The Waterbury Line has been shut
down for the past couple of months and instead of trains; Metro North has
been running Connecticut Transit Buses. Metro North conductors ride these
buses, answer questions, collect tickets, and act as company
representatives. I've gotten called in on my day off to cover bus jobs
several times over the past month. Sure, I get a little bus sick
winding through the curvy roads of the Naugatuck River Valley, but it's
overtime pay, and with two daughters in college, I can't refuse the offer.
Last week, I worked with a 50-year-old African
American bus driver, a woman who prefers to be called "Miss
Diva." I never got her real name, but this moniker seemed to fit her
perfectly. She batted her false eyelashes as she pulled out a
glossy index card sized flyer from her purse and handed it to
me. She pointed to the front of the card with a meticulously
manicured index finger..."That's me!" she said. There on the
cover was a picture of an attractive black woman in a white halter-top
dress. She stood with one hand on her hip as her eyes
flirted with the camera lens. At the top of the card in big loopy
letters, it read; "Come celebrate Miss Diva's 50th
birthday" and in smaller letters at the bottom it instructed: "Please
wear white."
"Wow!" I said. "This is just
like those black and white parties that P. Diddy throws out in the
Hamptons."
"Yeah...It's something like that," Miss
Diva said coolly, and then she returned the flyer to her purse.
Who is this woman? I thought,
and slowly, throughout the rest of the day... piece by piece, I found out.
Like most of us, it seems, a life in transportation
wasn't Miss Diva's first choice. She told me that she went to college in
Florida and studied journalism and earned her bachelor's degree.
Shortly after graduating she became a reporter, then an anchorwoman for a
small television station in Tallahassee. Soon after
covering the live remote of the Ted Bundy execution, she got a call that
her mother had taken ill in Connecticut. At the time she was newly
divorced and had a small daughter, but she uprooted her life and came
to Stamford to nurse her mother back to health. She got a part time
job working as a journalist for the Stamford Advocate, but like most part
time jobs, it didn't have health benefits. Her mother, a retired
Connecticut Transit bus driver, suggested she get her commercial driver's
license and apply to her old company. "At least she'd have
benefits," she said. That was 22 years ago. Now she has the most
seniority of the females who work out of Stamford Terminal. Therefore she calls
herself "The First Lady"... "Just like Michelle
Obama."
On our second to last run of the night, I
stepped on the bus in Waterbury at leaving time when "Miss
Diva" looked over her sunglasses and said to me, "Baby.... we got
ourselves a problem". The divine Miss D seemed exasperated and gave
her head two quick nods to the right, her large gold earrings swaying, as
if to say get a load of this one. The target of the nod was
a petite woman who sat just feet away in the handicapped seats.
"It seems," Miss Diva said,
"That someone here don't want to shut her damn music off on MY
bus."
"Someone here," the petite woman shot
back, "needs to learn how to speak to PAYING CUSTOMERS!"
The petite woman, who I will call Dorothy, was
wearing a hooded powder blue sweatshirt with the strings pulled tight
around her face. Her skin was tanned with deep
crevices and I'm guessing her to be also about 50 years of
age. She was missing some teeth and looked not
unlike the "after" on one of those "before and
after" mug shots that the drug council posts on their public
service billboards that warn of the devastating effects of drug
abuse on your appearance.
"Come on!" I said to Dorothy in a
friendly manner. "You know you can't blast your music on the train....
errrr.... I mean bus." I quickly corrected myself and took a
seat next to her. I went onto explain that the driver was just doing her
job, and that although she may enjoy playing her iPod
selections, not everyone shares her same taste in music, and the
other passengers might get annoyed.
"You know, I'm not a piece of shit, "
Dorothy said,” and I don't expect to treated like one." To add
emphasis to her rage, she whipped off the hood of her sweatshirt,
revealing an unkempt tuft of frosted gray hair with blond tips. I
couldn't help but think she looked a little like Woodstock from
the Peanuts comic strip.
