Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

by Rachel Simon

  I joined Beth on this odyssey so I could stop feeling like a bad sister. Perhaps on some level she is not aware of, some level that my own foggy vision has not allowed me to see, Beth invited me along because she wanted to stop feeling the same way about me.

  Bailey positions himself once again before the wheel, and as softly as brooms sweeping the world clean, a summer rain begins to fall.

  Break Shot

  Among the fifteen or so letters I receive from Beth each week I find these:

  To Rachel,

  Hi. Rick got a new hairdew. He looks great. I am So glad thAt he likes you a lot.

  Cool Beth

  Dear Sis,

  Rick will take you Were ever you want to go out Eat. I said that diner I like has Good food.

  Cool Beth

  Oh guess What

  Now Rick thinks the same way I do about you. now. I love You a lot.

  Cool Beth

  Finally the day comes when she chaperones me onto his bus. I take my seat beside Beth—and am pleased to discover that Rick is attractive. In fact, he's burly and broad-chested, with a boyish, Warren Beatty face and laughing walnut eyes; beneath a full crown of richly brown hair, he sports a tan that, I learn, deepens on his days off, which he commits to the putting green during the warmer weather. He is, Beth informs me, about fifty, "only he don't look it." I have to agree.

  But I have no intention of sliding into my sister's cunning little trap. I will simply be friendly but guarded, as I am with everyone I meet.

  Yet, oddly, I find myself feeling a little giddy.

  Rick tells me he's studied art history at a local college and that he is partial to Cézanne. He tells me he enjoys attending movies, especially films with real substance. He perks up when I mention that Beth lives down the street from a regional theater.

  "And," he says at a stop sign, "I've gotten into crossword puzzles."

  He produces one that he'd tucked beneath his side window "I do a few of these a day, between runs. This one's not finished."

  "I'm really bad at these," I say, though, despite my affection for words, I've never tried.

  He waggles it in my direction. Beth takes it from his hand and passes it to me.

  "No, I really can't do these," I say, reluctant to look foolish should I come up short.

  Rick says, "Oh, come on. See if you can help me with the blanks."

  He drives on, and the puzzle is in my hand. I read, "Fifty-four down: a recluse." I pause. "I know what it is. A hermit."

  "Is that it?" Rick asks as we stop for a long traffic light.

  "It fits."

  "I'd have gotten it."

  I continue. "Fifty-six across: snuggle. It's six letters, and D is the third one."

  "Hug."

  "Six letters. Cuddle? Hey, what about thirty-four down: a baby shoe. Six letters."

  Beth jumps in. "I told her you want to take her out."

  "Beth, please," I say.

  Rick says to me, "What's this about a little theater near where Beth lives?"

  "I just noticed it," I say. "Passing by in these buses. You get to notice every building from here. It's like you're Huck Finn and you're seeing America from along the Mississippi, and you get to understand so many things you'd missed when you were just standing on the shore."

  He says to Beth, "Good-looking and smart." And to me, "You like going to plays?"

  "Well, yes. I do."

  "I sometimes do that. I like plays. I like pool, too."

  "You sure do," Beth says.

  "So, Rachel, you like pool?"

  "Well, I've never even picked up a pool c—"

  "Bootie," a passenger in a flannel shirt calls out. He rises to get off.

  "What?" I say.

  "Bootie," the man repeats, heading for the center door. And then he adds, "A baby shoe."

  "Oh! Bootie!" Rick and I cry at the same time, and I scribble it in. "Thank you."

  Rick winks at Beth as the man gets off. "Well, I think I've got some kind of chance now," he says, and pulls the bus onto the road.

  Gone

  In my first two weeks at boarding school, Beth and I write letters every day. Laura, who now rents a room near our mother's house, drives to see Beth every evening. She pulls into the driveway, and Beth runs outside. They sit in the car and listen to the radio, and after an hour or so, Beth goes back in.

  Then right after Valentine's Day, I receive a letter from Beth. In it she says, I think Mom and That Guy. got MArried. I read it over and over, but it just keeps saying the same thing.

