The Line Across Her Neck And The Train That Was Never Ours

My daughter was born with a faint reddish band that goes most of the way around her neck, low, like the shadow of a collar. The doctors had a long word for it and said it would likely fade. It has faded, mostly. You have to know it is there to see it now. But she has always known it is there.

She has been afraid of level crossings since before she could explain why. The barriers, the lights, the bell, the long low shape of a train coming through. She does not scream. She goes rigid and grips my hand and will not breathe until it has passed. Other loud things do not bother her. Fireworks, thunder, the dog next door, none of it. Only the crossing.

When she was old enough to put words together she started telling me about a platform. A cold platform, early, with frost on the edge of it, and too many people, and a case that was too heavy so she had to keep putting it down. She told me she was in a hurry. She told me she was going to see someone and she was late and the platform was crowded and someone was pushing to the front.

She said her name was Margaret. She said it firmly, the way you correct someone. She said, before I was your girl I was Margaret and I wore a grey coat with a belt. She was so young when she said this. She had never met a Margaret. It is not a name in our family, not a name from her stories or her programmes, not a name I had ever said in front of her.

One night she told me the rest and it frightened me so much I wrote it down, word for word, so I would not soften it later in my memory. She said the case slipped and she bent to get it and she was too close to the edge and the crowd moved and there was a sound and then everything was very fast and then very slow and then she was warm. She put her hand to the faint band on her neck when she said the fast part. She said, it happened here, and then I came to you.

I have never known what to do with it. My husband thinks she is a sensitive soul who picked up a fear somewhere and dressed it in a story, and that Margaret is a name she liked the sound of. That is a reasonable thing to think. I would like to think it. But I was there for the way she said before I was your girl, and there was no performance in it, no reaching for a reaction. It was a fact she was sharing, like her age.

We do not go looking for Margaret. What would we even look for. But I keep the piece of paper from the night I wrote it down, folded in the back of a drawer, and sometimes I take it out and read it and my skin goes cold all over again. The grey coat with the belt. The frost on the edge. The case that was too heavy.

My daughter is growing up and the fear of crossings is loosening its grip. Last month a train went through and she watched it and only squeezed my hand a little. Afterward she looked up and said, I don't think it can get me now. I asked her what she meant. She shrugged and said she used to be scared it would finish the thing it started, but she did not feel that way anymore. Then she asked for an ice cream.

I gave her the ice cream. I held her too tight for a second, the way you do. Whoever Margaret was, if she was anyone, she was late for someone she loved and she never got there. I hope, wherever the pieces of us go, that she knows my daughter is not late for anything. That she is exactly on time, here, with me.