Do you ever wonder what happens in a public space before you enter it?
For example, on the seats of the MARC train, a commuter train that travels between Maryland and DC. Here is one snapshot in time when I witnessed another passenger being disparaged.
Dyed-red waves draped across her tanned and weathered face, a woman who appears to be in her late 40’s, maybe early 50’s, sits on the train doubled over like no spine exists in her back. From her manner and her dress, it appears as though she is returning from a late night out. Perhaps this trip represents her “train-of-shame” rather than a “walk-of-shame” across a few blocks hungover.
A leaking green slushie loosely grasped in her left hand creates a small puddle of green by her feet. Her eyes are closed. A phone that has seen better days and random snacks in plastic containers are littered over a plastic bag in the seat beside her. Small drops of green liquid drip from her lips.
I didn’t notice her at first, not until the train attendant collecting tickets prompted me to glance over at the individual sitting across the MARC train aisle.
{Is she alive? What do “normal” people do in circumstances where someone clearly is not well?}
The train attendant did not even look her way or prompt her to show her ticket. Before making a final conclusion I think, “He may not have acknowledged her because she may already have shown her ticket before I boarded.” But I can see everyone else ignoring her. At most, I see slight glances of disdain from others.
From her defunct position, she moves. She uses a small, white plastic fork to dig into the Styrofoam cup of green ice. Dexterity is lacking and she drops the slush on the ground. With seemingly laborious, yet lackadaisical energy, she scrapes for napkins in her purse. Not once does she sit up straight. Her demeanor is a constantly arched stupor.
She’s scooping up the green slush from the ground into the cup, her yellow-gold flecked nails touching the sticky train floor with one hand, grasping for tissues in her lap with the other. She pauses every once in a while as though these actions take all the energy in the world.
She stops mopping up green liquid when she feels she has done her due diligence. She then ruffles through the plastic bag on the seat for more snacks. She grabs onto a plastic container with baklava, then hangs her head on the seat in front of her with the container dangling in her right arm.
She mumbles something incoherent and out of nowhere draws strength to exit the train. As she rises from her seat, two tissues soaked with green slushie juice trickle on the blue leather seats. She glances at them for a millisecond as though she would like to clean them up. She doesn’t. In her black, tight one-piece, and leather boots she wanders toward the exit. On the way out, she bumps into a girl on her left and says, “Oh, I’m sorry.” The girl furrows her brow, touches her hair where they made contact and turns away.
And there the red-haired woman went. Sticky seats, sticky puddled floor, and sticky tissues in her wake.
All the passengers who board the train after do not sit in those seats.
And that is how no one came to sit in the triple seats on the left side of the MARC train car 7794 on a mid-May afternoon from Baltimore to DC…
{In those same seats, there could have been a married couple who sat with their child. A young man with a broken heart fresh from a recent break-up. An older couple leaning on each other on their way home to rest.
On public transport, we assume someone, at some time, will wipe down the seats and mop up the floors. That someone is responsible for cleaning up the messes we leave behind. To erase the presence of our being in the seats we sit in as we journey from point A to point B.
We have seen what happens when communities do not take care of their public services, support their public servants, or hold accountability for their own actions on the world outside of their own.
Who was that lady scorned? Before she left green piles of goop? Is she a sister? A mom? Did a tragedy happen? Why was she a hot-mess and what does a community do when someone in their community is obviously not well?}
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