The sign on the pole said the street was called All Street; it was an all-way, and it was also a bus stop. She sat under the pole with her skirt tucked under her legs, the boredom in her eyes hiding the burning excitement in her chest. The sky was turning light purple with sunrise, waiting for the sun to appear, just like she was turning purple waiting for her bus to show. She had a beaten-up suitcase and a beaten-up guitar case and a beaten-up dress on, and a beaten-up wad of money for a long, long bus ride.

She also had a home back down the street somewhere, a home that bowed slow to the ground in the long, long process of falling in on itself. She had a momma too, who languished all day in washerwoman suds and sleep, who forgot to work and forgot to play and forgot to pay the bills. A momma who cried when she thought no one was there. And so the washerwoman's daughter sat on the road looking like pale road kill and carrying all her clothes and all her money in one suitcase, waiting for her bus.

They said there was a life somewhere down this road. She just had to get onto the bus and tell the driver to bring her to the bayous and the city in between. “When you get there,” they said, laughing a little, “ask them a-bring you to Bohemia.”

And so she sat beneath the fluttering street lamp with the signs that said BUS STOP and ALL WAY and waited for her bus to come with the dawn. She was cold. There was frost on the pole, and it'd be on her nose and in her heart soon if she waited any longer.

Five minutes turned into five imagined hours until she saw, on the corner of the way, the glow of headlights and the behemoth bus, coming a-puttering her way.

She stood, but left a piece of her composure on the freezing ground, because it fell from her like shingles from the crumbling roof back home. Oh, her home, back down the street somewhere! And her momma, wallowing in washing! Could she really leave them? The city, they also said – after they told her of Bohemia with a laugh – can eat you, and will. But poor sad momma with the sinking cheeks never ate anything, especially not her daughter.

The bus came sputtering and spitting and spilling up to the corner of All Street, where it stopped with an unhealthy cough. She looked back down the street somewhere. The doors hissed open, and the driver asked through his cigar, “You ­coming, lady?”

She frowned. She was cold. The guitar case was getting heavy. Her stomach was getting heavy. The smell of suds and mold stuck in her nose. The bus driver and the other passengers were frowning back. The sun was showing. Momma never noticed anything anyway, she reasoned, especially not her daughter. So she said, “Yes, I'm coming,” and hitched up her bags and got on board. As she handed the driver her fare, she added, “Take me to the bayous and the city in between them. I'm going to Bohemia.”