Industrial Accidents
by Julia Rajagopalan
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
Once a week, the city offers free yoga at the farmers’ market. It’s an underused civic service because most people in our struggling Rust Belt city think yoga is for matcha mommies and stoned hippies. They have class rain or shine because the market is held in four enormous brick warehouses that were once a bicycle factory. I never miss it, mostly because it’s free.
When I tell my grandfather about yoga, he crosses his arms and leans back in his La-Z-Boy.
“Some bad shit happened there,” he says. My grandmother promptly scolds him for swearing. Despite the grumbling, he likes when I go to the city, even though he moved to the suburbs the second he retired.
“What bad shit?” I love ghost stories, stories about the old city, and really any stories my grandfather tells.
“Well, people used to lose hands and fingers all the time. That was before the unions, when the working conditions were terrible. We fought hard to unionize. Unions made a middle class in this country when there was none.”
I nod along with him. I’ve heard this speech before.
“Then after the unions,” he continues. “They’d lose limbs because they’d get drunk on the job because no one could fire them.” I’ve heard this diatribe, too. My grandfather is a walking contradiction, and it never seems to bother him. I wish I could crack a Pabst and laugh it off, but contradiction sends me into spirals of existential crisis. Maybe it’s a generational thing.
“That’s it? People lost fingers in the factories?” I can’t imagine a factory in our city where someone hasn’t lost a finger. Industrialization is a messy business.
“Well, that and the fact that they moved that old French cemetery to build the factory.” At my horrified look, he clarifies. “They moved the bodies to a spot somewhere downriver. It’s not like they just poured the concrete over them.”
The cement floor is cold and damp as I spread my yoga mat. Light streams through the mottled glass of the windows, yet the cavernous factory remains cool and gloomy. We have the entire warehouse for yoga, but we occupy only a small part of the enormous space. The dozen mats feel unmoored and small, floating untethered in the stony vastness. In the other buildings, the market bustles, but its cheer is muffled by the thick brick walls and closed garage doors that separate us.
“Welcome back.” The yoga instructor steps forward to greet me. She’s a sweet, idealistic young woman who regularly touts her practice as a cure for life’s great problems, probably because yoga was enough to fix her adorable little dilemmas. My grandmother would say, “bless her heart,” but I lean toward, “good for her.” Either way, when yoga pays off my student loans, I’ll tell people it changed my life.
I lie on my old outdoor mat, my spine adjusting to the unforgiving floor. A musty puff of wind blows through, tasting of rusty nails and stale caramel corn. Brassy notes from an amateur trumpet intrude in sporadic bursts.
As I relax, something soft tickles the bottom of my foot. I use my other foot to scratch it. Probably a fly. I’m no stranger to buggy friends in my alfresco classes. Still, in the park, I imagine ladybugs and squirrels. Lying on an empty factory floor, I imagine cockroaches and rats. I really wish my grandfather hadn’t told me about the cemetery.
Another slow stroke slides down the sole of my foot. I wiggle and twist it up to look. Nothing’s there, and the yoga instructor side-eyes me, then waxes philosophically on finding stillness in discomfort.
The sensation wriggles along my scalp, and I scratch at it. It trails down my neck and across the exposed bone of my clavicle. It doesn’t feel like a bug. It feels like the lazy caress of a curious lover. I swat at it because that’s somehow creepier.
“Let’s close our eyes and find our inner serenity,” the teacher says.
I would rather eat the withered kale leaf lying on the gritty floor than close my eyes, but she pads over, glaring, so I comply. I tell myself, I’m not feeling bugs. I’m feeling misfiring nerve endings or random tickles. Logic prevails.
We move to our hands and knees, and the tickle trails my spine. Glancing over my shoulder, I see another woman six feet away, arching her back like an overgrown cat. She didn’t touch me, did she?
I bend into downward-facing dog, ass in the air, my hamstrings straining. I feel terribly exposed. Between my legs, I watch the woman behind me. She ignores me thoroughly. In the distance, an ambulance siren howls.
