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| This never happened, too. “Overcast days never turned me on.” Sprinkles show up lightly on the Plexiglas window much in the same way that they show on the lenses of my glasses, which on this day are fogged into opacity by the temperature change as I step carefully, blindly over the small opening between the train and its tracks below. Through the doors and into the car, I don’t need to see to know that all of the seats are full. I will have to stand. And so I take my place, forearm wrapped around the holding bar, palm down flat to hold myself steady, supporting myself, leaning this way and that way as we make our stops at this station and that and then the next. A few stops en route, a seat vacates. It’s holder, scrambling awake, jolts upward and thrusts his body forward in order to barely squeeze out of the doors before they close, locking him in and making him tardy. I check to make sure that not another person intends to sit in this suddenly empty seat, which strangely looks to be somewhat shocked that it’s occupant fled so quickly, knowing itself to be a privilege of the early and the punctual. It seems to almost frown in digression when I look toward it, realizing that it will now be seating a somewhat second rate passenger. I contrive my balance (always so careful) by placing both feet at an equal distance from my center, standing up as straight and as tall as possible, and reminding myself that one foot in front of the other will get me where I need to go. I then unravel myself from the rail I had come to trust, and set myself into forward motion. I give my new seat, hesitant look still spread over it’s body, an apologetic look and settle into it, feeling mousy. I am taking my place for the second time this day. I have been standing fogged over for a good while and have almost forgotten what it was like to see clearly, if at all. As I remove the glasses, which hang somewhat adolescently over the outlining edges of my narrow face, I take a few minor seconds to glance about the car nervously. Always attempting to mask my unquieted mind, this task manifests in pretending as if I have a speckle of airborne something or other in my eye. I do this only to make certain that I did not move without grace, that I did not unknowingly stumble or jerk myself into this change of position. I scan the faces around me for reaction or expression, but just as I thought, there is none of either to be found. Nothing descried on the faces of these people that I, as a stranger, am adept to make out. I fail to take notice of the face of the person closest to me, my seatmate. (And that is a very telling thing about the both of us.) This is the person who, on a normal day, will be an unwilling, but incontestably captivated voyeur of my neurosis. He or she will watch me fumble in and out of my bag, looking for mint Chap Stick, a mirror, mascara, a phone, a wallet and an iPod which I will molest indecisively for the remainder of the train ride. I will bump his or her body with my elbow, or their leg with mine and when this happens I will utter to (but without looking at) this person a couple of nearly inaudible, however sincere, requests to be pardoned. “Excuse me, I am sorry...”. I turned slightly to my left in hopes to secretly read this one, unobtrusive face just as I had the others. To my surprise I meet a wondering gaze with mine. She — this person, this time — is a she. Immediately, her mouth opens and her lips morph into the shapes of words. She speaks out loud, quite loud actually. I respond. And when I do, I find myself sitting in surprise for the second time this day. For, I do it with a volume to my voice that I do not usually carry with me on days like today, days when I have not planned carefully to say a particular thing to a particular one. We, she and I, had the following conversation: She: "There just ain’t any good black men in the city.” It is only then that I realize she is a black woman, and the staring eyes that collided with mine seconds earlier were sad, dark, and searching...hunting, even. Not searching my face. Not interested in me. She is not speaking out of turn though, nor just to hear herself. She is speaking to me, for me to listen. Speaking with expectations which, based on her audience, she knows will be left suspended in air—hanging in a sort of naught purgatory, the place where all things that are “nothings” gather together. You might be nothing, but you don’t have to be it alone. Still, she speaks in earnest, and because she does, I listen just the way she wants me to. And Again: She: “There just ain’t any good black men in the city.” Me: “I'm sorry — what do you mean by good?” I make no contact, though I am looking her in the eye. Her gaze is through me now, on to the blacked-out window across the aisle to my right. It is as if seeing my eyes once became enough for her to know my face and read it by the sound of my voice from then on. She: “You know.” Little did I. She: “No black men who hold open your doors and buy you dinners and shows. No black men who’ll take you home and fuck you and not make your place all messy. No good black men.” Me: “Oh. There aren’t any good white men in the city, too.” She looks at me (through and past me) as if I had won the argument we weren’t having. Her mouth stretches very slightly at each corner and becomes what I am almost positive is, for her, a full on smile. We sit in silence. Whirs and door dings are the only things able to break into it. Her eyes and mine. She exits three, or maybe it was two stations further down the little blue line on the map. I continue, determined to go where I am getting to — or, to get where I am going — never can tell between the two. And on my way back home from whichever it was, I did not meet any exceptional Mexican men. |
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| Leslie Braley |
| Leslie Braley was born in the city of trees, raised in the South and is now residing just outside of the only city she has ever truly loved. She has been writing for a short-lived (but certainly not short-felt) seven years. In her spare time she enjoys impromptu games of make believe and driving too fast. Paranoia and Narcissism are her two of her best qualities and for her, the two are anaphoric. She plans to attend the University of California, Berkeley to earn her Master’s Degree in Library Sciences and to subsequently become a librarian. |
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