On my way downtown, the train I got on at 116th announced that its last stop would be 103rd, because there was a broken rail at 96th Street. There were no further helpful instructions. So at 103rd Street, the hundreds of people on that train all had to get off, shuffle out of the station and find some alternate means of getting wherever it was they were going. A lot of them got on a bus, a number of them hailed cabs, Vias, Ubers or Lyfts, and others (myself included) walked the 7 blocks to 96th where we were able to get on an express train (missing a number of stops that we might have been able to take were it a local).
Luckily I was only going to a class with a very friendly teacher, and luckily I had been able to leave early enough to allow that despite the added time, I was only 2 or 3 minutes late. But what if I had had a job interview, sandwiched between other obligations in my day? Or if I had had to pick up a child from daycare and had maxed out on my number of times being late? Or if I were going to work, or an important meeting? Late for a flight to see a sick relative? Why does this city not care about the worker that can't afford to pay to take a cab everywhere they go?
It made me really angry to think about it. And angrier still to think how ineffective that anger was. All the politicians know this is a problem, but no one is fixing it. It wouldn't make a difference if I wrote an angry letter or yelled at them. The feeling is that they don't care about a lower class that is not giving them campaign contributions. It is a terrible feeling to be so ineffectual.
My life is quite devoid of such anger, and as such, it doesn't stick. I come home to a warm space, have a very controlled and happy life, and something like an MTA glitch is merely an inconvenience in my day, not something that will derail most events for me. But there are lives that constantly have these setbacks, that are filled with anger and injustice, that are not heard. In this country, there is still an indentured class of citizens. Class mobility is not easy when it costs so much time and money to be poor.
Is it a gift to relinquish such control in the face of so many hardships? The borrowed feeling of powerlessness today was in many ways liberating. What is there to fear if no one cares, if you have no control anyway? Perhaps dying is much easier.
But is that a way to live, or a justification for not caring about others? And then what am I to do of it? That's the dull blow at the end of the fading anger, which admittedly doesn't even keep me up at night. I am able to let it go, because it does not really belong to me. One of the workers in our building, whom I've spoken with a number of times, calls me ma'am. I know his name and use it. But I'm neither entitled to a name, or better still, the silence in lieu of it. I am of a different class, one that is served, one that doesn't speak Spanish, one that has generations living on this soil. And it seems there is no way to bridge that.
May I discover another way.
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