I’m just about to stand when I feel the grasp of a hand around my ankle. If I hadn’t already been watching my feet, I would’ve sworn someone grabbed me. The hand tightens and then yanks, and my foot is pulled out from beneath me. I lose my balance and belly-flop hard on my mat. The fall knocks the wind out of me, and I take a second to catch my breath.
“Never worry about falling,” the instructor says. “Falling is a completely natural part of the practice.”
My cheeks burn. She could’ve ignored my fumble, but I’ve yet to meet a yoga teacher who doesn’t use a fall as a life lesson. Her voice echoes unpleasantly in the cavernous space, syllables swallowed by the dark corners, like she’s speaking in code.
“Fin you dris.”
“Inhale pea.”
“Foc on the pre.”
I stand and balance on one foot. A hand rests on my lower back. Rather than trying to push me, it feels like it will lead me in a waltz. Finally, I allow my mind to travel to the obvious thought. This is a ghost. A ghost is haunting me.
I bend over again, sticking my butt nervously in the air. I can’t imagine what a depression era factory worker’s idea of consent might be, but I doubt we will agree.
When we move onto our backs and into happy baby, I cross my ankles. I am not a baby, and I am definitely not happy. I need to leave. I would gather my things and get out, but I don’t want to be rude. Walking out in the middle of a yoga class is like giving the teacher the middle finger.
Finally, I lie in savasana, twitching nervously as an itch on my face tickles. Is that itch a ghost? Is the soft touch along my cheek a spirit? No, that’s a strand of hair. I’m losing my mind. Can PMS cause psychosis? I don’t think so, but you never know.
I jump up after the final namaste and wave goodbye. Juggling my unrolled mat, water bottle, and reusable grocery bags, I escape the warehouse. I need to get to the market and more people. I need to be around life.
While more people are in the other factory building, I find no relief. Shoppers shuffle from stall to stall, sluggish, as if in slow motion. A hand rests on my hip, and I spin around, but no one is behind me.
I rush toward my car, pass piles of apples balanced precariously on a table. Next to them is a heap of purple grapes, plump and juicy, dripping with water like they’ve just been sprayed.
As I pass, something wiggles between the fleshy purple globs. I don’t want to look closer, convinced it’s a cockroach, but it’s so much worse. It is a man’s finger, oil and dirt under its jagged nail. It pokes out between the bunches of grapes, prodding in blind exploration. I can’t see the rest of the hand, but I somehow know the finger with its grimy nail is all there is.
I smother a scream, burying it deep in my throat so that it doesn’t burst out and scare the hipsters around me. The finger points at me and wags as if telling me no, no, no.
As I watch, another finger wiggles out from between the grapes, knocking a small bunch to the floor. Above it, a pinky darts out, then a thumb. They press a grape between them, popping it like a pus-filled pimple. I shriek, and my colon churns. I need to find a bathroom.
I glance at the dusty carrots stacked on a table. I look resolutely away. No carrots today. Hard pass.
The restrooms are tucked in the corner of the building, and I sprint in, flinging myself into a stall before I can consider the dim, dank room I’ve entered. The light above the chipped mirror flickers. The facilities haven’t been remodeled in eighty years, but they’re reasonably clean, if you don’t count the rust-scarred waste bins and the chipped tile floors.
I wipe myself and notice a slick of blood. So I’ve started my period. Perhaps this is menstrual-induced psychosis. It’s a desperate thought. I’m not a gynecologist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing.
I dig a tampon out of my bag as another woman walks in, slamming the door open with a bang. I’m glad I’m already on the toilet because I definitely peed a little. She settles into the stall next to me, the other one of two, and pauses.
“Hey, sorry to bother you,” she says. My heart races. Is she real? A ghost?
“Yeah?”
“Do you have a tampon?”
I nearly giggle in relief. What a mundane question. “I certainly do,” I say too eagerly and pass one beneath the stall wall. I finish up, gathering my things, and I hear her unwrap the plastic.
