Jessica

“Rosie and Mary had taken only a 10 percentage of this privilege - they were three minutes late leaving their room and took the second bus that went past rather than the first just so they could feel themselves standing at a bus stop in Manhattan, New York, surrounded by people who were short, dark and voluble rather than tall, blond and silent. The fatal part was the bus they got on. They, of course stood, because they had been taught to do so, out of respect to everyone else in the whole world - they were from the Midwest and deference was their habit and their training.

......."Did you see that?"

"What?" replied Mary

"That woman."

"God, she was rude," said Mary.

And from that statement Rosalind knew that Mary would live the rest of her life in the Midwest, which she did.”
― Jane Smiley