Ming and The Magical Midnight Sketches

The cowards and the cynics of the world would have you believe that there is a finite amount of love and kindness to dole out. They, of course, would be wrong. Quite wrong! No matter, we would make sure they got their comeuppance when the time came. 

In the meantime, we were much more interested in lending our gifts to those who were deserving. We had grown especially fond of Ming. Even in her most sleep-deprived, grumpy state, she still smiled at babies and held the door open for old grannies who didn’t have a cane but surely should. When her mother died, she wrote a thank-you card to every single person who attended the funeral. 

Sometime in the distant future, saturated in stardust, we hoped Ming would join our ranks. She had just the right temperament for it. But for now, we had other things in mind.

On this particular night, Ming had spent several hours tossing and turning. Her comforter snaked around her legs as she stared up aimlessly at the stained ceiling. She puffed air out of her chapped lips, and her bangs floated for a moment before settling back on her forehead. She untangled herself and threw on a black hoodie. Ming had recently painted the starry night on the back panel in a fit of especially burdensome insomnia. Tonight, she would grab her MetroCard and throw various art supplies into her backpack to ride out her sleeplessness on the subway. 

She took up this habit when she was a teenager, and her mother was sick. While the fluorescent lights stung her already bloodshot eyes, the swaying of the train soothed her. The feeling that she was going on an adventure calmed the irritation that inevitably built up when one tries to sleep to no avail. 

She walked towards the station and hummed a tune from her childhood. It was a chilly November evening, and her Chucks left her toes a little too cold for comfort, but her spirits were already lifting. When she got to the platform, she waved at the crescent moon, and although we were much further away and she would have no awareness, we waved back. 

Ming boarded the N towards Manhattan and set up shop. The train car was empty save a woman with her infant tucked inside a scarf against her chest. The woman dozed in and out of consciousness, her arms wrapped protectively around the sleeping child. The train screeched before coming to an abrupt stop, and the conductor informed the riders of a momentary delay. The curdling screams of the now-awakened infant cut through the speaker’s booming announcement. The two noises battled for dominance as Ming, unperturbed by either, grabbed her graphite pencil and sketchbook. 

While the train was halted, she sketched the young mother and baby asleep in some nondescript room. The decorations on the wall didn’t matter so much as the serenity she etched into their faces, replicated on her canvas page. On the train, the mother stood and rocked her crying baby. On Ming’s page, the baby sank into a deep sleep, and Ming imagined the baby dreaming of technicolor shapes and sparkles. The mother’s ragged braid was replaced by a silk bonnet that most definitely did not fall off in the middle of the night. Her frown transformed into a subtle smile that spoke of rest absent from anxiety. 

When Ming was satisfied with her sketch, she took out her purple pen and titled it, “When a baby sleeps through the night…every night.” Her fingertips tingled, and a shiver waterfalled down her spine, which always happened when she finished a subway sketch. Soon, the train lurched forward, and the baby was ushered back to sleep. 

At 59th Street, she decided to hop on the 6 and head downtown. She never embarked on these expeditions with a plan but instead allowed her feet and heart to direct her. We adored this about Ming. An endlessly whimsical spirit, much like ours.

As she neared Chinatown, the train got more crowded. A man in a business suit scowled at the homeless man on the other end of the train car. Arrogance oozed out of him with his tie that choked his neck and hair gel that suffocated his scalp. The homeless man, fatigued and withdrawn, slowly made his way down the middle of the train, a foggy plastic cup in his hand. Ming foraged through her backpack and found a five-dollar bill to contribute to the jangling coins. She hoped it would be enough for a bite from a bodega. It wasn’t much, and had she more, she would have gladly given it. 

When she put the bill in his cup, Mr. Wall Street scoffed and rolled his eyes. Ming stuck her tongue out in his direction, and the ugly man folded his arms in response. The train jolted, and the man, who had a limp, stumbled and began to fall in the direction of Mr. Wall Street. He shoved the man away and growled, “Don’t touch me, bum.” The man, who had gentle blue eyes, profusely apologized and continued to hobble away. 

She wanted to say something, but Mr. Wall Street had already shoved his AirPods into his large ears, which sat awkwardly on his small head. So instead, to vent her frustration, she once again reached for her sketchbook, but this time grabbed her felt pen. She divided the page into four panels and started sketching an illustration that depicted the mean man tripping and face-planting in a jam-packed office. The next panel showed a scraped knee and bruised chin. The following panel showed the man alone in a bathroom with a dejected look of embarrassment plastered across his grubby face. She titled the page, “The man who embarrassed himself in front of his boss and learned his lesson!”

The last and final scene she sketched that evening was on the Staten Island Ferry. It had been ages since she saw the Statue of Liberty, and she didn’t enjoy the mild disdain that lingered in her system from her encounter with Mr. Wall Street. She figured the East River would restore her faith in humanity. There, she saw two friends signing to one another. She watched mesmerized, thinking how beautiful it was that their fingers and palms contained a whole language she was not privy to. She looked on in amazement and tried to guess what certain words meant. 

A smile graced her lips, and she dug for the small watercolor set she reserved for truly special occasions. Ming used the leftover water in her bottle and began to craft a scene. She tried to remember a teacher who had once shown her the sign for “I love you” and painted the two strangers signing it to one another. When she was finished, she wrote in calligraphy, “To have friends who are always willing to learn the language you dream in.” Her fingertips tingled again as she lightly blew on the page to dry it. 

Sleepiness slowly seeped into Ming’s weary bones as she rode the ferry back to Manhattan, and then she commuted back home in reverse. Luckily, the siren call of bed whispered to her, and when her head hit the pillow, she fell into an unbothered sleep. 

As she descended into the dream world, we started filing the necessary paperwork. We were especially fond of her sketches tonight. From tonight onward, the mother, whose name was Roxanne, would find herself bewildered at how her child always slept through the night. On Monday, Mr. Wall Street would trip on a bump in the rug and embarrass himself in front of the whole office, including the senior partners. The two deaf girls would be overcome with joy when they learned their hearing friends had started going to nighttime classes to learn sign language. 

People like Ming made the world go round. Not billionaires, not presidents, and certainly not people who preyed on the weak. No, it was the kindness of everyday strangers who allowed sunsets to sherbert across the horizon and for babies to giggle in delight. And while Ming would never know that we made her subway sketches come true, we had every confidence that she would continue to illuminate the world around her.