The scream that erupts from her stall rattles my soul as it shakes the thin panel between us. She has an unearthly, horror-movie shriek that makes me think she’s being slaughtered. I’m about to kick in her stall door when she drops something on the tile floor. It rolls toward me.
The severed finger is grimy, knuckles hairy, and distinctly male. A piece of white bone juts out from the end, blood and sinuous tendons dangling like wet shoelaces.
I scream because why does this psychopath have a severed finger? Why is she throwing it at me? Then I realize, she thinks I gave it to her. This is the favor I’ve bestowed, passing it under the stall. She probably believes I had a human finger floating loose in my yoga bag, and I handed it to her by mistake.
I open the door and run. My personal psychosis is disturbing enough. Mass hallucinations are a step too far. She saw the finger. It was not my imagination. It was there.
I tear through the farmers’ market, yoga mat flapping behind me. The hipsters stare. The farmers gape. I don’t care. I have to get out of this place. I reach my car and fling my things in and start the engine, nearly running over an old lady as I reverse. She shouts at me, but I ignore her and blast through the parking lot.
I’m several blocks away when my heart rate begins to slow. My hands shake on the steering wheel, and I have to pull over so that I don’t weave into traffic. I’m putting my car into park when the thought occurs to me. I gave that woman a severed finger in a tampon wrapper.
What did I put inside of me?
Shrieking, I slide down on the seat. I jam my hand into my yoga pants, fishing around for the string. Please god let there be a string. I can’t find it, and I imagine a dead man’s finger inside of me. It doesn’t feel like a finger, but I’m so panicked, it’s hard to say.
Finally, I find the string, and I yank. It rips out, flopping in my hand, and I inspect it. To my relief, it’s a regular tampon, bright white with a dab of red blood.
I laugh my horror away. What the hell is wrong with me? Did I accidentally eat some psychedelics? Why am I sitting on the side of the road holding a used tampon? Thank god no one is around. I wrap the thing in a tissue and put it in my bag. That’s enough of that for now.
My grandfather and his friend Ed are sitting on the porch as I pull up into his driveway. They wave as I park, and my shaking begins to subside. Their normal, old-person grumpiness is a balm.
“How was yoga?” My grandfather sniggers like he’s told a joke. I want to say that I’d rather do yoga than have a hip replacement surgery, but I don’t because I’m a good granddaughter.
“Why did you tell me about the cemetery?” I throw myself into the worn wicker couch across from them. It creaks in protest.
“What cemetery?” Ed asks, picking up a can of beer. They drink black coffee or beer, never anything else, and never, ever water.
“Grampa told me about the cemetery that used to be at the bicycle factory.”
“The one that’s now the froufrou veg market?”
“Yes.” I don’t know how a vegetable market can be fancy.
“That cemetery wasn’t under the bicycle factory. It was under Cartman’s, the boot factory.”
“Really?” My grandfather frowns and sips his beer.
“Yeah, it was next to the jankity old Presbyterian church that burned down when the river caught fire.” The river used to be so polluted that it occasionally burned, but that was before my time.
“So the market’s not haunted?” I ask. What did I see? Does it matter? “There are no ghosts or fingers, hands or things there?”
“I never said nothing about no ghosts.” My grandfather tilts his head and gives me a funny look, the same one he gave me when I told him I was taking sourdough and fermentation classes.
“I’m sure there are plenty of random fingers floating around there.” Ed scratches the gray stubble on his chin. “I mean, back in the day, a guy lost a finger like once a week in those places.”
My grandfather cackles, and Ed joins in. What kind of solidarity did they have with their fellow workers if they laugh at severed limbs? I think about the word patricide and wonder if it covers grandparents.
“I need a beer,” I say. Ed rips one off the six-pack and hands it across the table. I pop the top and watch as it fizzes over my fingers and onto the wooden planks of my grandfather’s front porch.
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