AT THE BUS STOP

Today's writing class prompt was: "Write about a woman waiting in the rain for a city bus"...

AT THE BUS STOP

The woman stands in a downpour at the southwest corner of Sunset Blvd. and Barrington in the Brentwood section of West Los Angeles, no umbrella to shelter her from the rain.  She looks so tired that’s it’s doubtful she could hold an umbrella above her head even if she owned one, which she doesn’t.  Her thick, shoulder-length,wavy black hair is beginning to mat and stick to the sides of her face.  She does not reach up to brush it back.  She is young, in her early 20s, though her face shows the fatigue of a much older woman.  Her domestic’s uniform -- the black dress and white apron -- is too large, probably passed down from the previous maid in the mansion up Mandeville Canyon where she works.  She either doesn’t know yet, or is too tired to care, that if she took off her apron, people in passing cars might not immediately peg her as a servant, and therefore invisible. 

She considers herself lucky to have a daily ride from the mansion down to this bus stop.  Some of the other women she lives with in the crowded apartment east of downtown Los Angeles have to walk long distances from their places of employment to the nearest bus.  She knows things could be much worse.  She came here from Sinaloa state. 

The Missus of the house does not yell at her the way she knows some of the other girls’ employers yell at them. It would not really matter if the Missus did say rude things to her, as the young woman does not understand more than a handful of words in English.  Most of her interactions are with the Missus’ longtime housekeeper, Maria, who is fluent in English, and behaves very kindly toward this frightened young woman.  The girl had been sent to Maria by Maria’s niece, who works in the home of a famous Hollywood movie producer, yet still lives in the crowded apartment.  

Because the young woman does not have a long downhill walk to to the bus stop, her white shoes, the kind nurses wear, still have a good deal of tread on them.  She won’t have to buy herself new ones anytime soon.  They gave her the dress and apron, but the shoes she had to buy for herself. It took nearly all of the money she had left after making her way across the border and up to meet her cousin in this alien, bustling city.  She doesn’t like to think of that journey.  At all. 

As dusk falls, the young woman turns her face up to the heavy rain and invites it to wash away the day, to transport her back home to her village, a village, where unbeknownst to the young woman, her mother sits on the dirt floor, stirring a pot of beans over an open fire, silently crying for her oldest daughter so far away. 

BLACK WATER

BLACK WATER 

Every Thursday night during high school, a group of my friends and I would gather at the local Shakey’s Pizza on Gloria Drive in south Sacramento, just a few blocks from our campus. We would end up at the pizza joint after we attended the weekly meeting of Young Life, a rowdy song-and-game-filled gathering of suburban kids, hosted by a minister who soft-pedaled basic Christianity, in the living room of a willing parent’s house.  We’d sing folk rock versions of old hymns, as well as new songs from musicals like Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar during the meeting, but once we reached the pizza parlor, the juke box reigned supreme. 

The one song we played first every week was “Black Water” by the Doobie Brothers.  It opened quietly, with a jangling noise that sounded like wind chimes made of shards of broken glass.  As soon as I heard that jangling, my pulse would quicken, anticipating the swampy chords and swirling rhythms to come.  We’d all sing along in low voices on the verses, but when the chorus came up, our group of at least a dozen tuneless teenagers would loudly belt out, “Old black water, keep on rollin’, Mississippi moon won’t you keep on shinin’ on me...”  By the end of the song, which repeats over and over, “I’d like to hear some funky Dixieland, pretty mama come and take me by the hand,” some of the other customers would usually be shouting the words along with us. 

The pizza parlor staff and other Thursday night regulars were used to our invasion of their space and the inevitable sing-along that was guaranteed by our presence.  Looking back on it, I think they probably welcomed the influx of clean-cut, paying high-school-aged customers who were inside, singing and playing Pong and Space Invaders  instead of outside, drinking beer in the parking lot, vandalizing cars and the building, or worse.  We were good kids.  

I’m not sure what it was about that song, “Black Water,” that so appealed to us.  Maybe, for a bunch of white kids raised in suburban Sacramento, the setting of the song on the Mississippi delta seemed exotic and intriguing.  Maybe it was the sawing fiddles, the interplay of instruments or the repetitive groove that mesmerized us.  Whatever it was, it pulled us in and got us singing along, week after week.  

Music really does provide the soundtrack of our lives. Every time I hear “Black Water” now, it takes me back to those innocent times when I flirted (ineptly... over root beers) with cute boys while they ate greasy pepperoni pizza... and occasionally flirted back. 

MY TEMPEST

The prompt for the following short story was "write about your first car."

MY TEMPEST

My father located and purchased my first car in my hometown of Sacramento in 1982.  I was 23 years old, living and working in Los Angeles. He paid $1100 for the car, which I was to repay in monthly $100 installments. He was afraid I might not like the 17-year-old automobile, but he knew that I needed a vehicle no matter what it looked like. 

