Chapter 1
Vanessa counted the streetlights as the bus roared forward on the main thoroughfare of the suburban sprawl where she was raised. Two, four, six, eight, ten. She lost count as they spattered light into the darkened bus while nightfall spilled across the sky outside. Usually Vanessa’s journeys on public transportation were limited to the sheltering light of daytime. Her six-year-old sister’s recent epilepsy diagnosis confined the convenience of the bus to times when the jittering of excess light wouldn't spur a fit or a seizure. These were the things she had to think about, the little details that swoop in to disarm you when you think you’ve got everything together. She’d had to step up in the last year, to assume the role of Mother, Father, Sister, Provider.
As Vanessa gazed out the window, she could feel shards of her old life nicking her from across the landscape of her consciousness. Independence was something distant to her now, something illusory. She’d forgotten the boundless, untethered feeling of something as simple as going to the grocery store by herself, the exhalation of autonomy swirling in the air around her. She’d taken the first twenty years of her life for granted, living as a normal child in a regular suburb with ordinary parents and a lackluster view of her own sovereignty. Now the memories of her parents being alive, cooking dinner, helping with homework, mopping floors… it all seemed jumbled inside Vanessa’s head, memories mingled with dreams in the same far-fetched, mental mirage.
It’s human nature to think that the death of one’s parents—the irreversible scorching away of a person’s fundamental support system—is the ultimate tragedy in life, especially for a young person without a life of their own yet. But somehow, for Vanessa, this wasn’t true. She didn’t know if it was just in her case or if everyone went through this—if it were some sort of rite of passage for everyone whose parents were ripped right out of their lives—but the aftermath was what really stung. Sure, receiving the news that she’d never again see her mother and father was devastating—worse than devastating, a cataclysm of every child’s worst fears rolled into one burst of anguish—but she only had to receive the news once. One time, and then it was over.
What wasn’t over? The stillness in their bedroom. The dust collecting on her mother’s books. The runaway follicles in her father’s horsehair brush. Their toothbrushes, side by side, never to be used again.
Vanessa woke up every morning hoping for the pain to ease, for reality to seem more normal, for the grief to subside, for Emma to understand. And yet every day, Vanessa was faced with more uncertainty, more bereavement, more despair. Emma was still a small child, and her disability branded her with an extra layer of frailty that Vanessa couldn’t seem to shelter. Being an orphan at the blink of an eye, being a parent, having to raise a child alone, bearing the weight of disability… these were all nearly unbearable realities to live out on their own. But for Vanessa, they were all sides of the same die thrown onto the board game of her life. She was all of these things, all at once.
Tonight Vanessa looked down in horror at an empty box of tampons staring back at her. Normally she remembers to pick up all her essentials during the day, when Emma’s in school. But these are seas that Vanessa is still learning to navigate: the uncharted waters of remembering everything all the time. Under the weight of what day the water company takes out the monthly bill from her checking account, the strain of learning to cook more than frozen pizza, and the feeling of treading water professionally, forgetting to pick up tampons on her way home to get Emma seemed like a tidal wave that would capsize the ship she’s trying to steer through the bluster that’s become her life.
Leaving Emma with her next-door neighbor, Vanessa decided to take the bus rather than ride her bike to the store. It was getting late, the darkness felt prohibitive and uninviting… and selfishly, Vanessa just wanted to feel what it was like to be chauffeured again. Her life had become so unrecognizably complicated in the year since her parents’ death that the notion of sitting in a seat and being driven to a destination felt almost unreachably luxurious.
When the stoplights didn’t beam themselves into the bus with the same speed, Vanessa glanced over at the doors of the bus. As they opened to accommodate new passengers, a face from a few years back illuminated itself in familiarity: the dimpled smile of a cheerleader from her high school named Talisha. Though they never really talked—just shared a few classes together—Talisha’s face lit up as she noticed Vanessa and approached her with what seemed like excitement.
