by Noah Cicero
My mother told a story.
My mother was a forklift driver
at the Chevy plant in Warren, Ohio.
for 33 years.
She had over 2000 coworkers during that time –
It is hard now, to imagine that huge factories
once stretched miles, and towered high,
with huge parking lots to match,
but they once did.
My mother was hired in 1968,
while the hippies were marching
and people were dying in Vietnam,
my mother got a job. My mother was neither –
she said she needed to make money.
Chevy held a hiring day,
over a 1000 people were there that day
trying to get a well-paying job, that didn’t require
a college degree, or any skills.
My mother got a job and a union that day
another woman was hired that day –
a woman that never took off her winter coat.
The women all started on the assembly line
when the women became pregnant
management put buckets next to them
so, they had a clean place to vomit.
The woman that wouldn’t take off her coat
wasn’t very fast,
she swept the floors and took out the garbage
she never spoke.
Day after day, not a word.
We had no idea who she was.
She never smiled or frowned.
Her expression never changed.
We had no idea where she lived,
if she was married or had kids.
All we knew, was that she never took off
Her winter coat –
the same coat on the hottest summer day
and the coldest winter evening –
the coat never changed.
I don’t remember if she wore different pants.
The girls would all talk about her
but the conversation never went anywhere.
No man ever went near her
she was pretty homely.
Eventually as time passed,
all the girls on the line moved on to different positions,
the machinery changed, it demanded new jobs
I became a forklift driver.
The woman who never took off her coat
got to stand next to a machine and press a button.
No more mops and dustpans for her,
She had a real solid position,
In the late 70s she got a new coat,
this coat was green, but the coat still looked used.
We were stunned, a new coat!
Still, no words came from her.
If you said hello or goodbye to her
she looked down.
New hires would try to talk with her,
she would mumble out a few words,
but she never did a follow-up
and conversation would die,
the new hire would walk away befuddled.
In the mid-80s I got so bored working there,
day after day, the same people,
no one left that job, the union kept us taken care of.
We even had a nurse on staff in case
of medical emergencies, which was constant
with 2000 workers.
I often felt that I was swimming in that factory,
the factory was endless on all sides.
There was no end to the factory, I had time
and I gave it to them. They took it.
We watched each other grow old,
our bodies became rounded after the children were born,
our faces gradually wrinkled, we looked like women.
We watched each other’s children grow up,
getting taller, going out into the world.
The woman who never took off her winter coat,
she aged as well, her face hollowed
her eyes became murky.
Was the factory killing her as well?
Did she question her life decisions?
Did she ever want anything else?
She would sit by her machine, and press that button
take the parts out and put them in a container,
no speaking, no sign of listlessness with the situation,
completely satisfied with the results of her life.
In the late 80s, a new coat happened,
this one didn’t look new either.
She surely made enough to buy a new coat,
but she never did.
Another decade passed,
and the woman who never took off her winter coat
kept on being quiet.
The 90s came and we were all deep in our 40s,
back problems, skin and sinus issues, migraines, bad knees.
All the physical problems came rushing into our bodies.
We were all going to the doctor and taking days off
to get surgeries and rest our spines.
The woman who never took off her winter coat,
never showed a sign of pain,
never took a day or left early.
She must have suffered there at her machine,
not a complaint, never a grimace, not a wince.
In 1988, over 300 of us remained from the 1968 batch.
The day was July 15, 1998, the day we reached 30 years.
We were able to take retirement with a pension.
We all wondered if
the woman who never took off her winter coat would retire.
On July 16, 1998, she did not come into work. Another person
took over her machine.
Noah Cicero was born in 1980 in a small town in Northeast, Ohio. In 2003 his first book came out, The Human War, which has been made into a movie and has been translated into several languages. He has published books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, many have been translated. His poetry book Bipolar Cowboy was short listed for Goodreads Best Poetry of 2015, which has a new edition from Girl Noise Press.
