The Bus on Thursday Page 5

  Oh Lord, do not rebuke me, I am feeble and broken. There is no soundness in my flesh, nor any health in my bones because of my sin. My wounds are foul and festering because of my foolishness. My loins are full of inflammation. My friends stand aloof from my plague, and my relatives stand far off. Do not forsake me, O Lord, do not be far from me, come quickly to help me, etc. etc.

  Seriously.

  I mean, it went on and on and on, but that is the overall gist of it.

  So I get to the end of this, and I’m thinking, Fuck.

  And I look up at him, and he’s just watching me, kind of like he’s studying me. So I say, “Why exactly did you want me to read this?”

  And he says, “Well, I’ll tell you. You talk as though having cancer was just random bad luck, but that’s actually not the case. Cancer is caused by a demon—or at least, the impetus which drives the cancer is demonic. And how does a demon enter the body? Through an open door. At the very least, you left the door open and it wandered in of its own accord, but more likely, you have unwittingly invited it.”

  All this said in a very calm rational voice, like it’s a perfectly reasonable statement.

  And then he offers to exorcise my demon.

  Again, seriously.

  So I say, “I think the demon’s already been exorcised, don’t you? Isn’t that what a mastectomy is?” And he goes, “No, that’s just an excision. You’re talking about the physical removal of a section of afflicted tissue. I’m talking about something more complex than that; I’m talking about that which afflicts you.”

  And something about those words, that which afflicts you, out of nowhere, I start to cry. Tears just rolling down my cheeks. A great feeling of sadness, a kind of bottomless sadness. He takes hold of my hand now and he leans forward and says, “Look, would you at least let me say a prayer for you?” And I say, “You mean a prayer to get rid of my demons?” And he nods. And even though he’s obviously completely insane and his lips have gone black from the wine, I think, All right. Why not? What harm can it do? I’m probably rattling with them.

  Next thing I know, the Praying Mantis is standing over me and he rests his icy hand on my forehead and starts murmuring this prayer. And as he goes on, he gets louder and louder and starts pressing down harder on my forehead, forcing my head back. And he’s reeling off every word for a bad thing he can think of. “All demons, all devils, all pets of the devil, all incubi, succubi, all fallen angels that prey upon mortal women, wishing to plant their seed, all unclean spirits, demon missives, serpents and scorpions, and all those demons that afflict the body and stimulate cell mutation and cancer growth”—I am not kidding, the list went on and on, these are just the ones that I remember. And now he’s really starting to hurt my neck because he is pushing my head back so hard and he’s shouting, “I command you to leave, in the name of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit!”

  And now I’m suddenly feeling like I’m going to throw up. I open my eyes, and he’s holding this fucking great crucifix over me, and shouting at the top of his lungs, “Out! Out! Begone!”

  With all the strength I can muster, I push him away from me and I just get the fuck out of there as fast as I can.

  And I basically run all the way back to this house, and I bolt all those door locks. Front and back. All of them. I am so angry, I am literally shaking; I am literally vibrating with rage. How dare he? How fucking dare he? And I think, I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t stay. I don’t like this place, I don’t like this place at all. And I pull out my suitcase and I start throwing clothes in it. But my guts are still really churning and I’m feeling really sick, so I go to the toilet and stick my fingers down my throat, and all I achieve is throwing up the rancid red wine and I’m pretty sure the tamoxifen I took this morning as well. And then in the middle of all that, Mum calls on the landline. So she cops the lot. I don’t even tone down the swearing.

  At the very least, you left the door open and it wandered in of its own accord, but more likely, you have unwittingly invited it.

  How exactly did I invite it? By wearing underwire bras occasionally? Go fuck yourself, Friar Hernandez.

  Oh, and this other really weird thing happens. I forgot to tell Mum this bit, but it’s actually kind of funny. When I run out of the church and onto the street, I suddenly realize someone is hurrying after me, calling out to me. Not Friar Hernandez, but this funny little sparrow-like woman who’s been standing in the vestibule counting hymn books; I almost plow into her in my desperation to get out of there. She’s scurrying after me now, going, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” So I swing around and very rudely, because I’m so fucking furious, I go, “WHAT?”

  And she hands me this leaflet about a decoupage workshop.

