10:32 p.m. on a Saturday evening, and I'm waiting at 135th Street in Harlem for the B train to scoop me away from the worn, wooden subway bench to take me en route to Castle Hill in the Bronx.  At first, when I walk into the station, it's just me and some muscular Black man occupying the same space in awkwardness.  I feel mixed about having his company—safe because he could probably make good use of those muscles when he protects me from some attacking criminal and unsafe because I just don't trust men like that.  I'm the only woman in my family who hasn't been raped and the thought of their misfortunes haunts me like a repressed memory, making me overly vigilant, paranoid, even.

     The C train arrives and the man with his I'm-buff-and-tough walk enters the train.  As the C pulls away and all I see are the train's tail lights fading into the tunnel, I realize I'm the only person at this subway stop—no MTA attendant, no homeless person, just me. Images from horror movies my friends tricked me into seeing begin to flash in my head, and I think I'm going to die tonight.

     The It's-10:00 p.m.-do-you-know-where-your-children-are? announcement at the beginning of each 10 o'clock news programming on Channel 5 plays over and over in my head, reminding me of how I vomited each night in third grade because the reports of gruesome murders and gang-banging that followed that announcement made me sick, made me realize that I lived in a ghetto war zone, a drug-infested, violent neighborhood in The Bronx.

     I'm scared shitless now like I was in third grade.  Anything could happen in this city.  It's dark and late for a young woman like me to be out by herself.  I could be the next story on the evening news—young teacher raped and killed; dumped in Hudson River.  My mother doesn't even know where I am.

     Suddenly, I hear voices clittering and clattering off the walls, and two teenage girls appear after having jumped the turnstile, taking full advantage of the unattended station.

        "Oh, there's a lady here," one of the girls yells to her friend, as she looks in my direction.

        "Are the trains running tonight?" She asks.

        "Yes," I answer.

     She sighs relief, and I too am relieved because I'm probably not going to die tonight—alone, that is.  I start small talk with these scandalously dressed teens, asking them their whole life stories: where are they going tonight, what are they going to do when they get there, what high school they attend, and so on.

        "Yo, you paid?" They want to know.

        "Yes.  I learned my lesson after I got ticketed when I was eighteen in Chinatown. Plus, I'm a teacher.  I can't be doing stuff like that anymore," I explain.

     Both of them look at me unconvinced and wonder why the hell I would pay if I could have easily gotten in for free. I have no energy to justify why I paid my fare and change the topic by telling them they should go to college.  My good deed for the night.  Maybe I won't die today.

     I hear more foot thumps coming from the station's entrance, and the Duane Reade employee with whom I was jokingly upset (because he did not have a Duane Reade membership card to save me 89 cents on a bottle of water) enters the train station with his friend.  We make eye contact and smile at each other, his smile a flirtatious one.
 
     "What are you doing here?" He asks as though I'm not allowed to be in this hood.

     "I'm waiting for the B, and it's been 30 minutes already," I respond.

     He looks at me as though I'm stupid and tells me that the B does notpass by this stop.  I return his what-are-you-stupid glare, and to show that the B does, in fact, stop at this station, I point to the
letter B on the sign above the platform the same way I would point something out to one of my students.  He insists that I'm wrong despite my pedagogical methods, and I decide that since this is not my hood, I'll take his advice and jump onto the next C train to 145th Street so that I could transfer to the uptown D that will take me to 161st Street where I'll catch the downtown 4 to 125th Street for the
uptown 6 to Castle Hill in the Bronx.  Long-ass, convoluted trip, I know.

     Melodies of another tongue become audible, and two women whom I later learn are from Senegal walk onto the platform, the vibrant colors of their cloth hypnotizing me.  They sit next to me, and before I could take my next breath, one of the ladies shoves a business card in my hand.  I take a look at it to learn that it's an advertisement for some hair-braiding place on 125th Street.  I'm a little offended because today my hair is loose, free, wild, big, out in its naturalness—a stark difference from their unkinked, processed hair. It was as though they were trying to tell me with their small gesture to put my hair away, to tuck it up, to hide it, to do something other than leave it the way it wants to be.

     Shortly, lights from another C train illuminate the platform.  I suck up my pride and follow Duane Reade man's advice and hop onto the C for one stop to 145th Street to transfer to the D.  The D at 145 Street takes me to 161st Street, and now I'm standing on the elevated platform at Yankee Stadium waiting for the downtown 4 to take me to East 125th Street so that I could get the uptown 6 to my final destination.  The 4 arrives after a ten-minute wait, and I squeeze my way onto a seat—one of the few advantages of being petite on New York City's metro system.

     My trip downtown is uneventful until the man sitting directly across from me pulls out a mystery hand bag, a green sack with a white, regal rope trim.  It's clear that the bag has been around the block, as its grease and enigmatic funk stains indicate.  The owner of this bag is well-shaved, bald, tall, thin, and is wearing a navy blue security uniform.  He opens up mystery bag and pulls out something that I cannot automatically identify.  After he unfolds the unknown item, I realize that it's a black wig, a cheap bunch of tangled, synthetic hair.

     My eyes are fixed on him now because there's nothing more intriguing than this.  He proceeds to put this beat-up wig on his head and begins to style it, patting it down here and there.  I give him the benefit of the doubt--it's cold from the train's air-conditioned air and he's bald so he's covering his head.  It makes sense to me.