I had been taking the bus to work from the ritzy Brentwood section of Los Angeles, winding along Sunset Blvd. through Westwood, along the edges of Bel Air and Holmby Hills, through Beverly Hills and past the Sunset Strip clubs, so swanky in the 50s, now frequented by safety-pin-pierced punk rockers... winding further and further east all the way into the heart of Hollywood and my job captioning TV for the deaf at Sunset Gower Studios.  The facility where I worked was a bit rundown at that point, but it had been the venerated Columbia Movie Studios back in its glory days.  

The morning wait and ride to my job were not bad, as the bus picked me up at a corner near my apartment in a prosperous part of town. The only other waiting passengers were tired-eyed Hispanic ladies who must have been heading home from jobs as night nurses and overnight nannies. The evening bus journey was not so safe or smooth... 

I needed a car.

I got a ride from Los Angeles to Sacramento with a friend, anxious to see this vehicle my father had bought - which would free me from the discomfort and danger of sitting after leaving work at a bus stop at the corner of Sunset and Gower... perched uneasily on the bus bench in the dark, alone in a seedy part of Hollywood, being approached and propositioned by strange and sometimes truly frightening men.  I HAD to have a car. 

My father’s fears about my reaction to the car were completely unfounded. I fell in love with it at first sight.  It was a 1965 Pontiac Tempest, a great, solid boat of a car... the front of the vehicle slanted forward, as if it could not wait to speed off.  The body was painted a fantastic aquamarine metallic fleck.  The hard top was bright white.  There was plentiful chrome trim, from the shining perforated hubcaps to the fabulous divided front grill. Heavy chrome bumpers front and back were clearly designed for protection, not just aesthetics.  This car looked retro COOL... and it was built like a tank, which turned out to be a very good thing. 

The interior of the car was also shiny aquamarine, from the paint on the metal dash to the vinyl padding on the doors to the brocade-like textured fabric on the seats.  The aquamarine steering wheel was enormous, and in the center was a clear plastic disc with black backing incised in silver with the Pontiac logo, an elongated indented arrowhead design... There were round Jetsons-like chrome bullet vents jutting from the dash. Everything glistened and gleamed... it was all in pristine condition.  The Tempest had only been driven to the grocery store and church by the original owner, a woman who was already elderly when she purchased it.  She must have felt safe, and maybe a little sassy in this huge, snazzy vehicle.  I hope so.  By the time the car came to me, she had passed away.  Her son sold it to my father as he was disposing of her effects. 

When I drove the Tempest around Los Angeles, other cars would often slow down, some would even honk.  Almost every time I pulled into a gas station the mechanics would come out to look at it.  They marveled at the spotless engine and the vehicle's incredible condition. They frequently offered to buy the car then and there.  Many people offered to buy my Tempest, but I always declined.  Thank God. 

Because one night when my 16-year-old sister Annie and her best friend Tena were down in L.A. to visit me and tour the UCLA campus, I agreed to take the two girls for a drive through Beverly Hills to look at movie star houses.  My friend and co-worker, Tim, came along.  He sat up front with me.  Annie sat behind me, with Tena behind Tim.  

The last thing I remember is sitting at the stop sign at the northwest corner of Sunset and Bedford, waiting to cross the busy road.  The next thing I remember is coming to in the Emergency Room at UCLA.  The Tempest, we later learned, had been broad-sided by two men joyriding without permission in their uncle’s Porsche.  Police accident scene investigators determined that they had been going 70 miles an hour and never hit their brakes.  They may not have had their headlights on.

Unlike my little sister Annie (the only one to miraculously escape injury in the crash) I do not remember the horrific sounds of the collision, I do not remember the blood, the wails of pain and terror, the sirens, the crowds of people who spilled out of the nearby mansions and cars along Sunset Blvd.  I do not recall how the police closed down Sunset Blvd. in both directions, because the Porsche had spun my huge solid metal tank of a car and thrown it across the grass median, where it landed on Sunset, facing the opposite direction, my drive shaft flung half a block down. I remember none of this.  I know these things happened only because of what I was later told by my passengers, what I read in police reports, private investigators’ findings, photographs.  

That Pontiac Tempest saved all of our lives, though my passengers and I were not unscathed.  Tena, my sister’s exquisitely beautiful best friend, had her jaw shattered and lost many teeth.  Now seems as good a time as any to mention that not only was Tena a girl I knew well and loved, having babysat her for many years when she was little, before I went away to college, but she was also my orthodontist’s daughter. Her father had straightened my teeth, and now his daughter was on a gurney in an emergency room far from home, bandaged so only her eyes showed, bruised and bloodied, in pain and afraid.  It was unspeakably awful.  

