The City is Home, but Escape is the Dream

The townhomes and ground of her big little world rumbled as she turned the corner towards the subway station. For a moment her heart sank in both the immensity of the artificial earthquake, as well as the anxious terror of possibly missing the train. She attempted to peer around the corner of the overhead railway, but could not tell from which direction the transport was coming or going. 

In her scrubs with a grandchild by each side, they ensued a charge like soldiers entering battle, hopping over small, ancient sidewalk craters which somehow always appeared without warning. Where the eroded holes were absent, tree roots uplifted the concrete into segments of a Ninja Warrior obstacle course.

Like a roller coaster ride, the walk to the station was always both a fun adventure and a panic attack; unpredictably swaying between both the positive and negative rushes of excitement. In one moment the lulling, urban, white noise of rumbling subway trains, cars passing, and hissing buses could put a baby to sleep. The next moment waking the dead with an interruption of a fortississimo symphony of sirens, shouting neighbors, screeching tires, honking horns and the occasional random pop of a gunshot excused as firecrackers.

The grandchildren would often describe the trek from their rowhome to the subway station in the same fashion that Buddy the Elf would describe his journey from the North Pole to New York City. After the bittersweet excitement of the ninja course sidewalk came the last obstacle before the station: the glass bottle shard sidewalk squares. As they approached the squares, their grandmother squeezed their innocent, little hands and shouted over the continuous, bassey rumble, “¡Venga, avanza!” The grandchildren hurried their step, scurrying their feet as fast as they could, but really only speeding up a about quarter step. They had easily become fluently bilingual Spanglish speakers, living with their Puerto Rican grandmother five years in the big city of Philadelphia. More so, they understood tones better than any Spanish student could pick up. Their grandmother had a habit of calling out their attitude, which was never clearly defined. Nonetheless, they learned to match the tone that pleased her, as well as recognize her loudness as a deficit, not permanent anger. She always spoke loudly, as it was partly cultural and partly due to hearing damage. It was never clear of whether her hearing loss in her left ear was due to her love of being right in front of loudspeakers during her surprising adolescent career as a roadie in a salsa band, or because of the smack her boyfriend, the band leader, laid on her when they broke up after a tour.

She never hit the kids in her disciplining, but often slipped off her sandal, slipper, or flip-flop, waving it at them as she reminisced on how she would give her now deceased son “un soplamoco” for his disobedience. The kids understood the beating of their dad as a kid was a threat to keep them in line. But they were more overwhelmed by her gracious, warm love, than her empty threats to whip them into shape.

As they arrived at the station, they hurriedly paid their fares and hopped to the top of the stairs where they found the train leaving. However, they breathed a sigh of relief once they realized it was the train for the opposite direction on the other side of the tracks.

"That was close Bela," the older one said as he caught his breath. 

"No duh stupid,” said the younger.

“Hey! Belaaa,” he whined.

She turned and gave them the frustrated look which they understood so well. It was a once wild fury that had been corked and bottled for ages, and its aura alone was tremendously terrifying. It was a slightly scrunched face of discomfort, biting her lip and appearance as if she was holding back vomit, but at the same time inviting it so that she could spew it on whoever got on her nerves.

“Sorry stupe,” the younger sister said with a tone of combined disdain and fear. Her brother stared straight ahead across the train tracks, silently accepting her apology.

Their grandmother straightened her stance, murmuring under her breath, "I hate this city." Yet, she looked south, admiring the Center City skyline. Though she knew the streets were just as littered with beggars and people too busy to care, the view evoked a heaven-like wonder, provoking wonder of life after death, and if heaven would hold similar views; as if paradise awaited along those skyscrapers. 

She noticed her grandchildren and herself were all in a daze. The kids were her kids, despite them never calling her Mom. They were staring off in different directions, still tired from the rush to get to the train. The three of them breathing deeply, inhaling the smoggy taste of city air. Despite the random sour smells, the grandmother had a moment of thankfulness as she surveyed the city and her eyes landed on her children with their blank stares. "Gloria a Dios," she whispered, returning her gaze to the skyline, again wondering what angels lied in the distance. 

