Spring 2024

Bus: A Short Story

By Leslie Flores

We were shoulder to shoulder. The bus moved over the unpaved roads to our town. Its inside was cramped like a stomach after a wave of ravenous hunger; it was regretful. I was squeezed between a man and a woman. He was thin, but my elbows still occasionally met the ribs at his side. She was modest, but no matter how tight she pulled her arms around her bag, our shoulders would still press against each other. My comfort was not helped by the occasional hand that shot to my knee when the bus ran over the more unpaved parts of the streets and threw our bodies around like rag dolls. My only comfort was that the hand hadn’t landed on my thigh; when hands landed there, nothing could comfort me. 

We all sat lining the sides of the bus and facing each other like we were waiting for a grand feast on a dinner table to appear in the space between us. I could only think of our bodies squeezed together. We moved like bobbleheads with our heels pressed into the aluminum floor of the bus to keep our heads from pulling our bodies off the warm plastic seats. We made sure to press hard enough to leave dents in the aluminum with our heels, our tit-for-tat for this cramped bus ride. Sometimes, during these rides, I’d sit next to my boss. It was like an uncomfortable public encounter with a former high school teacher. But the beaten briefcases squeezed in place by our legs, the men who struggled to keep from loosening their ties and the women who tugged at their stockings so they wouldn’t stick to their skin made us seem so similar that we would eventually forget to be tense around each other. We were all heading home anyway. 

After I had stepped onto the bus, I became hot. I’m sure my cheeks were flushed red by now. Our bodies were so close. I was reminded of the old church across the street from my apartment during the hellish Holy Week. We would practically sit on each other, thigh on thigh and shoulder to shoulder while we listened to the priest. Last year on Easter morning, I found myself shoulder to shoulder with an old woman with a baby she could barely handle. Then I found myself with the baby in my lap, fanning the baby with the Sunday missal so she would stop fussing. I always thought I saw complacent smiles on the faces of the altar boys from their chairs of personal space up in the sanctuary. Hellish Holy Week, how hot it was during those days. 

But when I would cross the street back to my apartment, I’d feel the unbearable freedom that comes with being alone. My small apartment would then feel too big or too wide. I would sit on the ends of my couch like many lonely people do to feel the squeeze of something else so similar to the squeeze of someone else. I would push my bed against the wall to feel like something would keep me from falling at night. I could only ever sleep huddled between my bed and the wall. I would tuck my bedsheets under my mattress so I felt like I was grounded. It kept my brain from thinking about loneliness but there were times when the sheets could only squeeze so tight. So, I found myself growing fond of the cramped bus rides. 

The modest woman beside me reached into her bag, her elbow lightly pushing against mine. The crinkle of a plastic bag disrupted the silence of the bus, our eyes struggled not to look at her. She pulled out a bag of round unwrapped hard candies; they all looked so delicious under the sun that seeped through the windows of the moving bus. She looked at the bag contemplatively like she was counting, determining if there was enough of the hard candies before she hummed. It was a pleasant sound from deep in her chest, a call for attention and an excuse to look up at her. She held the bag out, grabbing it open by the mouth. Our arms all left their confined spaces to grab a piece of the pastel hard candy. She held the oasis in the desert and we were all travelers looking for relief. That’s exactly what we felt after popping the candy in our mouths. I watched as the woman popped the last two candies into her mouth, they made her cheeks puff out. She flushed more than she already was when she caught my glance but I only smiled at her, she was well deserving of two pieces of candy. 

I realized that just like our arms reaching for hard candy, we would disjoin from each other and become plenty when this bus ride ended. Some of us would go home to become “we” again and others would become “I.” But I didn’t know if we all had couches that only sunk at the corners or if we could all call our house home. I don’t think I could. But on that bus, our bodies were so close; we were “we” far from “I.” 🐾