Brutalities by Margo Steines

Author:Margo Steines
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2023-08-26T00:00:00+00:00

A couple years later, I started working as a freelance subcontractor, outside of the union. I knew the work and the business well enough that I didn’t want to be told when I was allowed to have a cup of coffee or take a bathroom break anymore. That’s what I told myself, and it was true. But the other, bigger truth was that I didn’t want to be “the girl” anymore. I was a card-carrying journeyman ironworker, licensed to weld and erect steel in every United State and southern Canada. I had graduated at the top of my apprentice class and earned a prestigious award from the Department of Buildings. I had worked on Nouvels, Gehrys, Calatravas, the new Freedom Tower. I had seen them at their most unpretty, and I had, in some small way, been part of what made them stand. But my name on-site, always, was still The Girl.

Every new man that came on my crew would give me his coffee order, assuming I was the apprentice. And every morning, every season, I still put on two sports bras and two shirts because I was afraid of my nipples showing through my clothes. I had grown my hair out, so I covered it with a bandana, secretly jealous of my one female coworker who brushed out her waist-length hair in the shanty every afternoon, giving no fucks. The work it took to maintain my image of desexualized indifference was heavy, always, and I understood that no matter how good I got at the job, it might never go away.

If you know how to work with metal, you can play materials god and change some of its elemental properties. Take steel and temper it correctly, and you’re left with a material that is stronger and tougher, with improved ductility and decreased brittleness. Tempering steel is simple: heat it to the appropriate temperature for the alloy you’re working with, which will be very high but below the melting point, and hold it at that temperature for about two hours. Then, quench it in cool water or oil and heat it slowly at a more moderate temperature. Tempering makes steel more useful for the tasks of daily living. When you’ve completed those steps, you’ll have the kind of metal that is appropriate for a knife blade, a hand tool, or an automotive part.

When I left New York to move to Hawai’i, I took a small bag of welding tools with me. I had a plan to work for my friend Elko on his farm, doing manual labor and managing his crew of workers. I knew metalwork was the most efficient way for me to make money, but I didn’t know how to arrive in a new place and get a metal job. Even though I had been welding for almost a decade and carried nearly every license a welder could have, I still felt unqualified—not because I was new, but because I was a girl.

In liberal New York, the unions

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