Annie Claude and Tom D’Agostino, friends since our days together in Italy, have invited me to Washington DC for two days. I begin my trip in the Mount Laurel bus station, which is not far from my home in Medford, New Jersey. The bus originates in Philadelphia, stops in Camden; pauses in Mount Laurel, continues to Wilmington, to Baltimore, and it ends in Washington DC.
I’m last to board. I step up, I turn and I face the aisle: only two seats left. The one to my left is next to a young black man sitting by the window, staring at his laptop screen. The other free seat is across the aisle, three rows back, by a young white woman who sits by the window staring at her laptop. She and I are the only whites on the bus.
Where shall I sit? Will the young white woman feel more comfortable if I sit with her. How do I know what she feels! Would I feel more comfortable sitting with her. What will the black passengers think if I sit with her and ignore the closer seat by the black man? “Just another Whitey.” But then why hasn’t any black passenger chosen to sit with the young woman? The bus driver, a black man, is poised to go, the motor growls: I sit with the young black man.
He doesn’t lift his eyes from his computer screen as I drop into the seat. When the world was young, fellow travelers introduced themselves, perhaps conversed at length and when conversation lagged, they turned to their books, to their newspapers. My seat mate’s gaze is riveted to the glowing screen of his laptop. I open my book.
The bus stops briefly in Wilmington. Everyone waiting on the platform is black. Some passengers descend, a few come aboard, all black. The seat next to the white woman remains unoccupied.
The bus stops in Baltimore for twenty minutes, and I descend to use the toilet. The station is full of black people, with just a scattering of whites: students, tourists and a few faces working behind the ticket windows.
When I boarded the bus in Mt Laurel, I entered a black world. Bus passengers on the East Coast Corridor – Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and DC – are often black. It’s no mystery: bus fares are relatively cheap, blacks are relatively poor. Surrounded by blacks today, I feel no fear, no discomfort; it is a non-threatening world. I am not restricted to the back of the bus. I don’t have to use a Whites Only Toilet. No one called me Boy. It is a black world, vaguely alien, but benevolent. I am the alien.
My seat mate had not returned so I slid to the window seat. Shortly, a black, middle-aged woman sits next to me. We exchange greetings and then she opens her laptop. I hear an animated voice coming from the seat in front of me:
A young man is speaking aloud into his cellphone. He has a well-trimmed beard that looks like springy boucle’. I listen, I pull out my pen and my notebook:
“… I’m getting out of there. I’m looking for an apartment. If anything happens to my children, I’ll take her to court. Yes, Mother, I know. I’ll call you later” He hangs up and calls someone else, presumably his wife:
“What are the children doing? … You’ve been wearing that same pair of shoes every day for a year. You ain’t taking your medicines!” (He hadn’t used ain’t with his mother.)
He hangs up and makes a third call. He speaks quietly, guardedly. His girlfriend? I can’t hear what he’s saying.
The bus has been perambulating D.C. for twenty minutes. Here’s Union Station! We penetrate its deepest bowels: Murkiness. We approach a long line of windows along a far wall with glass doors that restrain lines of waiting passengers. Green and red blobs of light shine dully above the doors. Buses waiting in rows. The rumble of motors charges the air.
There’s Tom come to meet me! We emerge into the glaring white light of a sunny day. We walk to Tom’s parked car and he whisks me off to his home. My three hour passage through black America has ended.
chasperrone 