A REVIEW OF CARLA SAMETH’S ONE DAY ON THE GOLD LINE

by Abby E. Murray

I started reading Carla Sameth’s One Day on the Gold Line as part of my morning and evening commutes on the 400 bus between Tacoma and Puyallup. Many of the essays (and my habit of reading slowly, circuitously) seemed to fit the 45-minute route almost too perfectly, and I realized, after a few days, that I came to value my time sitting in the grey blur of traffic more than usual. Sameth has a poem in our May 2018 issue (2.2), and this collection of essays was released by Black Rose Writing earlier this year.

First, I spent a lot of time considering the title for this collection. The title essay hits you like a ton of bricks, just after halfway through a collection of pieces that recollect adrenaline-fueled adventures, with the narrator dodging—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—relationships shaken by violence and the mysteries of the mothering. In “One Day on the Gold Line” Sameth is brutally attacked by a Los Angeles police officer for not being able to find her Metro ticket quickly enough, mid-transit. Her head is slammed repeatedly against a pillar, thudding crunch of the skull and all, and the story whirls around those few seconds for pages afterward, moving readers incredulously from disappointment to disappointment: mute passersby, deputies and doctors who do nothing to help, unanswered phones and questions. 

The narrator’s recovery is resolved, in some ways, near the end, but I’m left wondering why this story, one in which the narrator’s response to violence is forced upon her by a stranger, is centered. In the essays that surround it, we glimpse the ugly face of domestic violence, the cruel stab of miscarriage after miscarriage, and the raging self-doubt that accompanies both these experiences. These are sharply contrasted with the title essay’s sheriff’s deputy, who arrives to deliver pain and is gone.

It might be that unique characteristic—this essay’s unusual relationship between narrator and violent stranger—which lends the story its power. The narrator is, in its most intense moments, beaten to the limits of observation: hazy confusion peppered with razor sharp sensory detail:

I thought of myself as a strong woman, but at this point, I was broken. My earring had fallen to the ground and was floating in my blood. …None of the deputies moved to help me; they continued to talk among themselves. I heard one belch.

She is tossed into the county hospital (handcuffed, with that Metro ticket wedged unseen between her wallet and purse) and abandoned, calling out to nobody’s answer. This is when her bruised body is moved by fear for her child and the terror of living in a society that constantly inflicts suffering upon thousands, then chooses which suffering it will acknowledge, and which it will deny. From a hallway, the narrator questions her privilege and the desire to protect her Black son.

I asked less for help as I realized that my survival depended on being quiet and compliant. …I wondered where my son was… If this could happen to me, a middle-aged Jewish woman, what might they do to my Black teenage son?

After being released into the night with a dead phone, no assistance, an earring dropped in a bloody glove, and a blood-soaked rebozo, the lawsuit begins, but is there any sufficient answer to the question she asks in that hallway? 

A lot happens in this collection, and many questions remain unanswered. At times it is overwhelming, the waves of detail upon detail saturating the reader to exhaustion. This technique can be effective in matching the reader’s emotional state to the narrator’s, swirling both of them in constant doubts, banana splits, prednisone, escapes from burning boats, car accidents, hospitals and recoveries. 

But the collection is punctuated by essays that buck the norms it establishes. In “What to Expect When You’re Expecting: The Teen Years, When ‘Molly’ Is Not a Schoolgirl,” Sameth shapes a glimpse at confronting teen addiction as instruction manual, walking us from room to room of our own houses and showing us how to consider the rearrangement of our own preferred substances:

The liquor cabinet: This is a favorite place for your young scientist to look for his or her first mind-altering experience. Start with your own stash. You probably have bottles in there that you don’t even remember from all the traveling you did back before you had kids. From the Israeli Sabra liquor to the Nicaraguan Flor de Caña rum—even the old two-buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s—they all have to go.

Prescription drugs: Mother’s little helper has now become your teenager’s. Stressed out by the English assignment you never started or the upcoming math quiz? Try mom’s Ativan. Bummed about the girl who was ready to give you your first hand job last week and now won’t talk to you? Maybe Vicodin will take away the pain.

And in “Some Markers as My Black Son Gets Older,” we are skipped like stones across condensed scenes in a numbered list: the narrator teaching workshops in a juvenile detention center, handling the barrage of racism faced by her son, reading about programs that “teach” Black teens how to “behave” around police to “avoid problems,” and, ultimately, loving her child unconditionally for his sensitivity, wisdom, and courage. The essay is quick to read but devastating to consider carefully. In short, that consideration is painful and necessary, for everyone.

You can order copies of One Day on the Gold Line on IndieBound (as well as the usual outlets, B&N, Amazon, etc.) and get in touch with Carla via Black Rose. Contacts are listed on her website, www.carlasameth.com. Check out her work in archived issues of Collateral, or, if you’re in the Los Angeles area, keep an eye open for public readings.