The Bus

This was her usual bus after all, she sighed with satisfaction. She’d feared she would be too late at the bus stop, have to wait twenty minutes for the next one, and be late for her downtown appointment. Not so at all.

She settled herself into a seat on the mostly-empty bus. Watched, as she so liked to do, the bus pass by the houses on her street - critically comparing them with her own - then do a sharp left-hand turn at the corner to make its way up the main street bisecting the housing development. She waited especially to see the handful of new houses that had been built in the last few years on land that had been vacant since she’d moved there, ten years earlier. These houses were different, obviously not built by a housing-tract builder. Their differences made them interesting. Not of the same predictable mould as all the other houses. Although they too were attractive; she had no quarrel with them. She was more than happy with the two-story single her family owned.

They’d originally come to the city and anxiously looked around at the available housing. Her husband’s employer paid to put them up at a hotel-apartment complex where they were comfortable enough with their two children. The apartment in the hotel was almost like a house. They had their own little kitchen with modern appliances, two bathrooms, and two bedrooms. And, of course, a spacious living room. Their first morning at the hotel apartment her husband had arisen earlier than all of them - they were all fatigued from their long drive to the city for house-hunting even though he had done all the driving - and bought breakfast deli delights to surprise them all. They stayed there for two weeks, that’s the time they were given in which to find a suitable home for themselves, before selling and packing up their house in Toronto.

They’d contacted an area realtor and the woman took their specifics, then hauled them around to a number of different areas in the city, where there were homes for sale. They had contacted the realty office after a search on their own netted them nothing. They were, in fact, dismayed with the quality of homes; it was a tight market, a sellers’ market, they were informed. No new houses, just re-sales, and those re-sales they saw didn’t fit their bill at all. They were leaving behind a real honey of a house they’d lived in for just two years in the city they were departing, and they wanted something at least equal in quality and comfort to that one.

Eventually, after rejecting houses which neither she nor her husband liked, they did find one that they felt suited them very well. By a well-known builder, in an established subdivision not all that far from downtown, with a series of interlinked parks, nearby schools, even a library. Their backyard had mature maples and an elm tree. It backed onto one of the parks, actually. She loved looking out the small window over the kitchen sink, watching the antics of the squirrels.

Their younger son had built a birdhouse for a class woodworking project and it hung for years from one of the maple trees. She'd watched the seasons change the trees and new birds nesting in that birdhouse. Until they'd finally had to take it down, because it had rotted, and inside, on the floor of the small wood structure they'd found a mass of squirming, disgusting maggots. Not fit to return to its perch under a maple branch, welcoming new residents.

It was a neighbourhood they learned to love. One where walking after dinner was a pleasure, since they could walk as far as they wanted, through all the interlinked parks, and even further, if they went in the right direction, right into the greenbelt encircling the city proper. It's where, in the winter, they snowshoed at night, all of them, thrilled to be out there under the bowl of a starry sky, with city lights reflecting in a peach glow off the snow.

And that’s where they now lived, and just loved living there, too. But for a few irritants. One being the gravel pit about five miles’ distant at the top of the main road, just about where it hit the highway, where daily blasts actually rocked the house on its foundation; a complaint of all the area residents, one which the municipality claimed soothingly would soon be solved, as the pit was due to be closed. That was eight years ago; it was still going strong, and a new high school had been built adjacent to the large gravel-pit property.

The second annoyance was the very convenience of having a bus stop just up the street from their house; the very stop where her husband ran to catch a much earlier bus on his way to work. On week-ends, when they slept in, buses driven down their street, hitting a culvert close to their house, would waken them, the house shuddering from its passage.

She recalled their first week in their new house, when she scrubbed everything she could, from the kitchen cupboards to the walls where the previous owners had allowed their young children to run crayons over their bedroom walls, even on the hardwood floors, and along the mesh screens in front of the windows. She was certain those marks weren’t there when they were inspecting the house, prior to putting in their offer. She’d never do anything so uncivil as that, and she hadn’t, she’d left their old-new house in immaculate condition.

The memory of walking up the street, her housework done, children still at school, a few letters in her hand, preparatory to putting them into the mailbox, and hearing someone shout “Paki go home!”. God, she thought to herself, who on earth would be shouting something so shameful as that at some poor immigrant? She looked behind her, in time to see the figure of a teen on a bicycle, pedalling furiously in the opposite direction. And there was no one else on the street. Only her. She was the Paki. It was she who was being invited to return from whence she had come.

She steamed with fury that anyone would raise children and imbue them with that kind of social bigotry. A hateful ideology of exclusion directed at those unlike the majority. And then, after all, she was Canadian-born. And not herself from the Indian sub-Continent, as well. But she knew the syndrome well, had been exposed to it from the time she was a child, when people would question her about where she came from. But where did you really come from? they’d persist, dissatisfied with her response that she was Canadian. Most of those questioning her, she later came to understand, wanted to pin down her ancestry to determine whether or not she was certifiably Canadian-by-emigration.

