Riding the Bus With My Sister: A True Life Journey (9 page)

"Iz getting
worse.
Thaz what the drivers say."

At last, at the far end of Main Street, Beth scoots up to a renovated Victorian firehouse, which has been converted into a restaurant and offices, zips around the side, and swings open an unmarked glass door. "Down
here,
" she says, shooting through an obscure corridor of small businesses and janitorial closets.

"How did you ever find this?" I ask, trying to see as we pass out of the sunlight.

"There were people in some office upstairs who helped Jesse out for a while, with money and stuff, and I'd just walk around when I went there with him, and I just found the baffrooms. But sometimes the doors're locked, so then I can't go. They don't always want us in here."

"Us?" I ask. "Who do you mean?"

She frowns, and opens a bathroom door. "Anybody who's not
them,
" she says.

We're on our way back up the street, only now we're walking. There's no need to rush; in the bathroom I removed a sweater beneath my coat, lingering for more than the three minutes Beth had allotted before our next bus. It was pulling away just as we stepped out of the firehouse.

Annoyed, Beth storms on ahead of me. "You take too long," she says. "I'm fast, why'd you take so much time, iz too slow, now iz all messed up, now we have to
wait.
"

"Sorry," I say. "But I was getting warm."

"You need to be fast to keep up with me, I'm not slow, I don't stop, I do what I want, I just keep going, and I can't keep going if you're so slow so you better get
quick,
you better, if you wanna ride with me, thaz how I
do
it, and thaz how you have to—"

"All right!" I snap.

Silence. Both of us steam. We're at an intersection, stuck waiting for the red to change. Ah—a distraction: I see a familiar form crossing up ahead, a woman with Native American jewelry and bouncing dark hair.

"Isn't that Olivia?"

"Who? Where?"

"Right there." I point. I turn and notice that Beth is staring at her, but cannot gauge who it is. I grasp now that Beth's vision, damaged by the cornea problem I learned about in her Plan of Care meeting, is deteriorating. "Oh!" Beth says at last. "Hey! 'Livia!"

Olivia whirls around and smiles. She's got a winsome, girl-next-door face, and since she has the walk sign, she U-turns back to us.

"You're visiting?" Olivia asks me as she reaches the sidewalk.

I say, "I'm touring the buses, and Beth is my guide."

"Well, you'll learn fast," Olivia says. "Beth is really quick."

"I sure am," Beth says. "I'm quick and she's
slow.
She was in the baffroom so long we missed Rodolpho and now we have to
wait
and I hate to wait and if she didn't take so long—"

"You don't have to blab it to the world, Beth," I say, realizing that for the rest of the day, she will.

Olivia says to Beth, "Does that mean you've got a minute for me?"

Our light has just turned, and Beth has a
let's go
look on her face.

"I just need to cover a few questions, honey," Olivia adds. "I'll only be a second."

Beth stifles the look, and Olivia explains to me that as Beth's case manager, she has to check each month to see if everything's going well, and because Beth is out all day and has no answering machine on her phone, they usually have this exchange when she bumps into Beth on the street. "Are you getting the services you desire?" Olivia asks speedily. "Are you getting the help you need?"

Off to the side of this exchange, I quickly put more of the system together: Olivia must work at the agency that monitors the services Beth receives, including those of the
other
agency, the one that employs Vera and Amber. That's why she was running the Plan of Care meeting, which was held where
she
works, and why she needs to know if Beth is satisfied with how she's being served. Once again, I'm a bit uncomfortable as I realize all I haven't known.

"Yeah, evrything's all
right
"

Olivia nods, listening hard. Then, "And how are your eyes doing?"

I'm
fine.

"When's the doctor appointment? I ask.

"I just
had
one, Beth says. "He wants to have me come in again this summer.

"To see if it's getting any worse, Olivia adds.

"We done? Beth says.

"All done. I'll see you in a month, Olivia says, but as she steps off the curb she turns to me. "I really like Beth. She's so cool. At this observation, Beth grins. Then Olivia hurries across the street.

We're sallying up the slope of Main Street, toward the
you'll see
of our next stop, when I realize, though Beth doesn't say it, that as far as she's concerned I am
not
cool. Having apparently forgotten her annoyance with me, she is chattering about the different stores along the way when we see a scraggly, bowlegged man walking toward us. His pants cuffs are unraveling, and his beard is a waiting nest for birds. I avert my eyes, figuring, as always, that it's better to ignore homeless people than to get a request for a handout.

As we pass him, Beth says, "Hi, John." He looks directly at her and nods back.

A moment beyond, I ask, "You know him?"

"Yeah. He lives on the
street.
He's nice."

I turn around and watch him walk away.

After a few more blocks, I realize that she knows all the misfits. Every time I notice one—the mustached guy with the loping belly and duffel bag, the frog-faced woman whose scarlet shoes match her hair, anyone who seems homeless or "different"—I, preset to tune them out, turn away. Immediately, as if reading my dismissiveness in the swing of my head, Beth will say, "He lives in a shelter. He uses Tide in the Laundromat." Or "She works at the drugstore. We talk about Whitney Houston." I walk on, my footing less sure than only minutes earlier.

But Beth's goodwill toward other outsiders doesn't extend to everyone.

A sallow man wearing a toupee, who's driving a rusty station wagon, screeches over to the curb. "Hey, Beth," he calls out, but she just treks forward, saying nothing.

I say, "He's calling you."

"I
know,
" she says, without breaking stride.

"Beth," he says. "I got something for you." He thrusts an arm out of the passenger window. Dangling from his fingers is a photo album with Tweety Bird on the cover.

