Janelle sat in the passenger seat as they drove just outside of Bethune and parked the car near the train depot in the closest neighborhood. They got out and Darius donned the messenger bag, backpack, and the bag of food. He locked the car doors and took one last look. It wasn’t much of a car. There were a few dents from when Nora was learning to drive and hit a mailbox on the corner of the front bumper. There was the side swipe mark on the front wheel head-cap when she was trying to parallel park and a dent in the back bumper, another parking collision, but with another car. Still, none of those incidents mattered so much as being able to drive a car.
They headed towards the train depot, and an emptiness took over Darius. In a matter of hours, he was running for his life, said goodbye to his family, and now left his car behind to be picked away at by thieves. Guilt swarmed over him, engulfing his reality, and he moved only by necessity. His thoughts were full to the brim with nothing and everything at the same time.
He looked at the woman walking next to him and thought she was the most unthinkable ally he could ever wish for. He was certain that she hated him. Maybe it was that he slowed her down the night before. Or maybe she just didn’t like to help strangers and was actually as selfish as he perceived her to be. She was only helping him because Lauren insisted.
“Let’s see what time the train comes through.” She said as they entered the depot. There were few people there already waiting, and Janelle quickly scanned the schedule posted on the wall. It was a digital schedule that was easily updated by someone, somewhere, possibly sitting behind a cubicle in a big office 100 miles away. “Oh, lucky us, we have 10 minutes before the next train back to Bethune comes through.”
She walked over to the kiosk and scanned her wrist for two tickets to Bethune and handed one to Darius. “Thank you. You do not know what this means to me.” He said with appreciation as he looked at the little white ticket with black letters in his hand.
“Yeah well, thank my sister.” was her indifferent response followed by silence.
He couldn’t understand what her deal was, but he was tiring of her rudeness. He didn’t deserve it. What did he do that was wrong? Janelle glanced up and down the tracks, her face taunt and uneasy. She may have been just as afraid as he was, but it was hard to tell.
As they waited for the train, his thoughts drifted back to his wife and his precious Lily, who was probably bouncing around her grandparent’s house right about now insisting that they play with her. Lily’s innocence was so beautiful to him, and he wished so much more for her than the Faction already predestined. Most likely, when she comes of age, her grandparents would help secure a suitable marriage to someone established enough in their society to take care of her. A job that should have gone to him.
They lived in a presumably classless society, but no one wanted to marry their child off to someone poor. Parents arranging marriages, betrothals, were commonplace with actual marriage following at 18 years of age. All of this because of the consistently declining birthrate and a societal craving for unattainable wealth. Darius was sure that Lily’s grandparents would do the honors he could no longer perform. He felt crushed by the image of his daughter walking down the aisle without him and even more so that he would always remember her as a little child and not the adult she will grow up to become. He had just turned Nora into a single mother, like Janelle was, but unlike Janelle, Nora didn’t have a heart of coal.
“It’s coming.” Janelle declared, interrupting his anguished thoughts.
The train screamed through the station with a roar as it came to a halt in front of them. The doors opened to bright empty cars with rows of blue plastic seats. Other people got off and on the other cars, but no one joined them in theirs. It was a light-traveled day. She sat down in the seat facing forward and he took the row right behind her, removing the bags and placing them on the seat next to the window. Shortly after, the train moved with a light jolt, picking up speed to a desired momentum. Darius felt exhausted. He wanted to melt into the seat.
“Can I ask you a question?” Darius said.
She turned around to look at him. “Sure.”
“I feel you don’t like me, and I don’t know why.”
Her face flushed slightly pink. He knew he had her cornered.
“It isn’t that I don’t like you as a person,” she said as she looked out the window. “It’s that I know what you are and you can’t fool me.” Her eyes shot back at him with an assurance that added to his confusion.
“I don’t know what you mean. How about you just tell me what it is instead of going around it in a circle, expecting me to get the hint? Because I’ll tell you right now, I’m not very good at guessing games.”
She glared at him, eyebrows furrowed. “Darius, I know you’re black. You may hide it from all your white friends in your white neighborhood, but just because your skin is white, doesn’t make you white.”
Darius stared back, perplexed by the statement. How in the world could he be a black man in a white man’s body? Janelle wasn’t just a mean person; he was now believing that she was also insane. She looked out the window again, scanning the passing buildings for familiar signs of home.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not crazy. I know what I’m talking about.” She said, as she met his gaze again.
“Obviously, you don’t know what you’re talking about because I’m not black. Every single person in my family was white.” He retorted. “Besides, you can’t claim to know someone’s heritage just by looking at them without even knowing a single thing about them. You know nothing about me or where I come from. All you know is what I told you, which is the bare minimum.”
She scoffed with a biting response. “Just because they fed you that lie doesn’t make it true. Do you know anything about your family before the Faction takeover? I bet they didn’t always live in Munich Hill.”
“No, they didn’t. The disbursement happened, and they had to move just like many people did. My family was told to go there, as I’m sure your family was told to go to Bethune, or one of the other black cities. But moving means nothing. People migrate all the time if the Faction approves it first.”
She shifted in her seat. “You’re right, moving proves nothing, but the features of your face deceive you. The shape of your eyes, your full mouth and even your bone structure all point to blackness and African descent. Don’t say it isn’t true, you know damn well what I mean.”
