The Bus on Thursday

by Shirley Barrett

  While he’s connecting the leads, I’m like, “You don’t happen to know what a dandelion looks like, do you?” And he grins and says, “I’m guessing you’re not a country girl,” and I’m like, “No, actually,” and he leans down and picks a dandelion about one inch away from my foot. And he presents it to me like it’s a rose and he’s the Bachelor, dandelion spores blowing in the breeze. I’m like, “Great! Now I don’t need my car jump-started!” and he’s like, “I’ll do it for you anyway, no charge,” which he does, and then he says, “If I were you, I’d drive it round for an hour or so to charge up the battery.” And I’m thinking, Okay, well, I’ll drive up to the Ridge. Because although I now have dandelion leaves, I can’t actually remember what’s supposed to happen when you pee on them. I mean if you’re pregnant. So no choice but to call Mum and try to find out in a roundabout way, which I know in advance is a bad idea because of course she will see right through me.

  So I drive up to the Ridge and perch on my usual rock, and wave my phone about in the air, trying to get some reception going. As anticipated, phone call to Mum does not go well. We end up screaming at each other, surprise surprise. She does not buy my story about my “friend” who thinks she might be pregnant, and gets very snappy and says, “Stop lying to me, Eleanor, I am not an idiot!” Then she gets it into her head that me being pregnant is just the worst possible thing given my breast cancer, because according to my mother, who is a self-appointed Professor of Breast Cancer and avid reader of online forums on the subject, my sort of cancer feeds on estrogen or whatever the pregnancy hormone is, so basically I tell her that I am placing a ban on any further communication with her for three months. I do these bans periodically. I have done ever since I was about twelve.

  I mean, I thought she always wanted grandchildren! Seriously, you can’t win with her sometimes.

  Anyway, I get back into the car and it almost doesn’t start again because of course I only drove it for about ten minutes as opposed to the “hour or so” that my lovely mechanic recommended. But, thank God, it does finally kick over so I drive home at speed, jump out of the car, run into the house, and grab a plastic container, because basically I am bursting to pee and I need to pee all over these dandelion leaves.

  Okay, so what follows is a tad on the weird side. I sit there on the toilet staring at my plastic container of yellow piss and dandelion leaves, swishing them round from time to time in a bid to speed up the process. For the longest time nothing happens. I start to feel myself sinking into the abyss all over again. I begin to berate myself for getting my hopes up and allowing myself to get all carried away on this slim, meager, hopeless possibility. Berating myself doesn’t seem enough punishment though, so I begin to punch myself hard on my thighs and arms until I mottle and bruise, but even this doesn’t satisfy me. Finally, I stand up and put my fist through the flimsy, moldering drywall of the toilet wall. That feels better. And I’m just about to flush the urine-and-dandelion potion down the toilet when suddenly I notice something. Strange dark purplish spots, barely perceptible at first, are beginning to appear on the dandelion leaves. Then, before my fascinated gaze, they start to swell up and blister. It’s disgusting. I’m thinking, what kind of fiendish hormone is this that causes these hideous festering ulcers on this sweet innocent little dandelion plant?

  A pregnancy hormone, that’s what!! Hooray!!!!

  Just trying to have a quiet moment to reflect and gather my thoughts.

  I’m expecting a baby.

  Even writing down the words feels momentous.

  But you know what? Things really need to change around here. I need to get my act together. No more nonsense. Time to behave like a grown-up.

  Should I tell Gregory? I think it’s only fair. He has a right to know. Plus I have a hunch he’s going to be super excited about it. Maybe shocked at first. Like, it might take a bit of getting used to. But I know for a fact that he’s going to be an amazing dad. Strict possibly, like he is with Ryan, but that’s okay, I can be the fun lenient one. I’ll be like, “Go ask your father.” And Gregory will be like, “Go ask your mother.” Possibly we’ll argue sometimes about child-rearing things, but that’s normal. Most couples don’t see completely eye to eye. Like, I could easily imagine Gregory being the total maniac tennis-coach dad. Hours of practice on the courts, screaming at the kid if he drops a point, that sort of thing. Beatings, possibly, with a tennis racket. But you know what? Compared with what a lackadaisical slack-arse I am, maybe a little bit of that’s not such a bad thing.

