They told me I needed to let go of the past if I wanted to find peace.
If I let go, did that require I had to let go of memories? And how does one go about to find peace? I couldn’t recall the last time I had peace.
But where do abandoned memories go? Maybe clinging to the past gave me unhealthy pleasure or a sense of self. They were my memories—what was I without them?
Placing a carry-on bag next to my seat, I claimed the window seat. I like the window seat, as I watched the world speed past. It was instinctual as I placed my palm against my tummy, nurturing a life that was once inside.
The bus pulled over, allowing a couple of passengers to board. A mother, presumably the mother, bestowed her child the duty to pay the bus fare. The little girl seemed proud to have taken the responsibility of shoving the coins into the payment machine.
What are those machines called, exactly? Fare machines?
The selecting of seats between the pair took a bit of time. The child was indecisive, whether to sit at the back or the front of the bus—the front seat was chosen for her.
People were always coming and going, moving about, having to be somewhere—having to get away from some place.
Where do people go? Where did they come from? What decisions do they make, which ones they didn’t follow through? And why do we need to go anywhere?
At the front of the bus, where the child sat with her legs dangled over the edge of the seat. The supposed mother rummaged inside a bag and pulled out a book. Were they a happy family? Maybe the woman was a single mother? Or perhaps she was the aunt? The child settled down with a book open on her lap—perhaps the child loved to read. I envisioned her sitting on her bedroom floor in a sea of books, engrossed in an imaginary world.
I returned to my view to the outside world and thought about Frank. The first time he introduced his hidden aggression was when he grabbed my wrist. He yanked me toward him as I walked away to avoid further conflict. He ensured I hadn’t ignored it as his grip tightened. I became a cliché. He promised he wouldn’t do it again. And I forgave him. That was how it started. The abuse was subtle, sneaking up, beautifully progressing with time when one day I woke confronted with the question: how the fuck did I get here?
I overheard two women disputing a matter, which pulled me from my re-lived thoughts.
“It wasn’t last week when Ralph died—it was two weeks ago.”
How could someone fail to remember when someone passed?
I placed my hand across my tummy.
“I got it mixed up, Georgina, thought it was Charlie.” The absent-minded woman moved forward and fiddled with something in a bag. “You finish the scarf.” She said. “My arthritis is acting up again.” Georgina agreed to the unfinished product.
The bus pulled over again, and a man with an umbrella boarded the bus. Gingerly, he slipped the coins into the machine but dropped one coin on the floor. The child leaped from her seat. She gripped the book in her hand and took the liberty to assist the umbrella man, shoving the outstanding fare into the machine. Shortly, the child returned to her reading task, beaming with pride. The assumed mother was swiping her thumb across a cell phone’s screen. She took no notice of the young girl’s initiative.
The umbrella man stumbled to a seat next to me. I pulled my sweater collar further over my neck to conceal the fresh bruises. Humans, curious creatures, just like my landlord was when Frank left a mark on the side of my skull. The weapon was a broom handle. I wasn’t quick enough to reach it before him. The story I fed her: a trip and fall—so unoriginal, but it was possible. People were capable of falling. I thought that the story I told my mother about the gash across my forehead that resulted from walking over a rake was a little more creative. And it surprised me that my mother didn’t question why a rake—randomly—was placed in the front yard during the winter. Looking back, clearly, she began to stop buying into my freak accident narratives.
From my peripheral vision, I felt the umbrella man’s eyes on me. Had he seen the dated wound across my temple? I flipped my hair to the right, turning toward the window.
“Are you going on a trip?” His voice was perky, merry. He smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. Maybe they were false teeth. He rested one hand on his cane. “I like to take trips.” He sat back in his seat—a man of contentment, as if it was at his disposal. How does one do that, discover bliss? And is it possible to sustain it? Or was it a utopia?
Pulling my attention away from the window, I glanced at my carry-on bag placed at my feet. “You could say that.” I returned to my view to the outside of a passing world. Unconsciously, I pulled strains of hair behind my ear.
“That’s some nasty bruise you got.” The umbrella man said. “A fall?”
“Walked into a door.” I kept my stare out the window, not bothering to cover the wound. What was the use covering the marks—I’ve been outed.
“Sideways?”
“I am a threat to myself.”
The umbrella man chuckled. I thought it was slightly clever, maybe.
At the front of the bus, the reading girl appeared crossed as she slapped the book on the floor—perhaps she was displeased with the story’s ending. Readers invest into their fictitious’ worlds and become crossed if it doesn’t meet an expectation. And judging by the child’s behaviour, an expectation wasn’t satisfied. “I wanted Peter Rabbit to have milk and berries, too!” The child stomped her feet. The woman fished into a bag and pulled out another book. “Here, Winnie-the Pooh. He eats lots of honey. This one’s better.”
“OK. Everyone gets honey?”
“Yeah, sure.” The woman returned with the thumb swiping on her cell phone.
I pulled the cord to indicate the next stop.
“It’s my next stop as well.” The umbrella man said.
Collecting my bag, I moved to the exit. The umbrella man stepped off the bus, gripping the rail. At the top of the bus steps, I offered to help—he ruled against my aid.
It was half a block from my sister Romi’s house. Glancing over my shoulder, the umbrella man moved unhurriedly across the street, toward a cafe. He didn’t look back.
Moments later, I knocked at the front door. It was months since I’ve seen Romi. She was expecting her first child. Moments later, I was greeted with Romi’s arm around me. I remained at the porch.
“Won’t you stay for lunch?” Romi collected the carry-on bag and placed it aside.
