A Springtime Memory
 
Buses drove by Shattuck and Ashby regularly, then meandered toward San Francisco or downtown Berkeley.  Today I had to wait for a bus into West Oakland. I knew I had to wait longer for the number 51 bus that drove down Ashby towards MacArthur. Two F buses bound for San Francisco came by before mine.
 April days in Berkeley sparkled. I felt the shimmery blue skies brush across my cheek and peered south, looking for the yellow bus.
 Tutoring. I made my college spending money helping children to read. When I went into Berkeley homes I charged $3.50 an hour. In Oakland I dropped my rate. $2.50 today. These jobs came through the student placement center on the Berkeley campus. Not everyone who tutored made the same allowance I did.  I took this bus all the time. Even then, I grew impatient with waiting!
 The bus pulled up. Filled with students, raucous laughter vibrated off the hard leather seats. Riders exchanged boistrous greetings.  Nobody greeted me, but I felt comfortable in the midst of this energy.
 I hopped off the bus ten minutes later. Houses here stood, packed more tightly together. Steps leading up to their porches sagged. I smiled at the elderly man standing on the corner. He smiled back. I scampered up the steps to Maryelle’s house.  Her mother, wearing a springy green housedress opened, the door with a smile. I saw Maryelle, sprawled across her overstuffed pink couch, engrossed in the afternoon cartoons.
“Maryelle. Ann is here. Run and get your homework. She can help you diagram those sentences.”
Maryelle bounced up, turned off the television and dashed into her bedroom. She returned clutching her textbook wrapped in a brown paper bag book cover and a spiral ringed binder. For the next thirty minutes we pored over her English assignment. We moved from that to a math sheet on improper fractions.
 “See. The denominator must be smaller than the numerator. Remind yourself, ‘Big numbers are too heavy for the poor numerator to have to carry around.”
 We moved with care from one problem to the next.
All of a sudden I became aware of the television. Its noise broke into our labors. A terse voice replaced the silly cartoon diddies. I heard something like “gunned down.” Maryelle’s mother came into the room.
 “Martin Luther King has just been shot. He is dead. Ann, you had better go home.”
 Martin Luther King! My mind flooded with memories of rallies in Chicago. We all stood arm in arm, swaying as we sang “We Shall Overcome”, our voices rising up in hope, Dr. King’s louder than all of ours combined. My memory of hopes then seemed to drown with her pronouncement. King dead?
 I went outside Maryelle’s house. The sunlight glared. Suddenly my white skin felt too white. I became aware of the somber faces all around me. The elderly man avoided eye contact. No smile now. I felt out of place.
 Again, the bus took too long to pull up to my corner. This time I drew in my breath, looked straight ahead. In the somber silence on the bus, I felt like every glaring face somehow blamed me for their sadness, their anger.
 I returned to my corner. Ashby and Shattuck, breathed a huge sigh of relief. Somehow, I felt I, with my white skin, took on the blame for the heaviness which permeated the late spring evening.
 I never got paid for that tutoring session. That evening, the neighborhood around where I tutored echoed with breaking glass and anger.