ALONE by Christina Franke

Alone, I look out the window, I look and keep looking, no matter what is in front of me. I have a book, I always have a book, but on the bus I don’t pick it up, or when I do, I put it down right away, and keep looking.

I have three days ahead of me, on this bus, 75 hours from San Francisco to New York City. When I’m moving all that has worried me, all that has made me unhappy, goes away. All that matters is the movement, the movement is enough to occupy me, looking, looking out the window. I don’t care if I’m looking at grey and ugly strip malls, sad, broken-down houses, or desolate farms, I take in everything, every detail. I imagine the lives of the people in these places, I watch the mothers walking with their children, the old men talking on street corners, everything is of equal interest.

And I watch the people on the bus, who get on, ride 100 miles and then get off again. In the Midwest, I see overweight women in thin cotton dresses, burdened with bags and young children, eating sandwiches, feeding their children soda pop as we drive along. I watch the sky, dark, looming, remembering that we’re in tornado country, afraid. We drive into the darkness for hours, days it seems. People get on and off, on and off. I stay in my seat, looking out the window. I eat in rest stops, grilled cheese sandwiches and coffee, pieces of apple pie, I brush my teeth in dirty bathrooms, trying not to touch anything. People on the bus are silent or murmur softly to each other. A child cries, then stops at a sharp word. I talk to no one, sitting in my window seat, looking out the window, never meeting anyone’s eyes, concentrating on the buildings and farms and trucks out the window.

Chicago. I have three hours before the bus leaves that will take me to New York City. I take a shower in the bus terminal, amazed that the Greyhound Bus company has thought of such a wonderful thing, a shower after two days sitting on a bus. When I get on the bus, clean with wet hair and a face that feels shiny from the soap, the driver tells us that this bus will go non-stop to New York. We leave at night and we’ll arrive at NYC’s Port Authority some time the next morning. We’ll only stop at rest stops, not to drop people off or pick people up. We’re all – the whole busload – we are all going to NYC.

Most of the passengers are black, many of them young. They’re thin, full of energy, talk, noise. I watch them, fascinated. They laugh with each other, they talk and talk, and as the night goes on, they all fall asleep, one by one. I sleep too.

In the morning, in the grey light, crossing Pennsylvania, crossing New Jersey, the talk starts again, the laughter, the joking, the stories. This is not the Midwest, these are not Midwesterners, these are city people, people going to NYC! I feel excited, I feel their excitement, and I know that they are the people I want to be with.

Way out on the flats of New Jersey, I see the Empire State Building first, then the other buildings of the Manhattan skyline. I weep with pleasure.