Giving Up For Compassion

NOTE: THIS IS A ROUGH DRAFT

Sweat dripped from the top of my forehead as I waited in front of LA 2W at Mesa Community College. My sister was still in her English 101 class, and since I had gotten out of Philosophy an hour earlier, I had to wait for her in his blistering weather. As I waited, sitting on a hot metal bench that could have scorched my blue skinny jeans under me I tried to occupy my silent time by eyeing what was around me. At moments other students passed by without a glance, and when they did it was sort of an amused sneer. I could only guess because my kinky auburn hair happened to not be well attended to that day. The heat soon started getting to me, bringing fatigue to my eyes, and unfortunately it got to my bottle of Dr. Pepper I had acquired earlier.
Just when I believed this would never end, the olive metal door opened, and random peers exited the room like scattering ants escaping her chambers. I stood up expecting her to be one of the first out, but then my eyes caught her at his desk, speaking to the earthly dressed instructor. After a few seconds I stepped in to make sure she grabbed her purple zebra print backpack, her Toshiba laptop bag, and all of her supplies from Art Class, and without a word exchanged to the stressed older man we left the room.
“How was class?” I asked her like usual, and she went on to tell me she felt embarrassed and envious of her other classmates in a broken voice. The rest of them had fathers in their lives. I could only watch her tear up for a moment, feeling like crying for her. Unlike me she willowed whenever anyone spoke of a dad, especially since he abandoned us years ago.
“Don’t worry about it, Kayla,” I tried to console her. “It just makes you one of the stronger ones. It makes us stronger.” She nodded, and she set her backpack, her laptop bag, her twenty-four by thirty-two cardboard portfolio which held an enormous wooden clipboard along with a few various sized sketchbooks, a clear supply case, and a thirty two inch metal ruler on the blue tiny hole ridden bench I sat on, and started looking for her Valley Metro Bus Youth Transit bus pass. It was soon she worriedly looked at me, and told me she could not find it.
The two of us checked over and over everywhere for the little plastic card that took us everywhere, particularly around Tempe, and to this college in Mesa, and still we were unsuccessful at best.
“Do you remember where you last had it?” I asked her, and that was when she suddenly realized, and told me, “I had it my Art Class. This girl asked me if I had a bus card and I told her I had one for me…” Then what she told me next sparked my bewilderment, “After I put my laptop away I turned around to get my bag it was on the desk and all the zippers were completely undone.” Of course it angered me so much I wanted to call the police, but instead I pulled out my cheap old cellphone to call our mom instead. I told her what happened to Kayla’s bus card, and considering the thief was nowhere around, all she told us to do was use the change she gave her for scan cards instead. If we did not have enough for the second ride, she had to ask for a break.
I knew as well as my sister did no one was going to sympathize with two eighteen year olds. Bus drivers who only cared for financial gain were on the top of my list for that, but I had to trust that this one time it would be different.
For fifteen minutes we walked to our bus stop across the street and west side of the school. The sun was beaming on us now, and I did not know how long we were going to last out here in over a hundred degrees of broiling air. When we got there, no seats were left under the shade of the burgundy colored metal near the blue and white bus stop sign that was damaged by both age and graffiti, so we had to stand and wait for our first bus to arrive. In the meantime, neither of us spoke, and I prayed for my eyes to see bright orange electric letters describing the bus number and destination as I constantly peeked down northward of Dobson.
A few moments later the bus did arrive, and when the doors opened I made sure my sister was able to get on first since she had the most physical burden. When she asked for a pass for the next bus, the bald old man shook his head and told her to ask the driver then. Already feeling my insides burn with the heat, I sat down next to Kayla as she asked me if I was okay. Really, I wanted to give the bus driver a kick in his face, but I told her I was fine.
It only took minutes to get to Dobson and Baseline, and as we got off the bus that was when I noticed my sister lagging behind me. Her eyes casted downward to the lighted sidewalk as if someone had just put her down, and then I stood beside her. I even took some of her belongings so she could make it across the street. The bus happened to get there just seconds we made it to the bus stop, and when the doors opened this time, I was ready to give my all to convince the bus driver to let my sister come home with me.
