In the beginning, since the chemical she was working with was supposedly harmless, at the end of the day she poured what she had left down the drain, like they did upstairs. One morning one of the supervisors found out and bawled her out. He instructed her then, like she was stupid instead of having only been following the order she’d been given by all the other supervisors, that from then on she should just let what was left in the pan evaporate rather than pour it down the drain. If it was so harmless, Fe did not understand why it couldn’t be poured out as the other chemicals were, but she gritted her teeth, said she would do as he said and after he left, she cried from rage since nobody had ever raised his voice to her like that before.

And at the end of the three months she was done and she got another raise.

She considered herself a kind of specialty person at Acme International, and as a matter of fact that is exactly what she was called officially. So, just like a specialty person, reserved for only the toughest jobs, after she was done she returned to being a materials dispatcher trainee to wait out the next big assignment.

But the next big assignment did not come. Instead came two men from the U.S. Attorney General’s Office directly to Fe one day and told her that she was going to get a subpoena.

“A subpoena?” Fe repeated, eyes wide and blinking at the two men in suits and ties and looking so official-like and very intimidating, having stopped production just to come to tell Fe this. “Did I do some bad?” she asked.

They did not answer whether she had done nothing bad, but instead told her that Acme International was going to assign a counselor on her behalf and that furthermore she shouldn’t say nothing about it to no one, not even to any of the rotating foremen or the supervisors. “If anyone has problems with our coming to talk with you, have them call us,” one said, and then they left like a couple of gumshoes out of “Dragnet.”

There was nobody to ask about it at Acme International since Fe was told by the federal government that she must not talk about her subpoena to no one. In the next few weeks, Fe was so upset, she could hardly keep up with her quotas much less earn any bonuses. Meanwhile the red ring around the nose, glue breath, big dried spots on her legs, and one constant fire drill going on in her head were doing nothing for her once-a-fairy-tale life with Casey.

“Mom,” she went to Sofi one night after work, “I’m gonna lose my career and I do ___ ___ know why!”

“Well, ’jita, I don’t really think you could call that job a career …”