The Contextual Beauty of Railroad Tracks

It’s never quiet around here. Especially not at night. I lay down in a bed where my feet hang off the edge, stuffed between my sister and a wall, and I listen. It used to keep me awake, but now it’s like my lullaby. The sound of screaming and breaking glass from the next apartment over joins muffled gunfire in the distance to create the opening sequence of my violent overture. Sirens pierce the night in staccato rhythm, growing softer as they speed towards the city and someone’s worst nightmare. The alley cats are having a turf war in the street below, where I can hear young and old women try to sell what they got to men who’ll take it all and bleed ‘em dry. Whenever Mama’s drunk she tells me that’s where I’m headed. I guess she knows, cause she’s already there.

Finally, the rumbling crescendo begins, a pounding beat that draws closer and louder and brings my heart into time with its pulse. The 1:47 passenger train, pulling people from better places to better places through this trash heap of a town. I love to hear it go by, and imagine all the kinds of people sitting on that train. I bet they’re all rich. They smell nice too, and they talk softly because they know everyone else wants to hear what they have to say. I like to picture where they come from, but most importantly I love to imagine where they’re going. Maybe to places where they can see the sunrise over the ocean, or maybe someplace where they can see the stars at night. Maybe they’re going to houses that smell like cinnamon and are full of people that love them so much they stayed up to meet them at the train station at three in the morning.

I try to picture where I would go, every night, but every night that is where my dreaming stops. I don’t have any clue where I wanna go. I just know I gotta leave. I guess though, if I could get on one of them trains and go anywhere, I’d go somewhere the exact opposite of here. Here its brown and dusty, so I’d go somewhere green and alive. Here is all cramped up, people and shoddy buildings and trailer parks, so I’d go somewhere open and free, maybe even somewhere I could see the ocean to remind me that there’s more space in the world than I ever did realize. Maybe I just wouldn’t get off the train, maybe I’d just watch a thousand beautiful places pass me by.

In the morning, I crawl over my sister to get out of bed and ready for work. I dropped out of school when I was fifteen cause Mama drank too much and lost her job, and needed help with rent. I’m a maid at a motel, which is mostly nice because no one really bothers me while I’m working. I like being alone, for the most part. My sister is the exception. I love to be with her. She’s nothing like me, and nothing like Mama. She’s sharp and funny and critical in a way that you know should make you mad, but it doesn’t. She just started high school this year, and I really want her to finish. I wish I could have stayed in school, but we would have been evicted if I didn’t pick up full time work. Art and science were my two favorite subjects, which a lot of people said was a contradiction, but they were wrong. It’s the only combination that makes sense. Ash likes English. She’s real smart. College material if I ever saw it. And the only thing keeping me in this dump.

I tie my hair up and head over to check on Mama before I leave. She’s passed out, drunk on the couch. People say you look younger when you sleep, but not Mama. She ages about 20 years. It’s like all the things she drinks to avoid worrying during the day catch up to her while she sleeps, and she frowns and frets over them in her unconscious state. On my way out the door I kick one of her empties into the wall, shattering the glass and, I hope, waking her up.