Tess walked down the streets of the Back Bay of Boston until she got to Copley Square. It was evening. She stood for a few moments as the setting sun painted the Square and the Hancock building with pinks and golds. This was her favorite time to be here. She took a few moments to enjoy this particular sunset. Each one was unique in its own way. She walked down the steps to the subway and caught the train to the red line. She stayed near the door because she had only a few quick stops until the green line intersected with the red line.

Boston was Tess’s city now but she was new to it. Though she wouldn’t say she loved it yet, she had a fondness for it that had taken her a little by surprise over the last few months. Being new to it, she could be overwhelmed by its diverse contrasts. She could walk into a neighborhood on some particular Saturday and feel a warmth and friendliness like someone wrapped a soft, warm pashmina around her. And next day she could walk down another street in another part of the city and with each step, feel a cool aloneness growing as if the place itself was sucking the warmth from her insides.

She exited the subway car and walked downstairs to the platform for her connecting train. As she waited, an empty, lit subway car rolled through the station, swaying clumsily back and forth on its rails. Tess watched as it lumbered past and disappeared into the dark tunnel. A moving, empty train always seemed like a lonely sight to her.

Her train finally came through the station.It slowed down and came to a stop. As the doors opened and she walked towards them, a handful of people suddenly appeared from what seemed like nowhere to brush alongside her and slip into the car with her. The car was almost full. She saw only a few seats left so she decided to hang onto one of the poles in the middle of the car. She wrapped one arm around the pole as the subway car started moving into a black tunnel under the city. She gripped her feet to the floor to try to keep herself steady.

The car came out of the tunnel and slowed down. The doors opened. Only one man entered the car as several people got up from their seats and hurriedly brushed past him as he entered. The car emptied a little but Tess decided to stay where she was. She was comfortable holding onto the pole while swaying with the motion of the car. She looked out the window. They were crossing the Charles River.  Before her was her city, Boston, at twilight. She liked the picture outside the window. The dark muted silhouettes of the buildings against the blue night sky. It wasn’t late so most of the windows were still lit.

But something pulled her eyes back to the inside of the car. She looked over at the man who had just entered the car for a quick second. She tried not to stare, but she couldn’t help it. She realized once he sat down that he was wearing a skirt. It was a long, full skirt that was aqua except for the end when the aqua blended into a taupe border. The print of the skirt had island motifs. He also wore a jean jacket and a thin aqua scarf wrapped around his neck. His long, brown, wavy hair was tied in a ponytail. His fingernails were painted blueish-black.

She turned her gaze away from him. Everything he wore could be both for a man or woman except the skirt, she thought, even the nail polish. She had seen some guys around the city with dark nail polish, guys you would see around Harvard Square who played guitars and performed in punk rock bands.

It was the skirt that made her turn back and look again. She watched him out of the corner of her eye. He took his backpack and placed it in front of him on the floor. When he bent down to rummage through it, she was able to turn back and really stare at him again. When he reached down to pull something out of his backpack, his jacket arms rode up and on his left wrist were some colorful bracelets. He pulled some papers out of his pack and a notebook. He got out a pen and started to examine the papers. After a while, he wrote notes in the margins of the paper. She wondered what he did for a living as the subway car braked, squealed and slowed down all at the same time.

When the car came to a stop and the doors opened, a group of young teenagers burst through the doors. There were four boys and a girl. The first two boys to enter the car stopped abruptly in front of the man Tess had been staring at, while the girl slipped around them and walked to the back row of seats that faced forward, towards the rest of the car.  The two boys continued to stare at the man until another boy behind them shoved both of them and exclaimed for the whole car to hear, “Are you guys in love?”

“Screw you!” one of the boys answered back as they all followed the girl to the last seats in the car. The other two boys followed them. The girl moved to the window seat as the rest settled in their seats.

They all looked like they came from different schools. The girl had on a dark green plaid skirt, a white blouse and a heavy green and yellow sweater with an emblem on it. She looked like she came from a Catholic school. Her outfit didn’t look cute and sexy like most school girl uniforms Tess had seen on T.V. This looked oversized and cumbersome.  Three of the boys wore tan khaki pants and wine polo shirts, and the last boy was wearing a basketball uniform. He had a basketball tucked under his arm against his body.  

One of the teens in the wine polo yelled over at the man, “Hey, Mister, what’s your deal…like are you a he-she?”

He continued to look over his papers and every few moments wrote a note on the edge of a paper.

Tess could see that same boy in the wine polo whisper something to another boy in a wine polo who had been quiet up until now. That other boy immediately yelled out, “Hey, we’re talking to you!”

Tess groaned inwardly. There was no bigger annoyance when you’re trapped in a subway car than a group of teens egging each other on. Tess’s heart started to race. These teens reminded her of a runaway train. No one knew how far they would go or if they could put on the brakes, not even them.

The boy in the basketball uniform mumbled something to the other boys that sounded like, “Will you guys knock it off.” Then he leaned forward and put his basketball in his hands and stared at it as if he was about to start bouncing it right there, but never did. The girl, looking indifferent, continued to stare out the window even though all there was to look at was the wall of a pitch-black tunnel.

Tess turned away and looked into the darkness of the car window.  While she stared out the window she suddenly had a sharp painful memory jolt itself into the forefront of her mind. She was a young teen. She must have been only fourteen or fifteen years old, so it was around     1975. It was a crisp, clear autumn evening in her hometown.  A hometown that was so small that you had to drive twenty minutes out of town to do any shopping. She and four of her friends went out to shop for school clothes. She remembered she wasn’t even old enough to drive yet, but one of them was, and they all piled into her friend’s parents’ station wagon. They headed to a mall a few towns away. It was a small mall. It was a one floor building with one large store and about ten small shops.

