I’ve lived here with Shaw almost four years. We still haven’t been able to move out, or marry. About a year ago, Shaw and his fellow workers tried to strike for better working conditions and wages. They were replaced the same week they started and he was out of a job for longer than he would’ve liked. He started the strike, and was blacklisted with several factories for doing so. He looked haggard during that time. We hardly had anything to eat. We became so desperate that at one point I went out and scraped mussels off the legs of the pier to boil and eat, and even smoked rat meat. I didn’t want him to see how thin I was, it would discourage him from eating. I kept a large work shirt on while I slept, and prayed that he didn’t feel my ribs through my skin. I’d grown soft, I admit, where I should’ve grown harder. This love was an inconvenience, I thought sometimes, for both of us. Yet I feel that if we parted, it would break us both. We were all that each other had. He runs his fingers through my hair, coos soothing words, says my name tenderly like no one ever has.
I wish more people could be like him.
When I began working it had been decided that it was for the best if my gender remain ambiguous. I heard stories of women being assaulted, taken advantage of. I cut my hair boyishly short so with all my layers of clothes on, I looked like a young boy. I overheard other men talking about women like pieces of meat. I even saw once, walking home, a young woman beaten down into the gutter by three large men, then raped and left for dead. I saw her pleading eyes, like my mothers when she followed my stepfather into their bedroom. They begged for my help. But I could only watch, I couldn’t move or make a sound. I only approached her when she was bleeding in the dirty water and concrete, her eyes rolled back into her head, barely alive. I called the police over, and then disappeared down an alleyway. I didn’t tell Shaw.
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