By Marie Estorge
Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year. I love the excessive displays of twinkling lights and tacky lawn ornaments, the colorful presents with their hidden gems, or not, the merriment and the parties, the traditional songs even though I’m not religious, homemade beignets with my sons, and the plaid-skirted tree decorated with the ornaments we’d collected over the years.
On this particular Christmas Eve, I had just started my Uber shift. I’d filled the gas tank, cleaned off the bird droppings that peppered the exterior of my red Mazda, and packed energy bars, cough drops, and chewing gum for the evening.
As I approached the address of my first passenger and pulled to the curb, I smiled at the lights strung on the balconies of the street-facing apartments. A young man in a grey coat glanced at my license plate and I waved. I’d barely put the car in park when he opened the door, ignored my greeting, and buckled himself into the back seat. His phone rang immediately. Judging by his end of the conversation, he was late for a holiday party. I too had been invited to a holiday party, but I needed to earn a hundred dollars to buy groceries for our Christmas dinner. There would be no gifts this year, unless someone surprised me with a huge tip.
“So,” he said, after his call ended. “You’ve got nothing better to do on Christmas Eve than drive for Uber?”
I looked in the rearview mirror and smiled politely. “It looks like that, doesn’t it.”
We didn’t say anything else as we headed toward Oakland. As he climbed out of the car at his destination, I wished him a nice evening. The door simply slammed with no response from Mr. Bah Humbug. Where was the holiday spirit? I wondered, heading to my next pickup and hoping the evening wouldn’t be one unpleasant passenger after another.
The next few six hours I drove laps around the Bay Area, from San Francisco to Mill Valley, to Moraga, back to Oakland, and so on. The saving grace of the evening was seeing all the holiday lights and knowing I’d be able to buy a turkey and all the fixings. When I got sleepy, I sucked on cherry flavored cough drops or chewed gum. Between rides, I ate my energy bars and made a few bathroom stops. My younger son, a sophomore in college, texted me around ten p.m. to ask how the night was going and if I would be home soon. My Uber app pinged, and I quickly texted, Going fine. Heading to my last fare. See you soon.
I arrived at an address in a sketchy residential area of Concord and texted the client to say I’d arrived. I glanced out of the windows, looking from side to side for potential dangers. As a middle-aged, single female Uber driver, I had now visited areas around the San Francisco Bay Area that I’d purposely avoided throughout my thirty years of living in Northern California. The first time I drove out to Bay Point, rudely nicknamed by some as Gun Point, I was terrified of being caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting.
Shortly after my text, a burly guy opened the front passenger door. I preferred for solo riders, especially men, to sit in the back, but I never insisted. Once a male passenger had laid his hand on my arm when he was thanking me for the ride. He waited a beat but probably saw the terror on my face and left without incident.
“Marie,” the guy now asked, lowering himself into the seat. “Beverly?” I asked, confused by the name on my app.
“That my mom.” Another middle-aged man and a boy emerged from a house. “Can you wait for her? She should be out in a sec.”
A couple of minutes later, a sullen woman trudged down the sidewalk. Her pace seemed deliberately slow. She opened the back door and said in a smoker’s voice, “Go without me. I don’t want to go.”
“Come on, mom. Just get in,” said the man seated in the back.
“No.” She shut the door and then started walking back toward the house. We all sat there in silence watching her.
“Should I go?” I asked.
“If you could hold another second,” said the man sitting beside me. He rolled down his window and shouted for his mom to get in the car. She turned around and they had a stare-off. Finally, she returned to the car and slid into the back seat. Immediately, the stench of cigarettes and tension in the car was palpable. I started the trip and glanced back at the woman. From all appearances, she was one angry, exhausted person. If she were my mom, I would have let her stay home instead of potentially ruining everyone’s evening.
As we drove toward their destination, I fielded the typical questions: How long have you been driving? Do you like it? Isn’t it scary being a woman picking up strangers? I gave my usual answers: there were benefits and drawbacks to the gig. Ninety-five of the people I encountered were nice, but some made the experience less than pleasant. Some were downright scary or rude. I liked the flexibility, the immediate cash, and enjoyed meeting interesting people.
“You have a nice voice,” said the mom. “I bet you can sing really pretty.”
I smiled, happy that she was defrosting.
“Uh, no. In fact, I have a terrible singing voice.”
“I doubt it,” she said, coughing loudly.
“Believe me. I’m not being modest.”
“Prove it,” she said.
The song that immediately came to mind, a favorite from my childhood, was a Helen Reedy classic. I sang, “I am woman, hear me roar. In numbers too big to ignore.”
I looked back at her and said, “See?”
“You weren’t joking,” she said, “Your singing is terrible.” We all started laughing. I couldn’t believe this was the same woman I’d picked up a couple of miles earlier.
“Let’s hear you do better,” I teased. Pretty soon we were all daring each other to showcase our voices. The man sitting beside me was the only one who refused to participate. When we got to their destination, before opening her door, the woman said, “Thank you for the ride. You made my night.”
“Mine as well. Merry Christmas.”
I rated them five stars and thought about the expression, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” This worn expression fitted this family perfectly. I’d made assumptions based on their neighborhood, demeanor, and appearances, especially the mother. I loved fun surprises. It felt like tearing into a box wrapped in recycled newspaper and finding a delightful gift inside.