By Carolyn Muchhala

Mama said, “Never go anywhere near the tracks.”  When she was little, the girl stood far enough away in the yard and waved, but one day her brother took her to see a train up close.  Wheels clacked.  The train whistled as it pulled in next to the depot, a sound that made her throat close up, her eyes squeeze shut.  Her brother grabbed her hand.  Steam poured around the wheels, billowing up to hide the train, the tracks, the platform.  She was glad her brother was holding on.

            Today the whole second grade is riding the train to Orr and back.  It will take one hour, her teacher says, and be enriching.  The girl puzzles over that word.  How will a train ride give her the money Daddy says they never have enough of? 

Teacher assigns partners.  They walk two by two from school, cross Main Street, and take the gravel road down to the depot. The air around her is thick with words, laughter.  Nobody has ever been on a train before.  Some of the girls link arms.  The boys make silly faces at them.  Teacher pretends not to see.  The girl wishes her brother were here.  She clambers up metal stairs, slips into a seat by the window. 

Grandma’s house is across from the depot. It looks sad, standing all by itself at the edge of town. Once upon a time, the girl, her parents and two brothers had lived there with Grandma, Auntie and Auntie’s three daughters. Uncle had been killed in the war.

The train whistles and her stomach lurches along with the car.  She watches herself dive through the window, run through weeds and tall grass to the house that is no longer her home.  An ache drives deep into the marrow of her bones.

            When she was six, Daddy bought their own house, many blocks away.  Grandma was mad and yelled mean words at Mama who sat on the bed folding pillowcases into squares for packing.  Tears ran down Mama’s face and wet the front of her dress.  Later Grandma accused them of stealing towels, spoons.  Grandma and Mama didn’t talk to each other for a long time.  The girl and her brothers didn’t play Hide- and-seek with their cousins in the falling-down barn or climb into the apple trees. The girl didn’t sit on Grandma’s lap unraveling her long gray braid.  It was her first taste of forever.

            Now the train is taking her away from the house, away from those Sundays when the families go to Mass together and eat at Grandma’s afterwards.  Then the cousins play on the porch or in the orchard while Mama and Auntie prepare the chickens Grandma killed and plucked the day before.  Sometimes Auntie’s best friend is there.  He and Daddy talk in low, grumbly voices on the back steps if it’s sunny or snore in the front room on rainy days until it’s time to eat.  If it’s winter everybody plays Button button, who’s got the button, the grownups crowing, “You’re warm you’re getting warmer,” while potatoes boil on the wood stove.

The train is moving faster.  Grandma’s house shrinks.  It looks like a bug. If she put her thumb on the window she could squash it. Other houses appear and disappear.  A woman is hanging clothes on the line. Her daughter, waving, runs along their backyard fence.  The girl is the only one on the train to wave back, before the child is gone.