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.