Hands

Like most evenings on my way home from work, I sat on one of the stiff blue seats of the Red Line train headed north to Granville. I was engrossed in a book by one of my new favorite authors that I had recently gotten my hands on. As we approached the Chicago stop, I shifted my eyes away from my book and glanced out the window to see a crowd of faces eager to board the train, eager to get home after a long day of work. Amidst the crowd was a tall, dark-skinned woman who stood out by sheer virtue of her height. I gazed at her from the moment I saw her and my eyes followed her red winter coat as she boarded the train, standing just a few feet away from me.

The car was starting to get packed with passengers and once everyone was on board, she was no longer in plain view. So I continued reading, every so often becoming distracted by an urge to peek through the sea of winter coats that prevented me from catching another glimpse of her. To my left, the sound of a loud musical cell phone ring disrupted my reading and the rotund, middle-aged woman sitting next to me answered her phone and began chatting rather vociferously. Soon the entire train became privy to her dinner plans and her strict instructions to the caller on how to properly roast a chicken. “Make sure you start off at 450° for 15 to 20 minutes, and then drop it down to 375° for the remaining cooking time”, she said. “The skin will be nice and crispy that way”.

The sound of her voice was so deafeningly close to my ear that it was almost impossible to concentrate on my reading. A small sigh inadvertently slipped through my mouth as I closed the book and put it back into my bag. I leaned back to make myself comfortable for the remainder of the ride while trying my best to tune out the cell phone chatter. But I must have been pretty tired because soon after I closed my eyes, I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up to a sudden jerk of the train as it stopped at Belmont. When the train conductor announced that a Brown Line train was approaching on the outside track, an onslaught of people rushed out of the car to change trains. In doing so, the woman in the red winter coat appeared again, standing directly in front of me, holding onto the railing next to her. She struck me as having a beautiful, smooth complexion and dark eyes that suited the brown of her skin very nicely. She had on a long beige skirt down to her ankles and a hunter green ribbed turtle neck under her coat, and in her free hand she held a coffee cup. I found myself mesmerized by the way in which she held her cup, because for some reason, it seemed strikingly familiar. And then it hit me.. she reminded me of you.

She reminded me of the way you used to hold your cup when we sat on the couch while drinking tea. Your long, brown fingers embracing the cup in a way that left no space between them. Your short, well maintained nails were a testament to your godliness and were all the more beautiful because they were real and never subjected to a single coat of nail polish. The skin on your hands was so smooth that when they touched my face it felt like heaven, and when they brushed against my lips, they tasted like chocolate.

All of a sudden these pent up memories of you came rushing through my head. I thought of the way you would tilt your head to the side and raise your right eyebrow whenever I said something that you didn’t agree with. Like the time we debated for hours over gender roles in society and the death of chivalry. And the way you smiled, a full, beaming smile, whenever I opened a door for you or held out a chair for you. I thought of that last weekend that we spent together 7 years ago, when we barely even got out of bed. I remembered smelling you on the sheets for days after that, the sweet perfume that you used to wear. The perfume that you refused to let me buy you for your birthday when you ran out, because you preferred a hand-made thoughtful gift over one bought at a store. You were so thrilled when I made you a scrapbook that took me hours to put together, full of pictures of us and magazine clippings that represented you and times we shared, and four letter words. I wondered if you still had the scrapbook hidden somewhere in a closet or stored in a trunk. I wondered if you ever looked at it for old time’s sake.

The woman in the red coat exited the train at Berwyn, an all too familiar stop that we shared for so long until you left me. As she left, I felt a sudden emptiness, similar to the way I felt the day we said goodbye at the airport. I wasn’t sure what to do next. So I watched her as she walked down the platform towards the stairs until she was no longer in sight.