To the colored car.
Colored!
I wasn’t under any illusions. I knew exactly who I was. But I hadpaidfor second class. A seat with real upholstery, a porter, a window that closed properly. In New Orleans, people made allowances, looked the other way.
But I was being herded toward the back of the train, behind the day laborers and traveling musicians. Past the respectable noise of second class and straight into a boxcar with rusted hinges and the ghost of livestock. Wooden benches. No service.
Lordy, there was a hen in a crate under one of the benches!
I had left New Orleans to escape unpredictability.
So naturally, it followed me onto the train.
REAL MUSTARD
I adjusted the crisp folds of my traveling dress, already regretting how fine it was. Every dart and button screamed of better company than the one I was currently keeping. The cabin smelled like chicken fat and something pickled. I sat bolt upright, back like a ruler, like my posture alone might protect me from the indignity of it all.
The seats were stiff and narrow, upholstered in a coarse fabric that scratched even through my gloves. Every face looked hard up, but it was surprisingly worldly in this cabin. I counted at least four languages. Across the aisle, a woman cradled a baby wrapped in a quilt that—God help me—smelled like onions. Actual onions. The baby wept as if it knew where we were.
I don’t hate traveling. I love the idea of it—trains especially. The glamour of departure, the suggestion of progress, the elegant inevitability of arrival. But this wasnotthat kind of train. This was penance on wheels.
I was supposed to be riding first class. Well, notfirstfirst class but Negro first class: second class. My monogrammed trunk should have been tucked away in a proper compartment, my hat carefully stored, and a porter—preferably well spoken and deferential—should have been offering me tea or a blanket by now. Instead, I was wedged between a farmer who kept spitting into a tin and a woman whose hat looked like it had been sat on by a mule.
I hated this train.
I hated the grimy windows, the ticket I no longer even had, and the man—the porter, or whoever he was—who’d snatched it from me like he owned my whole journey. I kept scanning the aisle,waiting to catch another glimpse of him. How had he known my name? Why had he pushed me aboard like he’d been expecting me?
No answers. Just soot-streaked glass and a view of the bayou slowly dissolving into fields. I curled my fingers around the hem of my dress, right where the emergency cash was sewn into the lining. My little fortress of forethought.
The train shuddered. My past billowed behind me like the smoke curling from the engine, gray and impossible to hold.
The baby across the aisle wailed again, and the mother hushed it with a sweet little rhythm.
The train lurched to a stop, throwing her forward. The farmer disembarked—thank God—with his spit tin and his molasses breath, muttering something about “feed” and “cousins.” I resisted the urge to wipe the seat with my handkerchief. The mother and her screaming baby stayed, though.
No sooner had he cleared the threshold than a woman heaved herself onto the train. She was either pregnant or stealing an entire ham.
She wore a shapeless muslin dress and carried a small square suitcase. The box thudded onto the floor as she lowered herself beside me with a grunt.
Without a word, she reached across me—across me—and held something over the squalling baby. A small glass dropper.
“Sugar water,” she muttered.
The mother nodded, desperate, and opened the child’s mouth. The pregnant woman squeezed the dropper and miraculously, the baby went quiet. Not a fuss, not a hiccup. And for hours everyone in our row could breathe again.
“Lessie Mae,” the woman beside me finally said, nodding once before popping open the suitcase—which turned out to be a tin lunch box.
Inside: warm buttered biscuits. Ham sandwiches. A holy scent lifted into the air like a hymn. Half the compartment swooned on instinct.
A man reached out to grab one, and Lessie Mae snapped the tin shut like a bear trap.
“Ten cents, please.”
He reared back. “Ten cents? I could get a whole box of biscuits for thirty cents!”
“You’re welcome to the box then,” she said.
He blinked. Then shuffled off. But others surged forward—coins clinking in open palms, some throwing nickels, others dimes, one dramatic woman dropping a silver dollar like she expected applause. Lessie worked the aisle like a practiced showgirl, taking orders, making change, never once standing up.
