By Ella Yarden

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*Cover Image Photographed by Christopher Henderson on 2008/04/11
at 165 St Terminal
Accessed: http://gallery.bustalk.info/displayimage.php?pos=-12640

An excerpt of a normal NYC commute that explores the riders’ histories through their transient time on the bus.

      The digital sign flashes above the bus’s windshield. Q89. Bay Hills to
Riverfield Hospital.
      The bus doors slam closed.
      The bus’s automated voice recites, “Next stop – 154th Street and Main.”
      Two people shuffle onto the sparsely populated New York City city bus.
      The heavyset man heaves himself onto the first available seat, a plastic bench made up of three blue chairs. Dressed in dirty white sneakers, dark blue flannel pants, and a worn grey hoodie accessorized by a recently opened Diet Pepsi bottle, he’s somewhere between disheveled and exhausted.
      The elderly woman proceeds onwards, deeper into the bus, and ascends the three steps to the slightly higher level in the back. She sits in the first row of the elevated section and puts her brown purse on her lap. Her brown skin stands out against her tan clothes and maroon hat, suited for the grey day that surrounds them.
      The Chinese woman already on the bus, looking far older than she likely is, sighs and pulls her small cart towards her. It’s made of interlacing thin metal bars, leaving holes to see the contents: a newspaper, plastic grocery store bags, and a red jacket. She stares out the window, not looking at the world outside but rather at her reflection and wonders if that’s really what she looks like – wiry grey hair and mournful dark eyes.
      The Indian man sits in the last row of the bottom section of the bus. His fingers rest on his burnished wooden cane, dull compared to his bright orange coat. He exudes an easy contentedness that warms the space around him. He leans back comfortably against the bus seats and holds the metal bars sticking up from the chairs in front of him. His fingers brush against the blue coat of the rider in front of him.
      In front of the Indian man is a teenage boy. He has headphones on, pushing down his overgrown, wild dark brown hair, parts of it dyed red. He shifts away from the seat back when he feels fingers on his back and tries subtly to peer over his shoulder, using his peripheral vision to see what that was. He’s dressed up for a kid his age: a white button up shirt tucked into black slacks held up by a fraying belt of the same color pulled as tight as possible. Of course, the blue jacket and the green and brown satchel, complete with a butterfly on its front, subtract from the effect.
    “Next stop – 160th Street and Main.”
.
.
.
      The Indian man brushes his fingers over the teen’s jacket again and the boy lurches forward, leaning away at what must be an uncomfortable angle. The man looks out the window and where he would usually swallow an apology, he finds there is nothing about to come up anyways. Life is easier when nothing matters.
      “Next stop – 167th Street and 51st Avenue.”
      The teen suppresses the shudder that wants to run through him, starting from the prickles of discomfort in his shoulder and radiating out to every point in his body. Bass lines resonate in his ears and he fiddles with the cuffs of his button up shirt. He sweeps his gaze over the other passengers.
      An aloof Indian man with a traffic cone jacket. A toothy grin revealed as chapped lips pull back. A smile punctuated with yellows and gaps and brown spots.
      “Next stop – 180th Street and Main.”
      A Chinese woman, one elbow propped on her little cart, the other on the windowsill. Desolate eyes downcast on the faux-sparkly bus floor to hide the dirt and dust.
      “Next stop – 184th Street and Glendale Parkway.”
      An elderly Black woman who’s prim and proper. Legs crossed under a leopard print jacket, hair shaped to perfection. Nail polish that’s been chipped to the point that there’s more nail showing than paint.
      “Next stop – 189th Street and Main.”
      And a middle aged, greying man who is staring desperately up at the ceiling to defy gravity and keep the tears from falling. His Diet Pepsi is now half empty. He lost the cap sometime before getting on the bus, so he has to finish the drink. Or else he’ll be stuck trying to keep it from spilling and he’s so tired of catching things before they drop.
      “Next stop – 193rd Street and Leeman Boulevard.”
      “Next stop – 200th Street and Leeman Boulevard.”
      “Next stop – 202nd Street and Leeman Boulevard.”
      “Next stop – Next stop – Next stop – ”
      The grey man yanks on the yellow string hanging above the window to signal a stop request. His Diet Pepsi is empty and he slams the bottle on the seat next to him.
      “Can’t this just STOP?” he cries, voice cracking, the wail filling the bus.
      The teen doesn’t know if he’s talking about the bus anymore.
      The remaining soda pools in the sides of the bottle like blood drawn to the ground in a corpse.
      The bus trundles on and the driver just smiles.
      “Last stop – Riverfield Hospital.”

Process

Bus Stop was inspired by the many people I’ve seen on buses as I commute through New York City. While taking the bus or subway, I get impossibly tiny glimpses of people’s lives. The person that first got the gears turning was a man with Diet Pepsi, who I encountered on my way home on the bus. Of all the commuters I’ve noticed, he stood out to me because of his profound sadness. I could feel his loneliness, his weariness, and his defeat coming from his entire being. When he yelled “Can’t this just stop?”, finally stomping off the bus and leaving his Diet Pepsi behind, something clicked inside my head. I would likely never see that man again and as soon as that bus was empty, no one would know the story behind that abandoned bottle.

Bus Stop was a piece that was initially supposed to do two things: get me out of writer’s block and work on ‘showing, not telling’. It then spiraled into this piece that is about these characters that I see constantly on the bus yet know nothing about. These experiences, from a brief glance, are entirely mundane. I will likely never see any of the people I take the bus with again. I will never know their story. They should not reverberate through my brain and yet – something compels me to take in the details I see. I don’t know their tales. All I can do is think what I will about them, based on what I see. So that’s what Bus Stop is here to do. To provide readers a glimpse of a New York City bus ride, giving solely the details and brief emotions I observed. These people’s stories are up to you.