Always aiming to be of service, I give you this advice, should you find yourself boarding a público: try to sit as close to the door as possible. Also, try NOT to sit next to gorditas.
Why?
Well, gorditas are young ladies who carry some heft to them. They occupy space. And when the chofer decides to impose the four-person-per-seat rule, he’ll cut no slack. Four people is four people, no matter their size.
It’s especially bad if you are a flaquito (the gorditas’ opposite) like me, and if the gorditas are on both sides of you. Which in fact they were. So there I sat, looking like a shirt being squeezed out of an old-fashioned wringer.
Well, the gorditas were students at a school of aesthetics (escuela de estética) which, no, doesn’t mean what you’d think. These little chubbies were not discussing philosophical principles or the properties of beauty and proportion—they were learning to cut hair. That’s aesthetics, down here.
I know this because one of them showed me her “practice head.” Real hair, it seems, is too precious to waste on anything less than experienced aestheticians. Gotta practice first. And she told me what I had always wondered. Yes, the practice head is full of “hair.” After you’re done aestheticizing (oh, of COURSE that’s a word!) you simply snip of the excess aesthetics and start again!
Well, well, something to know….
And happy I was to chat with the chubbies, because, really, the landscape is dreary, in this part of the island. The western edge of the city is a painful repetition of fast food outlets, strip malls, tire shops, car repair shops—all crammed next to each other, and all with monstrous signs with clashing colors. The only break comes when you lift your eyes, and see El Yunque, the tropical rainforest located on the highest mountain in the northeast part of the island.
That’s what I was looking at when the silliness started.
“¡Pare, pare! Hay una señora corriendo, y si ella se cae…” Hey, stop—there’s a lady running for the bus, and if she falls….
“Será una mujer caída….” She’ll be a fallen woman. (this, said by a young lady next to the window.)
Yes, it means just the same in Spanish.
Could it be? Would it finally happen? For my last three trips in públicos had been nothing like what I remembered from years before. Long, extended jokes and gags. Laughter. Gentle teasing and good humor.
Well, the lady catches up to the van, and it’s clear—she’s not colorless. Quite the opposite, for she is chattering the moment she enters and promises not to stop until she exits.
“Ay, mi madre, ¡es la cocina pa’mí!” Oh my lord, it’s the back of the bus (literally, the “kitchen”) for me!
She squeezes her way past, and sits—rather wedges—next to the guy I’d been talking to, those minutes-read-hours at the bus stop.
“Puej, la última vez que estuve en una pisicorre, estaba casi en la falda de otro pasajero…” The last time I was in a público, I was practically sitting in someone’s lap.
“I would be happy to provide that service,” says the guy.
Instantly she is outraged-womanhood.
“¡Señor! ¡Soy una dama casada y respetable!” Sir! I’m a respectable, married lady….
“That hasn’t been established. In fact, it was challenged even before you entered the bus!”
The lady is horrified!
“!¿QUÉ?! ¿Qué usté dice, señor? ¡¿La gente estaba hablando de mí, antes de llegar aquí a la gaugita?! !Qué cosa! ¿Y quién estaba hablando de mí??”
The guy points with his lips (a Puerto Rican thing) to the young woman.
“¡¿QUÉ?! ¡Una mujer como yo, hablando sapos y serpientes de mí! ¡Nena! ¡Qué vergüenza!” What! A fellow woman talking snakes and toads about me! Girl! No shame!
Well, now it’s a trio, as brilliantly witty as anything Haydn wrote. The lady is all outraged innocence, caught against her will between a lascivious man and a saucy young lady. And everything they say plunges her more deeply into her perilous hole. At last, she can bear it no longer!
“Usted, señor,” she says, tapping my shoulder, “make room for a poor thing seeking protection.”
She notes that I am gringo.
“Puede ser que él no entienda….” Maybe he won’t understand….
“Claro, señora. Señorita, move just a bit, to offer protection to the fallen woman….”
This is met with a horrified squeal.
“Ay, ¡mi madre! ¡Los hombres! ¡Son todos iguales!” All men are alike!
“Don’t move a muscle,” says the guy behind me, “it’s been months since I’ve been this close to a beautiful lady….”
“Ay Dioj mío! ¡Un hombre desesperado!” Oh my God! A desperate man!
Well, it goes on and on, as we pass the dreary stores and encounter a street flooded for an entire block. And it never goes over the edge, never gets vulgar, never is less than light-hearted and fun. But at last, the saucy minx gets out, the man as well, and finally, our lady of the wounded virtue.
“Santos,” she says, backing out of the van, “thanks heavens my saintly mother wasn’t here to see this spectacle!”
