Chapter #10After work - Settling in by: MirAli  She'd had to run, but she'd just made it back to the factory without going over her permitted break time. A small blessing, she somehow knew, considering how angry her boss would get at people who took even a minute too long to get back to work.
Maria's job had turned out to be cleaning and oiling parts of the machinery to keep the factory's dust and grime from contaminating the mechanisms and slowing production. It wasn't a hard job - mostly replacing filters and ensuring that fittings were greased - but it involved running around the facility all day from machine to machine and the factory was large enough that there was always something that needed fresh grease or a new filter. Overall, the job had a vaguely Dickensian child-labor feel to it, though that analogy hadn't crossed Maria's mind. To her it was simply exhausting.
Her co-workers has been mostly nice, though for some reason even most of the other Hispanic workers seemed to look down on her a bit. A few of the white workers, however, had been pretty awful. As Lisa, she'd had to put up with men ogling her, but with Maria's curves and her co-workers' knowledge that she couldn't complain without risking INS looking into things there were a handful of men who took advantage of that to get a grope or two in as Maria passed their stations during her work.
Maria was incredibly grateful when the day ended and she was able to finally go home and collapse onto her couch. For a few precious moments she simply relaxed before pulling out the file on Maria's life that she'd been given by the nonprofit but hadn't had time to read.
The first page was filled out in what she somehow knew was Maria's handwriting - her handwriting now, she realized as she jotted a note in the margin to compare and saw that it looked nothing like the writing of Lisa Hale. Apparently that had come with her new body along with Maria's language skills. Maria hadn't gone into much detail - she'd listed her hometown (Coyame, Mexico) and general information like her address, a few account passwords that the new Maria found she already knew, her family information (only child, mother and father passed), and that was about it.
Puzzled, the new Maria set the self-information form aside and looked at the other documents in the file. A typewritten note in English made no sense - though she did see her name, Maria Lopez, mentioned in it. Several more incomprehensible English pages followed. Just before she was fully discouraged, the new Maria found a typed summary, this time thankfully in Spanish.
To whomever this dossier is given:
Thank you for helping Maria. If our understanding of the process is correct, most of the papers in here have been incomprehensible to you. They are records of our meetings with the original Maria. Because we want our clients to trust us, we always give them copies of our notes. Since you are now Maria, you are entitled to copies of our notes from past meetings.
Feel free to verify them with an English-speaking friend whom you trust.
Also, we noticed that Maria's self-information sheet was not completely filled out. She's a little self-conscious about her lack of education and was afraid that mentioning she only had an elementary school education would prevent people from helping her.
We hope you are not too upset about this since we understand that after the process this will be your own level of education.
While we always encourage our clients to seek more education, we feel that we should warn you that, as sweet and kind as Maria is, she is not intellectually gifted. You may have noticed yourself struggling to understand discussion about the transfer after waking up as Maria. You should get accustomed to that feeling. We understand this may be hard, but the sooner you make peace with that and focus on Maria's many other wonderful qualities the more easily this process will be for you.
The new Maria read through the letter a couple of times, frowning in concentration. "¿Ellas piensan que soy estúpida?" [Do they think I'm stupid?] Maybe she'd gotten into more than she'd intended...   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
<<-- Previous · Outline · Recent Additions © Copyright 2025 MirAli (UN: mirali at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
CassieG has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work within this interactive story. Poster accepts all responsibility, legal and otherwise, for the content uploaded, submitted to and posted on Writing.Com. |