This morning I woke at 5am to scrub the bathroom tub, and the kitchen floors. I swept the entire apartment with a whiskbroom on my hands and knees. I dismantled the Lloyd marital bed that had been donated to me three years earlier by my ex-best friend, to throw it away, as so many people did when they moved. Who wanted to remember old lovers in a new house anyway, right? Chaddy and his little girl My My came over to help me with the last of my garbage and to take me to the bus station. My had just warmed up to me a few weeks ago and now I was leaving for good. As I dropped my keys through the office door, My asked why I had done a thing like that. � Because I don�t live here anymore.� Her 5 year old brain simply couldn�t comprehend it. Chaddy helped me load my two body bags, huge backpack and pillow into the back seat. We were off.
Once at the station My was determined to help me carry my bags. She grabbed the handle of the body bag that was twice as big as she and began to pull as hard as she could. Little by little the bag obeyed her yanking and pulling. She�d pulled it all the way to the ticket counter. � They you go!� She said with a proud grin. But we�d have to drag the behemoth to the bus next. Chaddy slung one over his back as I dragged the other.
There were only 4 people at the gate when I arrived. In front of me was a muscular blond woman who had been gorgeous before three kids wore her to her wits end. Wearing a tight pony tail, black jeans, and boots; a flesh colored tank top with white bra straps showing from underneath, and the coup de grais; a giant tattoo
Of Marvin Gaye�s song title �Let�s Get it On� across her back. I guess the tattoo worked, she�s got the three kids to prove it. I imagine her standing at a smoky low end tavern, in one of those clingy spandex dresses that were popular in the 80�s that she scored from the local thrift store thinking it was finery, as she had no idea that fashion had changed since 1986. Smoking a Marlboro and ordering whisky with a beer back (Rolling Rock) for the Auburn bowling alley bar dwelling type. The crappy dress is backless, and the tattoo gets her laid every night at the motel across the street. She may be trying to find a daddy for her kids, but she�s going about it in the wrong way, and not getting paid in the process for her troubles. Not even child support. The hyperactive kids annoy everyone waiting, until their mother threatens to smack all their heads off. They sit down on the luggage, frightened she may do it.
Behind her is a black woman in her late 40�s with thin, stringy salt and pepper hair. The gray is piss yellow from hot comb pressings. Her nails are long and browning naturally, she�s looking down and picking at them; seeming bored and anxious to leave. She wears a beat to hell burgundy Mississippi T-shirt and green jeans. She becomes visibly agitated when two white women in their 60�s with tight blue haired Mayberry perms cut in line after she�s sat there for 2 hours. The women never acknowledged us in any way. We were invisible to them. Only handed their tickets to the driver first, and lumbered their polyester asses onto the FRONT of the bus! 5 seats back on the left is where I sat. The bus has one improvement. The seats can be moved back as one so not to have a middle armrest in your back. I can stretch out this time. Not like the time I went to Ohio for Christmas in 1995. My spine in knots for days after. The black woman sits in the seat in front of me, and I notice at once she reeked of alcohol. My stomach turned from the smell an also the possibility she may become a nuisance. A man who looks like an African version of Nipsey Russell limps on with crutches, and sits across the aisle from her. A heavy set woman who looks white and Native American with bleached blond hair, squeezes on the bus with a baby carrier. She goes to the woman in front of me asking if she will move and give up her seat so her baby can sit next to her. The drunken woman scoffs and loudly says �NO!�
Rolling her eyes to look out the window at the station. The woman with the baby calls her a bitch loudly several times while squeezing her way to the back of the bus. The woman with the 3 hyper kids is in the front merrily annoying the rude blue haired women. The little girl will not stop talking, not even for a second. Mom shushes her obsessively, babbling, shushing, babbling, shushing, babbling, shushing, babbling�.