Riding the Bus With My Sister: A True Life Journey (7 page)

Now, Mommy's talking to Daddy on the phone. Laura and I are
hooking slips over our heads for long, princess hair, and suddenly Laura grabs me and points: there, in Mommy's arms, Beth's neck is going back, and her eyes are rolling up into her head. She isn't gurgling. She isn't
breathing.

"
Oh, God!" Mommy blurts out to Daddy. "What'll I do? Oh, God!

What?
"

Daddy tells her something so loud, we can hear him say, "Now. NOW!" over the phone.

She hangs up, looking with this sick face at Beth, and then she's dialing the phone with her finger so shaky she messes up and has to start again. Then she's talking high into the phone, and when she says, "Help me, Mort!" Laura whispers, "That's Linda's dad. He's a doctor.
"

We hold each other as Mommy says, "Okay, I'll try, I'll try," and throws down the phone and races with Beth to the sink, limp as a towel in her arms. She rips through the clean dishes, seizes a spoon, and sticks the handle in Beth's mouth, pushing on Beth's tongue. But Beth just lies there. "I can't do it, I can't!" Mommy's saying, her mouth all crumbly, eyebrows sucking together. She tries again, moving the spoon around like she's trying to dig something off the bottom of a pan. "Oh, God!" she wails, and then she drops her arm. It's like she's giving up. "Oh, no." The spoon clinks onto the floor.

That's when Laura steps into the kitchen. I follow, and with the slips still on our heads we walk up to Mommy. She's facing out the sink window, holding Beth against her chest, her body shaking.

"
What's the matter, Mommy?" Laura asks.

Mommy turns. Her eyes are red, and she looks down at us. And we stand there, just like that, staring up at her, until the scare in her face suddenly turns into something else.

She spins around and scoops up a new spoon and then it's into Beth's mouth and she's got it shoving against the tongue like a stick pushing a stuck rock. "Uh!" she says, and then we hear a gasp from Beth. Mommy keeps pushing, and then Beth breathes.

Later that morning, Mommy calls Daddy, and cries when she tells him the story. "I did it because they were there with me," she says. "I just couldn't let them see me not knowing what to do. They saved their sister's life today.
"

8:10
A.M.
"You know how you can tell the selfish from the unselfish people?" Jacob says to us. "On this bus, it ain't hard to do." An ivory-skinned man of average height and average girth, he grins hugely. His single distinct feature, especially striking for a man in his fifth decade whose Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors all went bald, is a tumble of dark hair. He has paused his bus at a stop sign at the bottom of a steep road. "When we had the older buses years ago," he says, as we peer up the almost vertical block to where this street will T-intersect at the forested mountain, "they lacked the power to climb this hill, so we would get to about halfway and then be stranded. I would then ask people, 'Is anyone willing to get out and walk the rest of the way up the hill and meet me around the turn?' You could tell the unselfish people because"—and he quiets for the ascent, then leans in for a hard left, arm crossed over arm, banking us onto a long ridge and over to the first shelter—"they would be the ones to volunteer to brave the demanding hike in sometimes harsh rain and snow. And then they'd get back on the bus with a good feeling."

It is about ten days after my first round of rides, and I have returned to spend another couple of days on the buses, a schedule I will try to stick with through the year. I came to this conclusion last night, as I cut my Toyota's engine in the bus company's visitor parking area. Beth, worried that the city's two-hour parking signs would keep me from being able to join her for whole days, had asked some dispatchers what to do, and they suggested that I leave my car here. She's making it so easy, I thought, as she hailed me to a shelter to catch the last bus home; I'll be able to handle this.

The seasons are already cycling, I see. The sun slants higher in the east, melting frost from parked windshields, and opening crocuses in window boxes. Jacob stops and starts the bus, block by block, so rhythmically that I almost don't notice when we're stationary and when mobile. In fact, we pause and go so predictably that Jacob—and all the drivers, I eventually see—time their talking for when the bus is not in motion, and do so with such skill that the exchanges appear to flow smoothly.

As we continue our pulsing course along the ridge, Beth tells Jacob about a driver she'd never ride with. "That Gus, he keeps saying I shouldn't go into the drivers' room. He's a
jerk.
"

"He might just be in a bad mood," Jacob tells her.

"He's ob
nox
ious."

"You can try to understand him," he advises. "When you listen to somebody's story, and you see the troubles they have, you get a better sense of why they act a certain way. It might not excuse lousy behavior, and not everyone who has a difficult life acts badly. But going deeper, and really listening to someone, can help you see that they don't mean nothing against
you,
they're just hurting."

"I don't
care.
"

"Remember that driver who died?"

"Yeah."

"He was a difficult driver," Jacob explains to me. "Gave Beth a hard time. Didn't like her talking and talking in the front seat. I kept digging at her to send him a card when he got sick. She finally did. It made him feel so good."

"But he wasn't nice to people. He was nasty," Beth says.

Jacob asks, "How do you feel about making him feel good?"

"I don't
kno-oh
"

"Ah, yes you do. You're blushing."

"No I'm not"

"You're really a good person."

"I'm tough," she says.

"You're tough and good, too."

"Thaz
right
"

"You like people too much not to be good."

"
Some
people."

"Don't I always hear you say," he teases her, "that you love all mankind?"

"
What?
I don't say that. I never say that. You're making that up. I love people that are nice to me. I don't love
ev
ryone."

"I'll be patient," he says. "I'll wait a year. I'll wait ten years. Because everyone's got it in them to treat others as they wish to be treated themselves, and I know you do, too."

"No I
don't,
" she says.

"Ah, you're blushing again," Jacob says.

"You just passed into Zone 1," a woman bursts out, accusingly. "And
she
doesn't have a Zone 1 pass."