“I can’t. I’m meeting someone.” I lied.
“Surely, you can have lunch with your family. It’s been too long.”
“It’s only been a few months.”
“That’s still too long.”
Dale emerged in the doorway. He tilted his head. “Lila, hi—how are you?” He pointed to the suitcase. “Oh, are those the baby clothes?”
“Yes,” Romi said, “just place it upstairs.”
Dale obeyed his wife and grabbed the suitcase’s handle. “Lila…not staying for lunch?”
“Dale, she’s busy.”
Dale gripped the handle while convincing me why I should stay and socialize. Shortly, and unconvincing, he left for upstairs, dragging the suitcase behind on two wheels.
“Thanks for bringing the clothes,” Romi said, “I know it must…it must—”
“It’s fine.”
“I could have come and picked it up. You didn’t have to come all this way.”
“I wanted to ride the bus.”
“We were really happy you called. But I hadn’t expected to see you this soon, you know, given that—”
“I am here, aren’t I, Romi?”
“I’m sorry. I just thought you might need more time to deal with…the lost.”
“I am dealing.
“I am not sorry he’s dead.”
I wondered how long she waited to utter those words aloud. Yet, she couldn’t say Frank’s name.
I left Romi at the front door. I didn’t look back. I imagined her watching me walk away as she held her hand across her stomach. I thought of Dale in the nursery unpacking Mia’s clothes from the suitcase. Mia would have been her name. And Romi would be stood in the threshold fussing about which drawer the sleepers should be stored. The placement of diapers ought to be stored at the top drawer of the changing table. And over lunch, the new parents to be would try decide between baby formula or breast milk?
When I arrived at the bus stop next to the cafe it started to rain—there was no shelter. And it was another fifteen minutes until a bus was scheduled to arrive.
“Would you like to share my umbrella?” I swung around to find the umbrella man stood behind me.
“You could catch a cold.”
Would a cold give you a cold? I supposed it could. I understood that heat kills a virus. Though, I could have been wrong about that as I was inaccurate about many things.
When the rain came down harder, I accepted his generosity for shelter.
The bus finally arrived after being behind schedule for five minutes. I claimed a window seat, and the umbrella man took the aisle seat across from me. He removed his eyeglasses and dried the rain droplets with the end of his sweater.
“Did you forget your bag?” He asked.
“My bag?”
“Yeah. You had a small suitcase. Did you forget it?”
“No. I didn’t.”
I was forgetting, but it wasn’t the suitcase. I returned to the view of the window, and when I removed my damp jacket, the bottle of Ritalin slipped out from the open pocket and fell to the floor. It rolled under the seat in front of me. The passenger turned around, holding the bottle of pills. “One of you dropped this?” He shook the bottle toward me, then to the umbrella man. He and repeating the shaking of the bottle, rattling the pills inside. Snatching the bottle from the passenger’s hand, I could not hold my grip as my hands were cold. The bottle slipped from my fingers, landing next to the umbrella man. He managed to reach down for the bottle—it was painful to watch as he gingerly collected the bottle of pills from the floor. “It’s fine. Let me get it.”
He examined the bottle for a moment and handed it to me. I shoved it into my pocket, zipping the side pocket, securing it inside. “It’s not for me.” I was unsure why I felt the need to explain myself.
“I have a friend,” the man said, “who lived next door to a guy, think he used to sell those kinds of pills. They found the guy dead.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, think it was an overdose. That’s what he told the police.”
“Who overdosed?”
“My friend’s neighbour. He said his neighbour had a girlfriend—they used to fight a lot.”
“Your friend told that to the police?”
“I believe so. He also said that the girl tripped or was thrown down a flight of stairs.”
I straighten my back against the seat. The passenger in the seat ahead of me was preoccupied with something as he sat with earphones on, gazing straight forward. “Your friend saw this?” I asked.
“Terrible. And the girl was pregnant. A fall like that, as my friend described it, one wouldn’t think the unborn child survived.”
“How would he know that? Your friend seems to know quite a bit about this neighbour.”
“My friend overheard an argument between the couple about the child not being his.” The man said.
“What happened to the girl?”
“I don’t know about the girl, maybe the police spoken to her, but I think the boyfriend’s body was left for a day before someone discovered him.”
The umbrella man pulled the cord for the next stop. He collected his umbrella and left the bus, this time, descending the steps with easement. From the view from my window, he raised the umbrella to motioned goodbye. He hurried down the street and disappeared around the corner. I missed my stopped four stops earlier and got off the bus at the next stop. As the bus pulled away, looking over my shoulder, I fished for the bottle of pills and discarded them in a garbage bin. About a block away, I found a bench. Sitting at the bench, I watched people and traffic passed by. I thought of the day Frank died. Fortunately, he had a sufficient supply of Ritalin. And luckily for me, I knew where he kept his drugs.
My thoughts fell away from Frank, with easement as I thought of Mia. I envisioned her with brown hair, hazel eyes. Or perhaps she’d have my sister’s eyes—green. And she would love to read. Maybe a dancer? Maybe she would have big ambition. I wasn’t ambitious. Mia would have inherited that from Romi. Romi was the talented one, the successful one.
The rain came down hard—it soothed me, and for that moment, I was content as I continued to absorb into my fantasies of the life of my unborn child. What would she have looked like? How would her voice have sounded? And what memories would Mia have had, and which ones would she have abandoned?
Then my spiral thoughts brought me back to the child on the bus—how did she fell when it was discovered, Pooh never shared his honey, at least that was how I remembered it.
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