A Very Soft Coffin

Changa discovered he has diabetes when he became very intoxicated with his friends one night and had to be taken to the hospital.  Since then, he has been told about his condition and what he must do in regards to food and diet to control it.  I did not know him when it he first became aware of it.  I do not know exactly what the medical staff he has seen has told him, but I do know that there are other Mexican employees with the sickness who have tried to explain to him that many of the things he chooses to eat are not good for him.  Wh I found out about the diabetes because he was very down one day and began talking of death and returning to Mexico to die.  Unknown to me at the time,  had been drinking with his friends and again had go to the hospital because of the amount of sugar in his blood. I assume at the hospital he was again warned about what would happen to him if he continued to disregard his sugar intake.  There were doctor appointments that followed and he told me about how he had too much sugar in his blood.  Afterward,  I would see him drinking Coca Cola, eating whole fried chickens from the gas station or wolfing down two Hostess cupcakes.  I would go up to him in the break room, take the evil items he was ingesting and try to explain to him how he was making himself sick.  I would show him ingredient the ingredient lists (he can barely read Spanish, let alone any English), show him the where the diet sodas were at thecompany soda machine and print out in Spanish explanations of the types of foods diabetics should avoid.  At first, he seemed to follow what I said, and I felt like I had shown him the right path; I felt helpful.   But after time, I would catch him once again with items in his lunch bag that were inappropriate.   I tried going  through his lunch bag to make sure that everything in it was healthy, like some kind of food officer.  Eventually, I began to feel like a nag, his mother, an annoyance.  Like his other friends at the bakery, I had decided enough was enough and that it wasn't that he didn't understand, it was that he didn't believe it or that he didn't care.  He asked me about cemeteries in this country, how people are buried and how much it costs.  I explained to him about the cost of a plot, a casket, a vault (law in Minnesota) and headstones.  He told me that in his village in Mexico, the plot in the cemetery is free and that the cost is very little to bury someone.  It is big business here, often, tens of thousands of dollars are spent making the departed comfortable in their fine casket and sealed vault.  Whenever Changa is feeling ill, he begins talking of going back home.  He wants to be in the village plot, a soft plush coffin, near his family.

The Heat

Today was the hottest working day I can recall.  The high outside was 95 F, but inside the bakery, with all of the ovens going, it was oppressive.  There was sweat dripping off the faces of the bakers.  Changa, my assistant, was very crabby.  He laughed very few times and seemed annoyed at all of the tasks he needed to do, yet if he was not making pastry, he would have had to work on bread.  There was nothing to be done to cheer him up.  We did spend some time in the cooler as some of the pastries could not take the heat, so we brought them in the cooler to finish.  I also had him do some work packing cookies in the office.  This seemed to annoy the office manager, who is racist towards the Mexicans, but I did not care.  Bill sits in the air-conditioned office all day, staring at a computer screen.  He does not have to work in the stifling heat, lift 50 pound bags of flour, take hot pans out of 400 degree F ovens, so I do not care if he is put off.

There is something intimate about sharing these bewildering work conditions.  The faces we make at each other, the weary smiles.  It brings us closer.  It makes us one.