Photo by Yulia Matvienko on Unsplash
I was curled up at the bus stop, collar high and hat low, angling a shoulder to block the wind determined to turn the page before I had finished reading it. I know, Jack Frost, that this is the exciting part, but let us slow humans read at our own pace, when someone else spoke…
“You would look more friendly if you smiled.”
The voice was masculine; shocker, I know.
Don’t engage. I tell myself. Don’t look up. Don’t engage. The bus will be here in four pages.
I glanced up, moving as little as I could. Nammy, a regular on the route, sat next to me on the side of the shelter where the plexiglass was still unbroken. She’s older, gray-hair and cane-for-balance level, and I insisted. Luis and Mateo leaned against the back, two latchkey middle-schoolers, their caregivers long-gone to their first jobs of the week. The speaker dressed better than any of us and was white, like me, and had about five years on my early twenties age.
He rode the bus every Sunday afternoon, arriving at ten and leaving at three. “Timothy Gordon,” he had told me in the past when I needed to go somewhere on a Sunday afternoon and no one else was in the bus shelter for me to use as a barrier.
I knew more about him than the mouth diarrhea he shits over me when I’m hostage to the bus schedule. Stuff he regurgitates like his condo, his boss, his office, a professional convention is meaningless to me. I know the important stuff, that his grandmother, who raised him, lived in 12973 on the fourth floor with two other widows to pay the rent. She appeared a lot less white than him, but she was proud of his schooling and being a banker.
Why he hadn’t taken her away from here, False Tree Slums, was everyone’s gossip. Theories ranged from kind to cruel. But what matters is at the end of the day he didn’t live here anymore and she did.
Me, I’m here, despite my skin color lacking the appropriate levels of melanin, because I’m moving up the social strata, not down like most people assume. I was lower than slum housing once I had turned eighteen, being released from the foster care/orphanage system without a penny to my name and a GED worth less than the paper it was printed on. Having shelter at night without selling, stealing, or hiding made the last eight months the best of my life, despite sharing a bathroom with five people.
It was Monday. Morning. I would be on my feet and smiling all day. I only had time to read 23 more pages before clocking in. And he shouldn’t be here.
I hope Ms. Vargas was okay; that he hadn’t had to stay overnight because she was sick.
“I’m not friendly.”
Why did I engage? Maybe picking up the double-shift on Saturday where everyone told me dozens of helpful hints of how to plan for the holidays, where they were in the process, wishing everyone their best life for the season of joy pushed me over the edge. Those people I can’t say anything to.
“Just a little smile.” He gave me a brief half-smile. “Come on, just a little.”
Nammy eyes flicked between him and me, but she knew better than to get between two whities. The boys behind pretended not to pay attention, but this would be one of the thousand examples in their head feeding how men and women should behave together. Those in power can demand behavior out of the weaker. What they will be allowed to do to the women in their lives.
Don’t engage.
I scanned him up and down, snorted, and returned to reading.
“Look bitch!”
The black woman and the two Hispanic boys froze around me. The silence after his words released the screech of the bus turning down sixteenth street, the last street before the Tree streets making up False Trees: Oak, Elm, Birch, Pine, Spruce, and Walnut. Streets where only the garbage men of city services risked travel.
Should I engage, apologize? Make the rest of the people here feel safer? He was a regular, had been a native.
I stood, tightened the coat I picked up last Wednesday when I had been able to go winter clothes “shopping” on Riverside Ward trash day. I didn’t get many weekdays off, since the university kids and high schoolers and adults working a part-time job got nearly all the weekends, but every one of those became “shopping” days thanks to a quick search of city-wide trash days and a universal bus pass.
Looking him right in the eye, I kept my face stoic, before turning to Nammy and giving her a gentle smile, “Need help, today?” The boys got the hint and came around the bench to get in line for the bus to take them to school.
I watched them corral Timothy to the front of the line, them staying just outside the slush slash zone. The water splooshed over the business man’s shiny shoes.
I guess they decided which side of power they wanted to be on today. Tomorrow might be different; they were still young.
He cursed and hopped back as the bus door opened. Glaring behind him, at the kids, at me, and, unjustly, at Nammy, he stomped on the bus. The boys clambered after him, then Nammy carefully lifted herself on the bus one step at a time. I brought up the rear, flashing my bus pass over the scanner and giving the bus driver a social smile.
The only open seat had Timothy’s glowing white face smirking at me. I grabbed the handle over Nammy and turned to face front.
(word 962, first published 12/23/2025)