  No, first she literally cowers away from me like she’s terrified I’m going to hit her, and then she plucks up her courage and hands me the leaflet about the decoupage workshop.

  Of course, I’m very apologetic when I see her cower, because this woman is so tiny and birdlike it’s almost like she might have some strange bone condition or something. She’s probably about fifty, though it’s hard to tell, and she’s all dressed up in her Sunday suit, including MATCHING HAT AND GLOVES! What year is this??? Have I been catapulted back to 1950??? And everything seems slightly too big for her, like she’s shrunk. Her manner is very nervous and tremulous, and she speaks very rapidly and breathlessly as if it’s a matter of great urgency, and she says, “I just wanted to say, you need to keep yourself busy here. Keep yourself active, in mind and in body. Do you have any hobbies?”

  Hobbies, for Christ’s sake. She wants to talk about hobbies. And even though this is the last thing I want to be chatting about straight after I’ve had my demons exorcised, I think for a moment, and I realize, Shit, I actually don’t have any hobbies. So I say, “Reading,” which is pretty lame, considering I spent about three hours yesterday flicking through one issue of New Weekly, which I hardly think could be described as reading.

  But Little Sparrow says, “No, not reading. We discourage reading. No, you need tasks; simple, pleasurable tasks, to keep your mind occupied. I saw you bicycling yesterday—that’s an excellent activity. Long, brisk walks, nine holes of golf. Anything really, just as long as it doesn’t tire the lungs or heat the blood excessively. The Women’s Auxiliary run craft workshops once a month. This month it’s decoupage—will you come?”

  And I say, “Well, look, I might—I’ll see how I go. I’m not much of a craft person.”

  And then she gets very serious, and she leans in and I get a whiff of eau de cologne and mothballs, not entirely unpleasant. She says, “I can see you think I’m being intrusive. I don’t mean to bother you, it’s just that the isolation can be so difficult. The feeling that the mountains are pressing in upon you. I worry especially for the younger people, like yourself

  * * *

  Okay, I’m back. I dropped the story there, because I suddenly came over incredibly sleepy and had to go and lie down, and then I slept for a solid three hours.

  When I woke, it was getting dark outside. So I got up and I put a coat on and went for a walk, and suddenly I felt better about everything. Talbingo looked so beautiful with the sun low in the sky, and the air felt so fresh and cool that breathing it was like drinking from a mountain stream. I climbed up to the back of the golf course near the pine trees, and met a couple of friendly old horses who ambled over to say hello. I like horses. Tomorrow I’ll bring them some apples. Then on the way back, I saw a few of the kids from school tearing around the golf course on their bikes, and they called out to me, “Miss! Miss!” and they were really excited to see me, and we chatted about this and that. So that was really nice. And the kangaroos were coming down from the hills to graze near the Pondage, and I could see a couple of them had joeys hanging out of their pouches. And then I came home and I cooked myself a stir-fry, and I thought, Okay. I can do this. Stay away from the Praying Mantis and everything will be all right.

  I’ve had a pretty go
od week so far. Which just goes to show how important attitude is. Working hard to be positive, instead of defaulting to my usual “woe is me the world is fucked and I am the only sane one” position. Even Glenda’s been okay for the most part.

  The kids and I are still in the “getting to know you” stage, but mostly I have to say it’s going pretty well. There have been a couple of minor bust-ups. The younger girls in particular find it hard to adapt to different teaching styles. Yesterday Brody burst into tears when I failed to give her an Awesome!! sticker on her spelling test. Apparently Miss Barker had some elaborate marking system which involved awarding stickers saying things like Awesome!!, Wow!!, and Keep it up!! in various confusing combinations depending on the mark. Clearly she must have had shares in a Taiwanese sticker empire, because Brody directs me to the sticker cupboard, which is literally chock-full of stickers, each with about a gazillion exclamation marks. Then she explains Miss Barker’s ludicrous overcomplicated sticker-awarding system to me in exhaustive detail until my eyes glaze over and my head explodes. Finally I say, “Gee, that’s great, Brody, but guess what? My method is different. Here’s what I do: I draw a smiley face.” That’s right, a hastily scribbled red Biro smiley face, which I think should be sufficient. I dug in on this: I wasn’t going to give ground. Suck it up, Brody: new teacher, new methods. Far be it from me to criticize Miss Barker, but in my humble opinion, stickers are a slippery slope. Kids get all demented and competitive about them. Case in point: Brody. Sheesh.

