The Last Bus Home

A short story I wrote for an English class in college.

You had no where left to go. He left you standing in the parking lot on the curb taking the stroller, and the car seat, and what little self respect you had left. He even took your purse, your wallet, your identity.

At least the rain had stopped so you didn't have to worry about your son getting wet, but the water and the cold were still seeping in through your shoes chilling you from the bottom up, the perfect metaphor for how you felt.

What he did leave you with was a sleeping baby boy, the clothes on your back, ten dollars in your pocket, and no will to go on.

You stood in the cold staring blankly out into the empty black sky above you breathing in the chilled, sweet smelling air until the sleeping bundle in your arms begins to squirm and fuss. Tiny drops of rain still fall infrequently, and inconsiderately onto your skin. So you turn around in a fog of pain your brain hasn't begun to comprehend and start to walk back the way you'd come and before you realize your feet are taking you there, you find yourself sitting back in the food court. Alone. You had been there only moments before but that was already in another life. You'd had a husband, a home, a purpose. Now there is nothing.

Your return hasn't gone unnoticed. The custodians who'd watched your husband storm off, and then you stumbling after moments later holding a baby, all begin glancing at you, wondering what had happened to you and a few are wondering if you were okay, if your son was okay; but mostly they're wondering if they're going to have to cross the empty expanse of tables and chairs and ask the sad looking mother to leave the mall because it was closed. The three of them make unconscious decisions to leave you be until the last possible moment. They don't want to speak to you anymore than they would want to talk to the dead.

You trade glances with them every few seconds when you check to see if they're still watching you. Like they thought you were some sort of criminal. You know that you'll have to get up and go soon, though you know that you have nowhere to go, you have no home now. You're not even sure why you're still sitting there. It's as if you're waiting for something, some signal to cue you in as to where you were suppose to go next, or what you were suppose to do. Even in the dazed state you were in you could feel the weight of impending action resting in your muscles. It gives you some small comfort because it detracted from the awful words your husbands had last said to you, which are still biting maliciously at your ears.

But you push these memories away. Keep them from making their way to deeply into your mind. But those words remind you of all the promises he'd never kept.

Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband to have, and hold, in sickness and in health as long as you both shall live? More like, Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband so he can beat you and rape you, leaving you broken and bleeding on the curb so he can go and drink himself into oblivion?

“I do,” you whisper to the table. There is no one around to hear you.

You aren't sure where the thought had come from. But as morbid as it was, it rang true and no matter how much you wished it wasn't, you knew in your heart that this was all your fault.

The man you had married has been doing things like this as long as you'd known him. Every time it got worse, but you never saw what was going on. And you should have. But somehow you didn't let yourself see any of the bad: the temper, the drinks, the gambling. You just saw a smiling accountant with a nice car. Nice. It had started with his hand slamming against your cheek; and peeked, you thought, with him beating you unconscious and raping you on the floor of his kitchen. Nine months later your son had come. Even now you couldn't look at your son without your temper stepping out of line. And yet there is no denying that you loved him. When he looks at you, you know it's the only time you've ever felt loved back.

Your pocket buzzes causing you jump and startle the baby. He shifts painfully against the fresh bruise along your side under your ribs.. He blinks at you with sleepy eyes for a short moment and seems as though he's about to cry. A lump rises in your throat and your heart starts to beat against your ribs. He scrunches up his face and his eyes begin to water but after a moment he simply rests his head against your shoulder and begins to breathe heavily again, taking comfort in the warmth of his mothers body.

The cleaning staff all take a deep breathe. They're glad the baby has gone back to sleep for reasons they're not quite sure of. And so are you.

You pull the phone, you'd forgotten you had, out and rest it against your son's back letting the vibrations lull him deeper into his slumber. You glance down silently dreading the call your husband would soon make. He never misses his daily opportunities to remind you of how much of a disappointment you are. How much you've fucked up. Why should today be any different? But it's not him. The word MOM is shining up at her from the front LCD screen. What is she calling you for? Probably more pestering about where she was going to be living soon. That seems to be all that she wants to do lately. The plastic shakes again and for a moment you consider answering it. You think about telling her what happened. But you already knew what she'd say. She'd just reminded you that this was all your fault. She loves to tell you that it was all your fault. Since you were ten years old.

