Thursday, February 19, 2004
Katrina Rides the Bus - Part II
I started this piece in the post just below this one, so you might want to check there first before hopping on this particular ride.
Let’s take a moment now and see who we’re dealing with. Katrina is about 5’4”, looks to be in her 40s, with a ruddy complexion and solid bone structure. Her hands are stubby; her clothes are clean and well-maintained. She doesn’t wear makeup or perfume, and I’m relieved to report that she doesn’t appear to have much of an odor about her. All four of her top front teeth are capped with gold, and a mole the size of a jujube has taken up residence near the corner of her mouth. She has large pores and dry, untidy, rough-looking hair cut short and combed with a part like a schoolboy’s. And she’s sitting there on my bus bench next to me, smiling at me. I can feel her even as I paw through my 50 page contract, making notes and inserting marginalia. She’s rocking slightly on the edge of the seat, nodding, tapping her fingers on her pudgy knees, waiting for me to be done. But I’m on page 3 of 54 and I don’t plan on being done anytime soon. I know she gets off at Laguna; I saw her do it yesterday, and that’s not even halfway to my office. I just have to wait her out.
She lacks patience. She lacks restraint. “You working!,” she tells me. I realize it’s a question, and I am going to keep hearing it till I answer it. My choices are to answer rudely or politely, and I ride that bus every day - I can’t be giving myself a reputation for being a jerk or it will come back to bite me. So I answer, “Yes, I’m working. This is work I’m trying to do.” “A report!” “No, it’s a contract. A long, complicated contract. I promised someone I’d read it.” “Ah! It’s okay!” “I don’t know if it’s okay or not. I haven’t read it yet.” “It’s okay! It’s okay!” And Katrina falls silent. I return my attention to the page, wondering how long the lull will last.
Not very damn long. She’s only not talking because she’s fishing out a small clear ziplock bag, opening it, pulling out a crumpled fold-over plastic baggie inside of it, from which she removes a semi-recent photograph of a very young and rather homely girl, maybe 2 years old, with a strange headpiece like a floral version of an old-fashioned doctor’s head-mirror. She’s thrusting it toward me, but I don’t take it. Still, I am obliged to look at it. So I look at the photo, and then back to Katrina. She stretches her grin a bit further and blurts, “My sister!” There’s got to be 40 years between her and this kid, I’m thinking; I don’t believe that’s her sister at all, but I’m not going to tell her that. It might be her sister’s kid. I don’t really want to pursue it. I just reply, “Very nice.” “Sacramento!” “Oh. Nice town.”
She carefully replaces the photo in the baggie in the bag, and then shows me her Muni pass again. “Yes,” I repeat. “Very nice.” I lift the contract from my lap closer to my face in the universal gesture of “I’m going to read this now,” but I know in my heart that the subtlety will be lost on her.
“You go to Laguna!” She’s talking again and it’s obvious now that there will be no stopping her; my best bet is to minimize the aggravation by accepting my lot and submitting to her inquiries. “No, I work downtown.” “Van Ness!” “No, all the way to the water.” “Oh, okay!”
“So you work this weekend!” “No, I got the weekend off.” “You are going away!” “No, I’ll stay at home. I’m going to paint a room in my apartment.” “Okay!” This is going pretty smoothly. Something is going to go wrong at any moment, but it hasn’t happened yet. But like a bus that’s a block away when I’m standing at the stop, I can feel it approaching. I just don’t know what it will be.
“You married!” Oh god, no. Don’t get into this with me. I’m not your type, lady. Let’s be fair to each other. “Yes. I’m married.” I show her the ring that’s two feet from her face. She laughs, covers her eyes with her thick fingers, peeking at me through them. “I didn’t know!” Her laughter seems a bit forced. “Me, no husband, no boyfriend...”
She pauses briefly and her emotions shift. She’s crying now, silently, her palms pressed to her face. “My baby, she died… she is gone… my husband - “ She pulls out the ziplock again, fishes out the baggie, removes another photo - a prognathic, scowling man, built like Richard Kiel, stalking through some sort of plaza; the photo is black and white, printed on thin stock with frayed edges as though it might have been taken from a magazine many years prior.
She’s crying harder now: “He is dead, my husband, dead, and my baby….” At this point I’m having trouble following her story, the words are mumbled and jumbled; she’s growing increasingly emotional as she goes on. “She went ... she died… he is dead… the car went - went - “ and here she loses all capacity for speech and begins to pantomime the event, using her hands on the backpack on her lap, showing two things coming together and then flying apart, her fingers each playing a different role, her eyes imploring me as she weeps openly on the bench next to me, showing the accident again and again. She says “school.” “Was she hit by a car at school?” Katrina sobs and nods. “And your husband, what happened to him?” Her sobs turn to wails. “Did they die together?” She’s nodding hard now, gasping, choking back her emotions; I can smell onions on her breath. I have to say something, so I say, “I’m sorry, that’s so sad. When did it happen?” Her only answer is, “Dead, my baby, dead, I’m all alone now, all alone...”
We’re at Fillmore street now, one stop from Laguna. She’s struggling to pull herself together, putting away the strange old photo of the heavy-jawed man, looking around and getting her bearings. She is ready to get off this bus and I am ready to let her. The bus is delayed, idling at the stop. She starts yanking the cord to get moving again, keening impatiently, “too long, too long....” I remind her, “The cord means to stop, don’t pull it if you want to go,” but she keeps pulling at it and the bus eventually moves on anyway, crossing Fillmore and lumbering up the hill to Laguna. As we near her stop she gets up and turns to me a final time, asking, “You work tomorrow!” “No, I get a vacation tomorrow.” “Okay! Bye-bye!” She gives me a big broad gleaming golden smile and slips into her backpack, out the door, and down the sidewalk, jogging cheerfully as if nothing in the world was wrong.
I immediately put the contract away in my messenger bag and pull out my writing book, start sketching notes on what had just happened. The first words I write are, “I am such a ghoul.” I can’t get her teeth out of my brain.