1
I hate this. This half life. This half foot. So I come here to forget. To the subway. To just sit and imagine all of the things. All of the netherworld places beneath my feet. The warrens and laneways and sewers and tunnels and secret entrances and exits. The underground people pulling their underground carts into even more underground places. The rats and snakes and blind feral cats lurking and leaping and scuttling. Along and beneath the hot iron tracks, way down below through the cracks in the walls and the holes in the ground.
I come to ride the trains. Late at night when there are not too many people around. When I can get a fix on who exactly is in the car. When there’s enough empty space to escape if I have to.
I get on anywhere and just sit and let the train take me away. I like the slipping and sliding on the blue plastic seat, the push and shove of the stop and start, the jerking and rolling, the thump of the wheels on the track. I like how no one looks at me and I don’t have to look at them. I like how I can forget who I am and who I was meant to be and the gaping canyon between the two. I like how I don’t have to think about the present, future, or past. Especially the past.
I ride and ride and ride. Sometimes for hours. I ride until the stale air tightens my face and the strange heartbeat of the train quiets my mind. I ride until all the thinking and dark thoughts abate. That’s the goal anyway. Because if I’m honest, he never really goes away. My constant unwanted companion, who tumbles around my skull like a lone sneaker in a dryer, the rubber fixing to blister and melt in the heat of the barrel. He never lets go of me and I never let go of him. We are Siamese twins. Bound together by the crimes he committed against me and my soul.
But at least here on the train I can sit and pretend he does not exist. And pretending is better than nothing. Pretending is all I’ve got and I want to hold on to that for as long as I can.
I know the night’s journey will end at some point and that I can’t ride the train forever. After a few hours I will have to return to the real world above, where he does exist, and eventually I will, raising myself up from the seat to stand on my one good foot and steady my cane in my hand and clap myself out of the subway car and up the stairs and back into the savage world.
But for now, I am here, thinking and not thinking. For now, I can let myself breathe.
Tonight I count the number of people in the car with me. Three. A gray-haired woman in a fluoro jumpsuit and Birkenstocks sits opposite. A regular guy in blue jeans and a bomber jacket leans against the pole thumbing through his phone. A girl too young to be out this late on her own stands by the door staring into the flying darkness. I can see her face in the reflection and she catches me looking. She casts a sudden bold look at me over her shoulder as if to say what the hell are you looking at? I wonder what she sees in return, this woman with a cane in her sensible navy trouser suit. There goes one hell of a broken human being? A survivor? Am I survivor? Or did I really die back there in the woods?
I glance away and she returns to the window and the dark tunnel walls flip by.
Above me, someone has scratched the words Pound Town into the ceiling of the subway car. I imagine a youth in a hoodie teetering on top of the seat, arm hooked through the railing, stretching with a knife to carve those words into the steel. Maybe his friends goaded him on. Or maybe he was a loner like me and simply wanted the world to know he existed. I wonder if he ever returns to admire his work. If he stands amongst the rush hour commuters, quietly triumphant, holding his secret close.
The train pulls into a stop. I glance up, as I always do, checking for who’s about to get on, and see them. A sea of expectant faces waiting on the platform. There are so many of them, so many faces, that I cannot possibly catalog each one. My heart pulses in my throat. The doors open and in comes the rush. All those chattering faces push their way in and fill up the car, swallowing up all that nice empty space. A well-to-do crowd in suits and tuxes and sequined dresses. In they come, pushing and laughing, fanning themselves with programs, diamante chandelier earrings swaying and winking. In they come, squeezing in on the seat beside me, standing around and over me, pressing in on all sides.
My throat goes tight. It’s not safe. I’m no longer safe. Three has become dozens, all crammed together. They are too close. Everyone is too close. He is here. He is everywhere. I have to get out.
I wake up on the cold hard floor. In front of me, shoes, lots and lots of shoes, all pointing in my direction. Polished black oxfords. Brown leather loafers. Strappy Jimmy Choos. High heels and kitten heels. A pair of battered Birks and an overgrown toenail.
I am flipped on my back. People loom over me.
“You dropped like a stone.” A bald, rotund man in a blue sweater crouches next to me then tries to steady himself as the train rounds a corner. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I thought you were dead.”
I turn my head. My cane’s a few feet away. The Birkenstocks woman is eyeing it up. Take it, I want to say, go on, just take it, but I can’t seem to speak, and now the man is lifting me to my feet and telling everyone to make room and the train stops and there’s a swoosh of the doors and he ushers me across the threshold and onto the platform and we stand looking, me leaning on him, at the train waiting to depart.
“Don’t miss it,” I say.
“Oh, there’ll be another one shortly.”
But he wants to get on, I can tell. The doors close and he loses his chance. Instead he guides me to a row of seats, lowering me into the second to last one.
He hands me my cane. “Is there someone I should call?”
From the corner of my eye I see a flash of gold, his wedding ring, thinned by time, tightly wedged into the crease of his chubby digit.
I shake my head. “Not really.”
He sits down. “What happened back there?”
“I’m not sure.”
Another train pulls up and he tries not to look.
“Go on,” I say. “I’m okay now. Thank you so much for your help.”
“Someone should stay, make sure you’re okay.”
“Please, I’m fine.”
He hesitates and casts a look of longing at the train.
“Go on, sir. Please.”
He gets to his feet. “Well, if you’re sure. My wife is waiting for me at home. Take care.”
He hurries across the platform and ducks through the doors and stands looking at me through the glass as the train pulls away.
2
“You dropped like a stone.”
I think of those words as I emerge from the subway. I’m shocked that it has happened again. I do the math in my head. Five weeks since the last episode. Three months before that. Seven months before that. They are becoming more frequent. I should be getting better by now but I’m only getting worse.
I pause to catch my breath at the top of the subway stairs. Stairs are the worst. Especially steep ones like these. I have to take them one at a time, steady my weight on the cane, haul myself up to the next one, all the while ignoring the pain shooting through my useless semi-foot. That’s what they actually call it. A semi-foot. I nearly laughed out loud when I first heard the physical therapist say it during our sessions with the railings.
“That’s right, Amelia, lead with your semi-foot.”
They like to do that, the helpers, re-label disabilities and items to make them seem like less of a lack. Like my cane. They call it a device. An “assisted living device,” to be more precise. Like the word “cane” is somehow derogatory.