She wasn’t even what the government quaintly termed a ‘visible minority’. There was nothing about her features, her colouration, that distinguished her from any other Canadian. She was of slight build, dark hair (did I forget to mention her peculiar hair-conceit, that she washed her hair daily, despite it was so thick and long and took interminably long to dry? That she made her own shampoo, from equal parts dishwasher detergent and vinegar, and three parts tap water? That she wore her hair in two long pigtails, tossed over her shoulders?), dark eyes and spoke perfect English. Why wouldn’t she, having been educated in Canadian schools?

Later, when she was a little older, and people still hadn’t figured out what ethnic group she might represent, perfect strangers would still approach her and hazard their guesses. French? No? Spanish? Incredibly, when she was in her late teens, and in the summer had acquired a dark burnished look because of her love of basking in the sun she had even been asked by someone of her own ethnic group if she was from Yemen. Aren’t people strange, she mused often to herself. Taking umbrage and at the same time, laughing at the crude incivility of it.

Now, when she looked out the bus windows at the houses flashing by, the bus gradually slowed, to pick up another passenger. At a stop, imagine, right in front of one of those new houses. An elderly man entered the bus, dropped his fare in the fare box and proceeded up the aisle. All those empty seats and he decided to sit directly beside her, to share the double seat with her. She smiled at him. He obviously lives in one of those uniquely different new houses she told herself.

He certainly was elderly, hair perfectly white, brushy moustache as well. He was neither lean nor bulky, wore a light jacket against the cool of an early fall day. He was, or had been, a tall man. He stooped slightly, and walked falteringly. She felt such compassion for this man, so frail looking, yet determined to get about on his own, not allowing his years and his obvious ill health deter him.

She decided she would offer a little chat, speak to him about the wonderful fall weather they'd been enjoying, and when the words tripped off her tongue, he turned to her, smiled widely, and said nothing. Then turned back to face the front of the bus. So she turned back to her window, and continued to look out, comfortable that she’d made the effort and he wasn’t really ignoring her, simply wanted peace and quiet.

The bus slowly filled to the point where at least fifty percent of the seats were taken, before it wheeled onto the highway and began its run straight to the city centre. She felt something odd. A hand, a hand creeping across her lap, was that possible? She looked down, to see the man’s blue-bulging-veined hand moving steadily on her lap. Instinctively she gasped, and threw his hand away. Turned and glared at him. At the side of his head that is, for his head wasn’t turned toward her; it was held fast looking ahead, toward the front of the bus. Was she imagining things, was she suddenly going crazy?

She turned back to the window, and there it was again, that same creepy feeling, and once more she glanced down, threw his hand away from her. The third time she was unable to move his hand, his arm had stiffened and she was amazed at the iron strength of his arm, his hand determined to reach its goal. And its goal? Why, to reach between her thighs. Grimly, she struggled, centimetre by centimetre nudging his hand away.

Why didn’t she scream? Why didn’t she alert the bus, the driver, to her dilemma? Well, it was a dilemma. She did nothing to indicate that she was being molested by this white-haired elderly man. She felt fear and shame flood her, even while she was struggling.

She’d get up, move away to another seat, but she wouldn’t reveal what had happened. How could she remove herself from her shared seat? He was immobile, staring straight ahead, immovable. What did she do then? Why she held her large square portfolio over her lap, hoping that would dissuade him, and it did no such thing. What it did was to shield from view, from any passenger who might leave their seat, make their way down the aisle toward the exit doors, who might casually glance down, to see what was happening. As though that was likely to happen. As though what was happening to her was likely to occur.

The bus sped on the throughway toward its first stop in the downtown area. It wasn’t a very long drive, but it felt like ages had passed, to her. Her silent struggle with this elderly, determined man, continued. She would succeed in wresting him away from her crotch, relax for a brief instant from the effort, and he would resume his own struggle to foil her, and satisfy his obstinate determination.

She felt perplexed at what was occurring, ashamed for him and for herself. She was reacting, not thinking, a victim when she needn’t be one. A loud, sharp denial. That would bring attention. But she didn’t want attention. She felt as though she was somehow complicit in what was happening. Later, when she thought about the incident, she agreed to herself, she was complicit, however unwillingly, however unmeaning.

By not insisting, loudly, that he remove himself, by not revealing to all those others seated in the bus that she was being assaulted, she had actually assisted him in his endeavours. Did she fear no one would believe her? Her word, a still-young woman, against that of an obviously elderly, patrician-looking man. A respectable man.

Perhaps he felt that her silence was acquiescence, despite her attempts to stop him. Perhaps he felt she was somehow an outsider, an immigrant whose value was less than his, and he could abuse her as he wished. Perhaps he knew, somehow, that her silence implicated her in what he was attempting. What was he attempting?

She felt nauseated, disgusted, both with herself and with the old man. How could such a frail appearing man have the brute strength her own much younger arms were unable to counteract? She felt confused, and she felt soiled. She felt pity and she felt anguish.

Finally, she half-rose, pushed him so hard he almost slid off his seat, and into the aisle. She rose fully, slid herself past the off-kilter old man, and rushed down the bus aisle to exit the opening door. She could hear a commotion behind her, as people close to where she had been seated, rushed to assist the poor old man, and offer him comfort.