His eyes narrowed sharply at her as she turned away from him to look out the window again with a grin of accomplishment on her face. “So that’s it then? You think I’m a black man masquerading as white, and that’s why you don’t like me.” He shook his head. “You are something else, you know that? Un-fucking-believable.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.” Janelle said as she came to her feet, “you have no right and no authority over me to talk to me however you want.”
The train came to a stop, and she held the metal pole next to her for balance.
“Oh, so you don’t like me defending myself? You can bash me and belittle me all you want but if I say anything in my defense, suddenly I’m the bad guy?” He glared up at her as the train moved again, “you are spiteful and mean and I don’t understand why you are like that. Even if I was black, as you say, what the hell does that prove? Does it give you justification for being rude?”
“What do you know about anything other than your perfect life? You don’t deal with as much bullshit as I do every day. You don’t have to share a tiny apartment with 3 kids and 2 sisters.” Her voice rose. “I bet you don’t have to stand in line for food every week. Rain or shine, hot or cold. Just wait outside and see what you get. No matter how much I work, I get only what they think I deserve.”
“Maybe I don’t have the same bullshit, but I get my fair share.” Darius responded in a more appeasing tone. He didn’t want to argue with her. He had a goal, and if he messed it up with Janelle, then Elan may refuse to help him. “I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but you’re right, I do not know how you live but, you don’t know how I live either.”
She starred at him for a moment and then looked out the window before saying in a sincere tone, “it’s difficult being the mom of a kid that’s destined to follow his father’s footsteps. I look at Jacob and I want something different for him. I don’t know, but maybe it’s just a pipe dream, but I want him to do something great in his life.
She huffed, and her gaze shifted to the passing buildings outside. “But then reality sets in and I realize there is nothing out there for him. There’s no dream path to life. It’s just an endless charade of daily tasks with no end in sight. No one is working towards a better future or a better life. Tomorrow is the same as today as it’s the same as yesterday.”
He nodded in agreement as she went on. “There’s nothing to strive for and no goal to reach besides the weekly rations of food, but what kind of goal is that? Work harder, and you don’t get more. Work less and the result is still the same. So, they threaten us with prison camps if we don’t work and decrease food rations when it suits them. The system is bullshit even though it’s the only one I know, but I keep thinking that there’s gotta be something more.”
“Yeah.”
He watched her, still standing with one hand holding the pole for support as the train moved along. “I understand what you mean and the fears you have about your son. I have my own fears for my daughter too.”
Her facial features had softened, and he thought he saw her eyes twinkle with tears before she blinked. It was as if she couldn’t bear to cry in front of him. It was that, or she was so used to hiding her own emotion, that the thought of being vulnerable scared her into retrieving behind her stoic emotional wall.
She took a breath before saying, “I know Jacob is going to be like his dad. He wants to be a medicine man, and he’s fascinated with their culture and their stories, but he hasn’t told me yet. I think he’s afraid to tell me, afraid that he’ll hurt my feelings. I can’t stop him from joining the G.W. or embracing his Native American culture. So, I just try to hold on to him as much as I can now while he’s still so young.”
Darius could see the sincere concern in her eyes. The train came to a stop again.
“This is us.” She said. The familiar uneven sidewalks and boarded up Bethune hotel came into view.
Darius quickly rose and arranged the bags around his shoulders again and followed her off the train.
“This way.” She said as they started walking and the train started moving again along its destined tracks, one way forward and one way back, but always on the same route.
“So, how did your wife take it? I gather she did not know you were a part of the Uprising.” She asked as they walked past a boarded-up building and a homeless man sitting idly on the floor, surrounded by his black plastic bags and bedding.
“No, she did not know, and I think she took it better than I would have expected, but the less she knows, the better. The hardest was having to say goodbye and know that I may never see her or my daughter ever again. I never thought it would come to this.”
The sun was up, and the clouds were sparse, but the air was still cold, reminding them that winter had not yet eased its grasp on the land. The deserted street smelled of urine as they passed an abandoned building. On the opposite corner of the intersection, a homeless man stood holding up a sign for food, written in jumbled black letters on a piece of cardboard. Darius wondered how they became homeless if the Faction offered food and shelter for work. Did they let it all go to waste for the transient life they live, or perhaps the answer was deeper than that and more complex as he himself realized that he too was now homeless.
Darius zipped up his jacket and wished he had packed his scarf or a beanie for his head, but he was in such a rush to leave that he packed the bare minimum without thinking about comfort. Janelle led the way across the street and rounded a corner. He could see the top of her apartment building come into view behind other buildings they had to pass. She didn’t seem as concerned as she was the night before to walk to streets, but perhaps it was because daylight brought a sense of security since bad guys usually worked under the cover of night. Or maybe they were in friendly gang territory, so hiding didn’t matter as it did when they were in Bolshie land.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, but he was grateful to not have to talk so he could think about his next move. As they approached the apartment building, he looked up and down the streets for signs of GPU vehicles, but the familiar set of white and blue sirens lights that sat atop the beefy Bladerunner vehicles were nowhere to be seen. They entered the building and rode the elevator up to her floor and then walked in silence through the hall.
Before opening the door, she turned to him and said, “thank you for the little talk. Well, I know I did most of the talking, but thank you for listening and I’m sorry for being mean. I didn’t realize that I was judging you.”
There was sincerity in her dark eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I understand.”