Elizabeth Osborn

hite ceramic tiles are set against square aquamarineones. These tiles make the station logo. It reads

SMITH 9

ST.

More tiles, these rectangular and mint green, border thesign. Parts of the mosaic are chipped, as if bullets hit them,and the glaze on some of the lower tiles is peeling off likethe kind of nail polish I used to get at the toy store, inthose safe-for-kids cosmetic kits.The cast iron platform is rusting, and the whole thingmight look better if the weather would just finish strippingthe white paint off of it. The electrical piping is rusting;the white chain link around the otherwise open, glasslesswindows is rusting. Even I’m rusting, just standing here,waiting for the train.You’d think with the Ikea store that just opened in RedHook, this old train station would get a little bit of love.But I guess that’s not how things work. Maybe if BrooksBrothers and Saks and Cartier decided Red Hook was theplace to be and moved their stores to this old shippingsection of Brooklyn, maybe then this station would get ascrub-down.But if that happened, the locals would gripe. We don’tmind the hike to the station, or the two flights of stairs andtwo escalators from the mezzanine to the platform. Wedon’t care that these long, almost-abandoned platforms feelas if they’ll tumble like Jericho if the right wind comes off

New York Harbor. We all belong to this station, and thisstation belongs to us.This stretch of the IND, all the way down to ConeyIsland, is aboveground, but it’s considered the subway. Thisstation is 91 feet above street-level, and is the highest pointon the IND. It was built in the 30s. The reason it’s so highup is because the Gowanus Canal passes under it, and thecanal is a tall-mast shipping route. The Gowanus Canalstinks to the highest of heavens because the sewertreatment plant overflows on a regular basis, and thecombined sewer outlets, when overworked, pour into thecanal. One of my friends grew up down here, and in thesummers, when the heat made the stink stink so bad thathis breakfast threatened to make an encore appearance allover his secondhand Air Jordans, he would run as fast as hecould to get from one side of the canal to the otherwithout inhaling.I’ve learned to breathe out of my mouth when I’m uphere, and I don’t really remember what the canal smellslike. Just that it’s awful.You feel the train before you hear it, and you hear itbefore you see it. And the big, lit F with a circle around itscreeches its brakes and you wonder if the train everwishes it had wings so it could flap backwards the way bigbirds do when they’re landing too fast.The doors fake me out every time, by starting to open,then not opening, then a second later opening for real. Inthe summers I like to stand close to the doors to feel thecool blast of the air conditioning, but on a temperate daylike today it doesn’t really matter. Two people get off. Iget on. This car is almost vacant: just a little girl, maybe