In the subway station at Fourteenth Street, I waited on the platform for the train, conscious that people were staring at me in my costume. I concentrated on the blackness of the tunnel, but from the din of the station, a male voice cut through.
“Can you imagine doing that?” the man said, loudly enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. He was about thirty, wearing a polished gray suit, standing between two other young men in suits. The trio was unshaven-on-purpose, wearing white shirts and ties in different colors, the only way to tell them apart. They laughed at the woman in the white and purple dress, knowing she could hear them, but not caring.
Not today, I thought. Please don’t do this today.
I turned to face them. The shame and embarrassment I felt made me want to keep quiet, as always, but then I remembered:
A Baptist isn’t afraid to take risks.
I looked at the man who’d made the comment and said, “I’m too much woman for you. From the looks of you, you probably like to diddle little boys.” The two guys next to him, the friends, his white-guy posse, laughed.
They shouldn’t have laughed.
The fist of the man who’d made the comment came flying at me. I saw it coming—the white paw, the hairy knuckles, the ring finger wrapped in a thin gold band. I opened my mouth as if to yell but his fist hit me before I could, the gold band smashing my lip into my incisor. I stumbled backwards, past the white line, near the edge of the subway platform. Someone screamed, but it sounded far away. I turned my head and saw the train approaching, the silver bullet, its white light heading toward me. My arms moved propeller-like as I fought for balance. Blood filled my mouth. I didn’t want to die this way, not with these people watching, but the white light was moving closer. I braced for impact, but then I felt hands pulling at me.
I fell to my knees on the platform as the train blew past. “He tried to push her onto the tracks. Did you see that? He tried to push her.”
The doors of the train opened and the passengers stampeded out, knocking me from side to side. When the crowd thinned and the train closed its doors, a woman knelt down next to me. “Are you all right?” She helped me to my feet. Another woman handed me a wad of tissue from her purse, which I held to my lip. The man and his two friends were gone.
When the police came, they asked me to describe what had happened. “He said something rude to me,” I told them, but I couldn’t repeat what he’d said. “I confronted him and he punched me.”
“He tried to push her,” said the woman who’d offered me the tissue. “I saw the whole thing.”
The officer said they would review the closed-circuit television and then contact me. I wrote my name and address on the form, as requested, and so did the witnesses.
The officer asked me, for the second time, if I needed the paramedics.
“I just want to go home.”
A 2-train pulled into the station and I settled into one of the orange plastic seats. The man sitting across from me was shrunken and old, and I could see myself reflected in the glass above his head. I stared at myself, Plum in Alicia’s dress, a bruise forming above her lip. The woman in the glass stared back.
? ? ?
Girls Will Be Girls
The 7:30 a.m. Metrolink to Los Angeles Union Station was due. The girl weaved between the waiting commuters. The women and men, staring into their newspapers and phones, took no notice of her. She should have been getting ready for school, this lone girl on the platform, a shawl wrapped tightly around her slender body. Her feet were bare, but she didn’t feel anything; she couldn’t. Her body didn’t belong to her anymore, not after the attack, not after so many people had seen the photos online. Soon, she would leave her body behind.
When the women and men on the station platform looked at her with their morning eyes, they saw a girl, but not that girl. Her identity was a secret, but they had all read about her, even if they didn’t know it. She’d been dissected before she was dead.
As the train approached the station, the girl felt it in her feet before she could see it. “Stand behind the line,” the man on the speaker said, but the girl didn’t stand behind the line. She rushed forward, and leapt.
La luz se fue.
The girl liked to ride around in cars with boys, that’s what they’d said. Did you see how she dressed? Slutty-ass bitch. She sure didn’t look twelve.
Luz lived with her grandmother in a house on the outskirts of Santa Mariana, an hour north of Los Angeles. Her mother had been away from home for more than a year. If her mother had been around, Luz wouldn’t have been riding around in cars with boys—she would have had to stay at home and do her homework every night and forget about sneaking out—but it was her grandmother who was in charge, half blind and hobbled by arthritis.