Vivian I. Bikulege

Swallowing Clay

My water treatment career began in Savannah, Georgia in 1983. I knew nothing about the business. I was hired because I had spunk and a chemistry degree. I was fairly attractive which helps in sales. I was athletic with straight brown hair that fell to the middle of my back, long black eyelashes and a bright, white smile complimented by a dimple. Originally, I had aspired to be a doctor, went from pre-med to pre-law with the thought of becoming a lawyer. I left St. Andrews College with a double major in chemistry and politics but no plan to enter either medical or law school. Instead, after a three-year stint at an inside sales and customer service job for a laboratory, I became a technical sales representative.

I walked out on my first job. I moved to Savannah running away from Raleigh, NC, an affair with a married man and a two-year relationship with a younger guy from college. I was running away from my self. I was a mess and I needed to dive into something constructive. My new district sales manager was Tom Lockhart, a nice enough guy. Tall, he was almost boyish looking with strawberry blonde hair and open-minded enough to give me a chance in the very masculine world of chemical sales.

My first company car was a Buick Regal. It was pretty, kind of an opal emerald color and a helluva lot bigger than the Chevy Monza I bought after college graduation. I moved into a shotgun apartment on Reynolds Street with a lady living above me in her one-room apartment. My white, brick shanty was $185 per month and had a living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, all lined up in a row running back to front. I parked the Buick on the sidewalk in front of my small cement porch, more of a stoop really, with its black and white aluminum awning. My landlord’s house was in front of the apartments and Sam, his white beagle with black spots, would pay me visits, sticking his nose through my bedroom window that was level with the his backyard.

I began my job learning to inspect boilers, run chemical tests and drive back and forth to the clay fields in middle Georgia. Interstate 16 heading west from Savannah was a stretch of nothingness in 1984. It still is. I would set the car on cruise, brace my left foot against my right thigh, one hand on the wheel, one foot on the floor, read the newspaper with my free hand and listen to Joni Mitchell sing about “A Free Man in Paris” at the top of her lungs from the tape deck. I made this trip at least twice a month. I didn’t stay in Macon. That was too ritzy. I’d stay in Dublin and head up to the kaolin mines before dawn or stay closer to the work site in Milledgeville at the Villa North Hotel.

When I first started working in clay, two hard-ass technical managers knowledgeable in polymer chemistry trained me. The application of emulsion polymer to vacuum filters for clay retention was new to Calgon Corporation and we were on the cutting edge of the technology and some big dollars. Kaolin, or white gold, is mined, refined and used in paint and kaopectate and I guess you can never have enough of either consumer product. Howard and Roger weren’t impressed with this twenty-six year old female with no experience and a foul mouth, but that’s what they got and as time went on, I earned my place with them and in the organization as a persistent and successful salesperson.

Once we were competent with the chemistry, it was time to take it from Engelhard to other companies mining that pocket of white Georgia gold. There were Thiele, Anglo-American and Georgia Clay companies. I didn’t make great progress with them. Very little as a matter of fact, but they liked me coming around if for no other reason than to learn what was going on with their competitors.

Roy Walters was one of the good old boys I called on. He was a purchasing manager for Georgia Clay and although I would have bet that he knew nothing about the manufacture of kaolin, every salesman calling on the company had to touch base with him in order to talk to operations. He was overweight and very Southern. I was a forward, Yankee female trying to sell a product, make a buck, and move on to the next prospect. So I’d visit him, make small talk, and try to sell him on cost savings available through the miracle of Calgon chemistry.

After two or three sales calls, he told me he had a potential application. Please understand; this wasn’t the bath oil bead Calgon that most people are familiar with. I sold stuff that no one would ever bathe in – sulfites, bromines and chelants just to name a few. Roy’s opportunity was for a clay retention basin remote from the main plant. The turbidity in the holding pond was excessive and they wanted to reduce the suspended solids to make the water acceptable for reuse and the environment. Would I like to take a ride and see it? Sure, that would be great. So Roy and I hopped into his Chrysler, a big Beluga-white automobile. White cars made sense out here. The Georgia heat reflected off of the car and the fine, chalky kaolin dust blended with the car’s exterior.

We rode a little while on the backcountry roads dotted with abandoned houses and telephone poles. Roy talked about Georgia Tech football. I mostly listened. To get to the clay basin, you traveled along a road that was like riding atop a levee on the Mississippi River. Once we arrived, Roy stopped the car and asked if I wanted to get out. No, I can see the situation from here. I wasn’t sure what we could do chemically. The pond was mammoth and without much turbulence. You needed mixing energy to apply any polymer effectively and the volume of the basin would take a lot of polymer to treat it. A large recirculation pump would be in order to obtain the mixing. This was all good from a revenue and commission standpoint. Large treatment applications equated to more chemical. More chemical sales equaled more money trickling down to commission dollars in my pocket.

