This Train Is Being Held

by Ismée Williams

  Seeing him move sends a jolt of familiarity through me. My heart stumbles, then picks up speed, like a rock crashing downhill. The boy sits down across from us. I study his face. It has to be Robi. Alex stands in front of him, his back to us.

  People on either side of Alex make their way toward the door. A man in a sports coat next to Robi gets up. Alex looks down at his uniform. His back rounds, like he’s trying to make himself smaller. He tells Robi to lift his feet and stashes the bag lengthwise under the seats, out of everyone’s way. He stands with his arms tucked against himself. He rides the gentle swaying of the train and doesn’t hold on.

  Those passengers moved because of him. Either because he’s so big or because of the dirt on him. That he’s self-conscious about it makes it hurt to breathe.

  It was my decision to walk away. If I’d been home that day, my brother wouldn’t have spent two weeks in the ICU and three weeks after in the psychiatric hospital. If I’d spent more time with Merrit instead of running off to be with Alex, my brother wouldn’t have almost died. And all those times I kept things from Alex? He knew. He let me. He was willing to take what I could give. But missing the concert? Not telling him why? That was too much. Alex deserved an explanation. I couldn’t tell him about my brother, not without telling him everything else. Not without him knowing what a horrible sister and girlfriend—what a horrible person I am. Thinking about it all makes my stomach turn.

  Chrissy doesn’t know any of this. She thinks Alex is the one who broke it off. Another reason to feel guilty.

  Robi peeks around Alex’s side. He must have noticed me staring. His eyes aren’t dark like his brother’s. They’re light brown, like mine. I give him a little smile, embarrassed at being caught. His return grin is blinding. There. That’s the family resemblance.

  A woman rises from her seat. She covers her nose as she passes Alex.

  “God, ever think of taking a shower?” Chrissy snaps.

  “Chrissy!” I hiss. “Don’t.”

  Alex turns, his eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. He holds my gaze for three long seconds. He tips his face to the floor and frowns.

  My lips feel dry. My throat too. I wish I hadn’t finished all my water. I didn’t expect he’d be happy to run into me. But does he have to be so unhappy?

  Chrissy looks him up and down. Her sneer would send plenty running for a cave or any other kind of shelter. “Seriously. It looks like you were wrestling in dog doo. Disgusting.”

  “Chrissy!” I say again.

  Chrissy stands. She thrusts her chin at Alex. “We’re getting off anyway.” Her fingers extend for mine. “Come. You’re going to the store with me.”

  Robi peers at me, at Chrissy, at Alex. His grin has shrunk to a hesitant smile.

  I don’t want to do that to Alex. I know what his brother means to him. I can ride with them for one more stop.

  I take Chrissy’s fingers. I squeeze her hand. “I’m fine. I’ll see you at class.”

  She doesn’t move. You sure? her expression says.

  “Yes, thank you.” I give her my stage smile, the one that shows each person in the audience, even the ones in the very back row, that I’m both overjoyed and confident.

  Chrissy nods at me, glares at Alex, and marches out the door.

  When the train starts up again, I lean forward. “Hi,” I say to Robi.

  Alex jumps back when I stand. He moves down another seat length as I come over, turning the dirt-caked part of him away from me.

  “I’m Isa.” I offer my hand to Robi.

  Robi rips off his cap. He takes my hand and gives it a shake. “I’m Robi.” He’s beaming again.

  “That’s what I figured.” I glance at Alex. He’s still frowning at the floor. Is he angry that I stayed? Should I have gotten off with Chrissy?

  “We were in Central Park, playing baseball. That’s why we’re so dirty.” Robi’s fingers bend the brim of the hat down and up, down and up.

  “I figured that out too.” I bend down to whisper. “Your uniforms gave you away.”

  Robi drops the cap in his lap. He holds up his hands, his eyes rounding. “Today was a special exhibition game. Each school got to send two players. Haeres sent Alex even though he’s new and only a junior. It’s because he’s their best.”

  So Alex got in to Haeres. “That’s wonderful,” I say, and I mean it. “You must be very proud.” Alex stiffens when I turn to him. His throat works as if he’s swallowing down words.

