Office Auntie

This week, we hope you will enjoy your first day on the new job with Rachelle Cruz’ “Office Auntie,” who warmly introduces you to your new workplace, and its unusual tasks. ~ Julian and Fran, June 11, 2023

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Office Auntie

By Rachelle Cruz

Look, I don’t just let anyone call me Auntie. But you’re a temp, and you’ll be gone before you know it, so I’m okay with being your temporary relative.

Don’t tell anyone else, they get jealous. No need to mince words. Your expiration date is in the job title.

Welcome to Phil’s Remittances #XR256.

And no, I don’t want to talk about the accident. That’s all anyone who first lands here wants to dish about. You can watch the outpost news feeds, sponsored by Phil’s News and Antics, but it’s ancient history.

I know you were hired to work in the Archives, but we’ll get to the workload in a minute, okay, Temp?

I give the best tours of the office because I get the boring stuff out of the way first. A brief overview: here are the bathrooms, the break room, the regular cubes, the window offices (you’ll want to avoid those), the copy room, you know, your basic, standard-operating office on the outpost.

Phil’s people ordered this office’s construction right in conjunction with the portraitists’ work on the inaugural monument. You know the one, the “Phil’s Girl” logo that lives on the surface of each of his outposts. The portraitists and workers sent their earnings back to their families on Earth or elsewhere here from this very office.

It should’ve gone as planned, like any one of his other offices. Phil’s logo done in a week flat. The welcome banner comes first, he’d said about the construction of his growing network. They look at her and forget all their troubles. And next are the remittance offices because that’s what keeps these outposts humming along. He meant that’s how the cash flows in and out of these places. Keeps the workers’ babies back at home fed. Dehydrators working. Hospital and tuition bills paid.

The portraitists were well-paced to finish in time. They’d carved the contours of “Phil’s Girl’s” bowl-cut bangs and her deep-set eyes . . . but you know, the infamous accident.

Fine, I’ll give you the lowdown so you’ll quit asking me. Better to hear it from me than from anyone else here. My colleagues weren’t there, and they’d no doubt serve you up some basura about what happened. The portraitists didn’t get to the signature gleam on her cherubic cheeks, what Phil calls the “light of possibility.” What he says is his reason for everything—building his brand and his family, repurposing carceral labor, and establishing his legacy in space.

Now this is the statue that memorializes that accident, chiseled from clay and silicate. It’s a miniature rendering of “Phil’s Girl” if the portrait were, in fact, finished on time . . . and if all of those people didn’t die. This projection overlapping the bottom half of the statue is archival footage. She’s only five right here, covering a giggle with a hand and squinting a smile at whomever is recording. See how the footage completes what wasn’t finished.

The portraitists’ names aren’t written anywhere near the memorial, but I’ve got them etched in my memory. But let’s move on from the lobby and stop dwelling on the dead. Bursts of light fray my vision when I look too long at the statue.

Phil was nostalgic for office buildings like this. Can you imagine? Nostalgic for fluorescent lighting that nettles at your concentration and manila envelopes that slice your hands open. The monied are strange like that. What they’re really nostalgic for is magazine covers emblazoned with their faces and names, the aspirational Top 100. The box-and-grid style isn’t really my thing—in fact, this entire outpost just isn’t . . . ideal but then there’s the work. The work makes it all worth it, doesn’t it?

That’s what they want us to say, yeah?

Sweet—

Pay no mind to these papers, they wave and rustle from time to time, but that’s what they do, and it’s none of your business. 

Ah yes, sweetie, this is the break room. It’s no question that this is my favorite place, and I’ve even figured out a way to screen that tinny smell out of rations. It’s the dehydrator over there that keeps humming with daing and smoked milkfish.

Go ahead. Take a deep breath. There’s nothing more alive than brine, the way it waters your mouth, and there’s that lick reminiscent of a hot grill.

And to think, our ancestors’ coworkers used to complain about the stink. Now they can’t get enough.

Tina over there oversees the Party Planning Committee; Raul’s on Safety; and Sofia isn’t on any committee because she quote “doesn’t like to bring work home with her” end quote. Okay, Sofia. You wouldn’t be munching on those mock honey puffs if I weren’t on the Goodies Committee, right?

Committees work. They get the job done. You know, the one besides the work you were hired for.