     Man in Uniform then pulls out a pair of gypsy-like silver hoop earrings and puts them on, first his left ear, then his right.  At this point, all the other passengers are snickering and turning red from keeping in their outbursts of laughter.  I remain calm and collected.

     To top off his gender-bending, Man in Uniform paints red lipstick onto his puckered lips, and at this point, I'm wondering what else he's going to pull out of mystery bag. Suddenly, the thought of dying
tonight seeps into my head again.  My vivid imagination tells me that the next item he'll retrieve from his bag will be a gun and that his wig, earrings, and lipstick are all part of some disguise so that he would not be easily identified for the subway massacre he'll commit. Meanwhile, everyone else is too busy laughing at him, and here I am picturing the next urban legend. Thankfully, we reach my stop before anything else comes out of that bag, and I'm thinking I just escaped a killing.

     It's scorching hot at the 125th Street station—quite a contrast from the nipple-hardening coolness of the last train I was riding. There's a Latina girl with a shaved head wearing a wife-beater leaning against the stair's railings.  Standing beside her is a gay couple—a Latino man and his younger white-boy lover. Two people to the left of me, there's a Black heavyset man who keeps checking me out.  His eyes land on my thighs, my breasts, and then warily on my face.  I avoid his eye contact.  I hate when men scavenge my body like that.

     Soon, the 5 train pulls in on the platform opposite from me, and I'm pissed because it's been one and a half hours since I left Harlem, and ironically, I'm still in Harlem, East Harlem, nowhere near where I need to be, and it's mid-fucking-night.   During my internal titty-attack, the 6 comes to the rescue, and I'm relieved.  The same man that was checking me out just minutes ago conveniently sits next to me and tries to start a conversation with me. I have nothing better to do so I engage in this nonsense talk.  I learn that he works six days a week all the way in Brooklyn before my attention shifts to a fighting couple that walks into our car.

     Boyfriend walks in behind Girlfriend, who is wearing a pink valor outfit, her shorts so short, they are sticking in her ass. Boyfriend's thinning hair is braided back into cornrows.  Oddly, his hair looks better than Girlfriend's chaotic hair that is sticking up all over the place.  Her face has dark blemishes all over it, indicating perhaps a poor diet, some disease, drug use, but what do I know?  She's struggling to keep her eyes open and is holding a portable cat carrier.  Through it, you could see the shadowy outline
of the cat and a sky blue cross hanging up in the carrier with yarn, resembling something I would have made in the Sunday school I was forced to attend as a child.

     "What you talking about?" Boyfriend yells, starting an unwanted scene.

     Apparently, he cheated on her, or so she claims.

     "Tanisha, you fucking being immature," he continues.

     She looks at him unphased, firm in her belief that he was fucking some other woman.

     I begin to worry because Boyfriend brought out the 'f' word, and from my experience, fists always follow the 'f' word in fights like the time when Tito from 4D of my apartment building got fucked up on
Tiebout Avenue in the Bronx.  He never made it to his 21st birthday. For the third time, I think I'm going to die tonight, not alone at the 135th Street station, not on the 4 train at the hands of a transvestite killer, but as an innocent bystander of a domestic dispute.

     A drunken man, struggling to keep his balance, is standing behind the couple.  He's too involved in his own drunken conversation with himself to notice the drama right in front of him.  Everyone else is
avoiding Boyfriend and Girlfriend's eye contact, wishing they would just get off the train or keep their business behind closed doors.

    "Tanisha, you could call me a crack head, but I love you, man," he pleads.

     She's not touched by his words.  Her droopy eyes catch Boyfriend's attention, and he angrily asks, "What did you do up there?"

    "My mind opened up," she mumbles.

     She's on something.  She's all doped up and shit.  Anyway, Boyfriend is pissed.  He thinks she is fucking around too and storms to the other side of the train where he begins a soliloquy.  Girlfriend is in
her own little world; speaking to her is like talking to deaf ears.

     "Man, I can't believe you did this to me, Tanisha.  I'm 45 years old, and I let your 29-year-old ass do this to me.  I fell in love.  That's what happened.  I've been through too much.  Been through jail and all that shit and now this," he pleads with his hands supporting his tired face.

     "You don't even know how to take care of the cat," she slurs, completely off topic.

     Boyfriend gets up from his seat in a fit of rage and marches over to her.  He bends down to her.  They are face to face now.

    "You're not in New Jersey.  Look. You're in the fucking Bronx," Boyfriend screams.

     I take his advice to Tanisha and look around only to realize that there are three other people on the train with me, who are impatiently waiting their stop to come.  I am too.  The mixture of drugs, anger,
and rage could cause people to do some fucked-up shit, and I ain't trying to die tonight.  Thankfully, before I know it, we are at the Castle Hill stop in the Bronx, and I quickly exit the train, exit Boyfriend and Girlfriend's lives, before something that will cause my death happens.

     Walking quickly toward my friend's house pass the begging junkies in front of the corner bodega, I contemplate what will happen between that fighting couple or Man in Uniform or the many people who opened up their lives to the public subterranean audience.   I will never know.  You will never know.  What I do know, however, is that this shit only happens in New York City, and I sure am grateful to be alive to tell you about it.

 

Dena Simmons, a Bronx native, is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont.  Upon graduation, she lived, worked, and researched the effects of teenage pregnancy in the Dominican Republic with a Fulbright grant.  During her travels, she kept a blog about her experiences at: http://deanbean13.blogspot.com.  She is now studying for her MS in Childhood Education and is a 6th grade teacher in the South Bronx.  She loves her job but wishes she had more time to write.