First I paid for my way, and I looked at this woman’s aged face and I politely asked her, “Ma’am, is it alright if my sister did not pay her way?”
“What?” was her immediate response; she did not understand me.
With a sigh I tried again, “My sister got her bus card stolen today…” and it was suddenly my voice cracked under a ripple of emotion. “It is really hot out here, and my sister is carrying a lot of stuff and she really needs a ride home—.”
“That is not my problem,” she growled angrily at me in her Hispanic accent, and it shocked us to hear the callousness within her tone. Quickly she tried to bring up the policy, and handed us a piece of paper explaining that if she rode for free she could be fined to five hundred dollars.
As I stared at this incredulously I heard my sister quip, “Well thank you for letting me stand out here in the heat.” I turned to her, my eyes widening with disbelief. She had cracked under the pressure of authority, and as for me, I could see the edges of her skin shaking awfully. Her lips were cracks like those deriving from earthquakes due to the lack of water, and worst of all, she looked like she was going to pass out. In these seconds, I had to decide to either get off the bus, or make her sit on the bus with me and risk being fined or sent to jail unlike the drunks and drug addicts I have seen this woman let on frequently. I looked down at my bus card, filled with outrage, and the driver told me to hurry up and get off the bus if I was not going to ride it while grabbing for a snack. My watering eyes caught my second half, and I handed her my bus card.
“Kylea, what are you doing?” she gasped.
“Kayla, stay on this bus and go home.”
She tried to give my card back, but I refused, telling her, “You’re getting sick out here and you have all that stuff. I would rather you go. I’ll be fine.”
I could see her mortification, but seeing she was holding up another passenger, she decided to take my seat. I gave her one quick hug, and in silent tears I stepped off, stood at the door, and watched it close in front of me before pulling away. Through the window I could see her sit down, and hunch over to cry. It was not long before I sat down in a bench and cried myself. This was something I thought I would never have to do, and while I was relieved to see her to be taken home before suffering from heatstroke I was now stuck without any way to be with her.
My spilling emotions caught the attention of a twenty four year old college student, and when I told her what had happened, she was equally as surprised, and almost close to letting a tear fall. She told me she wished she would have done the same for her sisters, and with that she rewarded my selfless act with a dollar to get me home. Another man who had overheard only looked at me with high brows before going back to texting on his cell phone. When the next bus arrived, I made sure I let the driver know, and he let me know it was wrong for the woman I had tried to respect to disrespect my sister.
I got home about an hour later, and I was so fatigued over the entire situation I had to drag my heavy-weighted rainbow checkered bag all the way from the front of Circle K across the street and through the adobe colored College Apartments. My head pulsed all the way down my neck, making the pain from a previous muscle strain even worse than when I had initially had it, and I could barely look up to seen my mom stand at the top of the stairs to meet me. The smile on her face was accompanied with eyes that brought up a curse, and at first I was scared to approach her. I was positive Kayla told her and I was almost certain she had to be upset with what I did, but as I sat on the bottom step, she descended and sat by me before saying, “I called Valley Metro.” Immediately I wondered, “Did you cuss them out?”
That was not even the word. As she explained the conversation, I was not shocked to hear the profanity in my mom’s words to Valley Metro, and really it annoyed me. But I did not disapprove of it this time, because she did what did in my favor. After she finished minutes later, I asked her worriedly, “Do you think I made a stupid choice?”
My mom smiled, and she shook her head before saying honestly, “At first I did, but then I had to think about it, and really, Kylea, it shows that you really have compassion.”
When she said that last word it echoed in my head as if someone shouted from deep inside a cave. Compassion was the very thing many people, including within my own family said I lacked, that I was selfish and did not care for another human being. In this case, it was someone serving for the people of the state that did not have enough to let a child go home without paying them. It was an incident I will always remember, not because I gave up something that was mine that day, but for the simple fact that I was strong enough and loved enough to do it on my own terms.