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a trip for her. When I would go to see her, I'd have to

ride the Big Blue Bus for nearly two hours to make

the right connections and you know the buses don't

run that often."

I glanced at them.

"Well, you girls probably don't know 'cause you

probably never been on a Big Blue Bus in Los

Angeles, have you?"

"I have," Cat blurted. She looked like she had

confessed to a crime or something. "My mother didn't

know I did, but I did," she added.

"How'd you like it?" I asked her.

"It was all right," she said. "Nobody bothered

me."

"Why should they? Just because someone don't

have enough money to have his or her own car don't

mean they're rapists and serial killers, you know:' "I was just scared," she said. She said it with

such honesty, I couldn't harden my heart against her

for it.

"Yeah, well, I've been scared on the bus too," I

admitted, "especially at night.

"But I often had to ride it then because I would

have stayed at Granny's too long and I didn't want her

to have to drive me home in the dark. Her eyes

weren't so good back then and they are even worse

now.

"I got so I ran to Granny every so often because

I couldn't stand coming home from school and finding Momma drinking, Rodney still in his pajamas, and the house looking like ten slobs lived in it. Granny knew why I showed up at her house in the afternoon from time to time, but she didn't harp on it. She had tried and tried with Momma and finally just threw up her hands and declared, 'My Aretha's just one of those people who have to decide to help themselves because

they won't let anyone else do it.

"'Your momma will wake up facedown in the