My friend Tim was one curtained bed over from Tena, and I was on his other side.  The doctors had shaved a sizable patch of Tim’s hair away in order to stitch up a large gash in his scalp. I had suffered an injury to my lower back and I had a concussion.  This physical trauma -- along with the horror of the accident scene -- had contributed to temporary hysterical amnesia.  I could not tell the doctors my name or where I was.  I knew I SHOULD know these things, and the panic at not being able to answer such simple questions just made things worse.  

I was agitated and terrified that my memory would not return.  I just kept repeating, “I’m disoriented, I’m disoriented.”  Apparently I had been doing this from the time of the accident on, trying everyone’s patience and adding to the tension of the scene.  The nurses were attempting to calm me, but it was only when Tim started to joke about his new shaved hairstyle in order to make me laugh that I began to settle down and to regain my wits to some degree so that little by little I could answer questions about who I was, where I lived, what day it was... but I could not tell the nurses or doctors what had transpired over the previous couple of hours. That never changed. The memory of the accident has never come back to me, and for that I am deeply grateful. 

The morning after the accident I was taken to a cousin’s house over Coldwater Canyon in Studio City... I needed to be observed to make sure that I didn’t fall asleep until the doctors could be certain that my concussion had improved.  I also could not keep my balance too well.  My lower back and my equilibrium were both faulty at that point.  After a couple of days, my cousin Shawn drove me to the wrecking yard to identify the remains of my beloved Tempest.  When I saw the twisted, mangled mass of steel that had been my car, I could not believe all four of us had survived. The enormity of what had transpired finally sank in. I sobbed for several minutes while Shawn rubbed my back. 

I took Polaroids for the attorneys of what was left of my poor old Tempest, and almost as an afterthought, I pried that plastic disc with the Pontiac logo off the middle of the enormous aqua blue steering wheel.  I still have it in my jewelry box, amidst my other valuables.  

SURF BREAK

SURF BREAK

I was awakened today well before the sun rose by the sound of laughter and voices coming from a spot not far away from my open bedroom window.  I wasn’t startled because this is not uncommon. I live on a bluff above a major surf break and there’s many a morning when intrepid wave riders -- carrying surfboards and wearing headlamps to light the way -- pick their way along the dark cliffside to the hidden path which will take them down to the beach.  It doesn’t annoy me to be roused from my sleep on these occasions.  It’s a privilege to live so close to the ocean which belongs to us all.  Once the sun comes up, I love watching these men and women catching wave after wave below my expansive living room windows.

I am not a surfer myself.  I would love to be, but I think it’s too late for me.  A left ankle badly broken at age 25 has left me with such severe arthritis in that joint at age 54 that the prospect of being able to quickly “pop up” into a standing position on a surfboard does not seem like a likely scenario for me.  I will stick to body surfing and boogie boarding -- and then only in the warmer summer months.  It’s January now and there are still dozens of surfers in the rather frigid Pacific winter waters below my windows on a daily basis. 

I try not to take where I live for granted.  Unfortunately, my children do.  It’s just what they are used to so I guess I can’t really fault them. They started coming here for vacations when they were very young and have lived permanently here at the beach since they were 9 and 5 years old.  Before that they grew up in the icy, sub-zero winters and humid, tornado-spawning summers of Minnesota.  I would have thought that they would want to spend every possible moment at the beach, as I had during my childhood vacations. I grew up in landlocked Sacramento and absolutely lived for the week or two when my family would take our summer vacation at the beach in Santa Cruz, California.  For my 5 siblings, my parents and me, the beach was pure heaven.  I spent every possible hour riding the waves with nothing but my little body.  No inner tubes, no boogies boards, nothing... just me and the waves.  My dad taught me to do this before I was even in kindergarten. Looking back on it as a parent now, I can understand why I made my mother so nervous.  I was just this little bit of a thing, being tossed around and ground into the sand by big waves... and I loved it. I was fearless.  It was good life training. 

My kids don’t dislike the beach, and they actually know how to surf.  Both my son and daughter took Surf P.E. at school and learned to ride the waves, but neither has a passion for it, which makes me a bit sad.  Their surfboards and wet suits lie unused in the garage.  I am thinking of donating them back to the school so kids with less advantages and more passion for the ocean might have the chance to learn to surf. You can’t force your kids to have the childhood you wish you could have had, nor should you... I learned that long ago. 

Not only are there surfers in our local waters, but we regularly see dolphins, and at this time of year, whales.  We spot them spouting as they surface on their way south to the warm Mexican waters of Baja California, where they will have babies... and then make their way later this Spring back to the frigid waters of Alaska.  And thus is has been for thousands of years.  Nature is an awe-inspiring thing.  

There’s still a bit of fog hanging in the air.  I can see it and feel it even though the sun is not yet up.  It’s a funny thing how, even over the roar of the waves, I can hear the laughter of the surfers down on the beach below the cliff.  I can’t see them, but I imagine  they are waxing up their boards and waiting for first light, which should be about to break any minute.  Soon I will be able to see them paddling out, catching wave after wave in the crisp morning air.  It’s going to be a good day, I can just tell.