Languages in LA

No experience so far symbolizes Los Angeles more to me than an incident which occurred shortly after I relocated here. My car had died on arrival, so I settled in Hollywood and used public transportation for three months. Most days I just met schizophrenics who had found Jesus, but one day I saw an incident.

An elderly woman with a walker was struggling onto the bus on the corner of Sunset and LaBrea. When she finally reached the top of the steps, the driver looked down and saw, to his horror, that she had slashed the thin skin of her leg against something and blood was running down freely. The woman looked down and saw the blood. Feeble already, she began to shake and speak agitatedly… in Armenian. The bus driver, who was African-American, helped her to a seat but could not communicate with her. He went to his radio for help.

We waited for an ambulance. There were only eight other people on the bus, and none of us spoke Armenian. After a moment, a young Mexican man came, knelt down in front of her, and offered his bandanna to wrap around her leg. He didn’t speak Armenian, she didn’t speak Spanish, and the hovering bus driver didn’t speak either language. But with gestures they communicated, and the driver moved the walker aside while the Mexican passenger bound the Armenian woman’s leg with his bandanna. She patted his arm gratefully and thanked him in words he couldn’t understand, but in tones we all could.

Eventually we were all transferred to another bus, leaving the Armenian lady with the arriving paramedics. That was it. It wasn’t terribly dramatic. But it was touching, and when I think of L.A., I don’t think of the chi-chi cafes of Sunset Plaza, or the airy, shallow denizens of the entertainment industry. I think of that day on the bus.