  Laura tells Dad, who calls to tell me that it's true. Laura knows because when she stops by to see Beth, there is a babysitter who says, "They've left for their honeymoon."

  But a week after the Valentine's Day wedding, when Laura stops by to see Beth, there is no babysitter. There are no lights on. In a panic, Laura scrambles around to the back door.

  She finds Ringo, chained outside in the night. Shivering, he jumps up when he sees her, licking her hands. She glances down. His Alpo is frozen. He is alone in the cold, starving.

  Dad calls Grandma. She tells him that she and Beth flew far away, to the place where our mother is spending her honeymoon. Then Grandma left Beth there and came home. We have no idea where that place is, and no matter how hard Dad yells, Grandma refuses to say.

  Dad slams down the phone, and says, "Oh, Christ, where is she? Where?"

  I don't understand what's happening except for one thing: my sister has disappeared.

  August

  The Loner

  2:25 P.M. "Just look at those children," a gap-toothed white woman mutters to her companion, who is probably, given their matching squints, her daughter.

  "Disgusting," says the younger one, whose face is a shrine to aqua eye shadow.

  We're standing a few feet from them at a bus shelter, peering up the street in anticipation of Jack's bus, but at this exchange Beth glances over. Monopolizing the bus bench, one in a faded denim jumper, the other in overstuffed capri pants, the women are sitting in judgment of a young family strolling down the opposite sidewalk in the blazing summer sun: white mother, black father, mixed-race children.

  "It's a disgrace," Justice the Elder pronounces.

  Justice the Younger opines, "Imagine a white mother raising her own babies to be nig—"

  "You shouldn't talk like that," Beth says.

  I hold my breath. The older one blinks. The younger one glares.

  "They're just people," Beth says.

  "It's none of your business what we—"

  "What you're saying iz wrong. Iz not nice"

  "How dare you interrupt us!"

  Beth says, "You can't tell me what to do. You shouldn't tell them what to do, either."

  Then Jack rounds the corner and comes to a stop at our curb. Beth turns away from this streetside court of opinion and, with dignity, marches toward his opening door.

  "Sit yourself down," Jack says in his gruff voice, gesturing toward Beth's customary spot. "Them there seats're just open and waiting for you."

  Chunky and pug-nosed, Jack has the kind of lived-in, seen-it-all face that looks made for chewing a cigar and a tough, give-'em-hell air that he might have picked up from Hurry'S. Truman, the first president Jack remembers. Yet Jack describes himself as a happy-go-lucky guy; his round, ruddy cheeks frame an easy smile.

  Jack's run curlicues through a housing development on the periphery of the city, home to a substantial portion of the Indian and Southeast Asian communities. The bus bustles with colors beyond even Beth's visual vocabulary—mint, mango, emerald, periwinkle, ruby shot through with gold—and with conversations in languages from all over the globe.

  Against this lively backdrop, Beth tells Jack about the toxic incident we just encountered. "They were gonna use a bad word," she says.

  "I think it's really good you spoke up," I say. "Most people wouldn't."

  "Beth's not like most people," Jack says, his short fingers gesturing. "Like John Wayne says in
True Grit: 'She reminds me of me.' Beth and me, we're just independent-minded. If you think you should speak up, you do it."

  "Yeah," Beth says. "You should say what you believe."

  "We mingle with the crowd," Jack says, "but we also stand back from the crowd. We do what we want when we want, and we don't say, 'Do you think I should do this?'"

  "Thaz right," Beth says. "They didn't think I should say that, but I don't care."

  "Independence is a good thing. If people don't like you the way you are, you just go, Tough on them. I'm me, and Beth's Beth. After they made us, they threw the molds away."

  Beth sits up tall.

  "Know how I learned about being independent-minded?" he says. "My lessons started when I was six years old. That's when I started working."

  "At six?" Beth says. "Why'd you do that?"

