Like most New York subway riders, I avoid the very last car because it is the likeliest to be nearly empty, an invitation to danger. But that afternoon, knowing I’d be using the rear exit at my destination, I negotiated my way along the strangely deserted Wall Street station platform, past a stairway and a pillar, to the spot where, as I knew from experience, that car would line up. The train arrived.
As I boarded, a young man standing opposite the door said, “Tell us where you’re going, sister.”
What was happening here? I had little choice but to act as if nothing might be amiss. Glancing my white cane against the first seat on my left, I determined it was free. As I sat down, I inadvertently nudged a person on the bench’s next depression. I suspected he or she had shifted over to give me room, but because I couldn’t be certain, I didn’t say, “Thanks,” though it felt rude not to.
“I don’t know I want you going where I’m going.” This was my neighbor, a woman, late teenager, perhaps seventeen or eighteen. Girl, then. She sounded cheerful. So, nothing amiss after all.
Pushing my lower back against the seat to ease the lumbar pain that had come back with a vengeance the night before, I pulled my shoulder briefcase around onto my lap and mentally reviewed the deposition I’d conducted that morning. Asking astute questions, or so I congratulated myself, I’d obtained useful information. So even though I was leaving hours earlier than normal, I’d already done a good day’s work. Still, I wished my chiropractor had agreed to an evening appointment despite the short notice.
Caught up in my thoughts, I was slow to take in what was going on around me.
A second guy, directly in front of the girl, said, “Joe wants to be going where you’re going.” He had a deeper voice, but less resonant, than the first guy’s.
“I like to go places by myself,” the girl said.
“What you gonna be doing when you get where you’re going?” said a third boy, tenor-voiced, standing on the girl’s other, left, side.
“Talking to a friend.”
The middle boy said, “Will that be a guy friend or some chick friend?”
“I have guy friends and female friends.”
“This one?” the middle boy persisted.
“Which one?”
“The one you’re going to see now.”
“There are lots of people where I’m going.”
“You said you gonna see a special friend,” tenor voice on the far left said.
“You got me wrong.” The girl’s pleasant tone softened the seeming challenge in her words.
“One friend, then?” tenor voice persisted.
“One friend, then another.”
“Just to talk?”
“Just to talk.”
“Talk to me,” said the guy standing directly in front of me.
Of the three guys, he seemed the most assured, or cocksure. I figured him to be Joe. The girl confirmed it.
“I am talking to you, Joe. You and your friends here.” She chuckled prettily.
I wondered if Joe was the handsome guy he and his friends seemed to think? And was there something in the other boys’ appearances that rendered them so deferential?
Joe said, “Let me go with you and we’ll talk on the way to where it is you’re going.”
“Sure, if you’re still on the train when I get off.”
“You tell me where you’re getting off and I’ll be here.”
“That would spoil the surprise,” the girl said.
“I don’t need no surprise.”
“Surprise is the spice of life,” she said. “That’s what they say.”
Joe apparently had no follow-up for that, and his friends stayed quiet.
The give-and-take paused when the train stopped at the big Fulton Street interchange and again at Park Place, by City Hall. I was unaware of anyone boarding this car. Perhaps there was a train just ahead of us. But subway riders had an uncanny sense for trouble, which suggested the posture of the three boys, standing in a crescent around the girl, appeared threatening. If so, anyone looking in would also count me as caught up in a situation to avoid.
Knowing the three guys were thinking of the girl in a physical way, it didn’t feel right to speculate about her appearance, but from a childhood with sight, I couldn’t help it. Was she an olive-skinned, raven-haired mystery, a freckled colleen with long red hair, or what?
The real question was if there was danger here. Were Joe and his buddies taunting the girl or just flirting? Maybe these kids knew each other and were playing out a game, threatening-seeming from the outside but harmless if left to themselves.
I grew aware of the ever so slight excrement smell I associate with the Seventh Avenue line, amid the plastic seating and metal everything else. I didn’t like my sense that no one else was in the car.
I calculated I myself was safe, judging by the guys’ single-minded focus on the girl. Had they shown any interest in me at all, it had been by dismissive side-glances or some other visual gesture.
But the girl couldn’t help being conscious of me. Although she said nothing to me, we were touching at the hip and sometimes her shoulder glanced against mine. Of course, her attention was directed at the boys. She might have been afraid that if she acknowledged me, I’d get involved and make a macho mess of her fine balancing act between placating and fending off the three guys.
Even so, I sat up straighter, gradually so as not to attract attention. I tightened my right hand’s grip on my one conceivable weapon, the cane. My left hand was free, my briefcase on my lap held by its strap over my shoulder.
