Untitled chapter
In Georgia’s early days of summer, the tea olives and crickets complete their job of creating a home with a certain degree of excellence. However, after seemingly endless days of sitting on front porches with nothing to talk about other than the people we smiled in the face of, the southern sunsets that I had grown into such an attachment with became a starting block for my desire to see the rest of the world. Having finished my years of state-mandated educational curriculum and having pulled my toes out of childhood, a plane ticket seemed the pinnacle of contemporary exploration. Overconfident and teeming with sentiment, my feet made their entrance onto the streets of Manhattan in a dance of enthusiasm. I spent one week in the city and to my disappointment, the grandeur of New York had, in my heart, failed to inspire amazement and individuality to the degree immortalized in modern entertainment. If anything, the four-story department stores and perpetual symphony, the constant crescendo and decrescendo of life, had strengthened my appreciation for chipped-paint wooden beach towns and the old-fashioned, pastoral beauty of moderate seclusion. In this way, I suppose the city had prodded me into deeper acquaintance with myself.
On the last day of our vacation, the freshly anointed valedictorian of our graduating class who happened to be in New York at the same time I was, asked me to meet him for lunch on Beekman Street. Since my mother and I had been staying at a hotel in Times Square, traveling to Kevin required more than my fairly unathletic legs and questionable sense of direction. Car rides were not the safest or quickest method of transportation; traffic laws in the congested, four-lane streets were reduced to suggestions and drivers were frequently forced onto their brakes in order to avoid being hit by tour buses or Mercedes vans. I was ready to be a local. And so, I gathered all of my optimism and all of my trust in the world and I plodded down the stairs of the 49th Street subway station.
Between the rushes of screeching trains, clenching their teeth as they yanked themselves into motionlessness, the platform was quiet. The dimly lit underground had its own atmosphere, its cement walls squeezed into shape and purpose by miles of damp, packed earth. It unnerved me to think that if I screamed alone in this tunnel, nobody would hear me. The spirit under New York City contrasted significantly with the culture at the surface.The sounds of voices were replaced by the shuffle of sneaker-clad feet and the staccato indignancy of business heels. Nobody had time for anybody.
When the doors of the E train opened, my apprehensiveness did not desert me. I disappeared into the trickle of silent passengers with unmatched fluidity, choosing a seat near the back of the car so I would not be in anyone’s direct line of vision. A tall, slender man with dark jeans and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes turned toward me briefly and I crossed my arms tighter over my chest. I do not like to think too highly of myself, but years of men following me in parking lots and getting too close to me at the gym had planted in my mind a seed of paranoia. He turned away and I stared at the floor, and in this hostile indifference and aggressive isolation we continued to blend.
I sat across from a petite girl in a denim jacket, her thick black hair falling gracefully around a face that roared with unfriendliness. She gazed straight ahead, through me, daring anyone to speak. I wondered how a person could be so small and threatening. I guess it’s a New York thing.
The sign above me signaled that we were departing again. Next stop: Penn Station. I thought it was funny how bright the station reading was, as if it was worried that people wouldn’t pay attention to it because they had something else to look at. The letters glowed white against a blue background.
“Blue is the color of the mind and essentially soothing,” preached the psychology of color.
Taking my chances, I allowed my eyes to patrol the entirety of the subway car. There were two average-looking men dressed head to toe in Nike apparel, probably traveling to some branch of the New York Sports Club to run for fifteen minutes, casually bench press 135 pounds, and spend the rest of their gym time taking pictures in the mirror on the weight floor. A Chris and a Logan. They both stood exuding boredom and moderate dread, as if they were on this short journey because they had been guilted into doing what was best for them. Next to them stood the man I had noticed initially, now deeply engaged with his phone. Sitting on one of the benches was a middle-class, touristy family whose two children whispered and giggled quietly to each other. The other people were dressed for business.
On the bench opposite the family, there lay a figure face-down. One arm dangled with the sleeve of a jacket slumped almost completely over the hand, dangerously close to the floor. Protruding from underneath the jacket, which looked to be a men’s XL and loosely shrouded the figure like a sack, there were dirty, paint-stained sweatpants, a quarter-sized hole torn near the right knee. A pair of black tennis shoes with all of the life kicked out of them. An oversized hat lolled haphazardly on the head, turned away from me so that the left cheek was smushed into the hard, cold, plastic. A lighter blue.
