I wanted Grandma to let me hold my own ticket. After all, I was thirteen, quite old enough to be responsible. She insisted that her purse would be the vault for the paper tickets allowing us to ride from Pittsburgh to Miami and back for our June 1961 trip. Three days each way, two nights sleeping on the bus. Grandma and I had wanted to fly, a newish mode of travel for middle class in those days. However, my Mother was adamant that flight was for birds, not people. “Better to trust the faithful Greyhound,” she had declared.
So, it was a bus trip. We boarded in Pittsburgh in late evening, arrived in Washington DC in the middle of the night and made our breakfast stop in Richmond, VA. I was surprised to see “Colored” over one of the drinking fountains. Later, I asked my Grandmother if colored water came from those, why, and what color. She explained that we were in the South now and colored people and white people were not allowed to drink from the same fountains or sit together in a restaurant and a lot of other things. I was puzzled, had a lot of questions, but she did not want to talk about it. The daytime part of the trip was boring. There is only so much scenery one can admire. Grandma slept a lot. I spent a lot of time reading, counting cows and small-town stops. I woke up Grandma for ticket checks and rest room stops.
In South Carolina, a girl appearing to be my age climbed the steps into the bus and made her way to the back seats where we were sitting. Her dark hair was plaited in careful braids with a pink bow at the ends. She took the window seat across the aisle from us, leaving an empty seat next to herself.
I shook Grandma awake. “May I sit with that new girl, Grandma?”
Grandma looked across at the young girl who was peering out the window, waving goodbye to her family. (I supposed)
"Sure. It's nice for you to meet a friend your own age.”
I moved over, introduced myself and she smiled at me. I told her my Grandma and I were traveling from Pittsburgh to Miami. The driver came to check tickets. Aurelia, the new girl, held out her ticket. Grandma showed him mine and hers.
I had a friend now, so I didn’t bother counting cows or towns. I did most of the talking— stickers, school tests, vacation plans with Grandma. I hardly noticed our passage into Georgia. Small towns became blurs of neon signs against ever darker skies. At the dinner stop, my new friend stayed on the bus, eating her own picnic lunch. After supper as all around us were nodding into sleep, Aurelia, and I shared secrets. I told her I was afraid of spiders.
Aurelia whispered in return, "I'm not 12, I'm 22. I dress younger when I go to Jacksonville, Florida. It's safer than way."
I was surprised. How could being a child make her safer? I was sooo anxious to be older to be able to hold my own ticket and be considered a grown-up. Why would she, why would anyone, want to be younger?
But her tone was so firm and sure, I did not question. We rode on. She ate dinner on the bus.
When we crossed the border into Georgia, a new driver came on. Soon after that stop at the border, I fell asleep. I woke up when the bus pulled to a halt in a small town and instead of just idling, the motor turned off.
Then I felt Aurelia moving in the window seat next to me and heard a gruff voice speaking to her. That new driver.
"Time for you to get out," he declared, shaking Aurelia.
I looked across the bus out of the window next to Grandma who was stirring in her seat. We were not even in Florida yet. We were stopped in a place called St Mary's Georgia. The station clock said three. Aurelia slid past me, out of her seat, into the aisle and reached up for her suitcase.
Surely, the driver was making a mistake.
I stood up. “Show him your ticket, Aurelia. He’s making a mistake. This isn’t Jacksonville.”
The big driver growled, "This is as far as she goes."
My grandma was now fully awake. Others stirred in their seats.
"Be quiet." Grandma warned me.
An ugly slash of a smile hung across the driver’s face. "Yeah, be quiet or you nigger lovers, you and your grandma, will be getting off here too."
Aurelia smiled and squeezed my hand. "Just be quiet. Stay here. Take care of your Grandma. I will be just fine."
My insides were churning. This was wrong. But clearly, my Grandma was afraid of this man. Would he hurt her?
Aurelia walked, head high, suitcase in hand, to the front and left the bus.
As the silver coach pulled out back onto the moonlit highway, I looked back and saw Aurelia sitting on the bench outside the closed-up station, alone in the dark and cold.
I waved but I don’t think she could see me. I was comforted by the secret knowledge that she was older, wiser, stronger than the driver knew. Later in life, I realized that this was why she dressed younger. As a child, alone she was less likely to be bothered than as a young woman alone, there on that bench in Georgia. Such occurrences were something she expected, prepared for.
I could not sleep the rest of that night. I was too upset. We crossed the state line into Florida. In Jacksonville, a new driver came on to check our tickets. I thought about Aurelia. She had the right paper ticket, but the right papers had not protected her—or us.
When we got to Miami, the first thing I did when we got to our hotel was to write a letter to Greyhound, but letters from little girls did not count for much to big companies in those days.
To them, my outrage was just a piece of paper. I tried to do what I could in my small way. I made sure that my own heart was free from hate. As an older teen, I marched in local demonstrations for Civil Rights. In years since, I’ve acted when I saw discrimination and as a mom, taught our children to do the same. Thankfully, the laws that forced separate drinking fountains and made bullies think they could order people around just because they were of a different race have disappeared. Young women no longer need to disguise themselves to travel.
In the forty-plus years since that incident, I have made friends with many people who live in Georgia—people of all races and ethnicities. I’ve driven through Georgia to Florida countless times from Washington, DC where I lived for many years, from our current residence in North Carolina, down Route 95 through Georgia. Yet, each time I cross the border into the Peach State, I think of Aurelia, and hold my breath.
Joan Leotta is a writer and story performer. She plays with words in poems, essays, articles, plays, and books. Her poems and essays have been or will recently appear in Anti-Heroin Chic, Vita Brevis, Sasee, Eastern Iowa Rewview and others. On stage, she tells persoanl and folk tales featuring food, family, and strong women.
