Bus
Number 1
“It’s life, Sidda. You don’t figure it out.
You just
climb onto the beast and ride.”
--from Divine Secrets of the
Ya-Ya Sisterhood
On my
second day in America
I took
a one-room apartment
above
the White Hen Pantry, corner
Commonwealth
and Massachusetts Avenue.
At
night I listened to the pneumatic wheeze
of bus
doors releasing passengers
or
enclosing them in wombs of pharmaceutical light,
bearing
them deep into the winding dark.
In Manila, home of my
twenty-three years,
the
Philippine Rabbit Bus Line had no air-conditioning,
its
manual doors cranked wide for a newsboy
or
cigarette-Juicy Fruit vendor to hang a ride
from
one stop to the next, with access
to
captive buyers inside. Jammed open,
the plastic
windows brought the stench of canals
and
fumes, the sting of salt air. Packed side-by-side,
back
to back, riders leaned against the walls
of
each other when the bus swerved
around
potholes and stalled jeepneys.
In the
morning my older brother called
to ask
if we could meet somewhere for lunch.
Minutes
later, in my aunt’s faux-fur coat
I was
lurching towards Cambridge
in an
orange leather seat by the window
of a
yellow-striped bus. Sealed within,
the
air was warm like bread. A woman pulled
on a
nylon cord running the length of the bus,
the
ding of a bell rocking us to a stop.
Then
ahead into the clear light we pushed—
past
black-shuttered homes and shiny storefronts
of
fish and flowers, past the Eastern Lamejun Bakery,
the
bronze-green dome of a church, past the sculls
and
sloops on the slate-blue Charles, pushing ahead
to
where my brother’s voice called me,
voice
of the one who came first, voice
of my
blood that said Get on the bus, and ride.
Angela Narciso Torres