Metal wheels screeching on metal rails, the train made a northward turn and pulled into the Chambers Street station, the last stop in downtown Manhattan. I could get out here and cross the platform for the local, though it would have meant an interminable ride to my destination. On this express, I had just three stops to go before I got out at Times Square to change for two more stops on the local. Or I could wait for the next express.
But I decided all over again that I wasn’t in danger, despite wearing a lawyer suit and carrying a briefcase. If this was a confrontation, it wasn’t about money; it was about the kind of pride that a girl can give or deny a young man. Nor would these guys view me as a threat. Blindness would have neutralized me in their minds.
Strangely, that recognition made me reluctant to desert the girl. Not that I was doing her any obvious good. However, I had been making a point of staring at each guy as he spoke. I might not be able to see them, but I hoped to communicate that I was witnessing everything they said and did.
As we began the five-minute stretch between Chambers and the 14th Street station in Greenwich Village, the guys took a stroll to the other end of the car and back again. I reviewed what, if anything, I could do to help the girl if things really turned ugly. Every scenario that came to mind required physical courage. Badgering a witness was one thing, but sitting before those three tenacious guys, I faced the old knowledge that I was no hero—less than ever with this damned back pain.
Or was I over-dramatizing? Wasn’t this just a sparring match? As such, it fascinated me. The guys were trying to get information out of the girl the way I, a litigator, would from a difficult witness, and she was being as obstructive as any witness I’d ever confronted.
Once again standing before her, Joe said, “What’s this place you’re going to?”
For an instant, I thought the girl was going to hesitate, a fatal tell she was about to lie. But she sounded still confident when she answered, “A place where friends hang out.”
“What kind of place is that?” the middle boy said. There was a strategy here. He and tenor voice put the questions that would have been too undiplomatic for Joe.
“A place, you know.”
“Someone’s home?”
“The place has homes and stores–businesses.”
“No, I mean the place you’re going to.”
“Like I said.” She sounded serene.
“You like to talk in riddles, don’t you?” This was tenor voice.
“Like I told you, I like to do things my own way.”
“All girls say that till they meet the right man.” This was Joe, sounding less gallant, if “gallant” wasn’t overstating his charms.
“I’ll always want to do things my way,” the girl said.
“A female Frank—what’s that dead geezer’s name?” the baritone guy in the middle said.
The guy on the left answered: “Sinatra.”
“Riiiight,” the middle guy said, snapping his fingers.
The train careened through the local stations. Once again, I became aware of the hint of excrement. There was also the dust and the stifling odor of old shoes. Homeless people had stretched out and slept here.
The girl had a pleasant scent, but I didn’t detect any perfume. Nor did I pick up any aftershave lotion from the guys. What was happening here would seem to have begun as a chance encounter, three aimless guys finding a girl alone on a subway car. Surely, they’d thought, they could beguile her with their clever words and antics.
The doors opened and closed at 14th, then 34th Street. Infuriatingly, no one was getting on our car. That never happened at these busy stations. Then again, I never took the subway on a weekday afternoon.
Now my stop, Times Square, in the heart of midtown Manhattan, was coming up. It was always busy, even in the afternoon.
With just a minute or so to go, I planned my move. At my right was the steel pole fixed at each end of every subway car’s bench. Then there was what I called the center pole, located between the doors on both sides of the car. It wasn’t in the exact same relation to the doors on every car, but whenever I stood to leave, I kept one hand on a bench pole and reached out for it, usually finding it with a swipe of my other hand. Then I’d need just two steps to reach the doorway. If I didn’t find it right away, it didn’t really matter. I just had to move more quickly toward the exit when the train stopped. This time I’d need to take extra care because judging by where Joe was standing, he was holding either that center pole or the bench pole across from me. I’d wait until the last moment to make my move.
I went through the same calculation as before. I didn’t know if the girl was in any danger at all. The guys were just playing—weren’t they?—and she was playing along. Or if they were working themselves up into something bad, she’d shown she could handle it.
Still, I kept arguing with myself. Couldn’t I break the silence between the girl and me by asking something like, “Do you think you’ll be okay?” What could she say to that? “No, not really. These thugs are planning something horrible”? Talk about escalation.
How about if she answered, “I’m fine”? She’d have to say it no matter what. By posing such a question, or doing anything else that occurred to me, I risked turning ambiguous melodrama into full-fledged nightmare.
The train stopped for no apparent reason in the tunnel. In the whirring, electric stillness, Joe said, “Come on, baby.”
