[lit-ideas] Memphis Memories

MEMPHIS CITY BUS MEMORIES

I was four years old and lying on the floor
of a city bus and screaming,
my mother said:
"You'd better get up 
or the  police
will take you off to jail."
I got up, 
but I've hated all authority since then.

I was five years old and sitting beside my mother
on a crowded city bus that stopped
across the street from a housing project
on Mississippi Boulevard.
There was a large crowd of people
standing in a circle
watching a man 
slugging a woman in the face.
He had to hold her up
by her dress
to hit her.
Blood all over.
No one did anything.
They were just niggers
after all.

I was seven years old.
I was riding the bus by myself.
It stopped where it shouldn't have.
A cop got on.
He walked to the back.
He took a black man off.
Went to the front door.
Made the man apologize to the driver.
I don't know what for,
He wasn't laying on the floor screaming.

I was seventeen years old.
Blacks no longer had to sit in the back
by order of the Supreme Court.
Black kids would sit 
one to a two-seater
just to aggravate the whites,
none of whom would 
sit next to no nigger.
I weaved my way through the white
crowded aisle 
to a seat 
and sat
next to a nigger
he smiled like glorious dawn.

I was also seventeen
when I got on a bus after school
with a crowd of Catholic High boys
who were all feeling randy 
but unable to do the handy
just then
chose for some reason
to take it out on a black woman
who was trying to exit by the back door
calling her a fucking nigger, etc. 
For the first time in my life
I instinctively resorted to violence
and slapped the shit out of some guy
and yelled at him never ever to do that again,
he started crying
which made me feel really bad.

But the bus wasn't always bad.
Often Sunny, my girl friend through most of high school,
would have to take the bus to school
and we would sit together
and touch legs.
God is good.


Mike Geary
Memphis

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