Internment(13)

The dozen or so people in this car are all like me, going through the motions, stepping forward, trying not to run screaming from the train into the arms of Exclusion Guards with large guns. No one speaks. My tongue is wood.

We find our seats: 18A, B, and C. I slide toward the window, my mother in the middle, and my father in the aisle seat. My parents put their bags on the luggage rack, and mine fits under the seat in front of me.

Remembering a poem, I lean over to my dad: “‘There was a man with tongue of wood / Who essayed to sing—’” I pause, waiting for my dad to finish the Stephen Crane verse, but he pats me on the arm and turns away. This is our little game—one of us quotes a line of a poem, and the other quotes a line in response. It’s a variation of an Urdu game, bait bazi, where one person quotes a line from a poem and the other has to quote another line of poetry that begins with the last letter of the verse used by the previous player. That seemed impossible to me, so Dad eased the rules. But he doesn’t feel like playing, and I don’t know what I was thinking—that a line of poetry could make any of this better? But I whisper the lines to myself anyway:


There was a man with tongue of wood

Who essayed to sing,

And in truth it was lamentable.

But there was one who heard

The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood

And knew what the man

Wished to sing

And with that the singer was content.

Perhaps my dad was right to brush this poem off. I always think of David as the person who knows what I wish to sing, and now all I imagine is him showing up at my house, ringing the doorbell over and over and hearing it echo in the empty rooms. I wrap my arms around my middle and stare out the train window, into the dark. My own reflection stares back at me, but I barely recognize myself.

The train jerks forward as we pull away from the station. My mom puts her face in her hands, and muffled sobs rise from seats around the car. My dad envelops my mother in his arms, kisses the top of her head, and whispers “I’m sorry” over and over.

I put my hand on the dirty glass and watch the city disappear in a haze. As we move past Santa Monica, I catch a last tiny glimpse of the ocean while a thread of dawn inches its way into the darkness before we track inland, north and east and north again. The last overly watered lush golf course gives way to rock and scrub and desert brush. We race by Vasquez Rocks, and my heart seizes for a moment as I think of David and our many hikes there amid the ancient stones, the slabs jutting into the air, sweeping into sharp peaks against azure sky. Once we took a lesser-traveled path off the Pacific Coast Trail and followed it to the top of a ridge, where we discovered a golden plateau of desert sunflowers. We passed the afternoon in delicious solitude and hiked back down in the fading light, a withering crown of yellow blooms encircling my black hair. It was perfect. I didn’t know then how the memory would be a gift.

The train jolts and slows, recapturing my attention, before gaining speed again. My mom’s head rests on my dad’s shoulder. I watch as his heavy eyelids droop and then close. We haven’t slept since yesterday. Probably no one on this train has. It’s only been hours since we were taken from our homes, but each excruciating moment since has felt stretched, elongated beyond what it should be. It’s like all of us on this train are part of an Einstein relativity experiment—every American has been hurtling through space at the speed of light except us. We’ve been left behind to age, harnessed by earth’s unyielding gravity.

I should close my eyes, rest up for the unknown world that lies ahead, but I’m antsy. I need to move. I slip by my snoozing parents and walk down the aisle, toward the next car and the bathroom. Some of the heads turn to look at me; others don’t bother, but everyone who can’t sleep has similar glazed-over, red-rimmed eyes.

I press the large black rectangular button that opens the inner door and step into the wide metal vestibule between train cars, then into the next car, which looks empty except for a couple of people who seem to be dozing in the front.

I take a few more steps forward. One of the sleeping men moves, and I see him.

Shit. A guard.

There’s barely time to panic. Quickly, I turn on my heel, hoping that maybe he hasn’t seen me or that he thinks it was a dream. I open the door and step back into the vestibule. It jostles and I feel dizzy, like I need to sit down right now. But I also feel rage, because why do I have this sick, panicky feeling when all I wanted was to stand up and stretch my legs and maybe pee?

The door swooshes behind me. I turn to face a stocky guard. He’s so aggressively tanned, he’s almost orange. We’re alone in the small metal vestibule, desert passing by through the small window.

“What are you doing out of your seat?” he demands. Instinctively, I take a step back, stumble, but regain my balance.

“I, um, I was looking for the bathroom,” I manage to say.

He scrunches his light-brown eyes at me and clenches his jaw. But he seems to look through me, like I’m not there. “You were told to stay in your seat.” He speaks slowly, enunciating each word, bursting with restrained resentment.

“I’m sorry. I thought—”

“You thought what?” He takes another step toward me.

I inch back farther, closer to the door at the other end of the vestibule, which will take me to my car, where I’ll be safe. Safe? I catch myself. Because there is no safe for me. Suddenly I’m acutely aware of how small this space is and how loud the train wheels sound against the tracks, and I wonder if people will hear me if I scream.