Wave to the temp, Sofia.

Listen, I might’ve made up the Goodies Committee, but I’ve been here longer than anyone else, and I will not endure what they camouflage for food, and I won’t let anyone else suffer under my watch. You now fall under that category so please tuck your sad sandwich into the compost bin. You’ll thank me later.

It’s too bad you were hired last month. I threw the best potluck for all of us outpost workers. Everyone took their rations, then elevated them—edible. We’ll throw another one at the end of the month, and if you’re still here, you should come!

Anyway, this is my favorite window. You can see the twinkling on the pathways signaling ships home or away. On the foggiest days, or when I forget my lunch box and have to head back to the generator-lit office when everyone’s gone home, the lights are the softest bite of yolky moon. For a moment, it makes me forget the transport lines of workers shuttling back and forth into and out of clamshell doors, clutching onto the rails of the airstairs. This particular window is also where sound bounces from the main hallway, so you can catch all the latest tsimis here. But let’s keep that a secret between us.

Did you know that Phil’s girl wasn’t actually his daughter? She belonged to an ex of his. Someone he dated for only a month. His marketing team thought he’d attract more clients and partners with a more approachable image. So, that poor girl became his logo, and of course, no one knows her actual name, but she’s the inaugural stamp on each outpost, each vehicle roving outside of these windows. Remember—secret.

This is home base. The cubes. I like to think that they represent plush patches in a soft, sprawling quilt. Tina calls me sentimental for saying that, but Tina’s would be butterscotch yellow. The day she stops smoothing out her kid’s star-flecked drawings onto her cube’s walls is the day I quit. Raul’s is a velvet sky, the way his tenor reaches the ceiling above his work is heavenly.

Tina says that nothing undoes a place like this more than our fullness. The executives can’t help but be absorbed by it. I don’t know about that, but hunger arrives for everyone. I’ve seen it.

And, well, there’s Sofia’s cube looking like a crumpled shoebox. Her quilt square would just be a blank sheet of paper. No surprise there though, right? Everyone has to have their office grump.

Here—

Excuse you for a second. Please keep your eyes off my clipboard and focused on the rest of the tour. The papers get agitated by the presence of strangers.

To reiterate what I said about remittances in the training feed, the sender sets aside a portion or nearly their entire paycheck to their families or friends back home. The sender makes life possible for the recipient. Food, and if there’s enough left over, a bit of luxury. No one sends them out anymore, it’s obsolete technology, actually featured at the transport stop’s display (of course we went on a staff field trip to check out the exhibit), but the higher-ups are studying the Archives to process market strategy, blah, blah, blah.

The last time remittances were sent was during that portrait incident.

You’re right. Not incident. Or accident, really. An outrage. A tragedy. Other instant monetary exchanges didn’t reach this far out at the time. No signal.

So yes, it’s this batch of remittance receipts to and from the portraitists that we’re filing and examining.

It’s like exhuming the dead because it is.

As archivists, we’re not allowed to see the figures. Most of the forms we file are redacted. I’d say 75 to 80 percent of the forms are blacked out. As a data junkie, it’s disappointing. Actually, it’s downright enraging. But that isn’t the real reason we’re here, is it?

And here are the window offices and the executives. And the ones who sign our paychecks. The glass on these doors is frosted so we can’t peek inside, and the lettering of their names etched on the surface are mirrored so we’re left with our own stares.

Just wave, then nod. That’s all they expect out of us anyway. Remember, processing data for market strategy. They like when we repeat our primary function back to them. It makes them feel like we’re all in it together making progress toward an innovation that was an innovation generations ago. They call me Auntie, too, though, and my freeze-dried potted meat caldereta makes their lives a little less depressing because can you imagine working an entire career mired in the belief that you know the definition to the word innovation? And that you’ve spent your most recent past convincing others of that utterly inaccurate definition?

The Archives. This is where we all practically live, besides our cubes. This is what we deal with daily. The paperwork. Here are the original blank forms. That trio of gold bars on the forms with the words Additional Messagedon’t seem like much but they ring with possibility. This blank form was an invitation for secrets, for evidence, for proof of life between islands, countries, outposts, planets. Between people.

Remember, we don’t see the figures. Besides, the money’s long been spent.

