There is a boy who gets on the bus I drive who reminds me of my son. He doesn’t look much like Tenga. He is shorter than my son, and thinner, darker; his skin is black coffee. I am a copious coffee drinker, three heaped teaspoons of sugar and two squirts of cream. A sprinkle of cinammon on the foam. My son’s flesh looks like the coffee after the cream is added. Even though they call us all ‘black’ there are so many hues. They are the people with the harvest brown faces and those with dusky, burnished arms poking out of spotless t-shirts. The soft Macadamia nut glaze is my favorite for women; it makes me look twice whenever a woman with Ethopian (or Eritrean) heritage steps onto my bus.

I am dirt brown, mud brown in the middle of the summer.

On forms that politely ask -- always an ‘optional’ question -- I place a sloppy tick next to ‘black’. I’ve never filled one of these forms and chosen keep my race remain anonymous. I’ve never wanted to pretend we live in a world like transparent glass figurines in a window display. And so, yes, maybe I got my job because the Canadian government decided that there should be a certain percentage of black drivers in the public transit system? It’s hardly a jet-setting occupation and I am never kept up wondering desperately, are my steering wheel turning abilities fully appreciated? I’ve only had two jobs in my life, not like those people who hop from one to another like frogs in a lab experiment investigating the long term effects of psychotropic drugs on amphibians.

I used to be a bouncer. I got the job easily because I am almost seven feet tall and my fat looks like muscle when I wear thick jackets. Hiram, paper-white blotchy skinned ex-boxer with typical coiled serpent and skull tattoos, grumbled that it was easier for me because I was black. Drunken, out to prove something, greasy, hairy apes always picked fights with him. He had a horseshoe shaped scar under his chin and his nose had been broken twice. No scars on my body except where my appendix was taken out and one on my left bicep from childhood. I don’t remember how I got it.

I’ve been driving buses around Montreal for twenty-one years. Nods, smiles and sometimes a ‘good morning’ or ‘bonjour’. That’s the most I get: except for from those trying to get on the bus with an expired transfer stub who either: pretend they had no idea, plead desperately, or shrug and ask me to let them ride for just one or two stops. Most people don’t acknowledge me and just walk quietly to their seats.

I’ve noticed, because you can’t help but notice this kind of thing, that the nods, smiles, good mornings and bonjours come more often from black people. That boy who reminds me of my son Tenga, he always nods. He dresses like a carbon copy of the friends who sometimes stumble onto the bus with him: baggy jeans, sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his bald head, a deliberate sway to his walk. He carries a student bus pass and I’ve never asked to see his ID. It’s natural to treat people who look familiar more generously.

I only met my wife because she looked so much like my first girlfriend. Thick heavy braids, full heavy breasts, and -- of course -- a Macadamia nut complexion. Because she looked so much like Aliki, it took me longer to trust Mandy. A part of me expected her to betray me as easily as the woman she resembled.

Only ever had two jobs, only ever loved two women.

Over the years, I’ve given my son a number of lectures about women -- how not to be shy around them, how to treat them, what kind of gifts they like. If Mandy was nearby she’d grin a big grin and keep it to herself that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Even so, sometimes I wanted to talk to that boy who looks like Tenga and tell him a thing or two about women. When he jumped on the bus in the evenings he often had a girl with him. White -- that’s all I noticed at first. It made me angry to see him with her; it made me think about the white girl Tenga had brought home for a short while.

One day, while she rummaged through a leather book-bag for a bus ticket, I noticed things other than that milk white tooth white cloud white skin. Big hoop earrings dangled from her tiny ears and her plump little body was squeezed into a tight black tank top. Tight stonewash jeans encased her thighs and she wore stripper stilettos. Her short blonde hair was too light to be natural and jewelry jinged as she moved: bracelets around her pale wrists and several bead necklaces.

It was only much later, after maybe a year of driving them to whatever club they had decided to go to, that I noticed more. It took tears. She cried without that self-conscious restraint most people have. She was clinging to the boy who looks like Tenga and her head was buried in his shoulder. She wailed like an infant and everyone on the bus shifted with discomfort. Their conversations faded to murmurs and her gasping moans filled the vehicle. At a bus stop, I glanced back and I saw how the boy who looked like Tenga wasn’t looking at her; he was staring out of the window and his muscles were tense. His arms dangled inertly and I wanted to grab them and force them around her shoulders. How could he sit their with her body jerking like that and look out at the electric lights of St. Catherine? I wanted to force him to look at her. I wanted to make him tell her ‘it will be all right’, ‘I love you’ and all the other things that people need to hear -- whether or not they are true. She cried for five blocks and then they got out and joined a long line to a nightclub similar to the one where I had been a bouncer.

The next time I saw them, I noticed she looked exhausted. Her skin was pasty and caked with too much make up. Her shoulders sagged as though her array of necklaces were choking her with their weight. Her eyes were raw, ringed by dark shadows that looked out of place on that young face. They sat at the front of the bus and I listened. The boy who looked like Tenga talked about something he had seen on a TV crime drama and something that his brother had done to a co-worker. Hearing the stories one after another, I noticed he spoke of his brother with the same heroic reverence he used when talking about the TV detective. I also noticed the girl said absolutely nothing while he talked. He didn’t seem to mind. His words were an impassioned monologue accompanied by well rendered sound effects and too many cuss words.

I told Mandy about the two of them and she pretended to be interested. Then she told me about what had happened that day at the bank and I laughed so hard my kidneys hurt. Mandy has a way of telling stories that makes moments seem more vivid. Her fingers trail the air as she speaks.

I saw the boy who looked like Tenga and the girl a few more times that month. It was always the same, a ritual with rigid rules that rarely were broken. When there were changes, they were small. They might sit at the back of the bus instead of the front, they might get out at a Pizza place instead of a night club.

One day, she wasn’t there. The boy who looked like Tenga swaggered in alone and sat at the front of the bus. He stared out of the window and bobbed his head to the music playing on his walkman. Next time I saw him, he was alone again. I wanted to ask him what happened to her. I almost did but I imagined his face contorting into a what’s wrong with you? look of contempt. And then the next time I saw him, he was sitting with another white girl. Brown haired this time, with a mischievous curve of a smile and bare shoulders. She was about the same size and body type as her predecessor.

I thought of Mandy and Aliki’s Macadamia nut skin and their identical thick eyebrows. I remembered how Aliki used to whip out a pocket mirror after crying and dab away the smudges in her eye-shadow.

THE END