Free Hydroplane: Fictions by Susan Steinberg Page A

big and full of workers working big machines. The workers were men who smoked while they worked. No one talked. They didn't like me and my brother running around. We tried to push buttons on the machines when the men weren't looking, and my brother would squeal like a fucking retard and the men would say to my father, Get these kids out, and come walking at us in a slow monster way that made my brother squeal even harder, and I was the one to tell the workers to get back to work, and they laughed at me, like, Who the fuck does she think she is, but they knew who I was.
    At some point they would be working for me.
    We all liked the island factory better. The workers on the island were ladies who spoke Spanish and played with my brother's hair. My father went to the island over the summers. It used to be he went alone. But now he had to take us.
    Weekends we stood in the ocean. We collected snails in a bucket and raced them on the sand. My father slept on a chair. We put snails on my father's feet to make him jump. He said, What the hell. He didn't shave on the weekends. The ladies around him laughed when he jumped.
    There were crazy kids who climbed the palms. They picked coconuts and split them up with a knife. They sold them one for a dollar to me and my brother. They told us we were stupid fucks. They said, They're free if you climb the tree. Neither of us could climb a tree with no branches. They said we were rich white fucks. We already knew this. The boys didn't wear shoes or shirts. They're free, they said. But we gave them the dollars.
    My father called the kids the Coco Locos.
    He said, Keep away from those dirty kids.
    We went weekdays to my father's office. It had a glass door. On the other side of the door was the factory. We could see the ladies hunched over their tables, sewing masks. The ladies couldn't see us in the office though. The door was like the limo windows. I liked to be on the unmirrored side. Though sometimes I couldn't help it. Sometimes there were limos with other people in them. And I was with my brother on the mirrored side. We were playing on the hotel sidewalk. And I wanted to look in the mirror. But I knew better than to look too hard. Even my brother knew someone could be giving the finger.
    When the ladies used the mirror to fix their lipstick, my father stood on our side and said, Stupid estupidos. Sometimes he opened the door into the ladies. Sometimes he said something funny like, Working hard I see.
    The ladies took breaks from sewing masks. There was pan de agua and coffee. They prayed before eating by closing their eyes and moving their lips.
    They're devout, said my father. De-vout. Good ones, he said.
    I had heard my father ask the ladies to dinners. Lucky you darling, my father would say. Good food darling. Buena comida.
    I'm allowed, he would say to me and my brother.
    I had seen my father touch the ladies. I had seen him touch their asses.
    My father's coffee was the blackest made in his own pot. The ladies spooned him sugar.
    Some ladies wore masks after eating their pan de agua. The factory air was dusty.
    Once I said, Funny.
    My father said, What.
    Dust, I said. Here.
    He said, You don't know funny.
    In Baltimore was the park on the hill where under the sand was wet.
    China, I said, if you dig deep enough.
    My brother's sneakers never looked right.
    There were days I could barely look at him.
    In the park were monkey bars. Rusted swing sets.
    There was a slide where we slid into sand.
    My brother and I went to the park after school. The monkey bars at the park were higher than the ones in the schoolyard. We perched on the monkey bars and watched the sunset. The sky turned orange. Then back to blue. We could see the whole city lighted below. We never talked. We sometimes heard gunshots. We mostly listened to traffic.
    There was a time my father would say to me, One day it's yours.
    All of it, he would say.
    He would gesture to what. A hotel room. A factory. A view. The leather