Thrust: A Novel

Back and forth and back and forth to the island, where she rose up and up. The pedestal was too wide for scaffolding, so after the iron frame was erected, some of us dangled from ropes and swung about inside, joining the pieces of her body. Endora was highly skilled at riveting. David was the most artful and efficient. I was quite delicately skilled with my hammer in hard-to-mold places — her nose, her eyes, her ears. We swarmed over steam-driven cranes and derricks like a swarm of human ants, conspiring and recombining, joining her body together.

Under our breath, we blessed the things we touched and made. From our different bodies and mouths and languages, blessings fell like flowers from our lips onto the ground and into the copper of her and into the water, every single day and night. Some of the blessings were for family members: May my mother or grandmother live through the night. May my husband be safe. May my brothers and sister find enough to eat. May this boy or this girl survive while they are held in the hands of others. Some were for the materials or the tools or the ropes and pulleys, or for the weather that surrounded and buffeted us: May this wood and plaster hold and carry us and all of our labor ever upward. May this steam-driven crane move her mighty neck and shoulders in the rhythm of our labor. May this storm pass us by without injury. And some of the blessings were malformed, half-thought, missing parts: May no one discover my fears, my secrets; may my family members not be deported; may the desires growing inside my body never be taken from me. May swirls of opium smoke comfort our suffering; may the laugh of an ample woman help me to breathe full in the chest; may this ache under my belly where my very sex seethes meet an equal want; may my desire be whetted without punishment or shame.

Because underneath our labor was our hunger.

We were men and women and humans and children of all different kinds. We were driven by our embodied existences: the need to eat, to shelter, to fuck, to work, to protect other bodies. We the body were driven to earn the money, since money was the only path to everything we needed: food and electricity and heat and blankets and medicine. Our bodies labored to the point of fatigue, so deep that we moved as if in a trance, like sleepwalkers.

It was our sweat that made her come. Our fucking burst open our fatigue and bred lust; our lust combusted into children. Some men loved women and the women loved the men back. Some men loved other men; some women, other women. There was a free flow of physical demand in the spaces we worked, in the workshops and warehouses and alleys and docks. Some of the children who worked among us had parents and others did not. Certain jobs were served best by small hands; others required a delicate touch. Some bodies did heavy work and some bodies bent and curled, tracing the shapes of the details we crafted. Some of us washed and cleaned and swept, carving an endless S in our backs. We worked together in waves and weaves, and when we went home at night, we were just ourselves again, apart from the work.

No one who worked to build her body died.

The girl slept on a blanket under Endora’s bed for many nights in a row. One night, after everyone else was asleep, the girl came to me. “You love David Chen,” she said, standing over my cot in the room I shared with John Joseph, Endora, and David. I could hear a symphony of soft snoring around me. But she was awake, and she meant for me to understand that she could see me. “You love him more than you’ve ever loved anything in your life. You desire him unto death.”

Her voice made my body tremble.

I looked across the room to where David lay sleeping. I had chosen a bed as far away from his as possible, but also one that would give me a good view of his back, so that I could watch over him as whatever voices and bodies and suffering moved through him in his sleep.