had never ridden a bus before, not a city bus, not a bus where you stood at a bus stop and buses came and you had to know which one to get on and where to get off. I had once ridden a bus from Jackson, Mississippi to Denver, Colorado to see the Pope at Strawberry Park. That was the Pope before this Pope and it was a long time ago. I was no longer Catholic, was no longer anything. I recalled other buses taking me back and forth to daycamp as a child and how I had not liked daycamp, though I'd preferred it to overnight camp. At overnight camp I cried and got my period and made the nurse call my parents to come get me. There had been other buses as well, tour group buses, buses that took you from the airport parking lot to the airport. But those were shuttles. Mostly, I had ridden shuttles. You couldn't get on the wrong one.
I was living in a city now, a city with many buses that could take you many places you might want to go and many places you would not want to go and I had to figure them out because I was afraid to drive for the same reasons and some additional ones: I didn't know how to get to where I was going or where to park once I got there or if I'd have the right parking pass, if one was required, or whether the meters were active, if there were meters, and whether they took coins only. And I'd just discovered that campus parking was particularly fucked up because you had to back into the space instead of simply nosing in headfirst. You had to put your blinker on and stop traffic and back into the space, all without hitting the cars on either side of you or the bikes flying down the hill. I watched as others did this, easily, with awe and horror. A lot of them appeared to be freshmen. Their tags said Illinois and Arkansas and New York.
I was ready to give up and move back home even though I'd left everything behind in a way that would not allow for my return: I had dropped out of my Ph.D. program, broken up with my boyfriend, and moved out of my house, leaving my roommate in a bit of a bind. There was nothing to return to except my mother. I could always return to her and she would be happy to have me. I also had a father; he lived with my mother and I loved him, too, but it wasn't the same. We had gone out to lunch before I'd left, just to the two of us, and he'd made the waitress cry and I was pretty sure she'd quit because the manager had begun to wait on us at some point and my heart had cracked a little. It was small things like this that did it.
It was August, well over a hundred degrees. I stood and then sat on the hill. It hadn't rained but my ass felt slightly damp. I was wearing a dress made of very thin cotton; it was like nothing. The tops of my breasts were exposed. Why had I worn this dress? It had been a mistake. There wasn't a bench at the bus stop I thought I should be at but wasn't sure of, only a pole in the ground with a picture of a bus on it, big windows like eyes and a lot of numbers that meant nothing to me.
I was in tears by the time I called my mother. I've been sitting on this hill for an hour, I said, over an hour, and I'm about to lose it.
Okay, she said, panicked. What can I do?
I'm about to freak out. I have to get home.
Okay, she said. Let me help you.
