Content Warning: Mentions of drug use and violence
I started taking the bus in seventh grade.
The anxiety of making sure my metro card was ready to swipe before a crowd could form behind me would cause my fingers to shake ever so slightly. Once the metro card had been passed from my hand to the overtired bus driver’s and back to mine, I would stumble into the cabin of the bus. The smell of spilled coffee on the seats and unwashed hair and bodies made my eyes water. My heart was pounding. I would sit motionless and wide eyed, surrounded by a crush of people and the vomit that no one had bothered to clean up, either because of a genuine lack of attentiveness or intentional spite. The ding that signaled someone had requested a stop rang constantly in my ears.
Despite the general loudness and cacophony that characterizes New York City streets, the bus was a strangely quiet place. People meditating on the day ahead, grieving the days behind them and perhaps trying to find a way to be okay with the fact that we would have to board the bus again tomorrow. I was often on the bus alone, without any family or friends. The few other children that would get on the city bus did not belong to me. They did not go to my school. They did not frequent the same parks that I did. I felt a greater connection with those who got on the bus at my stop; the man who would never look up, or the woman clutching her violin as if it was an extension of her body. I did not identify with those who were my own age and had equally heavy backpacks that caused our shoulders to droop and our heads to hang sorrowfully. They belonged to other stops, to other neighborhoods. They did not see my hands tremble as I passed over my metro card, and did not offer me a small smile, as the man who kept his head bowed did. They did not scoot over and offer me a seat, as the woman with the violin did. I rode the bus to and from school. My days were marked by the rhythmic turning of the bus wheels and the endless flow of people getting on and getting off.
I remember on one particular day, I waited for the bus with my head bowed against gusts of wind that threatened to push me over. When it finally came, my relief at abandoning the biting wind was replaced by the familiar ache of discomfort that came with having to stand a bit too close to complete strangers.
When I boarded the bus, it was too loud. The bus driver angrily reached out and snatched my metro card from my cold hands before I could stumble off the bus and wait, wait for the bus to fill with the usual uncomfortable silence. But not this bus. This bus was marked by something terrible. Why was that man screaming and rolling over in his seat?
As the man was screaming, cursing and writhing in one of the front seats, everyone kept their eyes averted, in typical New York fashion — as if they believed that looking into the eyes of another would signal the end; the end of what I was never sure, but I had been taught to do the same. As much as I wanted to look at the man and understand what was happening, I could not. My neck was stiff and my eyes glazed over as I stared at the 50-year-old pattern of circles and squares, black from dirt, that decorated the bus floor. The idea of decoration suggests some sort of appreciation, but I was unsure who cared enough to look down at these abandoned shapes, let alone admire them. Perhaps, I thought, the man who never looked at the sky. I wished that he was on the bus now, he would at least have an excuse to look away from the man in crisis.
I was one stop away from home. The bus was empty now, aside from the man in the front and another woman near the middle. Suddenly, the man screams and staggers toward the woman. He reaches out his hands and wraps them around her neck. He is choking her. Her eyes widen, and she raises her hands as if to push him away. He finally lets her go, and she breathes. I am dimly aware of sirens. The man turns toward me, and as he is closing the distance between us, police enter the bus. He is brutally, inhumanely, dragged away, slammed to the ground. Shouts of “Fucking addict!” ringing in my ears as people outside the bus yell at the police, the man, the bus.
I realized that the bus driver had called to report the man. He must have done so relatively early on in the bus ride for the police to arrive when they did. Just as the situation escalated beyond acceptable New York standards. No one had bothered to speak to him. The entire episode lasted a span of 20 minutes and in this time no one had breathed a word. No one else felt it necessary to break the rule of silence befallen upon those who boarded the bus. Right in front of us was an example of someone who had, and such an action was clearly unacceptable. But it was also ignorable. The casual cruelty in which everyone on that bus ignored that man — so clearly being swallowed whole by desperation and despair — was equally, if not more, unacceptable than the man’s actions.
I hadn’t done anything either and, as a consequence, the man haunts my thoughts to this day. I can’t help but wonder if someone had at least acknowledged him and his pain, would the situation have escalated in the way that it did? He needed help, and instead of recognizing this, everyone chose to ignore it. Although he ultimately acted violently, it is not clear to me that someone undergoing a violent overdose should be dragged away by the police. To be so brutally treated in a moment of abject suffering disregards his humanity.
