Chapter 1 #2
I was tired. Scared. My thinking wasn’t clear.
I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and what little I’d managed to swallow came back up into the commode.
Being seated next to someone smelling of fried food suddenly wasn’t working out too well, had me afraid I’d upchuck emptiness and fear.
I thought to excuse myself and stand with the men, wiggle myself near the back door so I could get fresh air whenever it opened.
But my seat partner’s sudden hissing interrupted that plan.
“Jesus, what now? I’m just tryna get home.”
Her words were weighted with something besides fatigue.
I looked away from the window to see her weary expression had slid into a mishmash of exasperation and heightened caution.
That had me following her tight gaze towards the front of the bus where the driver was raising sand.
So caught up in private misery, I’d been unmindful of external happenings and the fact that we were idling curbside.
Might’ve been there a minute or a long moment; only now was I refocused, noticing how the Reserved section at the front of the bus was as packed as the back.
“Reserved” was Montgomery’s sugar-coated way of saying “Whites Only.”
Water fountains. Restrooms. Diners. Libraries. The first-floor seats at the movies. If it was meant for public gatherings or consumption, race markers were posted reminding us of who was and wasn’t welcome.
Neighborhoods didn’t need signs. It wasn’t just near about impossible to live on their side; we knew better than to try.
You’d wind up with a fiery cross in your yard or a firebomb in your front room.
Forget living. Some parts of town you’d better not show your brown face after sundown. Not if you wanted to see sunrise.
As for worship, I wasn’t sure if we loved the same God, but clearly even heaven thought it best for Negroes and Whites to have their own sanctuaries come Sundays.
Maybe it was because us Baptists and Pentecostals required more time and space for shouting and demonstrating?
Then again, our African Methodist Episcopalians and Black Presbyterians, like Sadie’s family, were dignified, restrained, used hymnals, and got out of church long before we did.
Still, the Lord didn’t open those White-church doors in welcome to even them.
Truth be told? Didn’t bother me that He didn’t.
I liked a White-free world two hours every Sabbath.
Even when reserved and only signs weren’t posted or present, we knew.
We only had to see or smell the shabby, unkempt condition of whatever it was to know it was meant for us, not them.
It made me wonder if the first lessons a Negro child learned were A-B-C, 1-2-3, and separate and unequal living.
The times one of us dared to eat or drink from a place not designated Colored?
You best know there were repercussions. A ticket.
White backlash. A handcuffed trip to the courthouse.
A sentence of a fine or jail time. Or, depending on the severity of the offense and how “Christian” White folks and the law were or weren’t feeling, we could wind up peculiar fruit swinging lifeless from trees like Miss Billie sang.
Bottom line: we knew where not to be. Including up front in the Reserved section.
Case in point right then: riders were being ordered to make it light on themselves and give up needed seats. From what I could see, none of us were past that privilege line. So why was the agitated driver, giving those four riders the “what for” and acting indignant?
“Lord, these crackers. Don’t make no sense all four of them gotta give up their seats ’cause one White man’s standing.” My riding partner sucked her teeth, punctuating her whispered sentiment with disgust.
That disgust didn’t interrupt my focus. I was fixed on the folks up front.
Three of those riders were taking their time moving, yet complying. Their added bodies made matters difficult, but Colored folks already filling the jam-packed aisle shifted, miraculously making room for them. All except that one woman. She still sat, not moving fast enough. Or rather, not at all.
I couldn’t see her face, only the back of her head with its dainty hat, but the lady wasn’t vacating her seat as the driver demanded. She stayed fixed like it was a good night for sitting. Or maybe rebellion?
She wasn’t in the wrong, as far as I could see.
Wasn’t she in the Colored section, in an aisle seat directly behind the Reserved line?
She should’ve been left alone—wasn’t bothering nobody, or violating nothing.
But we all knew how this thing worked. If White folks wanted it, we had to give it, even if the thing in question was ours and they had no right to it.
What we didn’t give got taken. Sometimes with, sometimes without our resistance.
From my vantage point, it looked like that lady had decided a tussle was her preference.
Funny thing was, she wasn’t loud or uncouth, like Mama liked to say.
That lady simply sat in her seat, letting her stillness do her warring.
“I ain’t telling you again. You getting up like I said?” That driver was some kind of mad.
When she declined and he threatened her with arrest, that lady said something I couldn’t hear, but wished I had.
I didn’t know, didn’t care what the White folks up front were feeling.
Back where I was? There was a whole mess of tension.
Like some humongous, slithering snake had wrapped us Colored folks in its coil.
Multiple feelings were probably mixed up in it, but clearly there was concern.
Unease. Some impatience. And a lot of masked anger floating like steam clouds off our men.
All of that made me uncomfortable until, suddenly, I’d had enough of whatever was going on.
No, I didn’t think the lady should have to move but I wanted her to.
Anything to stop that venomous concoction boiling in the back and get that driver in his seat and get me where I was going.
But he didn’t sit down. That red-faced man stomped off the bus into the evening going only God knew where and escalating this thing.
“Miz Rosa, you ain’t moving?”
I don’t know who hissed it, but somebody did. That lady turning her head sideways was the only indication she’d heard them.
Seeing her profile, she felt familiar. Kind of resembled that lady who’d stopped Mama in the store, handing her a flier for some Colored folks’ meeting the other day.
Whoever she was, she seemed calm, like a warrior who might’ve known the war was stacked against her but was devoted to the bitter end.
And bitter it got when that driver returned madder than ten wet hens.
Not long after, two officers of the law joined him—their appearance on that bus halting whatever whispering or worrying might’ve been in progress.
Watching those police approaching that woman I felt the kind of nervous fear that keeps you from moving. All I could do was squeeze my suitcase and pray nothing horrible happened.
Horrible happened. And fast.
When those officers confronted that lady, Miz Rosa, questioning whether or not the driver had asked her to move and she confirmed he had, I held my breath.
Her telling those policemen to their faces how she didn’t feel she should have to stand had my whole world suspended and just about flipped on its head.
That soft-spoken, gentle-looking lady was standing up for herself like that?
I couldn’t say if she had crazy courage or was plain zany.
Maybe the situation called for a little bit of both?
Or could be she was simply fatigued at the end of a work day, or was tired of giving up things she deserved as if they’d never been hers?
Whatever the case, face pressed to the window, I couldn’t crane my neck enough to see what was going on after those officers escorted her from the bus.
But I wanted to. Like my seeing could help keep her safe from something worse occurring.
Or as if by keeping my eyes on her I could soak up some of whatever it was that let her say enough is enough, I ain’t moving today.
What directly transpired after that I don’t recall.
Thoughts were too busy rolling through my mind like wrecking balls, hitting barriers, knocking down walls.
Riding that bus as it pulled away, I wondered what life would feel like defying rules and making my own decisions.
The mere idea had something turning inside of me, deep in my core.
Deeper than my belly. Kinda like a flame on a matchstick, dying and breathing its last only for someone to blow and spark its life again.
Not some blaze running amuck across a cane field.
Just a gentle flame safely contained in the palm of your hand.
“This ain’t nothing but those two other gals all over again.”
Expecting my former seat partner, I was surprised to see a different, much older woman seated next to me speaking so softly I had to lean in to hear. Again, I’d been caught by my thoughts and hadn’t noticed the changes at the back of the bus. Who’d gotten on. Who’d gotten off.
“You heard about what happened to those two, didn’t you?” She named the two girls who’d, not long before, tried the same kind of resisting on Montgomery’s bus line.
My whisper matched hers. “Yes, ma’am.”