The Hope Chest by Karen Schwabach Page A

tears of frustration started in her eyes. Then a white man came through going in the other direction and Myrtle was able to pass through. He didn't even see her. Colored people were completely invisible to some white people, Myrtle had noticed. If she worked at it, she could make herself even more invisible. It was the only kind of magic she knew how to do.
    Finally she got to the colored car. It was older than the other cars, with an open platform at the end instead of a vestibule. That made the door the hardest of all to open, but a young woman sitting at the front of the car saw Myrtle through the window and came and opened the door for her.
    This car was made all of wood, and the seats were covered with woven rattan instead of mohair. The people in the seats were all colored. Myrtle felt relieved, knowingthat nobody in the car was going to give her evil looks over their newspapers. But there was a conductor at the end of the car, coming toward her. He was white, of course; all conductors were. He was taking tickets, reading them carefully, and snapping them neatly with his hole puncher. Myrtle felt for the ticket she had in her pocket and hoped that other stupid conductor hadn't made any mistakes on it.
    Myrtle looked around for an empty seat. The car was very full. She saw a space next to an old woman— remarkably old. The woman looked almost too old to be human. She looked more like a very ancient tree that Myrtle knew of that grew in Anacostia, Washington. The woman was wearing the full, long skirts that had gone out of fashion before Myrtle was born.
    The old woman saw her looking and patted the rattan seat beside her. “No one sitting here, child.”
    “Thank you, ma'am,” Myrtle said. The rattan seat creaked as Myrtle sat down in the space between the woman's full skirts and the wooden wall of the train car. The seat had no springs, and Myrtle jolted with each clank of the wheels rattling against the rails. Myrtle had heard someone say that trains ran on paper-cored wheels, but she didn't see how a train could run on paper, and the wheels sounded like metal to her.
    The conductor stopped in front of the old woman and held out his hand for her ticket.
    “Where are we headed to today, Auntie?” he said.
    The old woman murmured something in reply. Her voice was so weak Myrtle couldn't make it out.
    “Change trains in Lexington, Auntie,” said the conductor. He punched her ticket and reached for Myrtle's.
    “Change in Chattanooga for Nashville,” he said to Myrtle. She guessed her ticket was all right.
    “Mrs. Merganser is my name,” said the old woman, speaking quite clearly once the conductor had moved on.
    “Pleased to meet you, ma'am,” said Myrtle politely. “I'm Myrtle Davies.”
    They rode on in silence for a while.
    “You have people in Tennessee?” Mrs. Merganser asked eventually.
    “Yes, ma'am.” Myrtle had never heard that she had people there, but there were people in Tennessee, no doubt, so it was possible that some of them were Myrtle's.
    Mrs. Merganser seemed to accept this as reason enough for Myrtle's traveling. People sometimes sent their children on trains alone, because who could afford an extra adult's fare just to escort a child who presumably had brains enough to change trains by herself?
    “How old do you think I am, child?” Mrs. Merganser asked.
    “I don't know, ma'am,” said Myrtle, thinking that the woman must be at least a hundred.
    “I don't know either. I was born in Alabama a long time before freedom came. When I was no bigger than you, I was sold away from my mother into Georgia, and I never saw her again.”
    Myrtle kept her eyes cast down and listened respectfully. She had met old people who had been slaves before. None of them had been as old as Mrs. Merganser, though.
    “My first baby was sold away from me when he was one year old. The second as well. Then my master died and left me to his brother in his will, along with some cows and a horse.” Myrtle heard