"I'm a good person," She continued.
"I even volunteer my time to the Catholic church...just like Michelangelo
did when he painted that ceiling. When we get to the Pearly Gates, God's
gonna take a snapshot of our lives...and he's gonna judge us on the little
things...LIKE HOW A BUS DRIVER TREATS THE LITTLE PEOPLE ON HER
BUS!!! St. Peter is either gonna let you in the gate, or YOU'RE
GOIN' DOWN IN THE ASHES!
I asked Dorothy if she'd thought she'd pass judgment
"Yeah" She said. "He's gonna
say...DOROTHY...STEP RIGHT INSIDE! I don't know about the rest of
you folks on this bus though." She made sure she made this
last statement loud enough for Miss Diva to hear. Miss D chose to ignore
her.
Dorothy went on to tell me what a good
person she was, and that not only does she volunteer her time to the Catholic
Church...just like Michelangelo did when he painted The Sistine Chapel, but
she also works as a clairvoyant who helps solve murders for the local police
departments. I had to stop her here...
"First of all," I said. I don't
think Michelangelo spent all those years on his back painting that ceiling
for free. I'm pretty sure the Vatican or the Medici Family paid him for
his time."
Dorothy insisted that Michelangelo worked for
free. "Sure," She said. "He might have gotten
paid to paint the Mona Lisa, but he volunteered..."
'No," I corrected her. "The Mona
Lisa was DaVinci..."
"Oh, Right" she said..."The Da Vinci
code." I could tell she now thought me a smart ass, and she
was beginning to tire of our conversation.
I then told Dorothy that my new favorite show was
"Long Island Medium" and I asked if she was a Medium.
"No," she replied, now looking annoyed. "Because you look
more like a small." I wanted her to chuckle, but apparently she
was still peeved.
"I'm a clairvoyant,” she explained.
"I don't see dead people...I see the future."
"Really! What do you see in my
future?" I asked.
"I don't know you well enough to see your
future. I'd have to know you for at least three months before I could read
you." This is what she said, but I got the feeling she was still mad
at me for reprimanding her about her iPod.
"Okay then," I said. "Do you
know who killed Jon Benet Ramsey?" (The unsolved case of the 6 yr old
beauty pageant queen who was killed in Colorado some years back.)
"Sure," she said. "It was a family
friend."
"Her parents weren't involved?"
"No. They're both dead now anyway."
I hated to correct her again, but I told her that Jon
Benet’s mother had died, but her father was very much alive and had
recently gotten remarried.
"Oh, that's right. He married Natalee
Holloway's mother." (Wrong again, but I didn't have the heart to
correct her.) "I solved that case too,” she said. The sharks got
to Natalee long before the police could find her body."
"Then it wasn't the Dutch guy who killed
her?"
"Yeah," she said, "It was the Dutch
guy, but they'll never find her body on account of the sharks."(I now
envision gnawed bones washing up on the shores of Aruba.)
"I also know what happened to Billy, the local
guy missing from Naugatuck," she said. "Because...people on the
streets talk." That's hardly being clairvoyant, I think. That's just
keeping your ears open. I begin to open my mouth but then I think better
of it.
As we pulled into Naugatuck Station parking lot, her
stop, Dorothy had one last prediction. "I'm sure this one
here," now nodding to Miss Diva, "has the Po-Po waiting to arrest
me." But she was wrong again. Miss Diva was more than happy to
let me handle the unruly passengers on the bus. I guess that's part of
the reason we're there.
As the bus pulled away from the station, I think of
all the interesting people I'd met that day. The tattooed mother of three
who is a dead ringer for soccer star Mia Ham. The nasty school
marm type who refuses to give me her ticket before she boards the bus.
The divalicious bus driver who, if life hadn't intervened, could have been the
next Oprah Winfrey or Wendy Williams. And finally, the petite clairvoyant
woman who awaits her great reward in Heaven alongside Michelangelo.
None of us knows what the future holds.
Okay...maybe Dorothy does.
