that the strength of a man’s voice is nothing compared the the force in her bones.
