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Published: January 8th 2013
I remember stepping onto the train and looking for a seat. I knew I had to be strategic about this decision. After all, I'd be sitting next to this person for the next few hours. I made a quick scan of the back of heads trying to determine which one held the brain of the person I'd like to talk to. I tend to gravitate toward the out of place, seemingly lonely, foreign or extremely over or under dressed person. They have the most interesting stories.
To my left I noticed a young black man starring blankly out of the widow, wearing a black hoodie pulled over his head and hiding most of his face. The way he sat curled in his seat it was if he was almost hiding from something.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” I asked him.
He looked surprised but then nodded that it was ok.
He kept looking out the window and nervously tapping his foot. I didn't want the thoughts to go through my mind, but I admit, they did. Was this kid in trouble? Was he running from something? Was picking this seat a good idea?
"Are you ok?” I asked as the train started to lunge forward.
He turned to face me revealing ears with two giant diamonds pierced through and layers of gold chains around his neck. “Yes, ma'am, I'm ok. I is just a little nervous is all. Its my first time on a train.”
“Let me tell ya, its no sweat. This is surely safer than flying, right?”
“I ain't never been on no airplane ma'am,” he replied.
“Well, I've done a little of everything and traveling by train is a piece of cake. You'll be fine,” I reassured.
“I ain't so much worried about the ride. I'm worried because I don't have a ticket.”
I looked up and could see the conductor making his way through each car checking each passenger's ticket. Now I knew what the kid was hiding from.
“Man, my car broke down and I needed to get back to Chicago and my friends just dumped me off at the train station. They said I could buy a ticket on the train and it only cost $11 so that's all I have with me.” He opened his wallet and showed me the money like he wanted me to know he was telling the truth.
The conductor was just feet away from us at that point and the poor kid started sweating bullets and tapping his foot incessantly.
The conductor approached and I handed him my ticket to be punched. Then he asked the kid next to me for his ticket. The kid stammered his way through the story he had just given me about being dumped at the train station with eleven dollars to buy a ticket.
“Well, your friends got part of the story right,” the conductor told him. “You can buy a ticket on board but there's an extra $20 charge for that. If you don't have the $20 then I'm gonna have to ask you to get off at the next stop.”
The kid looked sunk. The next stop was two hours from Chicago, in the middle of corn fields and it was snowing. The foot tapping increased, the sweat was beading across his forehead.
I pilfered through my wallet and pulled out thirty-one dollars and handed it to the conductor. “I'll pay his ticket and service charge,” I told him. The conductor looked confused but took the money and gave the kid his ticket.
The kid turned and starred at me completely stunned. “Ma'am, I don't know what to say. That ain't never happened to me before. I would have been stranded. You must be some kinda angel.”
“Believe me,” I said, “I'm no angel. I'm just in the right place at the right time with exactly $31 in my wallet.”
He looked a little more relaxed now and told me his name was Jerome and he was headed back home.
“So you live in Chicago! I love Chicago! What part do you live in?” I asked.
He rolls his eyes at my naivety. “I live in the south side. No disrespect ma'am but you ain't never been to the south side.”
“You're probably right Jerome. Unless its near Michigan Avenue or the airport, then I'm sure I haven't.”
“Michigan Avenue? Ha! Michigan Avenue ain't Chicago. No ma'am, you wouldn't last a minute in my hood,” he added.
I leaned in closer. “Tell me Jerome, what is it like? I mean, I see on the news everyday about the gangs, the drive-by shootings and drugs. Are
you in a gang?”
He stared at me in silence for a moment then said, “Yeah, I'm in a gang. Once you join...you're in. You can't get out. Just try getting out.”
My first conversation with a real gangster. I felt like I hit the jackpot.
“Tell me everything Jerome. I want to know what its
really like,” I said.
So he did. He started at the beginning and told me everything. He told me about his mother raising six kids on her own because his dad was in prison for drugs his whole childhood. He told me about the gang he joined in high school and now was too afraid to leave. Teary eyed he told me about his younger brother being caught in the crossfire of two opposing gangs and how he was the one to find him shot through the head in the alley behind a convenience store. He told me how he had to tell his mother about her son being killed. He told me about the two years he served in prison for selling drugs. He told me he was just twenty years old and he was tired of his life.
“I never want to be in prison again,” he said. “That's when I knew I had to make some big changes or I'd end up dead like my brother or spend my life in prison like my dad.”
“Your mother's buried one child already Jerome, don't put her through that again. What kind of options do you have?” I asked.
He explained that while he was in prison he was able to take a few classes through the local community college.
“I just want a regular life,” he told me. “Maybe wear a suit and tie to work, that would be nice. Make enough money to take care of my mama. Who knows. Maybe have a couple kids one day. But for now, I'm stuck in a war zone.”
WAR ZONE. Those two words caught my attention. I live in a quiet wooded neighborhood in a little yellow house with a white picket fence. How could there be a “war zone” only two hours from my house? War zones were in Mexico or the Congo, not in Illinois.
We were approaching Jerome's stop.
“I wish I had some words of wisdom or great advice for you Jerome, but I don't. Just stay focused, finish school and never be afraid to ask for help. Who knows, maybe one day you can be a mentor for kids who are going through what you are. You are in a unique position to really relate and get through to these kids dealing with gangs. Maybe if you used your experiences to save someone else from going through what you have, you'd find some peace in all of this.”
“That's a good idea,” he said. “I think I could be a mentor one day. I tell ya, when you first sat next to me I thought why of all the seats on this train did this snooty white lady have to sit next to me.”
He stood up to leave, gave me the Obama fist bump and said, “But you ain't so bad for a white lady.”
I grinned. “And you ain't so bad for a gangster.”
What I've come to realize since meeting Jerome is that there
is a war zone only two hours from my home. When I read in the news about about kids being shot at walking home from school and violence between gangs its not a statistic anymore. I see Jerome, a kid trying to make the best with the cards that life dealt him.
Meeting and learning from people in your travels makes the world a smaller place. It puts real faces on the news we watch. It makes us more compassionate, tolerant and understanding. Though only 150 miles separates my life from Jerome's we are from two different worlds, but for an hour, those worlds overlapped.
And I think we both learned a thing or two.
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TinNiE
" Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness "
you are a mentor!
now that's a worthwhile train ride. beautiful story, thanks for sharing. x