Before You Knew My Name (14)
It is as if, here on this train, I have suddenly been reminded to not lose sight of the other me, the one who knows that life and people play all sorts of tricks on the unsuspecting. I am not someone who doesn’t know about corners and turning, after all. I am not someone surprised by the way life can change in an instant, with no regard for how happy you might have been just seconds before, your hand twisting against the handle of the kitchen door.
When we get to 28th Street, I’m tempted to stay on the train. To just keep going. As people exit onto the station platform, I reluctantly follow their lead, like I’m some kind of fish, and there is no choice but to swim the same way. The crowd is thick, and I am careful not to adjust my stride or break the rhythm as I am picked up in this swell of people and propelled forward. We move up the stairs in formation—one, two, three, four, five—I look down to watch my now-smudged sneakers as they slap down on one step at a time. Then a turn onto a landing, before the next set of stairs. This is where the crowd usually disperses; there’s room for us to spread out. I’m still watching my feet when I start getting knocked by people passing on my left. It’s as if they’re doing it on purpose, leaning into my path, one after the other, and I soon realise each person butting up against me is in fact shifting away from an obstacle on their own left. I look over, around them, and catch a glimpse of something on the ground.
It takes me a few seconds to comprehend that this obstacle people are moving around and away from is in fact a man, lying on the ground. He is flat on his back and his shirt is unbuttoned, exposing a smooth, dark chest that I catch in flashes between legs, shopping bags, coats. I soon see he is young, more a boy than a man, and I push back against the people rushing by, shift sideways through the crowd, until I’m standing right in front of him. Over him. His eyes are closed, his lips pressed together, and I can’t tell if he is breathing. I want to lean down and put my hand to this boy’s mouth, feel for warm air, but I can’t seem to make my arm move. People continue to move around us, some look over their shoulders once or twice, but nobody else stops. It’s as if my body is listening to their unspoken warnings. Danger! Stay away! This is not safe for you! But, up close, he looks like a sleeping child; if my arms won’t move toward him, my feet won’t let me walk away.
Soon it’s just the two of us. A young man laid out on his back, and me, hovering over his body, unsure of what to do next. His feet are bare, dusky pink soles caked in mud. He must be freezing. I think this at the same time I reach down, remove my sneakers and then my socks. They are white, thick and new, and I’m thinking of Noah as I wrestle one of these socks, then the other, onto this young man’s feet. I would give him my shoes next, if his feet were small enough. He doesn’t stir as I touch him, but I can feel the warmth of his skin. I know what dead bodies feel like. Not like this. Emboldened, I kneel down and pull his shirt closed, fumble with a middle button to fasten the threadbare material across his chest. And then I lean back on my now-bare heels and start to cry. Is this all I can do? Give him my new socks, cover his chest?
This is someone’s baby.
Someday soon—it’s coming—I will think, Doesn’t he know I’m someone’s baby? Doesn’t he know that I was loved? But right now, I’m fighting back tears for this child lying on a slab of concrete halfway underground, walked around, walked over, as if he’s not even there. As another train arrives and I hear people swarm toward the stairs, I take a ten-dollar bill out of my purse and gently tuck it into the pocket of the boy’s shirt. And then I turn, run up the subway stairs, out onto the crowded street, as if I am being chased. It’s dark, but you wouldn’t know it from all the illumination up here. The brightness of the city hurts my eyes. I walk a block or two with a sneaker in each hand, the soles of my own bare feet picking up the dirt and grime of a city where no one gives me a second glance, no one asks if I am okay. People walked around the boy and now they walk around me, as if I am not really here.
I want to go home.
Where would that be? I feel like I have been living inside a dream these last two weeks, and now I’m waking up to the same cold, hard bed, to the same cold, hard wall pressed against my nose. I’m fourteen and my mother is dead on the kitchen floor, and I’ve still got my schoolbag in my hand when I call 911, her blood all over my fingers. I’m fifteen, shunted to another small town, to live in another small house, with my mother’s cousin. I’m seventeen, and Mr Jackson has his camera pointed at my trembling, naked body, and I’m eighteen years old, alone on a bus from Milwaukee to New York City, putting twenty-seven hours between me and this man, this life.
Your days are numbered. What would the exact equation be to leave that life behind? What calculation of time and distance would enable me to safely move away from the edge of things, from the danger of being pulled back in? Noah shook my hand, bought me sneakers, tells me stories about New York, but would he miss me if I never came back to him tonight? Would he find another stray to fill up the lonely parts of his life, all the corners I have seeped into these past thirteen days?
Does Mr Jackson miss me? Did he ache to find me gone? I miss him. That I should not feel this way doesn’t make it any less true. I have been facing forward for days now, hiding from my old life, but the way everyone walked around that young boy tonight, the way he didn’t seem to matter, this has wrenched me back. A yank at the core of me, turning me around, as if a rope is being pulled. I am at one end, and who—what—is at the other?