Edward P. Jones’, An Orange Line Train to Ballston, is about lost opportunities, how they come to pass and what occurs when one abandons possibilities, or more importantly how we can react in having allowed them to pass by.
Each day Marvella Watkins, her daughter Avis, and Marvella’s two sons, Marcus and Marvin, ride the Orange Line Train that travels to Ballston. Their destination is McPherson Square, a stop located near the school Marvin and Marcus attend—where Marvella’s mother, who keeps Avis during the day, lives—and where Marvella works.
The orange line train like that of the blue line that veers off to destination other that Ballston, passes the Stadium-Armory Subway Platform where Marvella and her children board the train each morning. One day and minutes before boarding an Orange Line Train to Ballston the younger Marcus encounters the man with dreadlocks.
All five board the train. The younger Marcus, curious and taken by the man’s dreadlocks, and with Avis joining in, continues his conversation with the man whose name we never get to know.
The man with dreads never offers his name. Though not as obvious, Marvella, like her eldest child and elder son, Marvin, remains distant, never asking the man’s name and not offering hers. Marvella and her children arrive each morning at the Stadium-Armory stop with expectations of seeing the man with dreads or as Marcus describes them, “…hair like snakes.”
Most mornings he is present. Once on board, Marcus, more so than Avis continues their daily chats with Marcus asking the man various questions and the man with dreadlocks offering answers as best he can. He does not seemed bothered, rather impressed with Marcus’ curiosities about life, as he listens.
Marvella, tentatively looking on, desires to know more about the man—wishes he would inquire of her astrology sign. Yet she never asks the man’s name. Nor does she give him the slip of paper on which she has written her address.
Marvella never gives herself the opportunity to tell the man with dreads that she has experienced a set of failed relationships, one with the elder Marvin’s father, who visits Marvin on an irregular basis, and another man who treated Marvella badly.
Knowing this as a reader makes all the more interesting our observance of Marvella, her torture when in the presence of the man with dreads—her ambivalence around whether to give him the piece of paper with her address, or her inability to speak to him beyond correcting and chiding Avis and Marcus on how they address him.
Marvella’s soft reprimands to Marcus and Avis are almost an allegory of her internal voice telling her not to speak to the dreadlocked gentleman. Marvella, like the man’s hair, is knotted and confused as to how and when to strike up a conversation with him. Only through the interactions of her children—specifically Avis and Marcus and then for the most part Marcus— does she address the man with dreads. Marvella is not free and open like the younger, Marcus.
Caught between the diametric actions of the vivacious and questioning Marcus and the immense solitude of the elder and eldest, Marvin, Marvella, like Marvin, is wary and fearful the goodness of the man with dreads as demonstrated through his interactions with Marcus—and more severely her own sincerity. That the first syllable of her son’s names matches hers, Mar, is no mistake. One marvels with sadness at how Marvella’s life experiences have marred her ability to trust others, and most poignantly, herself and the wishes of her heart.
One Saturday and in desperation, after seeing the man with dreads wearing a suit and tie, Marvella, under the guise of driving around to explore their neighbor, goes out with the children. She is looking for the man with dreads.
Weeks go by after she does not find him, Marvella and her children seeing him only four or five times. Each day Marvella takes the train of whatever line—orange or blue—arrives first.
One day while waiting for the train at Armory-Stadium, Marvella is besotted by the Marcus’ questions thrown at her like a hammer. He wants to know how the subway lights know to come on, and go off when the trains approach and then leave. Marvella answers as best she can. Marcus’ barrage of interrogations subsides. Reaching McPherson Square and on their way up the escalator, he asks, why they had to wait [for the orange line] when the blue went to the same place they were headed. Angry and frustrated Marvella grasps Marcus’ arm and lambastes him with declarations of, “I’m the boss around here,” and emphasizing, “I’m in charge.” Her actions demonstrate she is not.
Marvella embarrasses herself, a realization made most apparent when Marcus, agreeing begins to chant, “You the Mama…you in charge.” Marvella tells him to, “Shut up!”
Like many individuals hurting and grieving life’s unfairness, Marvella discarded an opportunity—one conjured by the sincerities of her heart. She yearned to know the man with dreads. She wanted to see herself in a different light—move on from the abusive relationships in which she’s previously participated.
The man with dreads is nice. The constancy of seeing him on the Orange Line Train to Ballston speaks to the solidity of his character and personality.
Marvella’s anger toward Marcus is a form of self-directed rage in not being able to love herself enough to take a chance. The opportunity lost in the man with the dreads is at its worse a form of self-abandonment. Hence Marcus’ question infuriates Marvella, why they wait for the orange line train even though the earlier train on the blue line could take the to McPherson Square.
During past weeks Marvella has acted as if she had no desire to take the orange line train, dispassionate toward the man with dreads, while underneath soared a desire to acquaint herself with the man and frightened even herself.
“How many lost opportunities exist in one’s life?” Jones’s story seems to ask, the answer to which lies in the numerous hurts that have risen from the number of instances we have not surrendered our fears to the call of our heart’s desire.
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