“We: Nothing”

A teenage boy on my train was reading the Bible aloud. One of his eyes was maimed and bandaged clumsily, but you would only know it if you were on his right side, so half the car was more sympathetic than annoyed. He used different voices for the characters but his own when addressing the audience between pages, “Y’all: We are nothing without God.” From that and several other context clues, I figured Jesus had just died. It was hard to be sure since the woman next to me was speaking loudly into her phone (with one hand gripping the handle of her mango cart so it wouldn’t roll away and take someone out). Her Spanish and his English pureed together at equal altitude, so I don’t know who yelled “María/Mary!” when an old man crash-landed into our car, inches away from the girl opposite me (who was already clenched up in fear of the mango cart). The old man preserved his initial momentum – pinballing around the car with his hands in the air – catching himself by the wrists against the upper handrails – so never actually touching anyone – just briefly swinging above them. I was more interested in how the Mango Saleswoman locked eyes with the Pirate in accusation, as if he had summoned Jesus from the dead and onto our commute. Several young women with dyed hair and eclectic phone cases (in an order determined by their tolerance for this sort of thing) lined up at one of the doors, abandoning me. When He noticed me alone against that long, shining, sky-blue plastic slab, something inside Him caught fire. He grabbed the central vertical pole with both hands and thrashed toward and away from it, screaming, “FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU FUCKYOU!” while the Baby Battalion pressed themselves as flat as they could against the exit. They all looked so terrified – like they had been dropped into a lion’s cage. But I couldn’t tell you how He felt. I couldn’t even guess.