Excerpt:

For as long as we can remember, my family has been in the transportation business.
Or, rather, for as long as it's mattered.

We've been New Yorkers that long too. These streets are all we have ever known, and living anywhere else is unimaginable. My feet were born to treat these streets, born to hail taxis, born to pay exorbitant housing prices and disinter muggers. There is a subway map tattooed on my soul.

But, this is my ancestor's story as much as my own.
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Before recorded time, my great grandfather had a son. But he didn't know it at the time.

James Whitehall was a wealthy land owner and steersman in Texas, with an eye for beautiful women. My great grandmother was a very beautiful woman.

Margarita was her name, and she worked in his house, having only recently arrived from Guadalajara. When she stepped off the train, she could only say “I don't speak english”, “Ladies' Room?” and “I would like to see a buffalo.” (The latter being a suggestion from her sister, who knew someone who saw a John Wayne movie once.) Despite this linguistic handicap, she fell in love with my great grandfather at first sight. My great grandfather took a few weeks to give in, but she managed to wordlessly cajole James into a torrid affair. For several months she seduced him, expecting that, one day soon, he would propose to her.
But James was a jealous man, proud, quick to anger, and when he caught her speaking in spanish with his butler – well, he did not accept that she was merely trying to organize a birthday party for him. He threw her out of his house that very night, and shortly afterward, married a fashionable white woman they said he'd been courting for years.
Many months after, while working in the house of another wealthy Texan, Margarita gave birth to Agustin Ramirez, my grandfather. It was a difficult birth, but she and the baby made it through.
James had no idea about his illegitimate child.

Having never heard his side of the story, I cannot say how he felt about Margarita, Agustin, or their absence.
I would like to think he missed and loved them.
But we can dream all we'd like.
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I drive a bus. Or, rather, I used to, until – well, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I drive a bus. The 921, to be exact, from the Village to the center of town. That's my contribution to the family legacy.

Every day, at six in the morning, I open the doors to a sleepy string of passengers. They get on, they get off, and, eventually, at three in the afternoon, I park the bus in the lo. In the village, they are a kooky lot, covered with odd piercings and tattoos. Downtown, they are crisply well dressed, and carry briefcases. Usually, they cause me no trouble, but sometimes I get a doozy. Someone who really seems institution bound. That causes problems.
There was one man who wore a purple garland on his head, no shirt, and kept trying to sit on my lap. I almost got into an accident because of that one. Then there was the woman who, when I was five minutes late, smeared baby formula all over one of the seats, and then dropped little bits of newspaper in it. Or this one guy, who... well, that's for later as well.
But, for the most part, the passengers are regular. Normal. Predictable. Expected. Unsurprising. Boring.
Except for her.