Listen, Raul smells the resentment from about half of the forms he’s filed. Sometimes their secrets spill onto our desks, reheating our caffeine drip, deepening the bitter, or lightening the sweet. It depends on the message. Tina hears their voices. And I think you do, too.

Don’t call them that. Walk a little faster, Temp. We don’t say the G-word in here. At least not in front of the window offices.

Plus, they don’t know about the ghosts, but I don’t know if you could even call them that if they’re not linked psychically to a physical body but what do I know?

I can call them that because I’ve been here long enough, and now we’re at the restrooms anyway so they can’t hear us.

And here’s the stall where nothing echoes. There’s the artificial aloe vera and the fake necklace vine that somehow absorb the smell. No one knows why, but we don’t question gifts, do we?

What drew you in? Was it the carbon steeped into our fingertips, a smell you can’t scrub off no matter how many times you wash your hands? Or was it the delicious puffs because you look starved? Don’t worry, I’m not sending you home with just dessert.

For me, it was the word please. I’ve lost count of the number of times it’s squeaked under my bedroom at night in their voices. The trill of their pleas like cleaning bots pecking at crumbs underneath my door. I wasn’t scared, no, I just wanted to figure out what they were asking. What were their requests? The sad news is that they only know how to say one thing: what’s written down. The good? They’ve figured out how to sing and emote even though they stick by their own scripts.

So, we created our own little Musical Committee. Raul figured out who the singers are. He does fill in as tenor from time to time. Tina’s gathered the actors. We’ve put on a musical once. The Sound of Music. A classic. They really leaned into that second half. The half about the fascists that everyone wants to forget. And it’s literally the sound of music, the words they know and the words that haunt them, the ones they use to haunt the world, to animate Maria and the von Trapp children. It took six hours on a weekend in the corner office. Imagine “Bless my homeland forever.”

I think we all felt better afterward, and the papers fell into an organized pile. Alphabetical, of course.

I know it’s hard to believe. Disembodied sheets of paper putting on a musical when I can barely carry a tune. I played the role of rapt audience member and stage auntie whose eyes spilled tears at every number, and I think that’s just as important as acting teacher and choir director.

Yeah, we called them “heroes” after they died. But that didn’t stick. What’s the point of being a hero when you’re filed away in some dusty basement, your handwriting fading as the years stretch on?

You wouldn’t believe the messages they carry. Last words read or heard are equally as important as last words spoken. I think that’s why our kababayan chose their loved ones’ words to sing, speak, whisper, and growl in this half-life of theirs. They carry this generosity as both haunting and haunted. Both briefly and deeply burdened by what they couldn’t pay back.

You didn’t hear this from me, but the portraitists organized. It was their fifth portrait, and they were through. They lit a fire on each of “Phil’s Girl’s” cheeks—the light of possibility, blazing across the surface of this outpost. But of course, Phil wasn’t having it. An accident, all right.

It’s not just butterscotch and musicals though, is it? The real reason you’re here, Temp.

You’re looking for someone, right?

We’re all looking for someone. Not a hero. Or the idea of heroes. Raul was hoping to find his brother, a dead ringer for Liesl von Trapp, a startling soprano to his tenor. Tina’s mom was the nanny to one of the portraitists’ five children. She was the real Maria.

I know because I was there, and to hear my friends’ voices again . . .

We’ve long stopped calling it the Archives. At least in front of one another. Orphanage sounds cruel, but it’s true, isn’t it? And I suppose we all now belong here, too. Personally, I like to call it the Nursery.

Even Sofia hammered out a heart on the door’s signage. Shocking, I know.

The papers seem satisfied when we tuck them into our freshly washed lunch boxes. I never thought I’d find bureaucratic paperwork to be so adorable, but here we are. They rustle and sigh and sing their words to themselves and to each other lullabies on the best days. Dirges on the worst.

Here we are. Step lightly. They don’t sleep but they pretend to wake up when we tiptoe through the doorway.

I know you’ve already started to hear this one’s message.  Yes, the one on my clipboard seems to know you. What’re they saying? Go ahead, lean in.

Listen:

For you. Don’t forget to feed yourself. A little extra before the sweetness dissolves, too.

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Thank you for joining our journey this week.

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Rachelle Cruz (she/her) is a writer, poet, mom, and lover of shrimp chips. She lives in Southern California.

“Office Auntie,” © Rachelle Cruz, 2023.