Sunday, August 17, 2008

Drive Until You Lose the Road (or break with the ones you've followed)

The bus hits another pothole. I check my phone and see I missed a call from my grandmother. I forgot to call her in the morning, as I usually do. Oh boy. Pull off my headphones, pause the IPod, retrieve the message.

Her voice mail is the typical "Hi, I guess you're busy and you didn't call me, it's okay, don't call back..." She's worried, and disappointed. I hit 're-dial' and confirm that I didn't die in a ditch somewhere, I just ran late today. I wasn't avoiding talking to her, send love to Pop-Pop. I hang up in time to catch my stop before the driver pulls out. "Pay attention next time, lady." I almost miss my stop every day. And he tells me to pay attention three times a week.

Plugging my ear buds back into my head, I let music wash over me for the block and a half walk I take to the office. Bopping along, down the hill, across the street, taking refuge in the notes for another minute, just one more...

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a woman of indeterminate age. Tear-stained face, tattered slacks, a heavy sweater wrapped around her frail body, matted hair that was curly and vivacious once... She's waving at me. About a foot away from my face. Oh boy.

I take out the headphones. I know it's a mistake the second I make eye contact. My heart sinks, I should have kept walking, maybe I still can...

"Ma'am. Please, do you have three dollars and sixty cents so I can get on the bus to pick up my two children from daycare?"

Sobs wreck her body. I don't know how much it costs to take the bus, my university distributed identification card gives me free rides. Tears and children, my weaknesses. I can't say no. "It's okay," I tell her. "Here, one second..." I root through my purse, which seems to suddenly hold objects I didn't know exist, digging deeper at an awkward angle as she cries. "Did you call the daycare and tell them you're running late?" I would have forgotten to do that, if I was as upset as she was. She nods and sniffles. As I continue to fumble awkwardly with my belongings, she tells me of a rape, the loss of a baby because of it, the forty-eight stitches in her stomach...

I'm ready to cry at this point. No one deserves that kind of pain.

I find my tips from waitress-ing, and pull out a five dollar bill. "Here, this should cover it." She nods again, and takes it a little too quickly from my hand. Inside my head I hear my ex-boyfriend's voice telling me I'm naive, weak, immature. That a mature woman would have just kept walking. I ignore it, telling myself that I have done the right, compassionate thing and that makes it better.

I begin to walk away, and yet I know she saw that I had more than just five dollars on me. "Do you have two more dollars so I can buy my kids some lunch meat for dinner on the way home? They're starving, they don't get enough to eat..."

Something in me draws a line. You saw it coming, I tell myself. "I'm sorry, no. I don't."

"Please! Just two dollars!" She is pleading and her (well rehearsed?) tears reform.

I cave into the cynicism. "I'm so sorry. But good luck."

I walk away... if she needed two dollars, she had it. I gave her five, and she said the bus only cost three something. I tried to soothe my conscience with that as I put my IPod away. My mind is firing off three hundred thoughts in all different directions.

I remembered a girl at a monthly workshop for theatre I went to in high school. She gave a man fifty cents for the bus when we were walking to lunch. I asked her how she knew he wouldn't just save it and spend it on drugs. She didn't even hesitate. "That's what you trust in God for." I was floored by that response five years ago. And suddenly, those were the words resonating in my mind as I climbed my office building's stairs.

I hope that woman caught the bus without any other problems. And that the kids ate sandwiches for dinner.