Thursday's Child Has Far to Go

Bus number eight took Prudence downtown to work every day. She always sat in the same seat, second up from the back, the one with the stuck window. No one was ever sitting there when she boarded, and after a while she considered this to be her seat. She liked this seat because she could watch the people on the bus and on the sidewalk.

On this particular day, a Thursday, it started to rain. She hadn’t noticed the dark clouds as she ran from her brownstone to catch the number eight on the corner and hadn’t brought an umbrella. Now, as the bus got underway, the rain came down hard and trickled in long, wavy ribbons down the glass. Looking at the other riders, none of them brought an umbrella either. But she noticed the habitual passengers were not aboard today. She noticed this because she always watched them.

She tried not to let this bother her. Things outside her routine tended to make her nervous, and she bit her nails and mumbled assurances to herself. She told herself the usual people had missed the bus, or had gotten a ride with a neighbor, or were feeling unwell today. What she was certain of, however, were the words above the driver: Bus Eight Downtown.

The elderly gentleman who always sat behind the driver, and who always wore a black bowler and thin spectacles, was instead a dapper young man. His hat was a tan homburg, and his spectacles were black. And the schoolgirl dressed in her plaid skirt and navy sweater, the uniform for the Adcote School for Girls, was instead an adult woman holding a baby. She still wore a plaid skirt and navy sweater, and she still plaited her hair on either side of her freckled cheeks. But now she cooed and rocked an infant in her arms.

Not wishing to think about the confusing passengers any longer, Prudence turned her attention to the shops they normally passed outside the bus. Among them, a vegetable and fruit vender, and the red and white striped awning over a dress shop. It was difficult to see the familiar shops with the rain blurring the glass. Everything looked like it was melting. They resembled paintings where the colors bled down the canvas, and this was frightening. She vigorously swiped at the glass with her gloved hand. For a moment she didn’t understand why this wasn’t helping. And then she wondered why she was wearing gloves. She hadn’t been wearing gloves when she had boarded.

The bus pulled to the curb, one of its stops on its route. Through the blurry raindrops, Prudence saw the mother/schoolgirl get off and another woman get on. Despite the rain, and the fact she had no umbrella, the woman was completely dry. She was the only person to board here, and as the bus pulled away, she held the back of the seats to keep her balance. Prudence ignored her. But then the woman spoke.

“Is this seat taken?” Prudence looked up in disbelief. There were at least ten other empty seats. But before she could point this out to the woman, she sat down next to Prudence. This was highly irregular. No one had ever sat with her before.

The woman was overly-dressed, as if she were going out for an evening – a short skirt with sequins and high heels. Her strong perfume was making Prudence sick. The woman got out her compact and added another layer of lipstick, a cheap shade of coral. She smacked her lips and put away her mirror.

The rain had stopped enough for Prudence to look out the window, and this was a relief. She didn’t know how to tell the woman to move. She was not used to speaking to strangers. And thought if she turned away, the woman would not engage with her. But outside the window the bus was traveling down the rugged, industrial part of the city, where the dirty sky was crisscrossed with ugly electrical towers. Concrete factories spumed black smoke beyond brick walls tangled with barbed wire and painted with obscene graffiti. Stained mattresses and trash littered the dirt. Terribly upset, Prudence was considering asking the woman if she knew where they were.

But there was no woman sitting next to her. Instead, an obese hulk of a fellow was huffing and puffing in the woman’s place. His Hawaiian shirt was too small and stretched tight across his corpulent belly, exposing his navel and several layers of fat. He was using all his effort to extract something from the duffel bag at his feet. When he at last leaned back he held a jelly donut in his hand, grunting in pleasure, giving off a decidedly rank odor of sweat.

He bit into the donut and strawberry jam oozed out the other end. It dribbled in clumps down his Hawaiian shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice – or care. He munched noisily, thoroughly enjoying the pastry. Only at a second glance, the obese man wasn’t eating a jelly donut at all, but a raw clump of hamburger, squeezing it between thick, sausage fingers, and devouring gobbets of the rancid meat. The man was making her nauseous, but again, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him to find another seat. Or did he notice a woman sitting here a few miles back, dressed in sequins?

The rain had started up again, as the bus pulled to the curb. Prudence could hear the brakes squealing and the vehicle coming to a halt. Looking out the window, she realized this was her stop. She gathered her bag, noticing she had been sitting alone - the fat man must have disembarked at some point. Moving up the aisle, the elderly gentleman tipped his bowler, and the schoolgirl smiled at her, fingering her pigtails. Prudence paused, staring, then stepped down from the bus.

But this was the corner only a block from her flat! She looked at her watch, which wasn’t a watch at all, but a piece of string tied around her wrist. As if she needed to be reminded of something – but it had escaped her, whatever it had been. Still, she knew it was about five-thirty in the evening. The sky overhead was darkening into a cloudless dusk, and the streetlights were just coming on.

“Prudence! Good morning,” the bus driver said above the idling engine. “You going to stand there all day, or should we be getting on our way?”

“What?” she asked, turning, muddled, looking at him, then up at the bright morning sky.

“By the way, I might have some seltzer water to rub out that jelly stain on your blouse. Seems you got a bit sloppy with the toast and jam this lovely Thursday morning.”

Looking down, there were indeed jelly stains on the front of her blouse.

“Thursday, you said? Are you sure?”

“As sure as it’s going to rain today,” the driver said. “No need to have brought your umbrella.”