The girl didn’t say anything, but I felt certain she smiled. Her nonverbal responses seemed to communicate themselves to me through that off-and-on hip and shoulder contact. Except I doubted I was that attuned. More likely, I was anticipating her responses based on what she’d said and done so far.
My only rational course was to do what I’d come out to do: switch from the express at Times Square to the local and show up on time at my chiropractor’s. Besides, a ton of people would be waiting to get on, and the girl would be safe.
The train heaved into gear and lurched forward. The conductor got out all but the last syllable of the station’s name before clicking off his microphone. The train slowed even more. When it ground to a halt, right before the last jolt that sometimes caught me off-balance, I steeled myself against the back pain to come, grasped the bench pole next to me and yanked myself out of my seat. The jolt came. Then I reached for the center pole. Luck was with me. I found it immediately, and I didn’t brush against Joe. I was now facing the doors, which slid open.
Just then, a faint, pleasant scent came from behind and then around me. It was the girl racing out, apparently using me as a shield. Through our accidental contact, she must have detected my muscular tension as I prepared to stand. Her timing was perfect.
Joe called out, “Hold on, baby!” His friends grunted, “Huh!” “Hey!”—noises like that.
A crowd of agitated people pushed toward me. At last the car was going to fill up. I shifted toward the middle of the doorway and incongruously held out my elbows to block the way in order to give the girl a chance to escape. Someone, Joe or one of his friends, bumped me from behind, probably accidentally because it wasn’t hard enough to throw me off-balance.
Figuring the people in the crowd expected nothing less of a guy holding a white cane, I sort-of accidentally pushed against a big man, and bouncing off him, I genuinely accidentally side-swiped a hard-charging woman. Pain shot through my back, but the resulting near pileup gave the girl more time to sprint. Even over the clamoring crowd, I heard rapid footsteps clacking upstairs. After that single flight, she had many passageways in which to lose pursuers.
Behind me, a hotly frustrated Joe and his sidekicks were still demanding that the surging crowd give them space.
Adrian,
This situation sounds horribly tense and threatening for both you and the young woman you were with. I’m sorry you had to go through it. While I understand your urge to speculate about her appearance, your descriptions of the two women you envisioned were disturbing. Would you think a woman who wasn’t traditionally attractive by white standards would have somehow been less worth protecting?
Julie
Hello, Julie.
First, in all sincerity, thank you for posting your comment.
I must remind you that the title includes “A Story.” It so happens that the idea originated in a subway experience many years ago, but I recall only its beginning. The rest is imagination.
Earlier versions ran into other criticisms with a race angle. There, my first-person narrator guessed where the four participates come from and what ethnic group they might be. Critics argued that any discussion of race was certain to make the story unpublishable. Today, five years later, I realize the ultimate objection is that race would be a distraction to an already complex story.
But to address your specific criticism, if my character had vision, ethnic speculation would be unnecessary. In real life, it might not even be necessary for a blind passenger because ethnicity would probably be clear from circumstance, accent, vocabulary, etc. The problem arises only in the context of fiction where the narrator is blind.
If I had my character speculate the girl was Black or Latina, I would expose myself to other criticisms, such as some version of cultural appropriation. Also, by not specifying, I don’t open myself to charges of assuming all Black or Latino men are hoodlums. On top of that, if I didn’t have the narrator speculate about the girl’s appearance, other readers would criticize the omission. In short, however I handled ethnicity in this story, it was bound to offend.
Many unique problems are inherent in writing fiction from a blind character’s point of view. I’ve written about it on this website in the essay section.
Crucially, I reject outright your suggestion that I could believe “a woman who wasn’t traditionally attractive by white standards would have somehow been less worth protecting.”
You read this post as autobiography. That means you thought that as a blind person, I couldn’t differentiate among various ethnic groups. In reality, it doesn’t take vision to detect most people’s ethnicity. You might examine your own ideas for what other mistaken assumptions you might harbor about blind people.
People get fed up with us self-described liberals because we’re perceived as believing the worst about people who don’t see things precisely the way we do. It’s a long stretch from arguably poor judgment about an ethnic detail to suggesting that a white author has such a contemptable view of non-white women.
I genuinely appreciate your comment. While I take issue with you, it has enabled me to address a difficult dilemma for me as a fiction writer. I’ll add that having moved to New York in my mid-twenties, one aspect I soon grew to appreciate about the city is its ethnic diversity. When I think of the Korean, Nigerian, Puerto Rican, Iranian, Chinese, Egyptian, Ecuadorian, Israeli and other ethnic women I’ve befriended and worked alongside with, I feel as protective as I do of the Caucasian women I’ve been close to. Except if they ever found out I felt “protective” toward them, I myself would need protecting!