Bus ride

bus-interior-wet-day CrispinaKemp

It was going to be better once she got there. Not like last time.

She held her purse on her lap with both hands, knees together, spine away from the cushion and her body swaying lightly with the movement of the vehicle, as she watched the world roll ahead of the front window, indistinct in the liquid grayish light.

It’s been raining for hours. A persistent misty drizzle that had dampened so many of her earlier years. She shuddered even though the bus was overheated. Perhaps because she sat in her coat.

The driver leaned on the horn and she released one hand to steady herself against a possible braking. Her seat in the center of the last row had no armrest, but it was the only one with a clear path out.

She always needed to have an unobstructed way out.

And yet, there she was, going back.

For Crispina’s Crimson’s Creative Challenge

Photo: Hadera, Israel

The bus rumbled on the narrow road, slow behind the loaded tractor wagon. A mix of diesel fumes, damp earth, and faint notes of orange blossoms wafted through the open crack in the heavy window.

They were going to be late. Again.

She sighed and glanced at her youngest sister, automatically feeling for the change-of-uniform she carried at the bottom of her school bag for the eventuality that her sister’s car-sickness would get the upper hand.

Across the narrow aisle, a woman coughed wetly into a handkerchief and shifted the plastic baskets that crowded the small space under her feet. Those will be packed full on the ride back from Hadera, their area’s shopping center and nearest ‘big’ town.

Finally, past Gan-Shmuel, the snailing tractor turned into a field and the bus picked up speed. Houses marked the city’s boundaries. She nudged her other sister awake. “We’re getting off soon.”

For What Pegman Saw: Hadera, Israel

Note: Depicting a very true (almost daily) childhood memory …