I turn. A squat, seventyish woman diagonally across from us who'd been watching this exchange is now pointing at Beth, who has not even glanced over.

"All she has is an inner-city pass. You should put her off. Unless she pays you the extra, and she never does."

I look to Jacob; the mood in the bus has suddenly plummeted. He drives on, saying nothing.

"Can't you hear me? You're letting her get away with this! She's just cheating the system. She should be out on that road, right now."

I feel tense in every muscle, and glance at Beth. She acknowledges me with a slight tilt in my direction, and a rolling of her eyes. The woman, lips puckered, rattles on and on. What business is this of hers?

Finally, after maybe a mile of her demands, Jacob reaches a stop. I pull on my gloves, expecting Jacob to turn to us and tell us, sorry, we have to leave now. "Hey, Beth," he says, and I am puzzled to note the same pleasant tone as he had before. "Lift up your pass, Beth."

Beth turns to the woman, and hoists her pass as if raising her fist in a
Yes!
"Zone 1," it says quite clearly. Then Beth lowers it to her lap, wearing the aaah-hah grin that I know so well.

The woman clamps her lips shut, and stares out the window, fuming in defeat.

"Nothing bothers Beth," Jacob says, after the woman departs, hissing at Beth on her way to the door. She might as well have been invisible; Beth shows no response. As the door closes, Beth steps forward to hand Jacob a box of raisins, a treat she offers the drivers once a week.

"Some of the old people, they don't like me," she tells me, as she sits back down.

"Why? You have a pass; your riding has nothing to do with her."

"Thaz just what they're like," she says with a sigh. "
Some
of them."

"And know how much she'd have to pay if she hadn't had the Zone 1?" Jacob adds. "A big twenty cents."

"Iz just to be mean," Beth says. "But I don't
care.
"

"I'll tell you," Jacob says, "you could get the Marine Corps in here, and they wouldn't take Beth down.
Oh well
is her attitude. Whatever happens happens, she's going to get through it, and good things are going to happen after that. That's all there is to it."

He thanks her for the raisins as a family gets on, and the two little girls, in matching yellow coats, give Jacob high-fives. They and their mother take the seats across from us, and Beth is instantly captivated by them. With her seated posture resembling a macaroni noodle, she's at kid level. As they begin playing clapping games, singing,
A sailor went to sea, sea, sea, to see what he could see, see, see,
Beth acts as she often does with children: chuckling along, answering questions. Their mother acknowledges her with a cordial smile.

I've seen this before. The mother views Beth as another of the impromptu aunties whom they might encounter in public places, like waitresses who say
Hon.
Her kids, though, probably sense that this heavyset auntie doesn't seem like the usual authority figures who constitute the adult world, and welcome her as an ally. Some people—those who don't know better—might think that Beth gets along so well with children because she is simply a large child. But kids see that, unlike other grown-ups they know, she treats them as she wants to be treated: with no restrictions, no judgments, no authority.

I envy her connection with kids. When I felt myself backing away from Sam, it drained away any thoughts of having children. Now, sharing my bed with books, I have no room in my life for a man, much less a future family.

"She knows the good ones out there," Jacob says, nodding toward Beth as the kids grow louder and more giggly, and she seems increasingly spellbound. "She can pick out who to trust better than I can.

"But she and I have little debates," he goes on. "She feels, An eye for an eye. I argue, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's the biggest debate in life for all of us. I see her struggle with this, and it's a tough one for everybody. Like I just wrestled with myself back there about how to handle that lady. An eye for an eye would have meant getting angry, shooting my mouth off, or, like Beth puts it, 'telling it like it is.' It's a lot easier to do that. You get that immediate rush of power, that excitement, and some of the other drivers, that's how they advise her. But do unto others—living by the Golden Rule—that means you stay calm and don't get revengeful. Then truth will come out. It's harder, and it ain't instantly satisfying. But it's the right choice.

"She asks what I think, and I tell her. Of course, then she tells me back. Some drivers get impatient, especially if it looks like her mind's made up, which it probably is"—he laughs—"but I don't get bothered. It's good for me that she tests my patience. If I see myself growing irritated by Beth, I know
I
have a problem. I know Jesus wouldn't act like that. It's how unselfish can
I
be, because when I'm not, that's my problem."

I feel a twinge of those old bad-sister feelings, wondering if I have it in me to be as openhearted as Jacob. I glance at Beth to see her response. Her eyes are not on us, but on the children's hands, though her canny smile reveals she's been following every word. Then a commotion startles me back to the goings-on across the aisle. The girls' game has leapt to new heights, their voices bellowing, their whole bodies engaged:

A sailor went to sea, chop, knee, ankle, toe
To see what he could see, chop, knee, ankle, toe.
But all that he could see, chop, knee, ankle, toe
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, chop, knee, ankle, toe.

"Thaz good!" Beth says, as the girls zip flawlessly—hands, wrists, ankles, feet—through their routine. "Do it again! Louder!" She laughs, as complete a practitioner of the Golden Rule, at least when it comes to kids, as anyone could hope to be.

Last night, Beth sat me beside her on her love seat and, as she often does, laid one of her scrapbooks across our laps. As we were paging through, admiring her cherished collection of every letter she's ever received, she looked away. "Sundays are the hardest days." She sighed. "The buses don't run and the mail don't come. Iz too
quiet
on Sundays for me."

The brakes squeak; we are coming up to a railroad crossing just as the gates drop down. Jacob stops the bus, windshield facing the flashing red lights, and the first car of what turns out to be a freight train rumbles past us. I don't know that we will be at a standstill for something like fifteen minutes, though Beth and several passengers groan, the children's mother reaches into her bag for picture books, and, after a few moments, a fortyish man with a Rod Stewart haircut mutters, "Jeez, we'll all be dead and buried before that thing's done."