They say the city is a lonely place because it threatens to surrender you to the indifference of others. I was trained to ignore the very personhoods of those around me, in the name of safety and self-preservation. As was everyone on that bus. How could it be that living in one of the most densely populated cities resulted in an utter lack of human connection?
The man at my bus stop returns to me now. I cannot help but wonder if he always looked down because he could not bear to look up and have no one meet his eye.
I stopped taking the bus in seventh grade.
***
She was on this certain street corner whenever I walked by, whether it was on my way to school as the morning sun was breaking over the city, or at night when my mind was occupied with chemistry equations and conversations I had held with my friends.
She was short, and I could never determine how many layers of clothes she was wearing. The jackets piled on top of each other seemed to offer warmth but also immunity against the harsh glances of others walking by. People scowled at the shopping cart she pushed, filled with bags containing items ranging from more clothes to recycled cans. People would look at her, but not see her. And this, once again, seemed typical for New York.
A woman’s life was laid out in front of us, and yet it was clear that most people saw only the dirtiness of her clothes. They did not see the cups she had shaped from assorted pieces of plastic. People chose to see the elements of her life that suggested that if they engaged, there was the possibility of danger. I could imagine what they might be thinking when they glanced at her because they were the same questions I had been taught to consider. They might be something like What could be hidden in those bundles of clothes? What would she do if you stepped a bit too close to her dog, her only companion?
I walked by her countless times, and I began to await my daily passings of her. I imagined what would happen if I had the courage to stop for a second. All I had to do was offer a small smile, an indication that I saw her. Each day as I walked by her, I imagined a different small interaction that might confirm the existence of humanity on the cold and barren winter streets.
But this idea of a connection with her existed entirely in my mind. Even though she was real, echoes of “keep yourself safe” and “don’t engage” rang in my head. So, I continued to inhabit the imaginary space I had created where I knew I would be safe if I spoke to her. But she had no agency here, because how could I know how she would respond? Nothing I imagined would ever be right because I could not understand the reality of her situation.
This desire to understand, ultimately drove me to swear to myself that by the time winter was over I would do something — anything — to prove that I didn’t want to continue to walk by her without meeting her eyes. But that winter was brutal. Winds ripped down branches, temperatures dropped and dropped. I left New York for my school’s winter break, but I tracked the weather of the city. And when I returned, I think I already knew. I knew before I saw the street. I rounded the corner and looked to the place where she always was. Black concrete shimmered in the pale sunlight, as if the darkness of the streets had swallowed her whole.
It was possible that she found a shelter and chose not to return to a corner where indifference reigned. But I didn’t know, and I was left only to imagine. But there was no notion of comfort in that kind of imagining.
***
Growing up in New York often felt like a fever dream in the sense that I could never quite believe what was happening on the streets, the subway or even in a CVS. This constant disbelief at daily life might be why I so easily accepted the notion that self-protection should come first whenever I stepped out into the city.
When I was followed off of the subway by a man who refused to let me go to school, or when groups of angry teenagers would scream obscenities at me as I passed their games of basketball, it made sense that I look away. I knew that I had to keep walking, and it was not something that I debated. As a girl and then a young woman, New York was not always a safe place.
But there are other moments, like the bus and the abandoned street corner. And these other moments are the ones that I think about and are the ones that will flicker, uninvited, across my mind. Times when I walked away convincing myself that I was doing the right thing and that I was keeping myself safe. But having had to protect myself in other situations, when I reflect on these moments, I can admit to myself that I could have done something. I wouldn’t have been placing myself in peril. And yet the ways of the city, so ingrained in me, prevailed.
I don’t want to become desensitized to the suffering of others because in essence, that is a desensitization to humanity. It is painful to confront pain, but the guilt of looking away is worse.
When the pain of those in a community as large as New York is ignored, this pain does not go away, it is deferred — to be felt later by those who have observed, but not acted. It is felt by all those who believed themselves lucky not to be the one cowering on a bus floor or hunkering down on a street corner.
Statement Columnist Olivia Kane can be reached at ohkane@umich.edu