Page 48 of Things You Save in a Fire
SETTLING IN ATthe station was both easier and harder than I’d expected.
Over the next few shifts, I noticed a few important things about the crew.
One: They insisted on treating me like a lady. Sort of. To the extent that they could remember to.
In a way, this was a good thing. It wasn’t the blistering hatred that Captain Harris had led me to expect. It was still a problem, though. They wouldn’t curse in front of me, for example. I’d walk into a room just as Tiny was saying, “What the fuck?” and he’d duck his head, guilty, and change it to “frick.”
“You can say ‘fuck,’ Tiny,” I’d say.
But then he’d scold me. “Watch your mouth.”
“Stop treating me like a girl!”
“Youarea girl.”
I couldn’t shift anyone’s thinking. Curse words were not for females. Same for bawdy conversations, bodily functions, and jokes in general.Case wouldn’t even say the word “fart” in front of me. He’d just glance my way and say “toot.” If I was in the room, they held everything back that wasn’t PG. Over and over, I’d walk into the kitchen and watch them all fall silent.
“What?” I’d demand.
“Not for your ears,” Case would say. “Scram.”
I don’t think they were actually trying to exclude me—not consciously, anyway. It was a type of chivalry, I think. They were trying to be polite, and possibly respectful. But their idea of what it meant to be female was off, and I couldn’t seem to recalibrate it.
I was, for example, a huge fan of cursing. The power of it, the rule-breaking shock of it. The year my mother left, I cursed incessantly—in front of my dad, in fact.Withmy dad. And he was too heartbroken and angry and disoriented to stop me. I’d fix him a drink or two, and fix myself one that was “virgin” (though it wasn’t), and we’d sit at the kitchen table eating Pop-Tarts and complaining about everything we could think of. Especially women.
“Women,” my dad would say scornfully.
“Preaching to the choir, buddy,” I’d say, only half joking. “Women are the worst.”
Later, when my dad married Carol, we both had to stop cursing. She didn’t like it. If we wanted to curse, she sent us to the garage.
So now, being the reason the guys at the house had to use limp substitutes like “frig” and “heck” and “dang” kind of made me feel like my stepmother.
“Guys,” I kept trying to tell them, “Ilikecursing. It’s one of my favorite hobbies.”
But the captain shook his head. “Not appropriate.”
They also kept making the assumption I was weak, which really struck me as odd. Hadn’t they all watched me do nine one-arm pull-ups on the first day? I’d bet a thousand dollars that Case couldn’t even do one pull-up using both arms and a leg. And yet they opened doors for me. They reached things on high shelves. They’d take heavy equipment from me and say, “I’ve got it.”
In itself, this wasn’t bad. I took it in the spirit it was meant. They were being kind. They were helping. It was more than I’d dared to hope for on my drive up from Texas, when I’d feared they were just going to glare at me all the time.
But there was a downside to it: the assumption that I couldn’t do those things myself. The guys weren’t holding doors for each other, or helping each other carry equipment. If they had to carry the hundred-pound roof saw for me, I was the last person they were going to hand it to when it was time to use it.
It’s easy to fixate on the size difference between men and women, but there are actually plenty of ways that being smaller can benefit you in a fire. You’re lighter. You’re lower to the ground and more nimble. You can squeeze through spots no big guy can navigate.
Remember that valor award I got in Austin for rescuing a school bus full of kids? That bus had slid off an icy road into a ravine and crumpled like an accordion. I’d been the only one small enough to wedge myself in. I was the one who pried all those kids out because I was the only one who could fit.
We all have our different upsides.
But that’s not how the guys saw it.
I didn’t want to reject the kindness when one of the guys tried to carry the hose for me—but Ididwant to reject the notion that I couldn’t do it myself. I finally settled on a phrase for every time one of the guys started to do something for me: “I’ve got it,” I started saying. “Keeps me strong.”
Half the time, they’d do it anyway.
It was kindly meant. And limiting. Both.
The other thing the guys kept insisting was that women had no sense of humor. Where did this idea come from? Over and over in those early weeks, I’d crack jokes that nobody laughed at. Jokes I knew would’ve been funny in Austin.
