American Gothic, 2042

Story - American Gothic, 2042

The woman's name was Della and she cleaned the offices of a company that made algorithms for sorting photographs. She had been cleaning their offices for eleven years. She used a broom and a mop and she wore rimless glasses and a polka-dot dress that her daughter had found at a charity shop in Warrington.

The photographer's name was not important. He arrived on a fellowship from somewhere that wanted to document the North. He was shown around the building by a manager who spoke about the algorithms the way a man speaks about his children - with pride and anxiety and the need to explain everything.

The photographer met Della in the corridor outside the server room. She was emptying a bin. He asked her about her life. She told him. It was not the story he expected. It was worse and more ordinary and longer than he could fit in a frame.

He asked if he could photograph her. She said yes, but she would not look at the camera. He asked why. She said because the photograph is for you, not for me. I already know what I look like. I see myself every morning in the mirror and every evening in the dark when I close my eyes and my face is still there, waiting.

He set up the shot in the server room. Behind Della, the racks of machines hummed and blinked. She held the broom in one hand and the mop in the other. She looked slightly to the left of the lens, at nothing, at the space where the next machine would go.

He took the photograph. It was immediately legible. A woman, cleaning tools in both hands, behind her the machines that sort the images of the world. The homage was obvious to anyone who knew the original. The indictment was obvious to anyone who didn't.

He sent it to the magazine. The editors changed the title. They emphasised the machines. They cut Della's name from the caption. They wrote: "A cleaner at a tech facility in the North of England."

Della saw the magazine in the break room. She read the caption. She looked at her own face looking away from her in the photograph. She said nothing. She finished her tea. She went back to the corridor and emptied the bin.

The photographer called her three months later. He wanted to know if the photograph had changed anything. She said the bins still need emptying. He said he was sorry. She said don't be sorry, you did what you came to do. The bins still need emptying. That is not your failure. That is not the photograph's failure. That is the photograph's subject.

He stayed in touch after that. Every Christmas he sent a card. Every birthday she sent nothing back, because she did not know when his birthday was and she did not ask. But she kept the cards in a drawer beside the baggie of dreadlocks she had found while washing the clothes of her murdered friend, and every year the drawer held more, and every year the drawer held more, and the cards and the dreadlocks and the dust accumulated together in the dark of the drawer, which is to say in the dark of the room, which is to say in the dark of the building, which is to say in the dark of the city, which is to say in the dark of the country, which is to say in the dark of the photograph, which is to say in the dark behind her averted eyes, where she kept her sight in her two hands and touched only what was there.