Internally Vanessa groaned. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She didn’t want to get wrapped in a blanket of nostalgia for a time that seemed like eons ago—a life that she can’t even remember now under the weight of her almost immobilizing responsibilities. All she wanted was to look out the window for a few minutes, to feel the serenity of solitude, the luxury of loneliness. All day long she catered to customers and all night long she entertained the babble of her kid sister. Vanessa just needed a few minutes to herself, just a little bit of privacy… but apparently that wasn’t in the cards tonight.
“Hey,” Talisha said warmly, sitting in the seat next to Vanessa.
“Hi,” Vanessa said, reluctantly picking up her head from the window of the bus and sitting up straight.
“How are you doing?” Talisha asked in what seemed like a genuine tone.
“Fine,” Vanessa quipped, unsure of whether Talisha was just making small talk, or if she knew about Vanessa’s parents.
“That’s good…” Talisha said, dropping her tone. “I, uh… I saw the news report last year. I’ve been thinking about you,” she said, looking Vanessa in the eye. “I didn’t know how to reach out, or even if I should… so I didn’t. We didn’t really know each other in school, but when something like that happens, it’s instinctual to want to do something, to say something, to let the person know you care…”
“That’s all right,” Vanessa said sharply. Talisha was picking at the scab of a wound that had taken months to clot.
“Well, okay,” Talisha said, aware of the awkward energy she’d brought with her into the bus, the vapor of social clumsiness floating between them. “So,” she began in an effort to change the subject, “you’re in law school, right?”
“I was,” Vanessa sighed. It was becoming clearer each second that Talisha wouldn’t let up, that she was too curious to realize how her meddling was making Vanessa feel. “I had to drop out to care for my sister,” Vanessa admitted quietly, rolling the corners of her paper bus pass between her thumb and forefinger.
“Oh God,” Talisha said, putting a hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry. That must… be… hard…” Her voice drifted off and neither of them said anything for a few seconds. “What are…” Talisha began, unsteadily. “What… are you doing for money right now?”
“Well,” Vanessa began with an even deeper sigh, hoping to indicate to her socially tone-deaf seatmate that she clearly didn’t want to discuss any of this, that her entire life had become a bubbling cauldron of anxiety, that she was just trying to enjoy a rare moment of peace. “I work part-time at a restaurant. I’d like to work some more, but my sister needs someone home with her at night.”
“Oh,” Talisha said, inhaling deeply. “Well, that’s, um… that’s too bad.”
“Yeah,” Vanessa said in an attempt to sever the conversation, turning her head to the window once again.
“You know,” Talisha said, stiffening in her seat, “I’m, uh… I’m working at a nightclub now. As a waitress. It’s not too difficult, you don’t need any skills, just connections. I could hook you up, if you think you’d be able to work a few nights a week.”
Vanessa wanted to roll her eyes. A waitress, she thought to herself, yeah right. She could remember a time when the passable word was “dancer,” the word they all used to refer to the profession with a hint of playful whimsy, a lighthearted wink toward something otherwise scathing and low-class.
“No thanks,” Vanessa said, never letting her eyes stray from the window.
“It’s not what you think,” Talisha said immediately, a little too defensive to be taken seriously.
“I know what it is,” Vanessa said, turning to Talisha as the bus slowed. “I’m not interested, and even if I was, I can’t leave a six-year-old at home alone,” she replied, grabbing her purse from beneath the seat.
“Here, take my number,” Talisha said, scribbling seven digits on the back of a receipt she fished out of her purse. “Think about it, okay? It may be difficult at first, but… the money is,” Talisha broke out into a grin, “I mean, it’s insane.”
Vanessa glared at Talisha with a steely indifference, too thoroughly exhausted to give her any more attention. “This is my stop,” she muttered, reluctantly taking the receipt and crumpling it into her back pocket as she scooted out of the seat and out of the bus, into the crisp November night.