I'm running out of money. My anxiety is
growing, the kind a friend once described as like a wasp in a coffee can,
frantically trying to find a way out, pushing up against rigid walls that
simply won't give. I'm working on a couple of projects but even if they sell
money is distant and my need is immediate.
Someone suggests I sign up with a temp agency.
I've never heard of such a thing, but evidently I can register and with a
little luck they'll send me out the next day. It’s a certain way to quick
money. But I resist: the jobs are secretarial and to work in that way feels
like abject failure. To have to report 9 to 5, to be subservient, most
especially to need a "day job" because I'm not making it from my
writing - it feels like confirmation of all my worst fears, the end of
everything. But the walls of the coffee can simply won't give, anxiety is
verging on panic, so I make an appointment and show up at the agency.
There are many women like me signing up, all
of us filling out forms on clipboards as we crowd the small reception area,
with its lone scrawny ficus reaching up toward the fluorescent lights. I’m
certain all of them have taken extra care about how they look. I myself am
wearing a dress, something I rarely do, but it's my favorite thing in the
closet, a conventional rayon blue and black plaid cut in a very fashion forward
shirt dress style, narrow waist, very full skirt. I love the way it swirls
around me.
The agency woman who takes my application looks
like someone I might actually know; I recognize the signs of similar
background, education, class. I smile as I sit in a chair beside her desk and
look directly in her eyes. I want the frankness of my gaze to make a unique
impression, help her see that I'm not a run of the mill applicant. I want her
to realize I'm special. Much later, it will occur to me that she's probably
seen this behavior a thousand times. It's a cliche – who of us doesn’t want to
be seen as special?
All applicants must take a typing test (I'm
definitely average) and a short math and grammar quiz. I finish the grammar
section in little more time than it takes to read the questions. I look down
the list of math questions - basic fractions, multiplications and divisions, nothing
I can't handle. I finish this section quickly, too, with minutes to go until
time is up. I hand the pages in and watch as they're graded - I get all the
grammar questions right but I'm amazed to see that I get a few of the math
problems wrong. I don't understand it - they looked so easy, so doable.
But it isn't anything near enough to disqualify me. I’m told to call in early
the next morning to see if there’s anything for me.
That night, I set the alarm
for the first time in months. I’m trying not to feel sorry for myself. I say,
there’s nothing shameful in having to earn quick money. I’m lucky there’s a way
for me to do it. Don’t worry, I say, the key word is “temporary.” True, all true – but just words. They don’t put
much distance between me and the full blown despair I sense only millimeters
away.
The next morning I’m
told to report to an import-export office downtown, in a side street east of
Alemeda. There are two small rooms and both of them are crammed with stacks of binders
and bookshelves sagging under the weight of files, loose papers and pink, green
and yellow forms. A man and woman, the owners married to each other, sit at
desks in the larger of the rooms while a secretary and I are in the smaller. My
job is to sort stacks of the color forms, then file them by invoice number into
a rank of old metal file cabinets against one wall. Once the secretary has
explained this, she pretty much ignores me for the rest of the day. That suits
me. I don’t want her to know me at all. I want to be invisible. If no one sees
me, I am not here.
I’m caught in rush hour
traffic on the way home – more grist for my mill of self-pity – and find myself
thinking about the math problems I got wrong. Something about them is bothering
me. I've kept the page and, when I get home, I go over the answers; I can see
that I made very simple mistakes, which no doubt I would have caught if I'd
taken the time to go over my answers. Instead I basically twiddled my thumbs
until time was up - I'd decided the problems were easy, I didn't need to check
my answers...
Why is it still bothering me? Why am I holding
on to - what? - embarrassment? - that I answered a few questions wrong on a
very easy test? A kind of humiliation because after all I'm so smart, so
well-educated, so well, why not just say it, superior -- and that's when it
comes to me. I'd sailed through the whole experience as if I were superior to
it, visiting royalty waving from a slow-moving carriage. Of course, I didn't
take time, time I had, to check my answers. There was no need. I was superior
and I'd already decided I couldn't get anything wrong...
A word floats up out of the vast magic
eight ball of my consciousness: arrogance. I don't need to do what other people
have to do… and even as I say the syllables I feel them crack open like the
spine of an old book and I'm staring at what my arrogance is meant to mask - my
terrible fear I'm a failure and always will be.
I want to snap the book shut. This is too much
information. I’m fully aware of my insecurities and self-loathing, they’re old
familiar friends. But the idea that I’ve been unaware of their full workings in
me, that I haven’t seen the defenses they’ve generated, unattractive character
defects, ultimately self-sabotaging – a protective covering has been ripped off
and I’m lost in a shameful exposure. I'm still at a point where to see
something about myself that isn't flattering, that means I'm not perfect, that
above all is something I don't already know, doesn't feel like the starting
point of change; it feels like confirmation of every terrible thing I've ever
thought about myself. I'm not strong enough to look. Not yet. Not yet…
…and yet. Flashes of insight, even those I want
to turn my back on, leave their traces behind. I know I’ve seen something
important – my arrogance and how it works against me is something I stand of
chance of changing. In the coming days, driving to that temp job and the one
after it, meeting strangers who know nothing about me, and at night, making
sure I have clean clothes, setting the alarm clock, doing things to get ready
to do something I don’t want to do, I’m surprised to find myself looking for that
arrogance, not dreading that I’ll see it but wanting now to see it so I can try
to let it go.
The first check arrives
from the temp agency. It's a small sum in the scheme of things but enough to
get me through. I'm at the bank, endorsing it, when I see the letters of my
name as they flow from my pen. That's who I am, that's me - and on this day,
I'm the person who is taking action, doing what needs to be done. There's no
shame in that...I'm smiling as I walk to my car. I'm the person who is doing
what needs to be done.
