Six years of post-secondary school might put a woman in a better position to vie for a respectable career, but it certainly doesn't give her the education she needs to live in this whirling dervish of a town. It took months of training and practice to speed-walk down Broadway at nine in the morning. The right combination of raising her hand confidently and yelling out "Taxi" for a yellow cab to take her to the upper west side was a feat that required dexterity and an authoritative voice. What dictionary could tell her that Houston Street was actually pronounced "How-ston?" And could she ever fathom that a single Saturday night could be spent attending a Donizetti opera, dancing wildly to a deafening techno beat and watching a giant Tiffany ball drop from the middle of a chaotic Times Square?She walks the streets like she's lived there all her life. She knows just about every square inch of the city, and nothing, save for the unexpected sight of a starlit Brooklyn sky, seems to astound her anymore. "Aren't you afraid of muggers?" she is asked from time to time by her out-of-town friends. "Don't you think that New Yorkers are the rudest people?" they asked in amazement. She shrugged, unaffected. She had learned to live with it.
Early one Monday morning, on the B train to the office, she looked out across the green-blue East River and watched the brilliant sun refect off the perfectly still water. She pressed her nose up against the glass window and followed with her eyes a pure white seagull as it descended into the middle of the river. It landed gently, creating a series of concentric circles on the water's surface. She smiled as the furthest rings floated out towards the gleaming horizon. She wondered where the rifts would eventually land. "Don't you love sunrises?" she asked gleefully to no one in particular. She turned around giddily to her fellow passengers as if to receive some not in agreement, but got blank stares in reply. A wall of gray and tan trenchcoats stood stock still and the only sound that could be heard above the screeching sounds of the train was the snoring of a seated passenger.
She was a Dorothy, who had just awakened to a black and white world after a wonderous trip to Oz, except in this Kansas, there was loving family by her side. No one to tell about the gorgeous sight she had just seen. Her neighbors were oblivious to her - she could have been invisible. When the train stopped, they walked right through her and nearly trampled her underfoot. A young man dressed in a pinstripe suit misstepped and unknowingly pushed over an elderly woman. Horrified, she bent down to help the woman to her feet. "Don't touch me!" the woman shrieked. Others stared at her, with instant condemnation.
She exited the train at that station, even though she had not yet reached her stop. She darted up the stairs and gasped for the cold wintery air when she reached the street level. Hot tears welled up in her eyes, and although she tried to bat them back, she could not control the choking spasms of her breath. She half-ran the rest of the eight blocks to her office, carefully avoiding the gazes of passers-by who probably would not have noticed her tear-stricken face anyway. In a city so full of people, she never felt so alone.
It was as if her once-comfortable city had betrayed her. She felt like a newcomer in a claustraphobic room full of strangers. She had come originally to greet new experiences and instead had assimilated with a group of unfeeling, lifeless mannequins.
On her last day in the city, she hummed a silly song from childhood as she packed and danced like a clown in front of a mandolin-playing street performer before unleashing two pounds of coins in his change basket. She rushed to catch her plane, as the happily free wave in the river she'd watched so many months earlier had a fairly good head-start in their race towards the sunny horizon.
E. Lin
3/11/01
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