By Carolyn Muchhala<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mama said, \u201cNever go anywhere near the tracks.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Wheels clacked.\u00a0 The train whistled as it pulled in next to the depot, a sound that made her throat close up, her eyes squeeze shut.\u00a0 Her brother grabbed her hand.\u00a0 Steam poured around the wheels, billowing up to hide the train, the tracks, the platform.\u00a0 She was glad her brother was holding on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Today the whole second grade is riding the train to Orr and back.\u00a0 It will take one hour, her teacher says, and be enriching.\u00a0 The girl puzzles over that word.\u00a0 How will a train ride give her the money Daddy says they never have enough of?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Teacher assigns partners.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Nobody has ever been on a train before.\u00a0 Some of the girls link arms.\u00a0 The boys make silly faces at them.\u00a0 Teacher pretends not to see.\u00a0 The girl wishes her brother were here.\u00a0 She clambers up metal stairs, slips into a seat by the window.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grandma\u2019s 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\u2019s three daughters. Uncle had been killed in the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The train whistles and her stomach lurches along with the car.\u00a0 She watches herself dive through the window, run through weeds and tall grass to the house that is no longer her home.\u00a0 An ache drives deep into the marrow of her bones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s face and wet the front of her dress. Later Grandma accused them of stealing towels, spoons. Grandma and Mama didn\u2019t talk to each other for a long time. The girl and her brothers didn\u2019t play Hide- and-seek<\/em> with their cousins in the falling-down barn or climb into the apple trees. The girl didn\u2019t sit on Grandma\u2019s lap unraveling her long gray braid. It was her first taste of forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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\u2019s afterwards.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Sometimes Auntie\u2019s best friend is there.\u00a0 He and Daddy talk in low, grumbly voices on the back steps if it\u2019s sunny or snore in the front room on rainy days until it\u2019s time to eat.\u00a0 If it\u2019s winter everybody plays Button button, who\u2019s got the button<\/em>, the grownups crowing, \u201cYou\u2019re warm you\u2019re getting warmer,\u201d while potatoes boil on the wood stove. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The train is moving faster.\u00a0 Grandma\u2019s house shrinks.\u00a0 It looks like a bug. If she put her thumb on the window she could squash it. Other houses appear and disappear.\u00a0 A woman is hanging clothes on the line. Her daughter, waving, runs along their backyard fence.\u00a0 The girl is the only one on the train to wave back, before the child is gone.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The train whistles and her stomach lurches along with the car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1997,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-june-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2016"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2019,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions\/2019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}