The idea of going to her home to stay with her never crosses your mind. It's the one place you are just as unwelcome at as your own home where your husband is no doubt pulling into the driveway, still fuming from his tirade, ready to drink away any memories of you or your son.

So you let it continue to buzz and ring until it eventually goes to voice mail. The silence rings out in the now dimming light of the empty food court.

Time continues to tick away. And you continue to wait as the shops around you pull down their gates, lock them and then shut off their lights leaving through back exits into secret areas the public never get to see.

You glance at the time on your phone and see the mall is closed now. How long have you been sitting here? You don't know. Time has lost all meaning. The custodians haven't descended on you yet but they will be along to push you out the door any moment and if you had been able to think at all you would let them, but you're not. Autopilot has been engaged. It picks you up out of your seat and walks you out of the food court and deeper into the mall. The carpet muffles the sound of your squishy footsteps as you go to it from the tile, resembling the way the shock muffled your pain, like it was tightly wrapping what was left of your mind in thick warm cotton.

You pass the deserted shops, which only an hour ago had been filled happy people going about their lives but which now resemble empty eye sockets of on the skull of a dead girl. You even pass the lingerie shop your husband had taken you to buy you a present by way of an apology for not coming home the night before. You turn your head away from it. Even knowing it's there causes bile to rise up in your dry throat.

“Ma'am?”

You snap out of a trance and look around. You're standing in the empty line of the mall's movie theater. How had you gotten there? You aren't sure. Your son is still in your arms breathing sharply and you can feel the phone and crumpled up ten in your front pocket. Everything you had is still with you. Not that it matters.

Being here causes the safe warm in your skull to chill to the freezing point.

“Ma'am can I help you with something?” The clerk is a scrawny little teen with a short pixie hair cut and too much eye make up that make her look striking like the w****s she'd seen when she'd lived in the city going to college. This was the sort of girl you'd have hated if you were in your right mind but who's effect on you is dampened considerably by the fact you that you can't think straight. But still every time she says ma'am like you were scum, cracks the bone on the inside of your skull that has now turned to ice, a little. Leaving tiny fissures that threatened to shatter your only shield. They cause you to inwardly flinch. They make it all too real.

“Ma'am?” Crack! You look around at the dead wasted space of the lobby for some answer. You aren't even sure there was question.

“Yes?” you ask mechanically. You shift the baby up higher in your arms so he's not resting against your bruises.

“Ma'am,” Crack! “Is there anything I can do.”

You slide the ten out of the pocket of your tight jeans and across the counter automatically and order one ticket to whatever is still playing. You have no idea what movie you're going to and it doesn't matter. The clerk slides two quarters back with a smirk and her eyes glance down at the sleeping baby and then back to yours. Anyone could tell what she thought of you.

You miss it completely. Just so long as she doesn't say ma'am again. You're only twenty-five for Christ's sake. Old enough for an eight month old son but not for a word like ma'am.

“Enjoy the show, ma'am.”

The tiny fissure spreads along inside of your skull and you can feel your brain swell and begin to pull the bone and skin and hair apart and spill it all onto the nicely patterned carpet. It takes what little self control that you have left not to put your unoccupied hand on your head to keep it from falling apart. You begin to move again. Underneath the cotton and just out of sight your destination begins to form.

You move down the hall and past the concession stand which is still sending out a sweet aroma of popcorn and salted pretzels. It makes your stomach gurgle. You are so hungry. Your son was probably too. As you pass the concession workers and ushers they stop their conversation and stare at you. You slow down your pace on the verge of asking them what their problems were but then you remember the conversation with the box office b***h and you stop. You can't here MA'AM again and so you go back to moving. By the time you reach the theater you'd forgotten them. The numb is back holding you tight. It's like a hug you should have been getting from your mother and father all your life. It wipes away the tears you couldn't bring yourself to cry. It helps to keep you from realizing that in the absence of a father you ended up marrying someone exactly like your mother. A women who count's having you at the age of forty-three as the largest and most detrimental mistake of her life.