  Anyway, we got through it eventually. But to be honest, it felt good not to be pussyfooting around the ghost of Miss Barker the Absconder. I think the kids respected me for it. I’m thinking I might shake up the seating arrangement, too. At the moment, it’s all very uniform, everyone organized in their year groups. But sometimes it’s good to mix it up a bit, keep it fresh. Maybe I’ll work on that tonight.

  The other slight fly in the ointment is Ryan. He is the oldest of the kids and is supposed to be twelve, although he looks seriously fourteen and appears to have bumfluff, so is obviously in the throes of some sort of early-onset pubescence. He’s a lump of a kid, and quite frankly he gives me the creeps. We were doing group reading on Tuesday and I asked him to read aloud. He refused point-blank, and then Lucy says, “Miss Barker always does private reading with Ryan.” Because apparently he is too shy to read out loud in front of the class. One thing he is not shy about, however, is gawking at my breasts. I actually thought I must have had my shirt unbuttoned, because every time I looked up, he was staring at my boobs. And then later on, when I was bending over Oliver’s desk correcting his work, Ryan got up from his seat and brushed up right behind me like a sleazy old perv. Like totally rubbed up against me, pretending to get past. I straighten up like a shot, and say, “What are you doing out of your seat, Ryan?” and he smirks and says, “I’m just feeding Tommy, Miss.” And I’m like, “You can get up and feed Tommy when I tell you to. Get back to your seat.” And then he slithers past me to get back to his seat. Eeek. Get this kid to high school.

  But otherwise I think I’m making progress. I’ve organized an informal Parent-Teacher Night next week so I can talk to the parents and find out more about the kids, blah blah. So that should be useful. Also, I’m walking a lot and eating pretty well.

  5 Things I Can Be Grateful About Today:

  1. I have a great job.

  2. I am cancer-free.

  3. Madison and Grace very shyly presented me with Silkie’s egg today, and apparently Silkie hardly ever lays so it was extra-special! I practically choked up. Sweet kids.

  4. I live in this nice little cottage, rent fully paid by the Education Department!

  5. The Pritchett kids’ mum said the kids thought I was “cool.”

  Also, I suddenly realized today that I haven’t had any twinging for a long time. When did that stop??

  The new seating arrangement did not go over so well. There were tears. Like actual inconsolable sobbing. Recriminations were hurled, mostly comparing me unfavorably to Miss Barker. Brody told me she hated me (feeling’s mutual there). There were phone calls from concerned parents. Glenda accused me of “meddling for meddling’s sake.” So after gritting my teeth and persevering for almost two days, this afternoon I caved and put everyone back where they used to be. Then, as soon as the bell went, I drove all the way into Tumut to buy a carton of wine, so Janelle won’t tell everyone I’m an alcoholic. Drove back against the setting sun, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision, then cracked open a bottle and guzzled. Good night.

  Can’t sleep.

  Still no sleep. This is ridiculous.

  This is why I shouldn’t drink wine. When I finish this box, I’m giving up. Alternatively, I could pour the remaining eleven bottles down the sink right now. But that seems a bit drastic, not to say wasteful of money. That’s like $130 literally down the gurgler. Also, I practically got killed on the drive back from Tumut, so the least I can do is drink the stuff. I mean, I could very well be dead right now.

  What happened was I got stuck behind a bus.

  I mean, let’s face it, it’s a hideous drive at the best of times. You’ve got the mountains on one side and the Tumut River on the other and it just twists and turns the entire way. Sure, it’s spectacular, but what good is spectacular when you can’t take your eyes off the road for literally one second? To add to my misery, the sun is going down, which means it’s directly in my eyes the whole way and because my windscreen is so filthy, it’s kind of flaring on the accumulated dust and practically blinding me. Also, because the sun’s going down, all these kangaroos are coming down from the hills to the water, and for some strange reason, even though they are wild animals and thus you would think their survival instincts finely honed, they do not appear to notice the one and a half tons of smoldering metal bearing down on them at 100 kph. Or if they do eventually notice, rather than get the fuck out of the way, they figure their best option is to stand stock-still in the middle of the road—like that’s achieving anything. (How are these guys not actually extinct?) So anyway I am dodging these nervous ninnies the whole way, and let me just say, it is not diminishing my stress levels any. In fact, the solitary good thing about rounding a corner and suddenly finding this dirty great bus in front of me is that at least the bus would hit any kangaroos before I did. Also, it blocks the sun.

