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by Karen Antikajian OWP - June 1999 The train was picking up speed now, swaying slightly as it headed through the open stretch between towns. The other passengers had all settled down for the night. Seventeen-year-old Betsy sat quietly in the dark, her excitement mounting. Kicking off her shoes, she curled her legs up under her on the wide double seat, pushed her wavy, brown hair away from her eyes, and laid her head back against the seat, relishing this break from her classes, assignments, and long hours at the piano. She was enjoying her new life, but it was still nice to get away from it. The University, Albuquerque, and her recent friendships seemed worlds away for the moment. She glanced across the aisle at her dad, snoring softly as he tried to fit his long frame lengthwise onto the double seat. His head was propped up against the window and his legs were pulled up, making him look like a half-opened carpenter's rule. Before he left their seat for the empty one across the way, he had advised, "Try to get some sleep while you can, Honey. It was very early when we left Santa Fe and we have a big day in Chicago tomorrow." She tried, but her thoughts were playing musical chairs in her head. She gazed out the window to distract herself, but her thoughts, disguised as her reflection, stared back at her. So many things had happened in the last eight months - so many changes. It was hard to keep up. Her mother's sudden unexpected death, her own graduation, going away to college, being in a new situation without her almost-Siamese-Twin-best-friend... Her dad stirred, shifting his head to a more comfortable position, trying unsuccessfully to stretch his legs. She looked over at him fondly. This had been so hard for him, Betsy thought. He loved Mom so much - everyone loved her. I miss her terribly, we all miss her, but Dad suffered the most. Mom had left such a gaping hole in Dad's life. Maybe that was why Betsy felt this responsibility to try to fill a little of it if she could. Her dad tried to hide the fact that he was having trouble adjusting, but she could tell. Every weekend when she drove home to wash clothes, clean the house, and spend time with him, she could tell, especially now that her brother Joe had moved to California and it was just the two of them. Soon they would be in Chicago. When Betsy was little, her family lived in a suburb of Chicago. They had moved to Santa Fe when she was almost six and she hadn't been back to Chicago since. When her dad had first invited her to come along to his convention during her winter break, Betsy had jumped at the chance. She started to have reservations when an old, scary memory - something that had happened to her in Chicago a long time ago - began to surface. At least she thought it had happened that way. Even if it hadn't, memory was a great trickster, and that's the way it had been etched in her mind. A feeling of loss and loneliness swept over her causing tears to come to her eyes. Betsy shook her head to clear these unwelcome thoughts, but she could not erase the feelings she had about Chicago. She remembered some of the words from Sandburg's poem. "Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the big shoulders, They tell me you are wicked and I believe them." Well, not quite wicked maybe, but intimidating, impersonal, and confusing - so different from the sleepy atmosphere of Santa Fe where she had grown up. She wondered, would she be able to find her way around by herself while her dad was attending meetings? What if she got lost? The train gradually slowed to a stop. As she peered out the window Betsy could just make out a sign saying, "Topeka." A family boarded. The mother started down the aisle with a sleeping toddler on her shoulder, almost dragging a little boy with eyes at half mast. As soon as the father stowed their bags in the baggage compartment by the entrance, he caught up with the mother, and scooped the little boy up into his arms as they made their way past Betsy to the empty seats at the end of the car. This family reminded her so much of her own family - how they used to be, her dad, her mom, her brother Joe, and herself. But time would not stand still. It insisted upon marching on - forever onward. This distraction had put Betsy's thoughts on hold, but now they came rushing back, like a cascading waterfall. She remembered her family, the four of them, walking together down the quiet streets of Elmherst to the station where they would wait for the local train into Chicago. This was a Saturday ritual and it was always exciting to her. Sometimes all four of them went together, but other times she and Joe went with Mom when Dad had to work. Betsy chuckled to herself as she pictured one particular instance. They were late, running to catch the train, when her little suitcase, crammed with pens, pencils, paper dolls, and doll clothes popped open and scattered her precious belongings, willy-nilly, all over the sidewalk. All four of them frantically chased, pounced, and crammed until most of her possessions were salvaged and then they raced on to the station, just in time! She chuckled now, but it was not the least bit humorous then, just terribly embarrassing. After that she always tied a belt around her little suitcase, but it never felt secure.