And your husband is the same way. He never wanted a wife or a son. Hadn't he said that on your first date? But you didn't hear it. You were to busy being surprised that a man would even talk to you, to really listen to what he had to say. But he recognized you for what you were even if you wouldn't recognize him for what he was; and so it wasn't a surprise to anyone else when he married you. He'd always said that he'd marry eventually, when he had to. Because a man needs a wife, and you were the perfect wife for someone who hates women, a women who hates herself more than he does. A women who will never step out of line.

This thought jars you a bit, sending a chill down your spine and causing gooseflesh to rise up on your arms.

You are in the theater now sitting amongst the empty seats with your little son slumbering on the seat next to you. Only the booster seat keeps the cushioned bottom from folding up and causing the little bundle to slide through the gap and onto the floor below.

You stare at him for a long while in the semi darkness. You want to reach out and brush away the strands of hair from his forehead but you're afraid they'll cut through your fingertips cause all your courage to bleed away. The movie hasn't started yet and the theater is empty except for you and him and there isn't going to be anyone else until the cleaners come later. You are alone again. With nothing but the thoughts you won't think and the feeling you won't feel pressing in closer around you. So you wrap yourself tighter in the numb inadvertently opening all of the fissures and so you begin hearing MA'AM in the back in mind chiming like a bell you almost can't hear. It mixes with the voice of your husband and mother gently rising up from the depths of grey matter. This is it.

You stand without realizing your were going to do it, the autopilot still in charge, you move your son from the seat and to the floor next to it. You take your jacket off and cover him to keep him warm making special care not to touch his skin.

Seconds later you walk out of the theater. Your destination is clear now but still unknown to your conscious self. You wonder where you're going but don't have the strength or energy to stop yourself. You don't even glance back at your son. Not even one last look. You don't have the strength.

You are out the back exit, down the stairs and on the street outside before even your unconscious mind can keep what is coming from you.

You pull feebly and try to turn yourself around but can't. This isn't your show anymore. You're just along for the ride. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

You approach the corner where you'd gotten on the bus that had taken you home a million times when you were a child. In you mind you can even see yourself standing on the curb in a little sundress trying to smile as you realize your mother isn't going to come to get you. You can remember how relieved you were you'd not spent more and had enough to get home on your own.

Maybe it can do it just one last time for you.

The night air is crisper now. The rain is gone completely and the cloudless sky reveals the vast expanse of black. There are too many lights in the city to really see any stars but they're out there and in the very bottom of your mind you can see them clearly for the first time. You breath a sigh and smile.

Following the first memory more come in. One moment you're standing in an alter smiling at the monster you'd tied yourself to forever, the next you're holding your son in her arms for the first time.

The numb is melting and pain is coming in in waves but now it is a sweet pain. It makes you real again. Of substance again. It's important pain. The type that we all must feel when we make tough decisions so that we know if we are making the right one.

Your steps make splashing sounds as they move across the parking lot to the sidewalk.

Your toes dance with the edge of the curb. You avoid catching glimpses of your reflection in the puddles in the street, but instead stare blankly down the road where a pair of headlights from the last bus are just coming up over the hill, still breathing easy, still smiling. This is your one last happy moment. The rest were all behind you and you knew that even before tonight there weren't going to be any in front of you.

The muscles in your legs are tense now, tight and ready. A small amount of butterflies flutter in your stomach as the bus passes the pick up spot twenty feet down the sidewalk and begins to pick up speed again. When it's too close to stop you move without thinking to, but not away like you should. You begin to fall. And as you fall forward towards the street you see your self in the water, and smile.

Author's Note

I want to hear whatever it is you all have to say. Please just try and be constructive.

Reviews

[Evelyn Storm]

A very sad narrative but true. You took me on a painful ride in to the emotional hell of this battered and broken woman. You are a sensitive soul and have great insight into the minds and hearts of your characters. A well written narrative.