When they finished shopping, and stepped out into the mall parking lot, it was night. The sky was dark and clear, but they couldn’t see any stars because the parking lot was lit by new, tall, glowing parking lot lights. As they walked to their car, they passed directly under one of these lights. The light beamed down and into a particular car. They saw an older man sitting in the driver’s side of the car. He was wearing a sparkling lavender dress, a long, curly, black wig and bright colorful makeup. They all laughed loud belly laughs until they realized he wasn’t laughing with them. He was angry. He was angrier than Tess had ever seen any person become. Together they walked to their car, got in, and silently waited, confused, as their driver rummaged for her keys and started the car. They drove towards the exit. They turned around and realized he was following them. They could see through the back window that his face was as angry as when they first laughed at him. He drove past them. He stopped his car at the exit and blocked their way. They stopped. No one knew what to say. No one understood what they had done. No one knew why this was happening.

Finally, he got out of his car. He was coming towards them, but when he slammed the door shut, something got stuck. Something he was wearing. Tess couldn’t see what it was because the light from their headlights bleached out the scene in front of them, making it hard to see what he was pulling at. Gone were the lavenders, pinks and blues. Now, there was just a man in a dress tugging at something caught in the car door. He yanked and yanked. Then, suddenly, his body seemed to collapse in on itself, as if defeated. He stopped pulling on his garment. He seemed to be giving up. He put his head down. He turned away from them and opened the car door. He got in and wrapped his arms around the stirring wheel, and laid his head down on his arms. He didn’t move. The next minute seemed to last forever. Someone finally broke the silence.

“There’s another exit behind the building.”

They drove home in silence that night, not understanding what had happened. They didn’t talk about it again.

Over the years, she realized what had happened that night. When the awareness came, it felt like a cut of jagged glass against the soft tender side of her young soul. He wasn’t in some kind of show or a person headed to a costume party. He was a person trying to start a new life, and that night could have even been the first few steps in his new life, but instead, he ran into them. Even to this day, ten years later, it hurt a little to think about it.

She was startled back to the present by a noise. One of the boys in the wine polo and tan khakis started to whistle. He was looking directly at the man and kept whistling.

She looked down the subway car and saw an empty seat next to the man. She let go of the pole and walked clumsily down the aisle of the subway car, holding onto poles to keep her balance. When she got to the back of the car she crossed to the other side and sat down next to him. He glanced in her direction, then continued to work. While she sat there, that same boy continued to whistle.  

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He looked at her. There was silence for a moment and then whistles again.

“For what… You mean those guys?”

She nodded.

“I’ve survived worse.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“I find what works best is to ignore them.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Talking to you helps.”

“It does?”

“It’s easier to ignore them when you have someone to talk to.”

“Good,” she said and then she looked down at his left wrist. He had around twenty strings of tiny beads on it. “I like your beads.”

“My students made them for me.”

“Do they symbolize anything?” she asked.

“Each student in my class made each string a completely different color combination and pattern.”

 “So you’re a teacher?”

He nodded.

“It was actually a math project I had them do. No two strings could be alike, so they had to work closely with each other. When we were done, they put them together and gave them to me as a gift.”

“I would have liked to have gone to your school.”

“What’s your name?”

“Tess.”

“Hi, Tess, I’m Russell.”

“Nice to meet you, Russell.”

He put the papers down by his other side, and asked, “Can I see your wrist?”

She looked at him inquisitively, but moved her right hand over closer to him. He took six of the stretchy bracelets off his wrist.

“But they were a gift from your students.”

“They’d be happy to know I shared them.”

He slipped them on her wrist. When she looked at them she realized they were made of the tiniest glass beads she had ever seen. All together they looked like an explosion of color, but when she looked closely she could indeed see distinct and unique patterns on each string.

“Thank you, they’re beautiful,” she said, as she could feel and hear the slowing of the car.

“You were right” she said.

“About what?”

She looked in the direction of the teens. He looked over too. They were gone. They were standing near the door waiting for it to open. They were intermingled with all the other people exiting the car. The train halted and everyone waiting exited. The doors closed and the train started to move again.

While the train headed to the next station, Tess asked Russell about the school he taught at, and he asked her about her job in Boston.

When she realized she was close to her destination she said, “I guess you were right, about ignoring them,” and with a little hesitation said, “You know they’re just ignorant, right?”

He nodded, but it was a sad nod. He looked across the car out the window to see what station was next.

“What I mean is…they’re…people are ignorant until they’re not ignorant.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“Does it hurt?” she asked. “When this happens?”

“It always hurts.”

“My stop is next,” she said.

“This helps,” he said.

“This?”

“Your kindness.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Any kindness helps. A smile. A nod. A simple conversation. It matters more than you could possibly imagine. It makes me feel I’m not completely alone.”

Tess saw her stop come into view and heard the squeal of the car as it braked.

“Take care, Russell” she said.

“You, too, Tess.”

She stood up and walked out of the car, and as the doors slammed shut she turned around and watched as the dark car, lit from within, labored down its track and into the dark night.

– Bridget Grieve-Carlson

Author’s Note: This story is based on something that happened to me as a young teenage girl and affected me as I grew up and was able to look at the incident through more mature eyes.