She swerves over, snatches it from his hands, and resumes her march.

"Aren't you going to thank him?" I say.

"I'm gonna throw it a
way.
"

"Why?"

"Because he likes to give me things. I don't like that. He shouldn't do that. Iz
creepy
"

"How do you know who's safe?" I ask.

"He's not," she says, pointing to a man in a wheelchair sitting in front of a fast food restaurant.

"How do you know?"

"He asks people for
money.
The drivers and Vera told me he's bad news."

"That's how you know? You listen to what people say?"

"Yeah, but I also see if they're nice. I give them two chances. If they're nasty twice, then they're not my friends."

"For good?"

"Unless they change.
Really
change. Like, you can't fake being nice. If you have to fake being nice, thaz not who you really
are
" She sees a trash can, and, without elaborating on who this man is or how he knows her, she flings in the offering.

She's got her own streetwise code of behavior, I see, as she finally stops at a corner. It's a code born of circumstances she has not shared with me, and that have taught her a level of discernment I do not possess. Indeed, throughout this break from the bus, I've felt far more naive than the street urchin chugging along in front of me.

"So is this where we're waiting for Rodolpho?" I say.

"Yeah." She sets her radio on a bus bench.

It's Fifth and Main. I realize that, even though it is a fairly nondescript intersection, with a bank, luncheonette, bankrupt department store, and McDonald's on the four corners, it is where the two most important downtown streets cross. Not surprisingly, many buses stop here; each corner has one or more shelters.

"A
while
ago," she then says, "I was waiting for a bus here, and a homeless girl on that corner"—she points across the street—"started giving me crap. She called me names, and I tried to ignore her, but then she came over here and jumped on my
feet.
I'd heard that her boyfriend sometimes hit her, so I said, 'Why go after
me
? Did your boyfriend hit you again? Why not go after
him
?' Then she put her hands around my neck, and said, 'I'm gonna kill you.'"

"Beth, this sounds awful." But I notice that she doesn't sound troubled. Actually, her voice is gleeful, and each sentence is taking her higher.

"I pushed her hands and broke away and ran to Jesse's. I told him what happened, and he rushed back there on his bicycle, and I ran back, too. When we got there, we saw that she'd brought
her
boyfriend, too. He whacked Jesse, and Jesse let him have it! Then the cops broke it up," Beth crescendos in triumph, "and the boyfriend went to jail!"

I pause, aghast at how rapidly this incident went from ugly to life-threatening, and I'm terrified for Beth's safety. "Maybe you could have just walked away. Jesse and you could both have gotten hurt."

"And now the guy's out of jail." She giggles. "And I hear he has a
knife!
"

"Beth, please watch what you do out here," I say. "This isn't something to laugh about. This could be dangerous."

"Iz okay. Jesse will take care of me."

"And who will take care of Jesse?"

"Nothing's gonna
happen
"

"But it could, Beth."

"It won't."

"What if it does?"

It
won't.

Now I grow irritated. I glare at her, remembering how I used to get fed up with her stubbornness, and how much that made me disappointed in myself—and in a flash, anger spews through me, at her bullheadedness, at my inability to get through to her, at my years of excuses for not being a good sister. And there it is again, that deep voice grumbling on inside me: How can she be so blithe about the possibility of trouble? You can't let her do that. She may be putting herself in real jeopardy!

I take a deep breath. Despite her familiarity with this city, I'm not sure she fully understands, or accepts, how perilous the world can be. Yet if I get too "bossy, I know she'll dig in her heels all the harder. I also know it would be a great loss if I let some inner voice of criticism come between us. I'm enamored of her feistiness and her keen-witted street savvy. I feel privileged to be her sidekick. I want this year to go on.

So maybe I should back off. Even if I don't think it's safe here. I think of her words: "Iz getting
worse.
Thaz what the drivers say. Oh, how I wish someone would tell me what to do.

"I'm sorry, Beth, I say. "I don't mean to be bossy. I really don't.

"Iz all
right,
she says.

"I just don't want anything bad to happen to you or Jesse. "I
know.

"And I don't want us to grow apart again.

"Iz okay. I like having you here.

"Do you really? I ask.

"There's Rodolpho!"

"Do you really like having me here?" I ask again.

"You worry too much," she says, turning toward the approaching bus. "I don't worry. You should try being more like me."

"Oh, Beth, what am I going to do with you? I sigh, not caring that I may be uncool forever.

"
My turn," Laura says from the back seat. "Alaska.
"

"
Oh, not an A word," I say from the front. "All the A place names end in A, which means you start the next with A, and it goes on forever.
"

"
If she wants an A word," Mommy says next to me, her eyes on the dark road, "she can do that.
"

"
It's a free country," Max calls out from the far back of our Dodge station wagon.

"
Yeah," Beth says, next to Laura.

"
Ruff," our puppy, Ringo, barks. He rides shotgun in front with me. "How about Name That Tune?" I say. "I'm tired of playing Geography anyway.
"

"
Fine," Mommy says. "Laura goes first.
"

We're on our way home from visiting Grandma. It's winter, and Laura, Beth, Max, and I are ten, seven, five, and eight, and this ride lasts four hours. Home is this far now because we've moved to the mountains in Pennsylvania, the first time our family, including Mommy and Daddy, has lived outside New Jersey. It's cold every night in our split-level, especially downstairs, where Laura and I sleep, so we make up reasons to sleep in the warm upstairs with everyone else. Sometimes it works, and Mommy lets me sleep in Beth's room, Laura in Max's. Sometimes when we're up there and I can't sleep, I hear Mommy in her bedroom, crying.