  “Oh, I am proud of him. And Papi is too. He’s still there, helping. The younger kids, like me, are playing. But I’m not.” Robi looks at his feet. “Alex is taking me home.”

  Alex’s eyes slide almost helplessly to mine. His gaze slips away when Robi starts talking again.

  “Hey, how do you know my brother?” Robi asks, as if suddenly putting it together.

  “We’re friends.”

  Alex looks up when I say that. I can still use that word, can’t I? He has every reason to hate me. But I don’t think I could stand it if he did.

  “We actually met on the subway,” I tell Robi.

  Robi nods. He’s looking from Alex to me. “That’s so cool! Hey, Alex is taking me to the park near our house. Sunset Park. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve heard of it. I bet it’s beautiful.”

  “It’s OK. There are some actual baseball fields near our house too, but they’re probably being used by real teams now. So we’re going to the park. Do you play baseball?”

  “No. I don’t really know how.” I laugh at the face Robi makes. He adores Alex. It reminds me of how I was with Merrit at that age.

  “Well, if you want to learn, Alex is the one to teach you.” Robi’s eyes get really big again. “Oh, you can come with us now! She can, right, Alex?”

  Alex is watching me. His brow crumples. His small smile is so sad, I have to look away.

  What happened to us? What did I do when I walked away?

  “I wish I could,” I tell Robi. “But I have a class. In fact, this is my stop.” I look up at an ad for helping the homeless. I blink and blink until my eyes clear.

  The train wails as it pulls into Sixty-Sixth Street.

  “Oh man!” Robi slaps his leg. “Next time, then?” He scrabbles his cap back on.

  “Sure. Next time,” I manage to tell him.

  “Bye, Isa!” Robi cries out as I bridge the gap between the train and the platform.

  “Bye, Robi. It was nice to meet you,” I call back. “Bye, Alex,” I whisper to myself.

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

  ALEX

  We come up out of the subway. Afternoon sun glints off rusted rooftops. Wind blows but the yellow and orange leaves hold on tight.

  We head for the park. Robi wants to carry the bag. I tell him it’s too heavy. He asks why I haven’t noticed how much he’s grown over the summer. Fine, I say. Half a block later, I shoulder the bag again.

  Some kids are playing football on the field. Another two throw a Frisbee back and forth. I lead Robi to the far corner, toward the boulder he liked to climb when he was smaller. There’s enough room for us and more.

  I dig out a bat Robi’s size and hand it to him.

  Out of nowhere he says, “Isa’s really pretty. I think she’s prettier than Avery Santana.”

  “Avery Santana?” I turn to look for his glove.

  “The girl who lives next door. You’ve never seen her?”

  The girl who was playing catch with her dad. “I’ve seen her.” I take out two balls and put them next to the bag. Ten-year-old me would have thought Avery was cute. But she’s nowhere near Isa’s league. Even at ten, I bet, Isa was beautiful.

  “So why was she looking at you like that?” Robi’s swinging the bat. His grip is wrong.

  I find Robi’s mitt. I take hold of the bat. I don’t let it go until Robi’s moved his hands all the way down the handle. “Who?”

  “Isa. You didn’t see?”

  I take a breath. I slide on my glove and pick
up a ball.

  “It’s like she wanted to look at you. But instead of just facing you and saying hi, all she did was these quick looks from the side. It was kinda like how you were looking at her.” Robi’s stopped swinging. “And her sweatshirt. Didn’t you used to have one like that?” He’s waiting for my answer.

  I roll my head, stretching my neck. I reach up and massage a pinched muscle. “Isa and I . . . She used to be my girlfriend.” There’s no harm in telling him that.

  Robi’s bat tips to the ground. “Shut up,” Robi says. “When?”

  “Last spring.”

  “What did you do?” he demands. “Why isn’t she still your girlfriend?”