  We're stopped at a curve in the development, a major hub on this run, I see, as a score of passengers parades off in their silks and crepes and jeans, and a garden of new finery breezes on. As Jack's expressive hands flit from fare box to transfer pad to fare box, he responds to Beth's question. "Both my parents died when I was still a baby," he says, "and I didn't have no siblings. So I went to live with my grandmother. All she got was Social Security, so when I had the opportunity to go with this Greek guy on his oil truck when I was a kid, I went, and then come summertime, he'd switch to a fruit and vegetable truck, and I helped with that, too. I worked with him every day after school, and then came home at night and helped my grandmother out.

  "That's how I learned independence. I learned how to get along with everyone we met off his trucks, and there were all nationalities, and I learned to go among them all. No one could tell me I shouldn't talk to Thais or whatever. I listened to myself, and since I wanted to get along with them, I just figured out their ways. Clint Eastwood says in Heartbreak Ridge, 'Adapt. Overcome.' I wanted to adapt, so I did. I watched my grandmother cook, too, so I learned to cook all kinds of food. No one could tell me boys didn't cook—by the time I was eleven years old, I could cook a four-course meal. Now I can talk to anyone, and I can cook anything."

  "Like what?" Beth asks.

  "Everybody loves my chicken pot pie, red beet eggs, and chocolate mayonnaise cake, even though they're Pennsylvania Dutch foods and my friends aren't all Pennsylvania Dutch. That's because no matter how many differences there are among people," Jack says with a smile, "you know we all like to eat."

  Jack's Chicken Pot Pie

  "This comes out like my bus run, a big melting pot where everybody's mixing together. It's not like frozen dinner pot pies—it's a thick, gooey stew, with the dough mixed right in.

  "I use lard, but it's okay to substitute shortening. But don't forget the yellow food coloring. It gives the chicken a golden yellow color, and that's what makes it really special."

  FOR THE CHICKEN

  ½ split chicken breast

  1 chicken leg

  1 medium rib celery, diced

  1 medium onion, peeled and halved

  1 large potato, peeled and cut in half crosswise, then each half quartered lengthwise to make 8 pieces

  ¾ teaspoon salt

  ¼ teaspoon pepper

  5 cups water

  ¾ teaspoon yellow food coloring

  "Place all these ingredients in a six- to eight-quart pot. Bring right up to a boil, then reduce heat to medium. Cover and simmer for one hour or until the chicken's thoroughly cooked. Then take the chicken from the pot, set it aside until it cools enough to handle, and scoop those onions out and throw them away."

  FOR THE DOUGH

  2 cups flour

  ¾ teaspoon baking powder

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons lard or shortening

  About ½ cup cold water

  "Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and cut in the shortening, like making a pie crust. Then add the water—just enough to form a ball of dough—and knead it a bit and let it rest for five minutes. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured board till you've got a square about twelve inches on each side, and about an eighth of an inch thick. Then cut it with a knife or a pizza cutter into a bunch of two-inch squares.

  "Strip off the meat from the chicken, and toss the skin and bones. Set the meat back in the pot. Bring to a boil and add the dough one square at a time, stirring well after each addition. (The dough'll look like dumplings, not noodles.) Then turn down the heat to medium and keep cooking for about thirty minutes—but stir it real frequently. If it all gets too thick or the dough begins to stick, add more water, a quarter cup at a time. You know it's all done when the squares are cooked right through."

  Enough for four hungry eaters, or six, if you serve with salad, rolls, and dessert

  The humidity outside our air-conditioned shuttle engulfs the city like a steaming broth. Families lie limply in porch shade, their eyes glazed over, their skin sticking to lawn chairs like raw dough. Sidewalks simmer the feet of panting dogs. Wilted riders in saris and embroidered shoes press kerchiefs to their damp cheeks as they escape into the relief of the bus.

  At a long red light, Jack says to Beth, "You don't know it, but you helped those people."

  "They sure didn't act like it."

  "Sometimes we can get through to people, and we don't even know it."

  "I don't think I got through. They weren't listening to me."