  More and more I have the feeling that if I can only set down events in a straightforward chronological orderly fashion then perhaps I can make sense of these things that are happening to me one after another and maybe hold on to my sanity. Because I am feeling very confused, very bewildered, very shaken up all the time. This can’t be healthy. This can’t be good for my breast cancer.

  First there’s the memorial service—that is, the memorial service for Miss Barker. The Praying Mantis leering at us through his wine-blackened teeth. The children singing “Over in the Meadow,” all dressed in yellow, their little faces tear-stained and earnest. Me conducting, or at least waving my arms about. Miss Barker’s parents in the front pew, quietly dignified in their grief. (How short they are! Why are old people so short?) Next to them—this is where it gets interesting—a figure all hunched over, weeping and wailing like Oscar Pistorius. The fiancé, I’m thinking, it has to be. So I’m sneaking furtive glances, but it’s impossible to get a good look at him. I can see that there is something very weird about his hair, however. It’s bright gold, curly, synthetic, like a fancy-dress wig from a two-dollar shop.

  The song drones on and on, verse after monotonous verse. I mean, there are actually only ten verses, but about halfway through you enter into a state of suspended consciousness, like seriously you start using less oxygen, your heart rate practically stops, there’s no discernible brain activity. So anyway, we’re up to the verse about the old mother frog and her little froggies seven when suddenly I notice Ryan materializing at the back of the church. I hadn’t even registered up to that point that he was missing. He’s wearing a yellow T-shirt as per the dress code, but even from here I can see that he’s sopping wet and covered in mud. He seems very intent, very purposeful, and as he marches down the aisle, his sandshoes squelching with every step, I see that he’s holding very carefully in both hands the Tupperware container I gave him the other night. I’m thinking, What has he got in that container? Surely not cupcakes? Why is he bringing cupcakes into the church? And as he gets closer, I can see what looks like reeds, dirty brown water, some indistinct shape floating inside it, and I think, Shit! He’s found the hand! He’s found Miss Barker’s hand!

  So I panic. I’m thinking that Ryan’s going to make a scene here, an unpleasant scene involving the grisly hand, and it is imperative that I somehow head him off. I break away from my conducting (the song still droning on and on) and I move up the aisle toward him. I’m going, “Ryan! Ryan! What are you doing?” But he pays me no attention and just tries to move past me. So now I realize that I have to act. I grab hold of him as forcefully as I can, basically making a citizen’s arrest. He resists. We start wrestling violently in the middle of the church. He’s screaming, “Let go of me! You’re hurting me! Let go of me!” and now I’m vaguely aware that people are standing up and shouting at me. One of the dads is trying to pull me off. All the while I’m trying to wrench the Tupperware container out of Ryan’s grasp and he’s struggling like a maniac, and in the midst of all this commotion, Miss Barker’s semi-putrefied hand, still clutching the clump of stalks, falls out of the container and onto the carpet.

  This next bit I can barely bring myself to think about.

  Okay, so the impact of the drop causes the stalks to fall free of its grasp. For a moment the hand just lies there, a hideous slimy thing, much of its flesh rotted away, its thin little chicken bones exposed. A couple of fingernails remain, and I realize with a jolt that Mi
ss Barker wore the same Revlon Posh Pink nail polish that I do. So I’m staring down at the repulsive thing when, I swear to God, before my eyes, the fingers begin to unfurl. I cannot believe what I’m seeing, I mean I’m literally flabbergasted. The fingers wiggle about in the air for a moment, and I actually laugh out loud because it’s comical, it’s like a beetle on its back except it’s not, it’s Miss Barker’s putrid rotting appendage. But I guess my amusement must have made it angry, because suddenly it heaves itself over so its palm is facing downward on the ecclesiastical carpet. It lies there inert for a moment, as if resting, but then, very cautiously, the fingers begin a kind of creeping motion, uncertain at first but gathering confidence. Now the ghastly hand is starting to propel itself along the carpet! At first it sets off gamely toward the back of the church and then suddenly it stops. It seems confused. It wiggles two fingers about like antennae and apparently gets a whiff of something, because it suddenly executes a very decisive one-eighty so now it is facing me. I scream, but my scream seems to galvanize the little fucker and it sets off down the aisle toward me, scuttling, almost crablike; you’d be surprised how fast it can move. So I’m screaming and trying to get out of its way, but the more I retreat, the more hell-bent it seems on pursuing me, and somehow I can’t seem to retreat any farther because someone has my elbows pinned behind my back, and now the hand has reached the toe of my shoe. It hesitates a moment, raises a couple of fingers in the air, and then—sweet Jesus—it launches itself onto my shoe and digs its few remaining talons into the soft flesh of my ankles.

