Waiting for the Train

I avoid eye contact on the train platform as usual as I look for a place to sit among the benches that line the track.  Friday afternoon is busy with other college students going into Chicago for an escape from classes.  They stand in huddled groups, a few in dresses or ties.  Going to the symphony or the opera, probably.  Some carry bags stuffed with picnic blankets and dinner, preparations for an outdoor concert or a few hours at the beach.  I stand with only my purse.  I'll be meeting my Bible study group north of the city.  I just have to bide my limited time as a forlorn figure until the train comes to carry me to friends and food, my refreshing weekly routine of acceptance.

No benches.  The one closest to my chosen sentinel spot holds three people, the nearest occupant with his back turned to me in order to talk with his neighbors.  The white button-up, black slacks and shiny black shoes mark him as a businessman.  Or a missionary, I think.

The words of the woman next to him, the woman blocked from my view, are slurred by a lisp and a nasally tone.  

             "We's just don't know what we're gonna do.  There just ain't no money, you know."  Her voice sounds like she's speaking through a snorkel mask.  A voice that carries over the blending, pleasing monotones of others, that makes you want to stare, but makes you feel bad for doing so.

I dare a glance around the back of the white-shirted man.  The owner of the voice sits, slouched over, in an oversize t-shirt on which the iron-on colors have been faded by too many washings.  Her short red hair is pulled back with a purple scrunchie.  Blue eyes as faded as the t-shirt meet mine just as I look and in the millisecond of connection I see her self-consciousness.  I wonder if she sees mine.

What does a woman like her think of a girl like me?  Maybe she asks the same question of herself, but something tells me that life has taught her the answer in glances like mine, glances she has come to fear.  She stumbles a little, like she wants to begin a sentence but has forgotten what she was going to say.  I apologize by looking away and forgive myself silently.  She has given me my answer.

             Her partner takes over in her pause.  He is older than her, much older it seems, but hard to tell.  The undershirt he's wearing is no longer white but clean, barely covering his large, brown belly.  His frizzed, black hair needs cutting and is fading to gray in patches fanning out over his ears.

 "I mean, I love Jesus, I really do," he says to the man in the black slacks.  

The uneducated accent holds a note of self-justification.  It also holds the simplicity of truth.  The missionary-businessman only nods in encouragement, as if this is what he has been waiting to hear but doesn't really believe it.  Maybe the other man understands this, remembering past conversations with similar businessman-missionaries.  He keeps talking.  I hear in his tone the same lessons of experience I saw in the eyes of the woman, the well-dressed man’s reaction as anticipated and expected as the thoughts the purple-scrunchied woman saw in my momentary glance.

             "I mean, I love God, and I think everything's 'bout love and faith an' all that...I'm working hard to get my life right," the big-bellied man says.

The man in the slacks and white collar keeps on nodding.

             "I love God, and I'm working to get my life straight.  I mean, I love my kids an' I want 'em back...so bad.  I love 'em.  I'm taking classes and working hard.  I want to learn how to be better."  

             I see him gesturing with his hands out of the corner of my eye, leaning forward and backward and forward and backward, like his hands are the hands of a conductor, his body the music.  

 I stare into the sunshine, the green park across the tracks, and listen.  I listen and see his children as he speaks, the three young boys who he wants to raise better than he was raised, but that don't listen to him because they don't respect him.  Their mother, not the red-haired lady, says bad things about him, and they don't listen, don't let him speak.  He doesn't want them to grow up like him.  He wants their respect.   He wants their love to mirror the love he has for them.

             "I hope by me taking these classes they can see how much I love 'em," he says.  His voice is deep, gravelly, adamant.

             The red haired woman nods.  The missionary-businessman nods.  

 "He's a good dad," the woman says, shifting her heavy weight forward onto her worn tennis shoes showing beneath too-short khaki pants.

"I'm trying to be," the man says, almost whispering, not looking at her.  "I mean, I love God, I love Jesus..."

             His voice is drowned out by the ringing bell and the roar of the approaching train.  I hear the missionary-businessman speak for the first time over the thunder, wishing the couple well and goodbye.  

            “It was good talking with you.  I hope everything turns out all right.”  He doesn’t even stop to shake their hands.

They don't board the train with us.  I stare out at them from my lofty vantage on the second level through the smudged glass when I take my seat.  They stare at the blank silver sides of the train, longing for movement, for departure.  Their tired desire molds their expressions into an almost-embarrassment for non-participation, only able to offer internal apologies, excuses, and explanations.  No one else is there to listen. 

It doesn’t seem right to me, sitting at a train station without boarding the train, while people talk and listen and then leave, moving on from the place where everyone moves on while you bide your time.  I turn away from the window and find myself ashamed to be glad that I could get away.  I was just waiting for the train.  I don’t know what they were waiting for.