In the Apple

Chapter 4

I walked down the street in the direction of town, not really sure where I wanted to go, for the moment simply enjoying the widening gap between me and the prison of home. I turned down an unfamiliar street I had yet to explore and there ahead of me was the train station. Suddenly, a sense of purpose overtook me. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. A rush of adrenalin caused my hands to shake as I turned into the station. For the first time in my life, I was about to do something my parents had actively forbidden. I followed the signs to the ticket office and stood in front of the posted timetables. There was a train to New York in fifteen minutes. 'My God!' I thought, 'One hour from now I could be standing on the streets of New York City!' Trembling, I approached the ticket counter. The bored clerk sold me a round-trip ticket without looking up, and I made my way to the packed platform. As I gazed in awe at the crowd of commuters, it occurred to me that not only had I never been to New York, I'd never even been on a train. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the same sense of joyous freedom I'd felt as I skated on the moonlit pond in the woods the night my father announced our awaiting move.

On the train, I tentatively took a seat near the window, hoping I wasn't violating some rule I didn't know about. Were seats assigned? I looked around for numbers but didn't see any. No one seemed to notice me, and so I relaxed and gazed out the window. The train rattled on and the houses grew smaller, taller, and closer together until they morphed into graffiti-covered apartment buildings with washing lines strung from window to window, clothes dangling high above the ground. The noise was astounding; even over the sounds of the train, I could hear traffic and honking and the raised voices of many people. I gasped as we passed a building with smoke billowing out of some of the top-floor windows, the orange glow of flames behind the glassless black squares. The man in the seat across from mine raised his head from his newspaper. "First time on this train?" he asked pleasantly.

I felt my cheeks reddening. "Um, yes," I confessed, hoping I wasn't about to get into trouble.

He tilted his head towards the window. "You'll always see something burning there," he commented.

I stared at him, aghast. "Why?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Because it's the South Bronx," he said. "Nobody cares."

I gaped, and he returned to his newspaper. I looked out at the landscape with new eyes. A lot of the buildings had windows which were missing their glass. A lot of the rooms beyond those windows were blackened, presumably charred. I was puzzled because most of the buildings themselves were beautiful. They had careful patterns of multi-coloured brickwork, gabled windows and intricately carved scroll work near the roof lines, and quite often lovingly carved stone gargoyles perching on corners or the on peaks of gables. The occupied rooms I could see into appeared to be high-ceilinged and light, with moulded ceilings and picture rails. Through one window, I spotted a dining room with an oak-framed server hatch opening into a kitchen. I knew nothing at all about architecture, yet I knew that these buildings had been designed by architects who took pride in their work, and were made to be graceful and comfortable homes. Why was it no one cared?