Home Sweet Subway

She was exhausted, uncomfortable, ready to go home. Back across the East River to their tiny one-bedroom Queens apartment. It was afternoon, a cold and rainy early winter day in Manhattan. Her labor the previous day had been quick and exhilerating, an experience she would treasure once the pain subsided and she got some rest.

The woman and her husband gathered their belongings from the cramped hospital room that she had shared with the impatient Jewish woman and her constant barrage of visitors. Was she jealous? A little. Once again, she and her husband had greeted a newborn son alone amid the noise and chaos of a Manhattan hospital. It was intimate, a bond they would always have....but she regretted that no one else had shared those first precious moments of life with them. That it would be months before they could travel West for the rest of their family to meet their baby.

She dressed and swaddled her son, still trying to comprehend this beautiful tiny creature. She accepted that he looked nothing like her: strong Hispanic features, dark thick hair, chubby hands and feet. It didn't upset her. In fact, she loved that both of her boys had arrived into the world as perfect minature images of their father. She held her baby's beautiful brown skin against her own paleness. Even in Queens, the white woman with the brown baby ocasionally threw people off. An Arab man who had moved into the building shortly after her first son's birth had asked her if she was the child's nanny. How often, really, do you see a white woman working for a Hispanic family? her husband had asked. As her older son had grown, he began to look more like her. Probably this guy will too, she thought.

They strapped the baby into his carseat and walked out of the hospital. The city awaited them in jarring reality. An icy December wind, car horns blarring, people walking over each other to get out of the rain. She and the baby waited under the awning to the hospital entrance while the husband hailed a cab. The yellow cabs and towncars did not seem to notice him. They were full of early Christmas shoppers, city workers, tourists all trying to stay dry. She tended to her baby, making sure that he was well-swaddled and dry. The husband grew frustrated.

Let's shlep up one block, we will probably be able to catch a cab there, he said. The couple picked up their belongings and walked. Her insides began to protest the movement. She was cramping and feeling the exhaustion of childbirth. Their tiny, awkward pre-war apartment, the one she had secretly hated since her arrival that hot July day over two years ago, suddenly seemed heavenly.

As they walked, she did her best to shield the baby from the cold and rain. She pictured her obstetrician, Dr. Cho, running down this street in her high heels and white doctor's coat the previous day. She had arrived disheveled and out-of-breath just minutes before the baby's arrival. She had told the couple that she had run the entire three blocks between her office and the hospital. The woman pictured Dr. Cho walking by them once again in her head. This time, her doctor shook her head in disapproval as they towed their newborn through the wet cold New York streets.

The couple stopped on the corner of 38th and 2nd Avenue, next to a bakery and bodaga. The rain fell harder. She could smell fresh bread from the shop and the flowery scent of shampoo in her wet hair. The shampoo from her first post-baby hospital shower. She had fantisized about that shower during her labor, how it would relax her, cleanse her from the unpleasantries of childbirth. It had lived up to her expectations. Like a baptism, she came out of that shower feeling renewed, whole. The pregnancy was over. She could move on with life and her boys and her plans. This was a rough start to her second life, she thought.

The husband continued soliciting cabs. His urgency grew as time passed. His waving became more frantic, and he crept further out into the street until he was almost in the middle of 2nd Avenue. Finally, a cab pulled over. Relief passed through the woman like a warm fire. She picked up the car seat, and headed toward the yellow cab. The cabbie rolled down his window. He looked at the couple and then down at the baby.

- Where I take you? Thick accented cabbie voice.
- Sunnyside, Queens.
- No...no, I no go to Queens.
- Wait, my wife just had a baby. It's just across the river. It's illegal for you to refuse service once you have stopped.
- No Queens.

The husband grabbed at his window as the cabbie tried to roll it shut. Strong, vengeful words were exchanged. Behind the safety of his fogged window, the cabbie looked dark, evil, distorted. Her husband gave up and the yellow cabbie took off. Together, the couple watched the car spin out into the Manhattan traffic fray as if it was the last boat off a deserted island.

The couple decided they had two choices: Go back to the hospital and start over, or walk the remaining blocks to grab the 6 train which would eventually get them on the 7 train and home to Queens. She felt rising anger at her husband. Why hadn't he anticipated the weather and arranged a ride home? Where was his cell phone? Why had she agreed to move to this city, anyways? This wasn't her dream, it was his. When did she become the pushover wife? He was a convenient, but unfair target. The woman reminded herself that he would do anything for her and this was not his fault.

At least the subway ride home would be warm, she thought. She checked on her baby, buried under his blanket layers. He had been asleep since they had left the hospital, immune to the world outside his baby carrier cacoon.

Rush hour had begun and the trains were packed. She stood against her husband, the baby secured between them. The train rocked and railed its way towards Queens. A man in a dark business suit asked how old the baby was. One day old, the husband weakly replied. He gave the couple a funny look, and turned around. She was suffocated amongst the people, imagined the filth and germs in the train poisoning her perfect, healthy newborn. She felt sick. She put her head against the husband's chest and sobbed, unashamed. How did this happen? How did they end up taking their baby home on the subway? What kind of mother was she, anyways?

The woman said a quick prayer to settle herself down and decided that if this little guy could survive the subway on his very first day of life, he would be ready for just about anything life may throw at him.

HAPPY HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY LITTLE ASHER ... LIFE WITH YOU WILL ALWAYS BE AN ADVENTURE, JUST LIKE THAT FIRST RIDE HOME!