Bus Stop (Part 2)

Have you ever noticed the stop signs on the corners where the school bus stops? The shadows fall in different places at different times of day, different times of year, and they change in shape and size, but the signs stay the same. Sure, they get dirty and dented and rusted, but they keep the same height and shape, not like the children.

The children all change, even from morning to afternoon. I’m not looking, but they’re all pressed and starched with ribbons in their hair and a shine to their shoes in the mornings, waiting in clusters like little daisies on the street corner then filing onto the bus in a graceful line ascending the steps that’s practically a ballet in its beauty. But in the afternoons, they spill out of the hinged door and down the steps in disarray, smudges of dirt on white Peter Pan collars, shirttails hanging almost down to the hems of the pleated skirts, ribbons frayed out of their bows. They even smell different in the afternoons, dirt, sweat, textbooks, and lockers clinging to their soft skin.

It hurts me to see it, what just one day can do to a girl, how the world smudges and smears the pristine innocence into muddy streaks of filth, the sinister metallic smells making their silky hair harsh. It’s agonizing, so agonizing that sometimes I have to do something about it, try to slow it down even if I can’t make it stop.

I want it to stop, don’t even know how it started or who started it. You can never truly tell which side someone is on. They’re all polite and have a nice day for weeks and months and years, and then one day, out of nowhere, their eyes tell you that they know everything, and if you don’t do what they want, they’ll tell, and then it will all be over.

The first time, I didn’t know it would happen, didn’t know how much of Eve’s terrible knowledge lived in female blood. I think her name was Polly. That’s my name for her, and since I’m the last person who spoke to her, who called her a name (and I said I was sorry, that I didn’t mean it, that Eve was the whore, not sweet Polly. It’s all Eve’s fault. Apple pie should be outlawed.), so what I say goes.

Polly fell down the bus steps and skinned her knee, right through the tights, tearing them, the ring of crimson seeping out of her body into the raveling, grubby threads. I live right on the corner, and I have a really good first aid kit, so I helped her up and took her inside my house, just to the kitchen!

I sat her down in a chair and got my first aid kit. I was cleaning her knee, gently wiping the abrasion with an alcohol wipe, blowing on it so it wouldn’t burn so bad. When I inhaled, I smelled it. Eve’s blood, and it wasn’t coming from her knee. If it touched me, I would be unclean and have to make a pilgrimage to that river they talk about in the bible, and I don’t think I can get a passport, so I can’t ever let Eve’s blood touch me.

I don’t want to talk about what happened; I’m ashamed to have even smelled Eve’s blood, more so to have liked it. I’ll never tell anyone what it tastes like. No one should know. I shouldn’t even know.

The heater came on and stirred the checkered bistro curtain in the kitchen window over the sink. Mom used to watch me in my tree fort from that window, if she wasn’t too busy with other things. She never came up there, scared of heights, so I kept my secret treasures there. After I took Polly down to the basement, I took her ribbon to my tree fort. It was blue.

It continues here.