As I looked out the passenger side window over the opal white water, Roy leaned back in his seat. He held the steering wheel with his right hand and leaned his head against his left fist cocked up by the elbow he rested on the driver side door. He had a kind of mellow look on his face under tufts of white hair, beads of perspiration sliding down the sides of his puffy, red face, falling onto the collar of his short-sleeved, white cotton, button down shirt. Letting his eyes rest on my breasts with a half smile forming on his lips, he asked me, “Are those things were real? Can I touch them?” Sure they are and no you can’t. I was so stunned by the question, I laughed. I was totally amazed by the audacity of the question and although I covered my surprise with my laugh, my brown eyes must have opened wide to the insult as my mind raced to appraise the situation. I sat back in the white, leather passenger seat and looked out of the windshield. No longer assessing the chemical opportunity, I retreated into myself. Roy straightened up in the driver’s seat, put the car in drive and headed back to the main office, this time in silence. I believe I thanked him for his time when I got out of his car, climbed into my Buick, and headed home.

Interstate 16 is a long ride back to Savannah from Sandersville, maybe two and a half hours. The asphalt gives you a long time to think. As I drove past southern pine trees and exit signs, I reflected on the career path I was choosing. Everyday, I walked through industrial environments in my chlorine-stained jeans, tight golf shirts and steel-toed boots, my hair rolled in a bun and tucked underneath my hard hat. Eyes followed me and men often talked to my tits, not to my face or my mind. Incidents of this nature weren’t always that blatant or direct, but the innuendos were an everyday occurrence and I wasn’t innocent to that fact. I was playing the game. I knew that if I couldn’t get an appointment based on the brand name of the corporation I represented, the fact that I was female would open doors closed to my male counterparts. Men are curious. I’d make cold calls, wander in through the back door of a plant, talk to some laborer, learn the names of decision makers and then try the front door.

I kept that incident inside for about a week or two. I wasn’t sure I wanted to share it with my manager. I had been sexually harassed, verbally abused, wasn’t entirely surprised and knew I wouldn’t get that business. Hell, it probably wasn’t even a legitimate application, just a ploy to get me alone and test my reaction. What I did know was that I was never calling on Roy Walters again. Because Georgia Clay was on my prospect list, Tom would need to know that and why my sales activity dropped to zero. When I found the right time, I did discuss the incident with Tom. He understood and agreed with my conclusion to take Georgia Clay and Roy off of my list.

Tom and I never talked about pressing charges or taking Roy to task. It wasn’t really something you did back then. I didn’t anyway. If I opened up that box, I’d be running to human resources every month. It wasn’t going to happen. I was maybe nine months into my new job. I was a woman in the industrial chemical business and I enjoyed working in a man’s world – women bored me. There weren’t many of us. Five, maybe. Me, Cindy, Karen and Linda. Phyllis was in the mix somewhere but not “out” in the field. She was in Information Technologies. There were a couple of older women selling commodity chemicals and personal care additives but that work was non-hazardous. They weren’t slinging five-gallon pails of biocide or priming pumps that sucked sulfuric acid out of fifty-five gallon drums.

I was young and pretty once. Anxious to do a good job, to sell based on sound chemistry and my growing expertise. I had to discount or capitalize on the concept of men thinking with their dicks. It had to be that way, to keep moving forward. I didn’t really know it back then but then again, I knew it very, very well.

There were two Roy’s that worked in those clay fields back then. One was a reputable, business-like plant manager. The other was a purchasing pig. Still, it shouldn’t have happened. Not even back then, when women were just beginning to break through the glass ceiling, thumb their noses at double standards and confront lust and the abuse of power in the workplace

Time and circumstance carve their initials into our psyche and now, as my breasts sag from the pull of gravity and the effects of middle age, I wonder what might have happened if I’d have slapped Roy across his face instead of swallowing his perversion in laughter, out there, in the middle of nowhere Georgia.

It’s funny what you don’t want to know about yourself. You wonder why you can’t talk to anyone, have someone available to listen to your thoughts every minute of every hour. But then again, you couldn’t stand that. There is always going to be the good and the bad, the right and the wrong in business. You meet each situation on its own merit, decide how to manage it or take no action at all. There is always grey between the blacks and whites and even the teeniest things that you push down deep inside want out, want to be heard. And so you write: “Roy was a pig.”

A native of western Pennsylvania, Vivian I. Bikulege has set down roots in Beaufort, SC with her husband Donald E. McRae, a retired Lt. Col. of the U.S. Marine Corps. Vivian writes “Whatever,” a bi-weekly column for the Lowcountry Weekly; is an author of feature articles for the Lowcountry Monthly and was a winner in the 2005 Short Fiction Open for the Charleston, SC Piccolo Spoleto Festival.

Note: Since attending CWS4, Vivian began graduate studies in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte.

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