It's a real ocean-going ship. An old, shitty, rusty1 one that probably cost about five bucks2 at the ship junkyard. But it carries cars, and it goes through the water, and it doesn't sink.
The ship is just like the van, except bigger, with more people. But they eat the same stuff, sing the same songs, and sleep just as rarely as ever. By now, Y.T. finds it perversely3 comforting. She knows that she's with a lot of other people like her, and that she's safe. She knows the routine. She knows where she belongs.
And so finally they come to the Raft. No one has told Y.T. this is where they're going, but by now it's obvious. She ought to be scared. But they wouldn't be going to the Raft if it was as bad as everyone says.
When it starts coming into view, she half expects them to converge4 on her with gaffer's tape again. But then she figures out it's not necessary. She hasn't been causing trouble. She's been accepted here, they trust her. It gives her a feeling of pride, in a way.
And she won't cause trouble on the Raft because all she can do is escape from their part of it onto the Raft per se. As such. The real Raft. The Raft of a hundred Hong Kong B-movies and blood-soaked Nipponese comic books. It doesn't take much imagination to think of what happens to lone5 fifteen-year-old blond American girls on the Raft, and these people know it.
Sometimes, she worries about her mother, then she hardens her heart and thinks maybe the whole thing will be good for her. Shake her up a little. Which is what she needs. After Dad left, she just folded up into herself like an origami bird thrown into a fire.
There is kind of an outer cloud of small boats surrounding the Raft for a distance of a few miles. Almost all of them are fishing boats. Some of them carry men with guns, but they don't fuck around with this ferry The ferry swings through this outer zone, making a broad turn, finally zeroing in on a white neighborhood on one flank of the Raft. Literally6 white. All the boats here are clean and new. There's a couple of big rusty boats with Russian lettering on the side, and the ferry pulls up alongside one of them, ropes are thrown across, then augmented7 with nets, gang-planks, webs of old discarded tires.
This Raft thing does not look like good skating territory at all. She wonders if any of the other people on board this ferry are skaters. Doesn't seem likely. Really, they are not her kind of people at all. She has always been a dirty scum dog of the highways, not one of these happy singalong types. Maybe the Raft is just the place for her.
They take her down into one of the Russian ships and give her the grossest job of all time: cutting up fish. She does not want a job, has not asked for one. But that's what she gets. Still, no one really talks to her, no one bothers to explain anything, and that makes her reluctant to ask. She has just run into a massive cultural shock wave, because most of the people on this ship are old and fat and Russian and don't speak English.
For a couple of days, she spends a lot of time sleeping on the job, being prodded8 awake by the hefty Russian dames10 who work in this place. She also does some eating. Some of the fish that comes through this place looks pretty rank, but there's a fair amount of salmon11. The only way she knows this is from having sushi at the mall -- salmon is the orange-red stuff. So she makes some sushi of her own, munches12 down on some fresh salmon meat, and it's good. It clears her head a little.
Once she gets over the shock of it and settles into a routine, she starts looking around her, watching the other fish-cutting dames, and realizes that this is just like life must be for about 99 percent of the people in the world. You're in this place. There's other people all around you, but they don't understand you and you don't understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling13 anyway. In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work. And the only way to get out of it is to quit, cut loose, take a flyer, and go off into the wicked world, where you will be swallowed up and never heard from again.
She's not especially good at cutting up fish. The big stout14 Russian chicks -- stomping15, slab-faced babushkas -- keep giving her a hassle. They keep hovering16, watching her cut with this look on their face like they can't believe what a dork she is. Then they try to show her how to do it the right way, but still she's not so good at it. It's hard, and her hands are cold and stiff all the time.
After a couple of frustrating17 days, they give her a new job, farther down the production line: they turn her into a cafeteria dame9. Like one of the slop-slingers in the high school lunchroom. She works in the galley18 of one of the big Russian ships, hauling vats19 of cooked fish stew20 out to the buffet21 line, ladling it out into bowls, shoving it across the counter at an unending line consisting of religious fanatics22, religious fanatics, and more religious fanatics. Except this time around, there seem to be a lot more Asians and hardly any Americans at all.
They have a new species here too: people with antennas23 coming out of their heads. The antennas look like the ones on cop walkie-talkies: short, blunt, black rubber whips. They rise up from behind the ear. The first time she sees one of these people, she figures it must be some kind of new Walkman, and she wants to ask the guy where he got it, what he's listening to. But he's a strange guy, stranger than all of the others, with a permanent thousand-yard stare and a bad case of the mumbles24, and he ends up giving her the creeps so bad that she just shoves an extra-large dose of stew in his face and hurries him on down the line. From time to time, she actually recognizes one of the people who were in her van. But they don't seem to recognize her; they just look right through her. Glassy-eyed. Like they've been brainwashed.
Like Y.T. was brainwashed.
She can't believe it has taken her this long to figure out what they were doing to her. And that just makes her more pissed.
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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bucks
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| n.雄鹿( buck的名词复数 )；钱；（英国十九世纪初的）花花公子；（用于某些表达方式）责任v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的第三人称单数 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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perversely
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| adv. 倔强地 | |
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converge
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| vi.会合；聚集，集中；(思想、观点等)趋近 | |
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lone
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| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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Augmented
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| adj.增音的 动词augment的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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prodded
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| v.刺，戳( prod的过去式和过去分词 )；刺激；促使；（用手指或尖物）戳 | |
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dame
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| n.女士 | |
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dames
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| n.（在英国）夫人（一种封号），夫人（爵士妻子的称号）( dame的名词复数 )；女人 | |
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salmon
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| n.鲑，大马哈鱼，橙红色的 | |
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munches
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的第三人称单数 ) | |
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babbling
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| n.胡说，婴儿发出的咿哑声adj.胡说的v.喋喋不休( babble的现在分词 )；作潺潺声（如流水）；含糊不清地说话；泄漏秘密 | |
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stomping
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| v.跺脚，践踏，重踏( stomp的现在分词 ) | |
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hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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frustrating
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| adj.产生挫折的，使人沮丧的，令人泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的现在分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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galley
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| n.（飞机或船上的）厨房单层甲板大帆船；军舰舰长用的大划艇； | |
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vats
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| varieties 变化，多样性，种类 | |
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stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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buffet
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| n.自助餐；饮食柜台；餐台 | |
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fanatics
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| 狂热者，入迷者( fanatic的名词复数 ) | |
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antennas
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| [生] 触角，触须（antenna的复数形式） | |
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mumbles
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| 含糊的话或声音，咕哝( mumble的名词复数 ) | |
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