Fe’s lawyer told her to get the data sheet from the company on the actual chemical that she had used on those parts and for which she was almost subpoenaed by the government for using. This took a lot of determination on Fe’s end, calling and coming by and each rotating foreman hiding and telling the girls to tell Fe he was out to lunch, until she finally left a message for the supervisor in charge of rotating foremen that she knew that they knew that the FBI was on her case, so not to give her no more crap about that chemical having been ether or she with her lawyer would sue each little rotating ass there, and if she felt like it, she’d give every name of everyone who had ever so much as been in charge of when she could take a coffee break to the FBI. (Fe, as you can guess, was no longer in the mood to play Acme’s star worker.)

Finally, the next time she went by, the rotating foreman of the week let her read it, although he would not let her take it away with her or photocopy it for her lawyer. So Fe sat down, patched up and in perpetual pain, with the manual in the foreman’s partitioned-off station, which he called his office. And she began to read, not Fe the manicured, made-up bride of a few months before but a Fe without even the nice insides she had when she had started at Acme International, about the chemical she more than once dumped down the drain at the end of her day, which went into the sewage system and worked its way to people’s septic tanks, vegetable gardens, kitchen taps, and sun-made tea.

The chemical must always be sealed, “reclaimed” is what the manual said. It should not be left to evaporate, it said too, because in fact it was (and this last part really got to Fe) heavier than air.

And if she had been supposedly letting it evaporate all those months she worked down there by herself, but it was heavier than air, then where had it gone? “It _____ wasn’t _____ rushing out __ the room!” Fe jumped up, and screamed at the foreman—who in any case was nobody in charge of her life no more, but a cholo who did not know enough to open up a manual so as to properly inform a girl who had only wanted to make some points with the company and earn bonuses to buy her house, make car payments, have a baby, in other words, have a life like people do on T.V.

“It didn’t go ___ the roof, and it ___ didn’t go ___ through that excuse ___ a vent without no hood down ___, neither!