​I Know That Woman Who Fell in the Subway

Malaysia Goodson

I’ve seen her, wheeling her child in the caverns of my home town, going shopping, going to the doctor, who knows.

She was Latina, or maybe Asian, or dark-skinned from the States or Haiti or Africa, or white, but I have seen her, trying to navigate the stairways of hell-on-earth, our subway system.

Every so often, I stop and hold out my arm and gesture: I’ll take the front end.
I mean, what else are we men for, but to lug and lift and load?
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They see a grandfather type, offering to help, and they make the decision that I mean no mischief, and they nod in assent, and we improvise a step-by-step ballet on the murderous stairs.

(Update: my friend James Barron in the NYT has reported that the medical examiner can find no major trauma from a fall, so the cause of death may be medical reasons. But as Barron points out, the dialogue continues about the brutal conditions in the subways, under Albany and City Hall. All I can say is, lend a hand once in a while.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/nyregion/mother-falls-down-subway-stairs-death.html

(Recently, at my old stop, 179th St. in Queens, I carried two shopping bags up the stairs, to a bus stop, which gave me the opportunity to drop a few words of Spanish on the lady – “muy pesadas,” very heavy – which got me a smile that lit up my afternoon. No medals; I only do it once in a while, when I have time, and am of a mood.)

They are up against it, these mothers with their infants, these abuelas with their groceries, and most of the time they have no alternative. The subways are primitive, and falling apart, despite the elected public officials who posture and prance but put critical offices in a building in the terrorists’ playbook, who ignore climate warnings and put fancy new stations to collect the coming floods, but ignore the infrastructure and the lack of elevators for those who need them.

The Times says: “Only about a quarter of the subway system’s 472 stations have elevators, and the ones that exist are often out of order.”

Malaysia Goodson, 22, was living in Stamford, Conn., but had come back to the city of her childhood on some errand. Somehow, she tumbled down a flight of stairs while maneuvering a stroller holding her 1-year-old. The daughter is reported to be all right but her mother died.

I’ll try to remember her next time I am in the subway.

For Malaysia Goodson: Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess:”  

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