Job Interview
When my mother and father moved they had no stuff. There was no stuff anywhere. No stuff in the refrigerator, no stuff in the closets, no stuff in the car – for the first short while there wasn’t even a car. No stuff whatsoever. At the very start there was no stuff because there were no jobs, but this was soon remedied and after they started working they started to acquire stuff and soon enough they got a car which could carry more stuff more easily, over greater distances. Sometimes the best stuff is a little ways out of town. Stuff makes my father happy, makes him buffered, makes him pleased as punch when someone says, under their breath, maybe more or less to themselves, that they could really use a three hole punch, or that they wish their European electronic adaptor hadn’t gotten lost in the airport, or that they quite feel like some fresh-squeezed orange juice. These moments are when my father shakes off his cloak of everydayness and steps forth like a wizard. He sorts through his stuff, sifts through the piles and boxes and drawers and cupboards and shelving, and emerges with a three hole punch, a European electronics adaptor, a squeezer of oranges.
If you are from here you call it junk but if you are born without it, it is blessed, blessed stuff. My mother has since crossed over to the other side, somehow corrupted herself, now she walks around calling it junk as though she never used to mend the ladders in her cheap tights, nearly blinding herself trying to make the seam invisible, as though she has never washed a plastic fork and put it in the cutlery drawer. She gives herself away every now and then, unwraps the aluminum foil off a casserole and folds it neatly away back in the kitchen cupboard, washes out plastic take-out containers because they’re useful, loops ribbons around her finger and pins them together with a bobby pin at Christmas because it doesn’t look like garbage to her, does it look like garbage to you?
The stuff came after the jobs and the stuff made them a little more from here, in a way they were not from here before. People who are from here don’t say things like “what do you mean there’s a microwave in the children’s lunchroom? A free microwave?”
When my mother needed a job my father went through the phone book and chose the company that most suited her. My mother knew he was right because his finger was placed so authoritatively on the page. The page was yellow and so the book was called yellow pages. These small things you learn day by day. He pressed the numbers into the phone and straightened the knot in his tie as the phone rang, even though he wasn’t wearing a tie. When he was finally talking to the person he wanted to talk to, my father asked him what he would do if he knew someone with enviable work experience and very desirable qualifications, well-suited to the company this man worked for. There was a pause. My mother gripped the arms of the chair. She was impressed with his knowledge, and his accent, so much slighter than hers. How had he learned to do that? When I bring schoolfriends home to play and they ask me where his accent is from I am confused. I look around. Whose accent?
The voice on the phone admitted that as happy as they were to hear that someone was demonstrating such an interest in the well-being of their company, they had to ask how exactly they could be of service. Knowing this was a trick question, my father did not answer, instead turning the tables and asking what this person would do if they had the good fortune of being able to be put in touch with this same person, the person with the enviable qualifications. The voice cleared its throat and said they guessed they would welcome the opportunity to talk to this accomplished individual, as they had a strong interest in developing the company and a commitment to working with like-minded individuals.
When my father hung up the phone, my mother had an interview later that week. She tried to swoon. The prospect of being spoken to in English for any length of time over a minute and a half was only slightly more appealing than water torture. She wasn’t from here. They would know in less than one second. My grandmother had warned her. They lure you in, you make a mistake, then they have you forever. This is where trying leads to. The lure, the trap. End of discussion. My father gasped. He invoked the promise of stuff, the stuff they could easily have if only my mother had the good sense to take the first step towards it. Didn’t she care about stuff? My mother had nothing to worry about. After all, these were people who wore tennis shoes to dinner and ate food in their cars. Out of a paper bag. That had been handed to them through an open window. (It was beyond my father how one could use a knife and fork while driving a car.) She had nothing to fear from these paper-bag-eaters; she didn’t even own tennis shoes anymore.
In the end my mother memorized, painstakingly, the twenty-five likeliest questions and their most desirable answers, as determined by my father. She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the words, the waves of long Es and sharp consonants. She practiced endlessly, learning to pick up which question my father was asking even when he changed his intonation. When my father tested her by asking a new question and she simply smiled brilliantly and carefully enunciated the words “Can you please repeat?” my father knew it was in the bag.
The day came. My mother set her hair and dressed as solemnly as if for a funeral. They walked to the office together, murmuring the questions and responses to each other. My father kissed my mother on the cheek and went across the street into a coffeeshop to drink this foul brown hot water they called coffee, and wait. What a lot of people wearing blue jeans with holes in them. When my mother came back outside, she was walking a bit funny. Her face was a bit funny. She was acting a bit funny. How had it gone? Alright. How did she do? Alright. Had he asked the questions? He had. Had she answered the questions? She had not. What did she mean she had not? Why on earth not? She had forgotten every single word that she had memorized. Flown clean out of her mind like birds. What did she mean like birds? What the hell was this business about birds? It all flew away, that was all. So what had she done? Smiled. Smiled?! Yes, smiled and nodded. Smiled and nodded and said the few words that had somehow broken through. Thank you. Yes. I see. More smiling, more nodding. My father sighed. They would try again. It was not the end of the world. Was the man polite up until the end at least? Very polite, my mother said. So nice and polite that he had given her the job.
Micaela Maftei lives in Glasgow, were she is currently pursuing a Creative Writing PhD at Glasgow University.