  I squat and riffle through the bag. I don’t need anything else out of here. I just don’t want to see Robi’s face. “I didn’t do anything. Except walk away.” What else am I going to say? I still don’t know what I did wrong. And I’m not going to tell him she walked away from me. If Papi heard that? Coño. I’d never live it down. He’d be saying Te lo dije for the rest of my life.

  Robi punches my arm as I stand. “What did you do that for? She’s so nice. Nicer than Kiara. Kiara never talks to me.”

  I rub my shoulder and show my teeth, pretending Robi’s fist hurt. I don’t tell him that Kiara’s different. That she’s not really my girlfriend. I don’t think he’d understand. “Isa is nice. But it wasn’t going to work. Her parents didn’t like me.” This is truth.

  “How could they not like you? Are they blind and deaf or something?”

  I smile at his joke. “I don’t know. I only ever met them once. And not for very long.”

  “Then how do you know they didn’t like you? How did they know they didn’t like you?” Robi’s voice rises like it does when a game is close and we’re in the last innings.

  “They didn’t like the idea of me.”

  “What does that mean?” He drops the bat and lifts his arms to the sky. It’s like he’s been taking lessons from Bryan.

  “You’ll understand when you’re older.” There’s no way I’m explaining that. Let him enjoy not understanding for as long as he can.

  Robi rolls his eyes. “Well, she liked you, right?”

  I pick up the bat, flip it around, and hand it to him. “Yeah.”

  “And you liked her?”

  Lines of dark wood course through the blond grain of the bat. They disappear under my fist. One of the poems I wrote for Isa comes back to me. About the way her hair looked against my arm.

  I nod.

  Robi snatches the bat. “So who cares what parents think?”

  He should be right. Even if he’s only in fifth grade.

  “Since when do you not care what Papi thinks?” I ask him.

  “Papi’s different. He’s not like other parents.” Robi raises the bat over his shoulder. “Ezra and Seung-wong’s parents are cool. They don’t yell.”

  I tap Robi’s hands, reminding him to line up his knuckles. I don’t tell him I think Isa’s parents are like Papi. I don’t tell him that’s not the only reason we’re not together anymore.

  I adjust the bat’s angle then step back to check his form. He remembers what I taught him last week about keeping his body straight. I tell Robi I’m going to feed him twenty easy pitches. He’s going to run to retrieve each ball as fast as he can. I’ll time him. Just like Papi timed me. After that, we’ll work on his catching.

  Robi chases his first hit. I’m glad he’s not asking about Isa anymore.

  We walk back to the house. I tell Robi to run inside and open the basement door. I don’t want to track all this dirt into Yaritza’s living room. Robi grabs onto the railing like he’s going to drown without it. I worked him hard today.

  “Oye,” I tell him. “You’re getting stronger. And faster. I can see it.”

  He’s halfway up the stoop. He turns back around.

  “Thanks.” His little chest is all puffed up. He takes one more step. “Hey, when did you and Isa stop being boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  I scratch my chin, pretending to think. Really I’m trying to figure out why he asked. “I don’t know,” I tell him, even though I do. I know the exact day. “Just before school finished for the summer?”

  “That’s what I thought.” Robi keeps climbing.

  “Hey, hold up. What do you mean, ‘that’s what you thought’?” How would Robi know that?

  Robi shrugs his bony shoulders and looks over at me. “You threw out that notebook. The one with the yellow paper. The one you carried all the time. Mami used to complain about the bits that would fall out when you tore the sheets from it, so I started picking them up for you. Don’t think you noticed because you were too busy writing in it. Then one day I was throwing away the scraps in the trash and the whole notebook was in it. It still had plenty of paper. I figured something bad must have happened since you loved that notebook so much.”

  I rub the back of my hand across my mouth. I’m worried he’s going to ask me what I was writing. I want to ask him what Yaritza thought I was writing and if she told Papi about it. I don’t say anything except, “Huh.”

  “I saved it for you,” Robi says. “In case you want it back. You know, when you wrote? You looked happy.” He squints, studying my face. “I think maybe happier even than when you play.”

  When I get out of the shower a half hour later, the notebook with the yellow lined paper is on my bed.

