Stand clear of the closing doors please. Atlantic Avenue—Barclays Center. A woman boards the train with her young daughter. I wondered how she would tackle the next four years of motherhood. Had the meaning of the word pussy been included in a recent vocabulary lesson? When she tells her little girl that she can grow up to be anything that a man can be, will her voice quaver slightly? Stand clear of the closing doors please. Fourteenth Street—Union Square. A mass of people exit the train, and I notice an elderly woman clutching a worn handbag with a sewn-in patch that read "I’m with her." How long had she been waiting for what almost was? How many jobs had she been passed up for in place of a less qualified man? How many hundreds of times throughout her life had she been held to a different standard than her male counterparts? Stand clear of the closing doors please. Thirty-Fourth Street—Herald Square. The woman with the blond ponytail was still on the train. As I looked at her troubled face and puffy eyes, I thought back to a recent late-night run to the drugstore. A man I did not know had sent a chill up my spine when he biked passed me and shouted, "I’d let you sit on my face any day, Princess." How many times had Ponytail Woman been frightened, sexualized, and degraded by a strange man who felt entitled to say or do whatever he wanted to her? I wondered if she too was sitting there lamenting for the numerous women who had come forward recently with painful memories of assault and abuse that had been inflicted upon them by the soon-to-be leader of the free world. Stand clear of the closing doors please. Fifth Avenue—Fifty-Ninth Street. I stand, button my coat, and drag myself back above ground into the chilly, wet morning. My feet felt heavy as I trudged up Madison Avenue, anticipating the long day ahead.
—C.M.