Creative Emulation: NW

For my NW emulation I knew I wanted to incorporate some aspect of race and class as Smith does. I wanted to try and tell a story from the perspective of a minority race as well as a lower class rank. I tried to have her observe different races and class ranks through her commute home to her son and through a personal relationship she had with a Caucasian man who held a higher status than her.

My inspiration for this was to draw from my own experience as a commuter. As a commuter, I’m constantly observing a wildly diverse amount of people on the number of trains I take and blocks I walk. Two of the characters I wrote in the story, ones that my main character observes on the train, are actual people I’ve seen on my commutes and (creepily) made notes about on my notepad on my phone.

This is a response I wrote for one of my graduate classes.

*

The air was thick with carbon dioxide. Everyone’s mouths emitted the gas as they forced breath through their fourteen dollar scarves and the collars of their discount store coats. Loafers shuffled and high heels clattered against the gray speckled sidewalk. The buildings towered over her as she walked, including the hospital where she had spent the last eighteen hours running blood work for other people. They cast a shadow over certain corners of the city which never saw light. Her knockoff camel colored boots made a scooting sound against the ground where they were wearing thin in the heel. The fake sheep lining made her foot sweat and her sock slipped further into the shoe. Some patches of ice remained on the sidewalk, melted into growing puddles, and some water found its way into the small hole which had formed in the sole of her shoe.

Her hair was black and crunchy from too much 2 for $3 drugstore mousse. It got in her face and stuck in her scarf and in the hinge of her glasses. Her frames fogged up every time she dug her chin further into her scarf until she couldn’t see the person shuffling in front of her. Her coat was old and less puffy than when she bought it. The right side of it was caked in salt dust after she brushed up against a parked car. The purple scrubs she wore were too thin and the wind cut through them to her fourth day, post shaved legs. She approached the staircase which would lower her to train underground. They were wet and garbage was wedged into the corners. Soggy train cards, flattened potato chip bags, disintegrated cigarette butts. A coffee stained to-go cup from the nearest franchise rolled around at the bottom of the staircase. There was a garbage can right next to it.

She swiped her train card and walked sideways through the old turnstile. Once on the platform, she made her way to her usual spot, halfway between the graffiti streaked bench and the K-9 officer and his muzzled German Sheppard, and waited for her train. She tugged at her scarf and pulled it away from her neck where sweat had accumulated in the crook of her collarbone. She turned to look down the tunnel and the yellow light was becoming brighter as the train approached. She looked at the time on her phone and thought about her son getting home from school as the train stalled and the doors slid open and she swung to the right to let train passengers get off before she got on.

She picked a seat next to the window although there was rarely a view other than black cement walls. She wondered if her son was doing his homework in their little apartment alone. She had made him chorizo and rice the night before and helped him with his science homework before she had to leave shortly after his bedtime for her shift at the hospital. In front of her there was a woman who wore twisted gold earrings and a black satchel with the McDonald’s logo stamped on the front along with tribal patterns, buckles, and a pin for the National Association of African American in Human Resources. Her coat was black and with a brown collar that was only a few shades lighter than her skin. She had a red, yellow, blue, orange, and gold patterned pashmina tied around her neck and a black beret with the Penguin Group logo on her head. She read the tabloids.

The tiny, orange penguin on the woman’s beret reminded her of the books she used to read her son, Luis, before bed. She recognized that puffin on the covers of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Corduroy. Luis used to ask why the caterpillar’s parents let him eat all that food. Most of the time she ran out of explanations and simply turned the page. The train jumped and she looked out the window only to see darkness. She pulled her knit gloves off her hands and continued to pick at the skin around the nail on her ring finger. The fluorescent light of the sign above her flickered and she looked up to read an advertisement for the new pediatrics wing at her old hospital.  A white child held a teddy bear and smiled next to a white doctor who wore a white coat and smiled with his white teeth. In small print at the bottom of the ad were the names of the pediatricians who ran the wing. His name was second.

They had met while she was interning at the hospital in the NICU. She was older than the other interns because she had arrived in the United States a few years before and only started nursing school the previous year. She had left her family south of the equator in search of a better education and her parent’s haven’t spoken to her since. She was listening to an RN speak about temperature control in incubators when he came in quietly with a couple holding hands close behind him. They approached an incubator with a small pink bow perched on the outside of the plastic top. He spoke to them softly and smiled as the new parents looked at their daughter through temperature controlled plastic. He shook the father’s hand, and rubbed the mother’s back, as he turned to leave. He caught her staring, nodded, left as quietly as he entered.

He had chestnut colored hair, blue eyes, and always wore a smiling alligator pin on the lapel of his white coat. He was from Massachusetts where his parents still lived and sipped gin and tonics slowly at their country club. He was older than she was by at least a decade but didn’t look it. He first spoke to her when she was waiting in line at the cafeteria. He asked where she was from and if he could buy her cup of coffee. They sat in the corner of the cafeteria with their coffee and talked until he was paged. No one had been as nice to her in a long time and it didn’t take long before his doorman grew to know her name. They always spent nights at his place, a spacious condo on the 72nd floor of a high rise, because he told her he wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood where she lived. They didn’t go out to eat or to see a movie and he was rarely there when she woke up but there was always juice and coffee waiting for her in the kitchen. She’d let herself out, ride the elevator down seventy floors alone, and tell her doorman to have a good day on her way through the revolving door.

It was there, at his place, when she knew she had to finally tell him. She had kept it a secret for a few months but she knew she wouldn’t be able to hide a growing stomach much longer. He jumped up from the table where they were having dinner and spilled his glass of red wine. The wine streaked across the glass table in her direction where she scooted her chair away from the table before the red droplets fell on her dress. She walked to the kitchen to get some towels while he went on about not being able to have a baby with the immigrant intern and what it would mean for his career. She knelt down to where the spill was gathering in a crimson puddle on the hardwood floor and watched the liquid soak into the paper towel dying it a muted plum color. Before she was finished he picked her up by her arm and told her she had to leave. She yanked her arm away and threatened to tell everyone at the hospital. He warned her about making threats before pushing her out the door. The next day she was kicked out of the program.

The hospital she works at now doesn’t have the same funding and its wings are older. The halls quiet and dingy and people rarely smile. It’s where she gave birth to her son and left his father’s name off the birth certificate. She thought of him when she looked at her son’s blue eyes and his milky caramel skin, much lighter than her own. He’s never called, never sent a birthday card, and she’s running out of reasons why.

The train pulled out from underground and the setting sun light streamed in through the green tinted windows. A ray caught her eye which made her blink and return to reality. There was a twenty-something guy leaning against the glass near the train door. He wore a thin, ratty fleece jacket, despite it being below thirty degrees outside, and his dingy blonde hair kept getting in his eyes when he leaned over to look at his phone. He pushed it away with his dirt crusted fingers before it feel over his forehead again. A neon green lanyard that read “Get Wet” hung from the pocket of his worn denim. The train slowed at her stop and she stood as the doors opened. The dingy guy didn’t move as she passed him and out the doors and he smelled like stale smoke and Fritos. She walked along the wood platform and looked up at the purple faded sky. The wind was strong but smelled sweet and the boy walking in front of her had hair like Luis’. She stepped in a puddle in front of the stairs that led out to the street and her sock squished in her boot on every step.