Second Liberation

Story by Catherine Ryan Hyde

“Going to visit family?” she asked the old man.
“No,” he said. Nothing more.
“I'm going to see the birth of my first grandchild. A girl.”
“Mazel Tov.”
“May I ask where you're going?”
“Home to Poland.”
She stifled a nervous laugh.
“I hope you don't think you're going to Poland on a train.”
“No, of course not. The train goes to the international airport.”
“How long have you been in America?”
“Seventy years.”
“Oh my! You must have been a mere child when you left.”
“Yes,” he said.
When he spoke again, it was without prompting.
“After the war, we were to go home. But strangers were living in our house, and the neighbors weren't happy to see us. Bad things were still happening. When we could get the papers, we came here.”
“Oh, well, it’s better there now.”
He shrugged. “Who can say? I only know I no longer see safety as attached to a place. Good things happen there. Bad things happen here.”
“Nothing like that could happen here,” she said. “I won't even talk like that. I'm bringing a grandchild into the world.”
“You started the conversation.”
When the train arrived, he looked over to her before boarding.
“If you want a better world for your granddaughter,” he said, “don't waste time convincing yourself nothing bad can happen here. Use the time to see that it doesn't.”
He dragged his bag onto the train, then turned right.
She didn't see him again.