TARA PRAKASH

Revolutions

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The manager seems slightly surprised when I walk in on a brisk Saturday afternoon and ask to work at the Big Wheel Bikes bike shop.

“I want to intern to learn how to build and fix bikes,” I tell him. “I’ve always been good with my hands, and I do basic repairs on my neighbors’ bikes.” I add that I love to ride bikes, that I enjoy mountain biking in particular, gesturing to my purple Trek bike beside me. Dirt is caked into every crevice on the frame, tucked into the metal derailleur, the rusty top tube, the silver saddle rails.

He shrugs, “Sure, you can intern. Build a kids’ bike and let me know if you have any questions.” All the tools you’ll need are at the workstation table, he adds.

Then he moves to the front of the store to help a woman find a racing bike, leaving me in the back with the whirring of the heater as company. I look at the parts in front of me, scattered across the muddy carpet: pedals, two deflated wheels, handlebars, a plushy green seat and rod, the main frame. Shoot. I have no idea where to start.

A couple months pass, it’s December. I’m still an intern, unpaid. I’ve fallen in love with spinning chains, pedals cranking, screwdrivers turning. I’ve learned how to get grease out of denim. I’ve memorized the prices of the bikes, Trek, Marin, Kona. In moments of stress, I’ve found solace in the mechanical actions of pumping air into deflating rubber, wiping a muddied frame with a clean cloth, cranking wrenches to spin bolts and nuts.

I’m working in the back, using red and white calipers to true the wheel of a purple Marin, when the bell clangs and the door opens, letting in a blast of cold air. An older man comes in, wheeling a pale green Fuji in behind him. He tells us his name is Dillon, that he was biking to a meeting when his tire punctured on a nail. He needs it done now, he says. He promises to pay extra. The manager tells me to replace his tire, that I can come back to the Marin later.

I’m prying the punctured tube out of the tire, my fingers sore and aching under the weight of the rubber, when Dillon says, “I’ve never seen a girl work at a bike shop before. Shouldn’t you be working at a flower shop or a bakery or something?”

I look up, startled. Did I hear him right? He’s leaning against the doorway, his arms crossed over a neon Nike shirt. I’m not exactly sure what to say, not sure if there’s a right response. I stay quiet and finish tucking the new tube into the frame of the wheel. I don’t think the manager heard Dillon, and he doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t even thank me when I pump the new tire with air or when I screw the wheel to his bike frame, and within moments, the bell is clanging as the door bangs shut behind him. I go back to the Marin.

It’s summer now; the door is propped open with a cone. Dappled sunlight breaks through the large windows and falls across the bikes and the dark carpet in patterned rectangles. Bikes are crammed on the storage rack and lined up in tight rows on the shop floor, their taped handlebars shoving against each other.

I’ve been working at the shop for a couple hours when a man comes in with a little girl. She’s holding his hand, dressed in UnderArmour shorts that fall below her kneecaps. Her face immediately lights up when she walks down the steps, her neck craned to see the bikes propped up on the electric yellow wall.

“She needs a bike,” I overhear her dad say to the manager. “She recently learned how to ride, and she wants a two-wheeler for her eighth birthday.”

The girl is smiling wide, bouncing on the carpeted floor as she follows her dad through the store, and I’m reminded of my younger self, walking through a bike shop. “I want a blue bike,” the girl declares.

She’s wandering around for a few minutes, her dad and the manager talking about seat height and training wheels, when she sees me in the back. I’m hunched over on the tattered roller seat, using a flat head screwdriver to tighten the brakes of a vermillion Kona bike propped in a metal stand. My jeans and calloused hands are smudged dark, coated in grease and debris. The worktable, painted a fading black, is splintering, cluttered with chain breakers, spanners, and bottles of Tri-Flow chain lubricant. The sweet scents of glycol waft through the back of the shop.

She stands in the narrow doorway and watches me for a moment, her eyes focused on the turning screws, maroon from rust.

“Do you want to help me fix the bike?” I ask her. “I can show you how to tighten the brakes and how to pump a deflated tire.” She grins, says yes before I have even finished my sentence. I teach her which way to turn the wrench to tighten and loosen a bolt (“righty-tighty, lefty-loosey”), how to attach the nozzle of a bike pump to the valve in a tire to pump it with air, how to apply lubricant on a bike chain so it spins smoothly. I’m unable to change a broken chain without getting dirty and by the time we finish, our hands are dark with grease.

“I’m going to work at a bike shop soon,” she tells me as she’s leaving. When we’re done, she wipes her greasy hands on her shorts and skips out of the shop. I think of the girl and her greasy hands, hands too dirty for flowers and flour, for florist shops and bakeries, places where girls like her and I are ‘supposed’ to be. I think to myself, “That’ll change soon.”

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