Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have lived in Virginia since 2004. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. It is my home. I AM a Virginian.
The Railroad Tracks
Holly and I were thirteen and life was waging a war of attrition on us. So, we waged war on life back. We racked up abusers as if we were collecting them—fathers, uncles, brothers. We were rageful girls. Our rage grew into vines which clutched us tightly in their embrace. We hurt anyone we could; beat up anyone who called us fat, ugly or poor. One should pity the fool that dare say “Chrissy and Holly are fat hillbillies” to our faces. We’d set upon them like banshees. We dared anyone to fuck with these enormous chips on our shoulders. Some people—like my own mother—said we were evil.
We read Sylvia Plath as if her writings were a “how to” guide to life. We wore our poverty and our bruises as if we didn’t give a shit about a goddamned thing. We fantasized about running away and even attempted to on several occasions. Whenever we could, we escaped to the railroad bridge over the crick behind the field which no one every visited about except us.
The railroad track over the creek on the outskirts of Huntertown was our imagined escape from the petting zoo of monsters who immiserated us. “Chrissy, where do these trains go?” Holly would ask without expecting an answer. “Holly,” I would frequently opine as we dangled our feet over the concrete slap beneath the tracks, “what if we could jump in a boxcar and get the fuck out of here?” Holly, in her drawl would second the idea, “Yeah. We need to get out of this shithole. We can be hobos.”
On myriad afternoons beneath that bridge, we plotted our escape. Inevitably, some excuse, or another always kept us under the bridge. “I don’t know, Holly. Our grandmothers would be devastated if we up and left.” Holly would charily second this caution, “who will take care of our cats and dogs?” “Can we trust the other hobos in the box car, Holly?” “I’m not sure Chrissy. Maybe they’re rapists too?” We imagined making our mothers hurt like they hurt us. And we enjoyed it.
We loved it most when the train passed overhead with the rhythmical “thump, thump, thump.” It was the sound of possibility, of freedom, of escape from our shitty lives. Sometimes we’d fish underneath the bridge and bring the fish to Holly’s mom to clean and cook. Sometimes we’d recite a passage from Emily Dickenson or Sylvia Plath. But mostly we hung out under the bridge because it was pregnant with hope and possibility.
Tired of praying for god to give a fuck, one day I hatched the plan. After a particularly brutal beating from my mom, I was fed up. I said to Holly during recess “Tonight is the night to jump the box car. Fuck the hobos. Meet me under the streetlamp near my house at 10 pm with your bike.” I explained that we’d ride to the field, then cross it on foot and wait for the next train. “Tonight, we were getting out, Holly.”
I could taste the freedom in my mouth like a refreshing popsicle. During recess, we decided upon the required things to have in our rucksacks. For me, pictures of my grandmother were necessary as was the camera she gave me. I assessed that we also needed peanut butter, jelly, bread as well as the water bottles we got from the Army surplus. For Holly, it was her collection of trucker magazines and potato chip and margarine sandwiches. Our girlish selves were so unprepared for such an adventure. But we were undeterred.
At ten p.m., I was there. I waited and waited and waited beneath the streetlamp. But Holly never came. I thought she was made of stronger stuff than this. When I slunk home in disappointment an hour later, I found my mother waiting for me. “Goddamnit you little fucker, fetch me my belt!” Her hands flew about me like angry birds. I cursed Holly as mom’s fists landed on my little body.
The railroad tracks may have been the way to our freedom, but they weren’t that night.