The mini-daydream was abruptly interrupted by the screeching and rumble of the oncoming subway train. It was the train they needed to take, thus they quickly slipped between the sliding doors and found seats facing forward. They hated the awkward seats that forced passengers to make eye contact with strangers across from them. Other passengers usually spent the entire time of their ride with their necks craned like bananas as their eyes sank into their phones. But there was always one, one who simply sat staring forward, and it was almost always creepy and alarming.

In the forward facing booths, they could all remain close together, as well as peer out the window, holding their gaze on the majestic towers. However, as they sat admiring the view, a billboard which sat on an upcoming rooftop caught their attention. It almost always displayed a distorted advertisement that had been manipulated by graffiti artists. Today it was graffitiless, and the bright, crisp, new picture seemed to flash in the sunlight as the train sped past along the tracks. It was some social service program advertisement, featuring a traditional, American family: a mother, father, and two kids, all with big, seemingly natural smiles full of teeth. Immediately after passing the billboard, the train rumbled and angled downwards. Suddenly, but unsurprisingly, it was dark, the carts’ lights slowly transitioned to overhead fluorescent white lights. It was routine, the downward drop into darkness. That was the city they lived in: artificially illuminated, dropping into darkness.

The picture reminded the kids of the family they always wanted but knew they would never have. Their mother had disappeared after the birth of her second. She struggled with bipolar disorder, barely able to parent her firstborn. Five years later it was postpartum depression with the second that pushed her over the edge. The rise and drop from mania to depression was so hard, that the second she got out of the hospital she went straight to her mother-in-law who was already watching her son. “I just need a quick break,” she told her. “I’m a hit the grocery store and be back. You need something?”

She never came back. The drug infested, prostitute swarmed, dirtiest corner of the city swallowed her up and never spit her out. The father, a marine, was away during his daughter’s birth on tour in the Middle East. He had planned to return home on the thirty-sixth week of the pregnancy. The baby girl was an early arrival, born at thirty-five weeks. Desperate to come home, he was rushing on his way to his base. He did not notice a man running up to the car, a suicide bomber who jumped into the car. He never came home. Upon receiving the news, his mother had no chance or time to grieve. Alone with her son’s children, she saw no other option but to adopt the grandchildren as her own. 

Despite the trauma, grief, and reactive attachment disorder, the grandmother stayed strong, and the children bounced back, holding resilient. The city was a reflection of their life experiences: cratered, shattered, dark, but resilient, stronger with each hit. The Rocky Balboa mentality of the city was the only environment the kids had ever known. But for their grandmother, she was born and raised on the island of Puerto Rico, but spent her adulthood in the urban jungle of Northeast Philadelphia. From one rotting apartment to another, she finally spent the rest of her days in a quiet neighborhood townhome where she raised her son, and now her grandchildren. Yet, she dreamed of a small cottage outside the city; the kind of cottage wherein all necessities would be a car ride away, only two to four houses could be found between intersections, no city skyline would sit teasing in the horizon, and a farm full of chickens, cows, and horses would sit only a five minutes drive away. She hoped and believed that one day her kids would live out that dream, and at the very least would give her a taste of that dream outside the city.

As a nurse at a small clinic, life outside the city was but a dream, one she never believed would come true. Her income needed to triple to be where she wanted. All the patients were low income families, mostly minorities, or seniors using Medicare and living frugally off of their social security income. What she appreciated most about her clinic was the free childcare. The schools were closed for Memorial Day, but the clinic remained open. It was her greatest and longest standing support, a benefit she could not imagine finding in the suburbs where employers would be less compassionate towards childcare needs, being captive to public transportation’s chronic tardiness, and the simple blur of a walk from the subway station stop to her workplace. Her workplace was both a beautiful blessing and a curse. She dropped the kids off down the hallway, turned, and went to work, helping her city stay strong, one person at a time.