The Real Life Midwest Princess

A drunk homeless man on the bus is telling me to put a hijab on. I say nothing. In my journal, where I can be my purest self, I write what I would have said back: “Why don’t you put a roof over your head first.”

I follow up that thought with self-awareness: “I am fantasizing about ‘winning’ against a homeless man, someone with nothing to lose or gain.”

I can keep my most uncharitable thoughts to myself but many, like the bus driver, cannot. She is a boisterous, middle-aged white woman from Chicago who feels compelled to rant to me about courtesy riders like the homeless man. According to her, they are a byproduct of “DEI,” which is a vibe and a mood—a bad one!—more than any kind of policy.

“Does the fair come out of your paycheck?” I am being sarcastic.

“No, but it’s the principle. I only have a GED and I make $38.00/hour. Why can’t they do that?”

I imagine her tallying the number of riders who get on without paying, keeping the score in her head, carrying the psychic weight of it. She seems truly burdened and dysregulated by the fact of these people getting something for free, jealous even. I know that feeling, and the contempt that comes with it, having been on the receiving and giving end of it. Other women’s faces fall when they learn that I live in a studio apartment my mother owns and that KC spent thousands furnishing it this year. My face falls when I learn anyone has a trust fund.

My mother doesn’t want others to know I am fortunate, that I am the real life Midwest Princess. She believes I will incur evil eye for it. I probably will incur evil eye and I probably have incurred evil eye, but I am more concerned with my own capacity for evil eye. I know my spirit is covetous and rottenly middle-class.