  "You never know. Let me tell you something that happened to me once: A woman got on my bus about six one morning. She said, 'Jack, they're following me.' I said, 'Who?' She said, 'I don't know.' I said, 'Can I ask you a question? Are you on any drugs?' 'No.' 'You drink a lot?' 'Yeah.' I said, 'Now I know why people are following you. You were drinking last night, weren't you?' 'Yeah, till four this morning.' 'I can't tell you what to do,' I told her, 'but you need help, if this happens a lot.' She said, 'I don't know where to get help.'

  "Well, I'd taken this class to become a community service counselor. They tell you what to say if someone's in trouble, and then they give you this book that lists all the organizations that can help. I'd looked through that book—I call it the 'Help Anyone, Anytime Book'—so I knew right off what to do. I said, 'I'll tell you where to go, if you promise to get help.' And we were right there, so I just pulled the bus over and said, 'Go into this here hospital, and say you want to talk to someone in their detox program.' And she got up and went inside.

  "A week later, I heard she was still there. A year later, she's still clean. I saw her one time on the bus, and she thanked me. So you never know when you can get through."

  "That was a really nice thing you did," I say.

  "I like helping people, but I feel like John Wayne—he's one of my heroes. He'll help everybody, but when it comes to him being in some predicament, he'll go it alone. That's how I feel. Helping people makes me feel good. I just don't want anybody helping me."

  Beth doesn't say, "Yup, thaz the way I am." She says, "I'm cold. Will you turn the air conditioner down?" But I detect approval in her face.

  To Beth, every day is Independence Day. This was not true for the first half of her life, and for the next quarter it was more of a rebel war, with its own versions of boycotts (particularly at meals), Boston Tea Parties (I shudder to remember her efforts to overturn the order in her classroom), and a one-woman Minuteman regiment. Since she has lived on her own, though, each day her actions declare anew that all men are created equal, and have the inalienable right to life, liberty, and, especially, the pursuit of happiness. I love this about her, and, now that I have come to see her as proudly bearing the torch of self-determination, I regard her as courageous, a social pioneer. However, sometimes Beth's assertion of independence can be at odds with what I see, and others do too, as her best interests, and I find this conflict to be as much of a challenge for me as her sometimes obstreperous ways on the bus.

  This realization recurs at odd moments. One evening recently, Vera drove us to the supermarket.

  "How much of your money do you want?"
she asked Beth.

  "Fifty dollas."

  "You know you'll have to come back here pretty soon if you don't buy more now."

  "I don't care. I'll get here on the bus."

  After riding all day, I just wanted to be stationary. So as Beth hustled across the lot and Vera popped a tape of salsa music into her cassette player, we got to talking.

  I'd finally pieced together that Vera, whom the drivers call Beth's aide, and who after a recent promotion became officially known as a team leader, works for a provider agency that oversees the work and home lives of people with special needs. Beth's first job out on her own was in their sheltered workshop, a section in the agency's headquarters, where, in a supervised production line, people with developmental disabilities perform low-tech tasks for local businesses, such as folding boxes or putting washers in plastic bags. When she wanted to move on from that, the agency trained her to get a job in the community. They also oversaw the group homes where Beth lived and now run the support program that sends Vera to monitor people who live independently.

  "I used to go in there with her," Vera said, nodding toward the grocery store. "But I'd say, 'You need vegetables,' and she'd just walk by them, so to keep from getting upset I wait outside now. She'll take the bus here, but since you can carry only so much back on the bus, sometimes I drive her. Not that it encourages her to buy healthier. Though she did learn to cook real meals. I taught her myself."

  I was surprised; I've never seen Beth do more than boil spaghetti. "When?"

  "Oh, that was years ago, when I worked in her group home." She explained that they had two types of group homes then, one with twenty-four-hour care for people with severe and multiple disabilities, and the type Beth was in, with eight-hour care, for people who needed just some help. It was in that semi-independent program where Vera taught Beth cooking, "and fire safety, dealing with strangers, all that." Then six years ago there was a big push toward independence and the agency folded the semis. Beth and most of the others there moved into their own places. "She's happier this way, but I worry about newcomers. They don't have any intermediate step—it's either twenty-four-hour care or you're in your own place. It's like going from grade school to college overnight."