I waited to go back to the city with a book in my hand and no interest in reading it.
I sat on a bus that growled and shook. I enjoyed the vibrations just enough to get settled. Windows swarming the seats rose well above my head and stretched the length of the bus carriage. I felt comfortably captured in this people-aquarium. I looked out the window to see two frail women embracing in a long goodbye. The similarities in their deteriorated mouths revealed that they must be related, even sisters. The embrace broke as the older one turned and stepped onto the bus. Here she disappeared.
Eight minutes until departure and the one left behind waited idly, desperately, for the bus to leave. She could no longer see her sister for the window was tinted. Was she waiting for her sister to come back out? Her eyes passed back and forth never resting on the big hunkering beast about to take her sister away. Shoes, street, sky, depot is all she could look at but never the bus. If it was uncomfortable then why didn't she leave? Was this aching anxiety of being in limbo (yet so close to companionship) better than the finality of loneliness that awaited her back at the apartment?
Her eyes were not at ease, had never been at ease by the looks of it. Her smile did not change the restless and suspecting stare. Crow's feet ran deep from the edges of her eyes. Cracked skin pulled down over her sharp cheek bones and turned into crevasses on either side of her mouth. These were not smile lines. Her face looked like a desert: dry, void, waiting for something to replenish it. She stood there like an angel draped in white. Her jacket was crinkled like old paper and her plainly trousered legs - how they barely held her, yet she was so small.
Her chin quivered. There was an oasis in the desert after all! She pursed her lips to suck back the beginning of a cry. She appeared to chew the inside of her cheek (maybe her tongue) and let her face relax. It wasn't long before she pursed her lips again - and again.
Standing alone against the office wall she looked to be lacking everything. She was quarantined in her loneliness.
Suddenly, her eyes widened so slightly that I nearly missed it. Did she recognize someone? A saviour to wait with her in her quarantine? An older man who had been on the bus walked across the lot and leaned against the wall beside her. Their weathered faces lit up as each exchanged bits of conversation. The unspoken need of comfort brought two souls together at that moment. Is it possible to be content in agony as long as there is company? The man passed her one last glance before walking away. She smiled; it was sour and forced but not mean, not to this kind man. She worked her lips back and forth, now a nervous habit triggered by the man. She would now have two people to shield her gulped cries from. Emotions can be so embarrassing.
The minutes were long and awkward, I wanted it to end. It wasn't ending. The agitation was growing in her, her movements became jerky and impatient. The strain leaked out from every corner of her body: her eyes, crossed arms, the casual, yet, uptight stance. Would it have meant more to her sister if she had cried? Had hung herself over her sister's shoulders and gasped goodbyes?
I was no longer seeing her with my eyes, but with the eyes of my eyes. She was no longer a woman waiting but a woman needing like I need. I didn't feel sorry for her, I felt with her as she let the bus do what she was not able - to take her sister. Surely you could call her dependable, biddable. There was nothing within to fill that void cast into the spot of her heart where she did not look. She did not have the tools necessary to build bridges over these voids that cannot be filled.
The bus began to reverse and the land moved backwards slowly. As the bus pulled out of the lot the remaining sister jumped up with a final wave (of relief) and as she faded from view I thought I spotted the beginning of the rain