  Then there is a blank (I’m having a lot of blanks). I don’t know what happened. Maybe I fainted.

  The next thing I know, I find myself hunched over a toilet, and I’m throwing up. I feel like maybe I’ve been throwing up for a while because my throat is red raw, and yet I have absolutely no memory of how long I’ve been here. Can you throw up when you’re unconscious? I guess so—drunks do it all the time. I become aware of voices outside my cubicle, women’s voices talking in hushed tones, and now as I rest my cheek against the toilet seat I try to hear what they’re saying, but I can’t quite make anything out. The toilet seat feels cool against my skin, and that’s nice because I feel hot, extremely hot, probably feverish. Someone knocks on the door to ask me if I’m all right. I wipe my mouth on the sleeve of my blouse and I get up and flush the toilet and stagger out. And there’s Glenda and Mrs. Moran standing by the basins, staring at me. They are “gravely concerned,” says Mrs. Moran. Apparently I took a turn. I made a terrible scene in the church. And I say, “But the hand! You saw the hand!” And they say, “What hand? What are you talking about?” And I say, “Miss Barker’s hand! The hand that Ryan brought in!” And they say, “Ryan brought the turtle in, Tommy the turtle, because of the song. An old mother turtle and her little turtle one. It was Tommy that fell out of the Tupperware container. We all thought the shock had killed him because at first he didn’t move, but then, one by one, his little legs came out and off he went, marching down the carpet.”

  And now Friar Hernandez pokes his head into the bathroom. And he says, “How is she? Is she all right?” And Glenda says, “She’s not well, not well at all,” shaking her head and pretending to be all concerned about my welfare. And Friar Hernandez says, “Ladies, may I have a moment in private with her, please?” And I’m thinking, No, please, please, no moment in private with Friar Hernandez. But the two women obediently scurry out and leave me alone with him.

  So now he leans against the washbasins and folds his arms, and surveys me very seriously, very intently.

  “I’m going to ask you a simple question, Eleanor,” he says finally.

  I’m thinking, Here we go.

  Then he asks me if I’ve had any visitors.

  And I’m like (frowning), “Visitors? Are you asking me if I’ve ever had any visitors? Like, in my entire life? Or just if I’ve had any visitors lately?” I’m being all pedantic because I’m trying to stall him, I’m trying to buy time. But he’s not going to brook any nonsense from me, so he says, very slowly and deliberately: “I’m asking you if you’ve had any visitors lately. And by lately, I mean specifically since the exorcism I performed on you.”

  So I say, “As a matter of fact, no. No, I haven’t received any visitors since that totally unwarranted and unasked-for pagan ritual you put me through.”

  Which was a lie, of course. Because I have had a visitor. In fact, I’ve had several visitors, but specifically I’m thinking of the visitor of all visitors, the incredibly beautiful golden-skinned taut-torsoed Gregory, tippy-toeing around my house like he’s casing the place.

  And he says, “Are you sure? Cast your mind back. Bear in mind, they can be masters of disguise.”

  And I make a big show of casting my mind back, and then I say, “Nope. Pretty sure no visitors.”

  He sighs very heavily. And then he’s off, spouting the Bible at me:

  “The unclean spirit when he is cast out of man passes through arid places, seeking rest blah blah, and finding none, he sayeth, I will turn back unto my house from whence I came. And he taketh seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter in and blah-de-blah-blah till the last state of the man becometh worse than the first.”

  Something like that anyway. I don’t know what it is, but anytime anyone starts rabbiting on with Bible quotes, I pretty much tune out completely. Basically I just stand there and wait for his mouth to stop flapping. And when it does finally stop flapping, I’m like, “Um, did you say something just then?”

