Short Story #1

This is one of the short stories that I am putting together in my compilation of short stories titled, Subway Series.


1am Saturday evening on the 2 train to the Bronx…

Marie, exhausted from the day and night’s work, gently closed her eyes like a shade lowering on a window. Her face subdued and muscles relaxed. Her old, plump face looked like a black cherub. Her wide nose and thick lips were her father’s features. The rest she assumed was of her mother who she never met. The fine scars and scratches on her face told a story her lips never uttered. Her coarse, wavy graying hair was tucked into a shirt she wrapped around her head.
Marie opened her eyes. The subway car was packed. So much money to pay for a ride that had insufficient air-conditioning this summer night, she thought. The lights all burned out save two, which flickered like a strobe light putting Marie in a trance. She felt her sweaty face. Her hands caressed her scars.
Her mind traveled to Haiti. She was nine years old then. Marie loved school and was raised by her father, who worked around the island as a carpenter. She often stayed home alone while her father walked from neighborhood to neighborhood fixing and building things for families. She was an active little girl, so thin her legs looked like broomsticks. Marie played with all the neighborhood children hiding around bushes and people’s compounds. Her father and the neighbors always enjoyed her humor and high energy.
This one particular day, Marie walked along the narrow dirt road to visit the Massacre River. She wanted to lay her hands in the river and feel the power of her ancestors who proceeded home before her. Maybe her mother’s energy, which she knew nothing about, would overtake her body and allow her to swim freely.
Three drunken cane workers passed her speaking obnoxiously about things a little girl should not hear. Her eyelids bowed to the men as she picked up her pace. Suddenly, she felt her heart race and palms sweat.
The men whistled and one said in Creole, “Stop it! She’s Salvatore’s daughter.”
One man rudely spoke, “Sal, that COCKROACH! Why does he leave his little flower to roam the streets alone?”
Marie walked faster.
“Sal owes me money. I let him go on too long” the man snickered.
“Well, I guess we must do it then” and nodded to each other.
“NO!” a voice yelled.
But the men followed Marie.
Marie looked back and now saw the men following her.

She ran through the cane fields. The pain as she ran through the sugarcanes was intense. She felt like her skin was on fire. The cane scratched her face. One of the men tackled her like she was a chicken running away from its coop. Her face hit the ground knocking three of her teeth out. The man on top of her was nasty with sticky sweat and breathed heavily. The other man repeatedly punched her in the face while the other man looked on nervously. The man on top of her turned Marie on her back as she fought and whimpered. She was frightened and thought they would kill her. The darkest of the three men yelled at the other two to hold her legs. She felt the muscles of her fragile legs tear then rip apart from each other.
The man punching Marie tried to cover her mouth but she bit his hand with the teeth she had left in her bloody mouth. In the process, she bit the tip of her tongue off. One man entered her young body and she yelled in agony. Marie felt like her bottom half was ripped open and apart. It was no longer attached to her. She looked at the sky through the cane stalks and drifted away thinking of the bittersweet taste of the cane. The men took their turns and finished with her, then urinated on her face.
Marie passed out.

Marie’s father had just finished slicing the throat of the goat Marie had loved for the night’s dinner. A mob of people headed towards his one level 3-room house. In their arms, they carried a bloody little girl. He realized the bloody girl was Marie by her yellow dress with daisies on it. His eyes widened and he screamed a painful cry to the world.
The men laid Marie on the steps as they also cried.

The light flickered again in the train and Marie blinked. She realized her face was wet with tears. White women who boarded the train at the 66th Street station just stared. Marie noticed how she let that tragic moment dictate her life in New York hundreds of miles away from her homeland. It dictated her decisions with men, family, and relationships. She lived all alone in this grand city and ate herself within yards of death’s door.
Three men boarded the train. They were dressed in all white with drums covered in red fabric. They began playing as a whisper and then picked up the beat pounding the drum. Marie stood up and listened to the beat and danced. Her arms flailed and her body jerked. All eyes were now on her. And she danced. Her feet moved. Her body moved. Her eyes closed. Her body became one with the rhythm.
Marie danced back to Haiti. Back to Africa. She danced back to freedom.