Part II of Round and Round

The highway strip softens as you ride past. The grass lengthens and shines like bulrushes in the light and you realize it’s sunny. You haven’t noticed all this time because the radio tuned your sight to other things you can’t recall now that you’ve been jolted. But laying back you slip behind your eyeballs once more to recover these images in the lines of green leather seat before you.

They are the duck pond. The fireplace. The red swingset. They are places that people go to be happy together. Your family fills them with flailing arms and shrieks of laughter as if you remember them that way. But you know the montage is not a memory. It’s a splicing of pieces of things you remember. Your family plays on the red swingset but you know you’ve not been altogether to the park because your father works. He never joins park day. Today though he rakes the pine cones off the playground like you’ve seen him do in the yard and he’s happy to be working on his morning off. Your brother climbs the monkey bars and your mother chases him on the ground but you know she’s never goaded him like that or smiled so wide. She would watch your brother with her arms out, practically hugging his swinging buttocks in case he lost his grip. She herself dreaded heights and didn’t want him to fall and snap a wrist. Not her precious firstborn. But she smiles now a smile you recognize. It is not from the swingset but from the shoebox of pictures she keeps under her bed. In them a girl version of mother with long hair and freckles shines pale through the brownish dark of old photos. Her smile is wide and gappy and infectious then and now.

You sag in your seat as the grasses wave past. The bus assumes a flowery smell and you’re charmed with visions both real and made up of your whole smiling family. They puff you up with pride. You want to join and ensure their happiness. You owe it to them.

The light goes. It comes and goes again. The bus shuttles through light and dark in what must be a tunnel. But this was outbound. The country as you think of it is open and empty. It doesn’t need tunnels. Then again there are many buses. They flank either side of yours, dozens of white buses of kids tunneling into the flowery dark.

You wake. A clean breeze comes from outside as the driver holds the door open to let you off at your driveway. You recall having gotten on this morning few blocks down the street but the bus must know where you’ve come from and want to drop you home safe. The driver smiles and you toddle off. You are at once relaxed and energized as you walk up the front lawn and stumble over the hose. It glitters green and troublesome from its invisible coil in the grass. You reloop it in tidy circles around your elbow and hang it on the houseside peg so no one else risks a tumble. For mother in her silk morning robe fetching the paper—if she tripped and faceplanted in the mud she would not be happy. You wouldn’t. Unsafety is a grave problem.

You enter the kitchen and see on the table she’s got your backpack. She asks why three doors down they found it on the street corner and left it for you at the mailbox. What did they say at school when you showed up unprepared? How did you manage without lunch?

You feel guilty for being so oblivious. The backpack and its contents are not inexpensive. Not to be left around and the lunch inside not to be wasted. Those are good vegetables. You thank her for recovering the backpack, but you don’t need it anymore. You’ve been on the bus.

She is redly aghast. You thought you would have relished the affect but instead you’re worried she will be upset. You apologize for disobeying her warnings but you know underneath you did well to join the program. You should defer to your parents’ judgment. But if you know unspitefully in your heart a better alternative that will ultimately honor and benefit the community, you must choose that instead. Alternative and community. You know what they mean but you can’t recall ever looking them up. Them and Goodwill. The word jogs your mind. There are many parts to Goodwill but all you can do is recite it with internal tongue clicks, the G and the D on the roof of your mouth, and from those movements glean its meaning. Will you do good? Will you will to be good?

You set the placemats and pour the milk and after dinner you ask to see the books in your father’s study. You want to study but only if the work is done. The dishes, the laundry, the work. When it is, you have all night to improve and apply yourself.

You looked forward to tomorrow’s bus ride.