The Bus

She got lost in the noise. The clamor wasn’t unpleasant to her; it was something she could hide in, and Clare was very fond of hiding. People filtered in and out of the bus with eyes averted to their phones, buds in their ears, and on the rare occasion, noses in novels. She needed no such diversion. The movements caught her eyes, and she watched them with equal parts interest and trepidation, wishing in some part of her that she could observe behind the sanctity of bulletproof glass. It was unsettling to be so near that many bodies.

Time passed. Her stop was not for some distance. The office she worked at paid well but only in respect to whittling down her commute, which she did with dreaded public transportation. Initially she’d had to take anxiety medication just to get through it. Now she’d managed to whittle that down too, to just the curling and uncurling of a paperclip between nervous fingers.

The streets whirled by. She reached up to her face as her other hand fished out her pocket mirror. Flipping it open, she turned away as she checked her features. The makeup was smudged. Couldn’t have that. A quick dab and the blemish vanished. An important technique in her hiding.

People fascinated her even as she feared them. In front of her, she could see a Jewish man right his Yakama, and she took a moment to admire the little Star of David on its top. In the seat across, a toddler swung her legs in and out as her mother yammered away on a pink-cased android. The girl turned her head and studied Clare, before dimpling and waving shyly. Clare waved back, before looking out the window again.

The bus hummed to a stop. The exhaust sighed. More people filed on as others filed off, taking up vacancies. Her eyes widened momentarily as a large man made his way towards the back, a black man with powerfully muscled arms. The shirt he wore seemed barely to contain him, and he bore himself with straight-backed confidence and strength. When he took up the place beside her, grabbing the handhold hanging from the ceiling, she shrank back against the wall and tried not to make eye contact.

Her phone rang, and classical music poured out, a haunting Mozart motif. She flicked the call on and watched the man warily from the corner of her eye, hoping not to draw his attention.

“Clare!”

The shout was a bullet from the speaker, loud and furious. She yanked it from her ear and cringed.

“Please don’t yell,” she whispered, “I’m on the bus.”

“I don’t give a fuck if you’re on the bus, bitch! I told you to iron my clothes this morning! You knew I had to go in for that interview, and you made me look like a fool!”

People’s heads rotated to look in her direction, picking up on some of the words. Tears of shame pricked her eyes and her face felt hot as she desperately fumbled to turn down the volume.

“I’m sorry, really. I’m sorry. I forgot, but I didn’t forget the interview! I made you breakfast, I-”

“I don’t care about the fucking breakfast. When you get home your ass is mine.”

The phone signaled the call had ended. She pressed it back into her purse and traded it for a tissue to wipe away the tears. Wincing when she pressed too hard, her heart skipped a beat as she yanked the mirror back out again to desperately make sure she hadn’t smudged the precious makeup.

“I was mad at first, you know.”

With frantic dabs, she tried to turn the garish blue of her cheek back to fleshy tones. The man’s words made her sick to her stomach and she pressed herself harder against the wall, as though to meld into it.

“I thought maybe, you know. Looking at me, you saw the color of me and figured I was a violent man. But that ain’t it at all, is it baby? Thing is, you got one living in your home, and when you see someone big like me, you think I’m gonna take that bigness out on you. Because you’re small. Because you break.”

His voice was measured, calm. Gentle. People turned around in their seats again, strangely, away from them and their conversation. Perhaps in response to his air of authority. She quivered, first bodily, and then only in her lips.

“I don’t know what sorta religion you follow, sweet thing. But in mine, we believe that God took women right from a rib of ours. The ribs, they’re meant to protect the heart. So the way I see it, women are meant to give us that heart. Keep us remembering how it is we’re supposed to love and cherish something.”

Hesitantly, Clare looked up at him. Now that she did, she could see a kind face, a young face, with brown eyes that emitted warmth. “A man that hits something like that…I say that’s a broken man. This strength ain’t made for hitting. This is made to hold.”

She swallowed thickly, unable to speak, afraid if she did all the tears would fall. And the mask would too, and they’d see the marks on her chin from the coffee table, the slit from his ring, the bruise from his fist. Humiliation washed like a tide over her head, and she felt as one drowning, unable to breathe.

“You deserve better than that. You remember that you deserve better than that. They got a safe house for women down the street a ways. Got a big sign. I don’t know where you live, but think about it. I don’t want to see your pretty face in the newspaper. I don’t want to live with that.”

The bus ground back to a stop. The man gave her a parting glance, before getting off. As he left, she could see angel’s wings were stitched into the back of his shirt.

The houses blurred by. Clare clung to the purse in her lap, her fingers white-knuckled, her tears streaming freely as they ate away more and more of the cover-up.

When it was time for her to get off and go home to him, she didn’t.