Betsy remembered how their local train stopped at all the little suburbs along the way and then, as it neared the city, would gradually work its way up until it became the elevated, or "L" as the locals called it, traveling high over the miniature traffic below. It was almost as if the passengers entered people's backyards and invaded their privacy as the train wound around the backs of apartment houses. You could gaze into fifth floor windows, see the tenants belongings hanging on the fire escapes, and brush past the laundry lines stretched between buildings with their little pulleys to drag the sheets, socks, and underwear in and out. These Saturday visits to the big city were always eagerly anticipated. She enjoyed meeting friends, shopping, and stopping for lunch with her unvarying order of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread, something they never had at home. Betsy shifted uncomfortably in her seat as that other memory worked its way to the surface - the one that had made her a little reluctant to return to Chicago. She pictured Chicago's huge, noisy, central train station where they had to go to catch the local to return home at the end of the day. The thoughts she had that day tumbled over one another like tumble weeds playing leapfrog on the dusty desert plain, rushing along until they were abruptly caught in some rancher's fence. "How could her mother do that? What was going to happen to them? Would they ever see her again? Why was she leaving?" Her memory ended there, but not the feelings about Chicago that it left behind. She again relived that day in '45 as if she were watching an old movie. Joe and Betsy had gone with Mom for the usual Saturday outing and now the three of them were rushing to the station because they had been delayed. Betsy vividly recalled the monstrous, noisy, bustling station with everyone hurrying in a different direction, like ants after their hill has been destroyed. Five-year-old Betsy held on tightly as her mother gripped her hand, almost dragging her because Betsy's little legs couldn't quite keep up. Her eight-year-old brother ran-walked on the other side trying to avoid scurrying passengers and suitcases left in the way. About twenty trains were all backed into the station with narrow cement platforms between them like teeth in a comb. To get to their local, the three of them needed to go outside to the platform at the back of the station, turn right, walk down to the wide platform along the end of all the trains, walk along it to the end of their train (somewhere in the middle), and walk back up the narrow platform to an open car door. This roundabout way was the only way to get to their train. As the three of them raced across the marbled floor of the station, out the big double doors, and started to turn right, a strange man came up beside them. "You're catching the local to Elmherst, aren't you? I've seen you on the train before. Come on, I know a faster way. Follow me." Instead of heading down along the first train to the platform on the end, he boarded the train in front of them, walked through it and out the other side to the narrow platform between the trains. They followed. First the stranger, then Joe, next Betsy, and finally Mom - the caboose. And so they continued - this abbreviated parade - into a train, across the aisle, out onto the platform, across the platform, and into the next train. One after another, after another, after another. From behind, Betsy heard her mom say, "We're almost there. Just a little farther." As they stepped onto the express to Milwaukee, they could see their local. Betsy had just stepped off the express onto the platform when suddenly the express train started moving, picking up speed rapidly as it started down the tracks with her mother still standing in the doorway, her arm raised. It looked like she was waving good-bye. Betsy wanted to run down the platform after her mother. She wanted to shout, "Come back, Mommy! Come back! Don't leave me!" but she couldn't. She just stood there, frozen, with her not-much-help-of-an-older-brother and The Stranger. That's where her memory ended.
Betsy shook herself to try and erase the feelings of abandonment this memory brought back. Then, like the sun breaking free from behind the clouds, another memory flooded through her mind. She saw her mother's face and recalled the special times when the two of them would have mother-daughter gabfests. During one of these times, about two years ago, Betsy had asked her mom, "Once, when we were in Chicago, why did you ride away on a train and leave Joe and me on the platform with a strange man?" She saw the puzzlement in her mother's brown eyes, the look of surprise, followed closely by understanding as she suddenly realized what Betsy was talking about. She smiled lovingly at Betsy, " Is that what you thought? I would never have ridden off and left you and Joe alone with a stranger." She explained to Betsy why they had followed the man through the trains and how, being last, she was still on the express train when it took off. "The man told me not to jump - the train was going too fast. He yelled that he would take care of you, but I just had to make that leap to the platform. What else could I do? I couldn't leave the two of you alone. When I landed, I fell, bruised my knee, and skinned my hands a little, but I wasn't really hurt. The stranger, who was really a very nice man, helped me up and found my purse. He helped us onto the train and were all settled in our seats before it started. I didn't realize that you were worried about it all these years. I didn't know you even remembered it." Betsy heard herself saying, "Is that all it was? Why didn't I ask you about it before, instead of letting it bother me all these years?" Now, sitting alone in the dark, Betsy thought, her mom was right. Her mom would never abandon them. She was the kind of mother who would sacrifice her own life for her children if necessary. She always looked out for them. Maybe she was still looking out for Betsy. She curled up on the seat under her long winter coat, laying her head on the armrest next to the window, her new thoughts warming and comforting her. She felt secure. Her eyelids drooped and she must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew her dad was shaking her gently. "Wake up Honey. It's time for breakfast. We'll be there in an hour and a half." Betsy sat up and grinned at her dad. "Breakfast in the dining car," she said. "Remember our trips from Santa Fe to New York to visit Grandma and Grandpa and how Joe and I would always race to the dining car?" She'd always loved eating in the dining car when she was younger. It was still fun and exciting. Maybe that's how Chicago would be. |
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