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13

  ISA

  I’m the second one out the door after Technique class. I’ve got thirty minutes before Jazz Movement.

  “Excuse me. Pardon me.” I dodge a beige bodysuit pirouetting in the hallway and duck under a pointed foot elevated above the dancer’s head. I weave around clusters of students talking too loudly, each with limbs extending and reaching and stretching. My gaze remains focused ahead. Ever since seeing Alex and Robi on the train, I don’t look at any single person’s face for too long. Their smiles hurt, because they’re real. They remind me what I had and what I lost, what I chose to give up. They remind me how little I have left.

  The locker room is heavy with steam and the smell of damp dance clothes. I kick off my shoes and head for the showers. I stand under the jets and close my eyes, imagining heat and water peeling back layer after layer, thought after thought, discarding the sadness, finding the soft core of me underneath.

  I’m out by the time Chrissy comes in, hands in her hair, adjusting her bun.

  “You showered again?” She dips her chin and slides a pin through her hairnet. “Didn’t you shower after Pointe?”

  I ignore her and bend to wrap the long, damp mess of my hair in white terrycloth. Chrissy sits beside me as I tug on a clean pair of tights. When she’s done pulling on her own, she stands, raising her arms, then drops into a deep plié. “Want to come over tonight? We’re ordering in Vietnamese and watching YouTube videos. It’ll be fun.”

  It’s Friday, so I was expecting the invite. Chrissy always asks on Wednesdays and Fridays. She knows Monday and Thursday I’m either hanging with Merrit or taking extra classes until nine or ten. Tuesday is family therapy and Saturday and Sunday is family dinner.

  “Thanks, but I can’t.” I adjust my tights, careful not to jam my ragged fingernail through the nylon.

  Chrissy straightens her legs then plants her palms on the floor to stretch. “Why not?”

  “I’ll be at class,” I tell her.

  Chrissy unfolds herself, lines of confusion marring her forehead. “What class—Wait, you’re not taking the enrichment session with Madame Bouchard, are you? That will be your fourth extra class this week.”

  It’ll be my fifth, but I don’t correct her.

  “OK. What are you doing for Halloween then? Can we go to Lauren and Deborah’s party together again? I was thinking we could be Betty and Veronica from Riverdale . . .”

  “Don’t you want to go with Kevin?” I ask, looking for a way out.

  “Funny thing. He hates costumes. He says he’ll meet us afterward.
We can catch a midnight showing of Rocky Horror. Susan Sarandon is such a versatile actress. Hey, that’s another idea! We could be Thelma and Louise, the ultimate gal pals who ditch all the men in their lives. How about it?”

  I fold my wet towel and lay it on top of the others thrown in the wicker bin. I think about what I did to Alex, how he looked at me on the subway, his little brother glancing between the two of us. I did ditch him, didn’t I? I don’t think that’s anything to celebrate. Anyway, why would Chrissy think I’d want to dress up as someone who gets back at the world by offing herself? As if that would be an answer. As if that’s something anyone should ever do.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” Chrissy whispers, realizing her mistake. She tries to take my hand. This time I let her. “Did, um, the psychiatrist find out what happened with Merrit and his medicines? Do we know for sure it was just an accident?”

  I shake my head, my eyes smarting.

  “Well have you asked him?” Chrissy asks. “Maybe he’ll tell you. You’ve always been close.” Her thumb strokes my hand. I tug it away. Alex used to do that.

  “The doctor said it’s best not to talk about it until he’s ready,” I tell her.

  Chrissy nods. “OK. I guess the doctor would know. But listen, I’m worried about you. You haven’t been yourself since . . .” She doesn’t say since Merrit or since Alex though I know that’s what she’s thinking. She watches me pull on my jazz shoes. “It’s just, all this work and no play, it isn’t good, Isa.”

  “I’m OK. Really. And the extra practice is good for me. I might even get a solo out of it for the spring performance. Or at least something good for The Nutcracker.”

  “What you’re going to get out of it is a sprain. Dance is an escape. I get that. It’s an escape for me too. But if you don’t slow down, you’re going to get injured.”