I didn’t look at him again until I had to. Nobody else gave him a second glance. The height of personal barriers and the depth of self-involvement continued past Penn Station, everyone conscious of their surroundings and still conspicuously avoidant of any interaction. Chris changed the song on his phone. Brad sneezed into his elbow.
He was just sleeping. He was homeless and homeless people slept on the subways in New York because they didn’t have anywhere else to go. Apartments the size of my closet cost more per year than my entire house, so there were a lot of homeless people and they slept on the subways. This city didn’t even have public bathrooms so where else is a man with nothing left in this world supposed to sleep save for the dingy, moving underground?
The train slowed to a stop; the passengers exchanged roles and different-colored people came to stand in the middle of the car as bystanders, as sheep. The man on the bench didn’t move. I looked again at the station reading. The lights flashed, yelling at me to stay put because I had 5 more stops to sit through before I could forget.
He lay still because he was sleeping. Right? He was asleep and it might be the only good rest he’d gotten in the last week so I shouldn’t disturb him. Besides that, I shouldn’t get his attention because he might try to hurt me. He might try to take my purse, the fake Gucci one I bought from a street vendor, my debit card and my driver’s license and a few stray m&m’s rattling around in its vast emptiness. If I screamed, nobody would hear me.
I didn’t touch him. The train rushed on, anxious to get these people out of its compartments. This man didn’t have a destination; he gave up on following the streams of busy people that flowed in and out of the doors when he decided that nobody was waiting for him on the other side. So, instead, he fell asleep. Those parents looked like good people; they looked like the kind of people who would stop their car immediately in the event of a mild crash, even if it was the other driver’s fault. And now, the father crossed his arms as the mother quietly scolded the little girl for tickling her brother. If they weren’t concerned for this man who was so obviously and so ordinarily and so peacefully asleep, then I shouldn’t be either.
Look at the fingers. In that moment I couldn’t remember where I had seen or heard or learned this. From the sleeve of the jacket, a small cluster of fingers dangled, only the top half of them visible and turned over so that the nails were hidden. I had to make a decision: to leave him to rest in the style of this vastly indifferent zoo, to marinate in trust that eventually this man would open his eyes, sit upright, and pick a station at which to depart, or to take his hand and break his silence, condemning the unwritten Guide to New York with an act of humanity.
Look at the fingers.
The family was getting exasperated with each other. The little girl was braiding her hair, her brother playing a video game. I didn’t see any of the other faces that had been on the train when I boarded. The new ones were all unfamiliar, miles away. There was a blonde woman reapplying lipstick and a dark-haired woman checking her watch. They both wore blue. The man didn’t move. It was becoming too much for me, the air completely void of compassion and conversation, eye contact and friendliness.
Again, the doors opened and this time I was no longer seated. Nobody looked at me when I walked over to this hopeless slump of material and flesh, having given up on desperation, not even when I took his hand and turned it around to see the nails in the process of being swallowed by a dark blue. Oh no. I bent down to listen for signs of breathing. Nobody looked at me and nobody looked at him and nobody showed any kind of alarm. I heard the subway move, the tapping of the little boy’s fingers on his video game, the muted, alien noise that leaked from someone’s headphones, and I did not hear an inhale. I tapped his shoulder.
“Sir? Sir!” He did not move. I pushed him, shaking his whole body. Next stop: World Trade Center. The doors shut and the new herds of people melted in. Desperately avoiding any kind of obligation, choosing to ignore the fact that they and I and this man who was not breathing were of the same species. “Help!” They didn’t listen or maybe their fixedness was too engaging or maybe their music was too loud, but whatever it was it was more important to keep their attention on than me, in all of my wild exclamations, and this man who was homeless and probably just sleeping. Deaf to their own humanity, lost somewhere between 8th and 49th street when they first entered the city. I tried to call 911 but my phone did not have reception one floor beneath the surface of this great haven for life, which made me angry because if I didn’t have reception than neither did anyone else on that train and they weren’t looking at me just because they wanted to ignore and be ignored. I screamed, and nobody heard me.
I kept trying to get his attention but he was as unresponsive as the bodies around him. I promise, I really tried. The train decrescendoed to its last stop, my stop, and I should have gotten off to try to find someone to call or to help or to care but I felt that any effort would be futile. The family finally stood, dragging their kids off the bench and I barely noticed them. I sank into the blue plastic next to this man who had been buried prematurely underneath the lights and chaos of New York City, who had been overestimated and underestimated his entire life.
