I Remember the School Bus

I remember the school bus. The smell of exhaust and tired maple trees. I remember sitting there, kindergarten-small, wearing a purple wool skirt on that hot September morning. I don’t care. I love that skirt. I love things I love and I want that color everywhere. It doesn’t matter that I am sweating. Doesn’t matter that I can’t go upside down and do handstands. Truth is, I would have done handstands right there, even in a skirt. Modesty was alien to me. Still is, but for a mild feeling of discomfort. Tiny blister on my heel while I’m dancing. It’s there, but it’s invisible and usually, I rebel against it, moving passionately with the sting, dancing harder for it. 

Bus is all kids and plastic - sweaty, packed with fresh trapper keepers and mechanical pencils. I look around me. Everyone is first-day nervous, well behaved, sitting-put on their naugahyde benches. Sticky and wide-eyed. Vicky, the bus driver, is strict. Even as the year progresses, those rides are tight. We get silly and laugh, but we stay in our seats. When the back of the bus becomes rowdy, she sends Lesley and me there to keep an eye on the 8th graders. We are so little. I am in love with everybody. 

I can’t talk to them though, the big kids. I just sit there small with Lesley, reporting back to Vicky at the end of the ride. 

Her technique was effective. When the big kids wanted to talk sex and rule-breaking, they did it hushed. I remember being confused a lot. Quietly, I had fantasies of showing myself. Do they know who I am? Do they know I can do handstands, backflips? I imagined myself tumbling down the center aisle. Turning school bus to circus show, dazzling students with a sudden break of routine-transit. Bus seats to gymnastic apparatus; shuttle to traveling stage. I wanted to be seen - all the invisible beauty I could feel, I wanted it out. I imagined this place we all thought predictable, as a dynamic playground. Everything still, waiting to come alive.