White, and in the minority
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She speaks English. Her co-workers don’t. Inside a rural chicken plant, whites struggle to fit in.
It was minutes before the end of the first shift, and the beginning of the second, and the hallways at the chicken plant swarmed with workers coming and going. One pulled a hairnet over her curly hair, giggling at a joke. Two others exchanged kisses on the cheek. A woman with a black ponytail hugged everyone within reach. And a thin, ashen woman, whom no one greeted or even seemed to notice, suddenly smiled.
There he was. Standing near the lockers. Tall and crew-cut. Her boyfriend.
“Hi,” said Heaven Engle, 20.
“Hey,” replied Venson Heim, 25.
They met every day at this time, before he started his shift as a mechanic at Bell & Evans Plant 2, and she started hers as “I don’t know what they call it; I just check the chicken.” It was the hardest moment of her day. She knew she was about to go at least eight hours without speaking English, or probably anything at all, in a plant where nearly all of the workers were Latino and spoke Spanish, and she was one of the few who wasn’t and didn’t.
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