Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Katrina Rides the Bus
Sometimes fate catches you by surprise, and you wind up where you never imagined you’d be. And sometimes you see fate trotting toward you from across a busy street and you just know in your bones that your number’s up. And that’s how it was with Katrina.
The first time I really noticed her was a Monday a couple of months ago. Over the weekend, road crews had torn up part of the traffic islands in the middle of Geary Boulevard, which is a divided street in my neck of the woods. The islands are about four feet wide and had, for years, jutted well into the west crosswalk at Park Presidio. Pedestrians had grown used to being forced either to step up and over their high curbs or to skirt heavy traffic to circumnavigate the island - clearly, an unsafe condition for everyone, and positively hazardous for anyone with a handicap. Then, that weekend, jackhammers had pulverized those outcroppings, opening up a clear path across the entire crosswalk.
I stood looking over this crosswalk by my bus stop that fateful Monday morning, waiting dully in the damp for my musty bus, when I first saw Katrina. She was standing on the other side of Geary, in an outfit I soon learned she wore habitually - jeans, a white and purple ski jacket, and a purple Power Puff Girls backpack. But the costume wasn’t what caught my eye- it was the way she grinned so broadly as she saw the open crosswalk, her gold teeth shining out brighter than the dawn. When she got to terra nova, where the old obstruction used to lie, she literally pranced over it, raising her knees high and stomping her feet with every step, pounding her identity into the new smooth blacktop, laughing gleefully.
Once she got across to where I stood amid a good crowd of fellow mass transiters, she turned and shouted triumphantly but wordlessly into the street at the non-obstacle she’d just overcome. I asked myself if she was mentally sound, and then answered myself: she’s stable, but low-functioning. And it was then that I became utterly certain that I’d wind up on a short bus ride next to her someday. Fate had shown me my future, and it wore a Power Puff Girls backpack.
In the ensuing months I saw her occasionally, or maybe a bit more than that. I began to doubt that we’d truly meet. It seems that was just the lapse in my diligence that fate had awaited.
A week ago I stood waiting again at my usual spot with one other patron of the majestic 38L when the Power Puff Girls backpack rematerialized. She crossed Geary and came over to where we stood and introduced herself to the woman standing next to me, who engaged her in a brief, strained chat that I assiduously attempted to avoid without being rude to a total stranger. Then she turned to me. “Hello!,” she insisted with a Russian accent and a cheerful smile. “How are you!” “I’m fine, thanks, how are you?,” I automatically replied, instantly ruing my inability to be rude to total strangers. “I’m fine, fine, fine!,” she replied, nodding vigorously, inching closer to me as the other woman slipped a bit further away, casting a relieved glance at me caught in the snare she’d had the good sense to escape. The woman with the gold teeth and the juvenile backpack showed me a card that she wore on a chain around her neck - a Muni pass, but an unusual permanent one, made of stiff plastic and emblazoned with a markedly unflattering photograph of her. She held it up to my face, nodding seriously and then breaking back into broad smiles. “Katrina! I’m Katrina! Who are you!,” she demanded of me. “I’m Dan.” A pause. “Dan.” “Hello, Dan! Good morning!” I felt cornered, anxious, irritated, guilty, ashamed. I struggled for something to say or do to extricate me or relieve my discomfiture, and I wasn’t particular which or what.
My salvation came in the form of an impassive bus that at that moment pulled up and graciously let us board, and let me off the conversational hook. The act of boarding the bus seemed to take a lot of Katrina’s concentration; she hummed a strange Jerry Lewis-like song and furrowed her brow, hoisting her substantial bulk up the stairs and past the driver, to whom she offered an effusive “Hello Hello Good Morning!” She took a seat near the front, in the seats reserved for the elderly and handicapped. I smiled my farewell to her as I walked past, moving smoothly to the back of the bus, avoiding her, ending our nascent relationship. Or so I thought.
The next morning she got on the bus with me again, but in a big crowd in which we were not obliged to share any pleasantries. I saw her get off at Laguna, a minor stop on a major line, in front of the Chinese Consulate. Every day several Chinese people from my ‘hood get off at Laguna, walking purposefully, speaking softly, attending to serious geopolitical business. And there was Katrina, jogging along the sidewalk among them, smiling happily, singing a wordless, tuneless song through her nose. I could hear her over the roar of the bus as it accelerated uphill. I sensed then that she wasn’t finished with me yet. More was to come.
The next day was Wednesday. She was waiting for the bus when I got to the stop and immediately noticed me, came over with a friendly smile. “Hello! Hello!” she effused. I smiled and nodded, intent on minimizing my exposure to her. We didn’t talk any more at the bus stop, but once the bus came I wound up right behind her in the disorganized mass of riders crowding the door, and I had to engage in some low-level acknowledgment behavior as I funneled myself past her while she negotiated her way into a forward seat. I strode manfully to the rear of the bus, got a nice seat facing in, and pulled out a draft contract I had to review. The seat next to me was empty, for which I was momentarily and thoughtlessly grateful. But within seconds I felt a presence - she was standing before me, smiling her golden smile. She’d abandoned her seat up front and come back to sit next to me, twisting herself on the bench to face me. I smiled sourly and nodded to her, knowing that a conversation was inevitable but hoping to stave it off for a few minutes. I failed.
Part two tomorrow: Katrina loses it.
footnote: I posted this last night and realized in a dream that I’d gotten a fact wrong, so I updated this morning - I was honestly reading a contract, not writing a poem. I was writing a poem yesterday morning, and a damn good one too. That’s for later. For the nonce, Katrina will not be ignored.
