A Very Short Story

True life on the F Train

It was around eleven on a Wednesday night and, by the time we got to Brooklyn, there were only a few people on the F train. A couple were in my car, a few yards away from me. They were white, tired, bespectacled, and wearing sensible shoes. She spoke fairly insistently about family matters. He mostly listened and nodded.

Across from them sat a Black woman, maybe twenty years younger. She wore a dark coat and under it a pale blue shirt with a black vest. At first glance, I thought she might be an off-duty transit worker. She was also deep in conversation.

But she was alone.

I didn’t pay much attention at first. If you can’t talk to yourself on the F train, where are you supposed to do it?

Instead I stared out the windows as we emerged from the tunnel and rode the elevated rails overlooking Carroll Gardens and the Gowanus Canal. Then I heard a hissing sound.  It was the woman in the blue shirt who had been talking to herself. She pinched her fingers together and showed them to the white couple across the way.

“Stop talking,” she said.

The couple looked confused.

“Your voice….” The woman in the blue shirt winced. “Your voice…It’s like…”

She squeezed her eyes shut like it was an effort to continue.

 “Your voice sounds like ‘nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah...’”

It was an unsubtle imitation of the way a certain type of educated white person speaks – not kind, but not completely inaccurate either.

“It’s driving me crazy,” the woman in the blue shirt explained. “So just…just…stop. Okay?”

“I understand.” The woman in glasses nodded. “I totally, totally get it --”

“You’re doing it again.” The woman in the blue shirt cupped her hands over her ears. “It’s like nails on a blackboard to me.”

“Of course.” The woman in glasses answered, as if she couldn’t stop herself. “The same thing happens to me when I’m doing too much --”

“Bitch, please!” The woman in the blue shirt shouted. “Just. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

“It’s okay,” the woman in glasses whispered. “I won’t say another word if I’m bothering you…”

The train halted and gave a violent shudder outside the Fourth Avenue station. None of the other passengers looked up from their phones. It felt like one of those moments when a normal subway ride is about to turn into a New York Post story.   

The woman in the blue shirt put her face in her hands and shook as if she was starting to cry.

“I’m so sorry,” she said in a quiet voice. “My mother would be so ashamed now if she could see me.”

Everyone was looking up from their screens. Her torment was as plain to see as the MTA map on the wall. Her journey was her own, but it was difficult not to be moved by the sound of another human being in pain. For a few seconds, it felt like a rare moment of grace on the F train.

Until the woman in glasses stretched out her hand and said, “You know, I so relate to what you’re saying --”

“Oh my fucking God!” The woman in the blue shirt suddenly lurched to her feet. “Are you kidding?”

The couple looked up at her, waiting.

But then the train finally started moving again and a few seconds later we arrived at the station.

The woman who had been shouting shook her head and staggered on to the platform without another word.

Then the doors closed and the train started heading back underground.

“Anyway.” The woman in glasses turned to her husband. “What were we talking about?”