The pregnant woman walked into car three. I watched her through the vestibule glass. She was still filming — her phone was raised. She was narrating. She walked up to row two, where a Black woman in her thirties was sitting with a kid — a boy, maybe nine years old — in the seat next to her. The boy was, I could see, wearing a Patriots jersey. He was playing a game on a Nintendo Switch. The woman in the cream sweater stopped at that row. She pointed the phone at the boy. She said — and I heard this clearly because the vestibule door was open — "I'm pregnant. I need a seat. Can you move your son?" The mother

— I will never forget how calm she was — said, "Ma'am, my son paid for this seat. I'm not asking him to move." The pregnant woman said, louder, "So you would let a pregnant woman stand?" The mother said, again, "Ma'am. I'm sorry. I'm not asking my nine-year-old to stand for three hours." The pregnant woman — who had, up until this moment, been keeping it within bounds that were at least argumentative and not fully unhinged — snapped. She said, to a nine-year-old child wearing a football jersey, "You know what? You're a brat. And your mother is raising you to be a selfish brat. And when you grow up, nobody is going to do anything for you either."