  He’s getting exasperated with me now. He shifts his bony arse on the washbasin and cocks his head to one side, regarding me in a way that I guess he hopes looks “quizzical.”

  “All right,” he says. “In plain English. When the demon is cast out, it comes back—do you understand?—only seven times worse than before.”

  And then he says, “In cancer terms, if you like, you could say it metastasizes.”

  I can’t think of a comeback because the wooziness returns to me now. I’m feeling overheated, not quite comprehending. All I know is I don’t like that word metastasizes. I’ve never liked the word, and I particularly don’t like the word coming from Friar Hernandez. If anyone is going to talk to me about metastases, let it be Doc, my dear beloved Doc with his bald patch and his kind eyes and his warm hands. Not this creep, not the Praying Mantis.

  But now he leans in horribly close so I can smell his rancid communion wine breath: “Seven other spirits more evil than the first. And you, stupid girl, keep inviting them in!”

  And suddenly he reels back and slaps me hard across the face. So hard I’m thrown against the toilet doors and then I ricochet into the hand dryer, setting it off. I drop down on all fours, totally in shock, staring at his trouser legs. I literally cannot believe what is happening to me. Next thing—I don’t even stop to think—I’ve got my jaws clamped tight around his bony trousered shins. I’m sinking my teeth in hard and it feels good, it feels really good. I suddenly think, This is why dogs like postmen! and even through the polyester/viscose, I’m beginning to taste the sweet saltiness of his blood. He’s screaming and shaking his leg and trying to pull me off by the scruff of my neck, but that just makes me dig in deeper, jerking my head from side to side to toss him around a bit. He doesn’t seem to enjoy that much at all.

  Finally, I take pity on his whimpering and release him. I escape out the bathroom door and find myself in the sunshine, so bright and yellow it makes me flinch. I duck into the shade behind a tree, and after a minute or two my eyes adjust and I begin to make sense of what I’m looking at. The entire congregation is assembled outside, each holding a yellow balloon. People seem to be giving speeches. Now Mrs. Moran passes the microphone to Ryan and he reads aloud from a piece of paper.

  “If roses grow in heaven,

  Lord, please pick a bunch for me.

  Place them in Miss Barker’s arms

  And tell her they’re from me.”

  Bad timing, I know,
but I immediately throw up.

  Mainly just bile and bits of flesh and small fragments of Friar Hernandez’s trousers. No one pays me much attention because they’re all releasing the balloons, which are floating skyward, and everybody oohs and ahhs and claps their hands like they’ve never seen a balloon before. But I’ve got my eye on the fiancé in his strange wig. He’s standing between Miss Barker’s oldies with an arm around each of them, and they’re gazing up at the yellow balloons as they disappear into the heavens and poor old Mr. Barker is wiping away a tear. I start circling around through the crowd toward them, because I’m determined to get a good look at this fiancé guy, this supposed betrothed of Miss Barker. I need to know if it’s Gregory lurking under that wig.

  And as I’m edging closer, he suddenly turns and looks straight at me. It’s like he knew I was coming, like he sensed it, and I get a jolt, like a cold chill, because of course it is Gregory. It’s most definitely Gregory, even though for some reason he is wearing this ludicrous wig. And as our eyes lock, his finger rises fleetingly to his lips as if urging me to be quiet. Then he turns away and allows himself to be pulled into a warm embrace by Miss Barker’s mother.

  But I’m not about to keep quiet. Not after what I’ve been through. So I go marching up to him, and I tap him on the shoulder. And when he turns, I say: “Why didn’t you tell me you were her fiancé?”

  I’m actually startled by how different my voice sounds. Perhaps it’s damaged from all the vomiting, but it’s deeper and scratchier, and the sound of it shocks me, and it seems to shock everyone around me. But Gregory just looks at me blankly. “I’m sorry?” he says. Quite politely, like he has no idea who I am. So I grab hold of his arm, and in my scary new voice, I say: “I’m having your baby, you bastard.”

  Not quite how I pictured breaking the news.

  And yet it seems to have an effect.