Tuesday, July 30, 2002

I saw her get on

I saw her get on the bus around Polk Street, mismatched and garishly made up, her face stretched taut.  She sat near the front and glared at people as they got on and walked past her, her head snapping as she cast her evil eye from beneath her hood and bandana.  I was sitting next to an empty seat, as I usually do, way toward the back.  I paid her no more attention than I did to the tattered homeless guy asleep two rows away from me, or any of the other freaks that always ride the 38.

Suddenly, dramatically, she stood and swept toward me down the aisle.  I felt it coming.  The bus was crowded but the seat beside me still was empty.  There had been no eye contact but here she came anyway.  As she settled in demurely beside me and someone on the other side got up and left the bus, I noticed that she didn’t stink - her clothes were clean and so was she.  Her fingernail polish didn’t seem to match from finger to finger but it was neatly applied.  Her cheekbones were high and glowed with rouge, but her eyeliner had run badly.  She had been crying.  She was about to start again.

We sat facing into the bus; the window opposite us was a mirror in the predawn darkness.  She began to respond to her reflection, arguing, imprecating.  She was getting worked up, her one gloved hand slashing the air and accidentally slamming down on the empty seat next to her.  That scared her a little and she tried to exercise some self-control for a moment. 

I was listening to headphones so I didn’t realize at first that she was talking to me.  “Why do some people always make it be on time?,” she was asking me tearfully.  I slid a phone off one ear and raised my brows, silently indicating my total lack of comprehension.  She repeated her question and then explained, “Sometimes you got to be late.  It can’t all be about being on time.  Not with me.  Cuz I’m telling you - that ain’t gonna work.  Not with me.  It just ain’t.” Her eyes gazed deep into mine so I could see in intimate detail her clotted conjuctiva, the ebony of her pupils blending smearily into dirt-colored irises that seemed to just collapse and seep their color out into the rest of her eyeballs. 

By now I was convinced of three things: she was psychotic, a transsexual, and she was off her medication.  She had stopped talking; I returned to my music.  But I could sense her emotions roiling; her face twisting as she fought to hold back.  She turned in her seat to face me.  I turned off the walkman.  “Did you ever love anyone who didn’t love you back?,” she asked.  I slowly inhaled, buying time.  She compliantly continued, the tears starting again to flow freely, “And what about that whole class?  That whole class?" “Class of people?” - I broke the rule, asked a question, gave her permission to erupt.  “The GRADUATING CLASS!” She threw off her hood; her leopard-print bandana was neatly wrapped and tied.  She sobbed.  Plummetting into misery she mumbled, “The graduating class...” She began to blubber, her words mating clumsily in her mouth.  I struggled to follow her: “It’s because I’m black… because I didn’t want to be black, or brown - but they wouldn’t have that - I wanted to be burgandy - but no - burgandy - but no - back then I was daddy’s little silver dollar baby - wrapped up in foil - cuz he give me a silver dollar when he see me - and now I got nothing - it’s not even nothing - I thought they loved me - it was all a lie...”

Her tears flowed in black tracks down her face, she wiped them with big delicate fingers.  “I never thought they loved me,” I admitted to her.  “I have to get off the bus now.” As I stood and left her, her eyes followed me like tadpoles suffocating in mud.  I stepped into the charcoal air.  A shabby man stood at the steps to my BART station, a sign in his hand, a hat extended.  I put coins in his hat.  I didn’t want to read the sign.