Caught Between Worlds by Lance V. Packer

Author:Lance V. Packer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: family relationships parents expectations alcohol, teenage romance understanding confusion, culture conflict traditional modern life, teen friendship bullying loner, Native American heritage Alaska Aleut
Publisher: Lance Packer
Published: 2021-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

14

Shake-Up

Catherine

Truly, as Cal noticed, Catherine had changed. What started as a pin-prick in Mrs. Irving’s class had grown into a painful ache. Now, somehow, she couldn’t shake the question, “What are the choices you have in Biorka?” or Ruth’s crazy scheme of them going to college together.

Catherine would be in class, concentrating on Mr. Campbell’s explanation of a point in shorthand technique, then, before she realized it, her thoughts would have drifted off completely, to daydreaming about herself attending college classes or working at a big-city job. Several times teachers had caught her inattentiveness, and she had to ask to have their questions repeated. It was uncomfortable to have this happen, but Catherine couldn’t seem to shake it. She couldn’t get those thoughts out of her head.

During vacation, she worked at the crab-can building, a few days when one of the regulars couldn’t make it. She was glad to get the money, but what she thought of and saw there made her even more confused.

She worked with nine other women, several of them young and recently married. They stood at the packing table, taking crab meat out of the big trays, packing it in the small cans, weighing each can for the correct amount and putting them on the conveyor belt, which went to the sealing machine. The women all wore large, white aprons and caps, rubber gloves and boots, and gaily chatted with each other about this and that: the gossip of the town, how their children were doing, or what their husbands were working on. Meanwhile, the machinery hummed and clanked, and the lights burnt brightly in the working area, fading into the recesses of the building. On and on this went, hour after hour. After work, the women pulled their hooded coats close against the chilly wind, and went home to their domestic duties.

Catherine watched these women for hours on end and wondered about them, about herself and her future. She wondered... and got nowhere.

Back in school, it was no better: she watched her friends and saw in them the white-aproned, rubber-protected women of the cannery—the mothers-to-be, who would raise more girls, to in turn become white-aproned, rubber-protected women... That was as far as she could get.

That life was the known, but she wasn’t sure she liked it. She was tempted by the unknown, the Outside, yet she feared it, too. She felt caught and she hated it.

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