Yudl by Layle Silbert

Author:Layle Silbert
Language: deu
Format: epub
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2013-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

LaSalle Street Station

It was LaSalle Street Station, the railroad station on Congress Street, vast, dark, and pungent with smoke, shedding dirt democratically on trains and passengers. Ellen stood alone in the world, both feet on the step the conductor had just unfolded from the floor of the car vestibule. Her bag, standing behind her, cut her off from going back into the train.

Above, the vaulted glass and iron-beamed ceiling enclosed trains, moving baggage wagons, porters and passengers in diverse streams to and from trains, in and out of the exits and entrances at the far end.

She had been here before, in the same railroad station, a week ago Sunday, on her way to camp. Through one of those entrances at the far end, she and her father and mother and a well-labeled suitcase had joined her to the party of other girls going too. From afar, as they’d hurried—she came from a family who didn’t know how to come on time anywhere—she saw a population of small persons like herself, their suitcases another population under the supervision of a black man wearing a cap, his hands on his luggage cart, watching.

“Here she is,” said her mother as Papa, carrying the suitcase, was catching up.

“Just in time,” said the camp counselor. “My name is Miriam.” She checked Ellen’s name off the list in her hand. “Now we can go.”

Quickly Mama pasted a dry kiss on her. Then, embarrassed, Papa kissed her too. He’d never kissed her goodbye in public before.

This morning at camp, when she was getting to feel that she’d spent her whole life there, she’d been sent home three days early. This was Thursday. Why? Well, Miriam wasn’t saying. “You’re supposed to leave today,” she’d said, very annoyed. It had meant she had to drive Ellen by herself in a small truck to the railroad station in Valparaiso, ten miles from Loon Lake and jokes about loons, loonies, lunatics, and four-eyes. Her mother said she had to wear glasses because she read too much and never went out to play. In camp she used to read with her book up in front of her face, pretending nobody would know who she was.

She wasn’t the only one who liked to read in camp either. Sometimes, though, she stopped. Then she would talk with the other girls. A lot of times they talked about their mothers. She found out that she wasn’t the only one who had trouble. They compared how their mothers treated them, what they criticized, even the way they sat, the way they ate, reading when they should be outside, being outside when they should be doing homework. What Ellen really couldn’t understand was how much Charlotte in the bunk across loved her mother. “I miss her,” Charlotte said, and regularly every day cried. “I can hardly wait to get home.”

Now with her extra eyes squarely on her face she examined the station. At her back the conductor said, “Jump. Don’t be afraid.” She didn’t move.

She could hear the porter and the conductor talking in the vestibule.

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