Ingrid Hughes was born in London in 1945. She grew up in Greece, Saigon, and Singapore, as well as the United States. Since she was twenty she has lived in New York, where she brought up two children and now teaches English to immigrants and native New Yorkers at the City University of New York. Her poems and stories have appeared in magazines like Lilith, West Branch, and the Massachusetts Review.

Ingrid Hughes

Crazy Baby

She calls me at my sister’s house in Washington to say
she found my wallet on the train she was cleaning.
“In a red pouch. It’s a wine color. Is it eel skin? The cash is gone,
but your credit cards, your license, your library card,
one for Red Apple, and the one for the bank machine all there.”
Is she trying to sell it back to me?
The credit cards I cancelled, but I don’t tell her.
“Yer family’s real good-lookin'.”
She’s even taking out the pictures; there’s no reserve possible.
I’m embarrassed to have her finger through my things.

Next morning, red daypack on my back, I ask Station Services for Track 8.
“Gate A. Why you want to go there?”
I explain and she nods her corn rows to give permission.
Under the high gray roof of the train shed I find
Tracks 8 and 9, 10 and 11, 12 and 13, but no Cassandra,
who I’m to know by her hard hat.
“Cassandra?” I ask someone with the yellow dome on her curlers.
No, but she leads me to Track 13.
I don’t mind that I’m going to miss my train. This is fun.
Five cars along the empty train two women say Cassandra is
back where I started. Walking there they ask for Crazy Baby.
Crazy Baby is right. I consider reducing the reward I promised.
“How’d she find you?” they ask.
She called my home in New York, I say.
“That was nice.” “Yes,” I say, restoring the amount she’ll get.

We’re almost at the gates when they yell, “Cassandra,
Crazy Baby,” at a tall, skinny kid, maybe twenty-two, hatless.
“I been lookin’ for you,” she says. “I’ve been looking for you,” I say.
“Walk with me,” she says.
She doesn’t want the whole station to see our transaction.
I don’t tell her, it’s too late, you should have been at Track 8
to start with, they’ll hit you up for sure.
She flourishes my wallet in its pouch; I pull three tens from my pocket.
Folded, it look like more.
“What train you takin'?” “The 9:20 but it’s 9:18 now.” “Come on” she says,
takes me a back way, asks, and asks again for number 86,
races two at a time down a steep double flight.
She had my license, she knows damn well I’m 43 and 5 foot 2,
I think, as she waves me on.
“Wait, wait, wait,” she yells at the conductor on the platform.
I can tell I’m going to make the train.
While I trot along, she shrieks, gleeful as an eighth grader
getting to boss the teacher, “Hurry up, hurry up.”