Just Another Friday Evening at the Bus Stop

It’s 5:15 on a Friday at 12th and Jackson, and the #7 bus is running behind. The little crowd at the bus stop includes the usual wide range of ages and ethnic groups -- mostly huddled under the shelter, out of the spitting cold rain. A small woman pushes past me, talking loudly in a language I don’t know, and sits down on the bench behind me. I shuffle forward to make room. I’m a little distracted thinking about work stuff, my kids, an old friend who is struggling, historic and current injustices, the show I listened to on my lunch hour, set in the aftermath of 9/11. Man, that lady sure is talking loud -- basically shouting. I listen to the stream of unfamiliar sound, trying to discern words, or tone. I watch a man crossing the street toward the bus shelter. He has dreadlocks, a heavy black parka, a street-weathered look. “Hey baby,” he is saying. His voice is gentle, inquiring. I realize he is talking to the loud woman. I turn around to look at her and see that she’s not on the phone, as I assumed -- she’s been yelling into the void this whole time.

I study the two of them, trying to read their faces, accents, body language. For a moment I think maybe he knows her, or at least understands what she’s been saying -- but no, they appear to be from different worlds. I feel a flash of shame that none of the rest of us thought to ask her if she’s okay -- though, to be fair, it’s not uncommon to encounter someone yelling at the bus stop, and it’s mostly not wise or fruitful to intervene unless you have the capacity to offer meaningful assistance. Plus, as I said, I figured she was on the phone.

Anyway, she’s having none of it. She pulls herself up and spits out, in heavily accented English, “Excuse me? Leave me alone!” She is maybe 30 or 40 years old; the man might be a little younger. He persists briefly, in a way that might be kind and solicitous, or creepily manipulative, depending on a million and one personal and cultural factors that I have no hope of untangling, and which may well be entirely differently for each of them. She gets up and stomps out of the bus shelter, sits down on the ground against a nearby building, and pulls her scarf tighter over her head against the rain. Dreadlocks Guy stands awkwardly for a minute. Then he follows her out, but keeps his distance -- and eventually starts up a conversation with another man who shares his aimless vibe. The lady resumes her monologue, more quietly than before.

The #7 appears at last, and everybody queues up at the curb. I hang back, noticing a #9X coming just behind -- it’ll get me home 10 minutes quicker than the #7 this time of day -- and checking on the woman, who is, once again, being approached by the guy with dreads. Again she rebuffs him. She stands up and joins the line for the #7, behind another woman in a headscarf, who turns to ask her something. The two women are talking quietly as they board the bus. I’m relieved: it seems she has found someone she can trust, if she decides she wants support of some kind. The man stays behind, talking to his friend. The wind picks up a bit.

As the #7 departs and the #9 glides in behind it, I ponder all the subtleties I know I missed in this brief-but-complicated interaction. I wonder if I (or someone else) should (or could) have done something more to help the shouting woman, what kind of grievance she'd been shouting about, where Dreadlocks Guy and his bus stop friend might be sleeping on this cold and rainy night, and in what ways all of their lives have likely gotten harder or scarier or more uncertain since November. Or were things already hard and uncertain enough that changes coming out of D.C. only register as distant thunder? I think about the other people at the bus stop -- the little old Chinese ladies and the Vietnamese teenagers and the white guy in the wheelchair -- and the hurts and fears and losses each of us is carrying around, and witnessing, as we navigate this crazy world every damn day. And I wonder: when the apocalypse comes, how will we even know?