It's 1974 and I've spent the day at the downtown library in Indianapolis. It's October, and I'm a little chilly as I'veall I've got on is a thin chambray shirt, a jean jacket, and blue jeans with rips which let the wind in around the knees. (I have repaired the hole below the back pocket with a piece of red bandanna so at least my butt's not cold.)
I look at the white woman. Her hair has been done earlier in the day at a beauty parlor. She's got on pearl earrings, a fancy mink coat, and high-quality black leather high heels. She's obviously not taking the bus but instead is waiting at the curb for her husband to come get her in the Buick. She's spent the day shopping, and she's got two large white paper shopping bags with white cotton-cord handles.
The rich woman is about twenty feet from me where I stand next to a rusted bus stop sign. The sign's up on a green metal pole which is bent in the middle at a 45-degree angle.
Behind the woman's cat's eye glasses, darting eyes are scanning the street on one side and then the other. The woman's red-lipsticked mouth is pulled tight. The sun is about to go down, and she's worried that Black people are going to emerge from the impending darkness like zombies.
I know we're supposed to bond because our skin is the same color but I can't imagine what she is doing so close to run-down Monument Circle in a fur coat and jewelry which would pay a family's rent for half a year, and then on top of that, holding two large bags of easily-retrunable goods still in their original boxes. The receipts are probably in one of the bags. If not, any of that stuff would glide right into the inventory of A-1 Pawn with no questions asked.
I have no fear for myself. I obviously have nothing and no one is going to mug me. There's extra security in the fact that I've taken the precaution of putting my real wallet in my sock. The thin naugahyde-over-cardboard billfold in my back pocket had cost 99 cents at Woolworth's. It now holds an expired library card and two worn one-dollar bills, one of which badly torn and mended with yellowing Scotch tape. If a gang of hoods hassles me on the bus, I will act like I really want the fake billfold so the bad-ass kids will feel like they really won when they demand the wallet or they will get off the bus at my stop.
I say nothing to the worried woman. Why on Earth would I stand next to this dumb-bell and get hassled or robbed by proximity? Not only will I not go stand next to her or invite her to come closer to me, but I am tempted to pull a 10-cent mini spiral notebook and pen out of my raggedy jeans pocket. I would like to write an "I'm Not With Stupid" sign and add an arrow pointing to Expensive Fur Coat Lady.
Fortunately for her, a burgundy-color Buick Riviera (Did I call that or what?) pulls up and the woman hustles her two big white paper shopping bags over to it. Her husband, who has filled the interior of the car with gray cigar smoke, does not lean over to open her door for her, and she has to put down a bag to jerk her door open. With a resentful glance at me, she settles herself in with one bag in her lap and the other wedged in on the floorboard near her high-heeled feet. The passenger door slams and the car roars off in a blast of invisible but hot and smelly exhaust.
Now I am all by myself on a dark street downtown in crummy Indianapolis, waiting on a bus, and I feel much, much safer.
