“You’re a machine,” Mom said, from her chair.
“I could use some water,” I said.
She pointed vaguely toward the house. “There’s a pitcher in the fridge.”
That night, after I showered at their place because I was too spent to drive home covered in grime, I walked past the living room and heard my own voice coming from the television. I stopped in the hallway.
My father had cast the video from his phone to the screen.
There I was, enormous and unavoidable, bent under a bundle of shingles, hair stuck to my face, making the unglamorous effort-sounds of someone doing genuinely difficult physical work. The caption at the bottom of the screen, in my father’s caption style, read: Look at this joke trying to prove she’s useful.
My uncle had replied with a meme of a raccoon in a hard hat holding a tiny hammer.