  Turns out it’s the slowest, stinkiest, least-roadworthy-looking bus I have ever had the misfortune to get stuck behind. It is creeping along at seriously 10 kph, yet this seems to require extraordinary amounts of fuel, because it is belching out these vast clouds of diesel fumes. Obviously there is something very seriously mechanically wrong with it, because not only is it emitting all these toxic fumes, it is also making very unhealthy wheezy rattling grinding noises, like its innards are about to drop out on the highway at any moment. And my problem is that between Tumut and home there’s no stretch long enough or straight enough to overtake it. So after twenty minutes of being stuck behind this behemoth, I start to get desperate. I feel like I’m asphyxiating, even with the windows up. I realize if I do not do something assertive, I will be stuck behind this bastard for at least another forty minutes and after the day I’d had, I’ll be honest, I was hanging out to get home and inhale wine. So when the bus sticks its right-hand indicator on, I think to myself, Well, this must mean the bus is telling me it’s safe to overtake. To be honest, I’m a little confused about what it means. I’m thinking, Does this flashing orange light, dimly discernible through the road grime, mean “Do not overtake under any circumstances”? Or does it mean “Here’s your chance, sweetheart, go for it”? I’ll admit I’m not fluent in bus semaphore. But I’ve hardly seen any traffic coming the other way so I decide to gird my loins and take my chances. And even though the bus is heading toward yet another blind corner, I pull out and start to overtake.

  The minute I pull out, of course, I’ve got the sun back in my eyes and I literally cannot see. I slam the sun visor down, but that doesn’t seem to hel
p any because the sun is now so low it’s below the actual level of the sun visor. So instead of reconsidering the whole thing and pulling back behind the bus, which is probably what I should have done, I put my foot to the floor in the hope I can accelerate my way out of this pickle. And immediately I’m reminded just how gutless the Corolla is, especially in a pinch, in a crisis, like when it matters. It’s giving me nothing, and not only that but I’m suddenly noticing how long this stupid bus is—maybe all buses are this long and I’ve never actually realized. And I can’t figure out why I don’t seem to be gaining on it and then I realize that it’s because the bus is actually SPEEDING UP. WTF??? First it signals to overtake then it speeds up to stop me passing!?! I can hear its engines whining right alongside me, like an aircraft straining for lift-off. So even though I’m absolutely flooring it, I find myself going around this bend neck and neck with the bus, except of course I am on the wrong side of the road. And suddenly I hear this ear-piercing musical horn blast and even though I’m blinded by the glare, I glimpse this vehicle, a mustard-colored muscle car, coming straight for me. This is it, I think, I’m about to die to the tune of “Dixie.” I’ll either plummet over the side of the road into the Tumut River or smash headlong into this hot rod—those are my two available options. So I scream out, “God, please help me please please please!” and miraculously—I do not use the word lightly—the Corolla somehow finds the guts to surge ahead of the bus. The moment I pass it, I veer right back in front of it, narrowly avoiding collision with the muscle car.

  Car goes past with another blast of “Dixie.” Fair enough.

  But unfortunately, what I’ve done now is I’ve cut the bus off. So it slams on its air brakes—this horrible gasping, wheezing sound, like something you’d hear in a respiratory ward—then its wheels lock and it goes into a skid. It’s slewing and sliding all over the road, and I’m seeing all this in my rearview mirror. I am literally whimpering. I am bleating like a lamb and just trying to get the hell out of its way because it is obviously completely out of control. And because we’re on a downhill slope now, it’s gaining momentum and it looks for all the world like it will careen right over the top of me. So in my panic I slam the steering wheel hard left and swing the Corolla headfirst into a culvert on the mountain side of the road. Just in the nick of time because the bus hurtles right past me, blasting its horn.