(Fiction by Epicene Blue)

[To my father, who did not escape whole from Vietnam or his broken family, and so had to break everything else around him.]

He didn’t help her as she sprawled on the slickness of the bus stairs, her bag flung all the way under the driver’s chair.  He could hear her labored, rasping breathing as she tried to retrieve her now mud-slicked pocketbook from between the driver’s feet.  He was right there, front seat, could have offered a bare, hairy arm to the raincoated one that reached out to him.  But why should he; why should he?  Wasn’t his fault she fell. 

But there were her eyes as she looked up, staring, accusing; eyes pitted, echoed by stringy black hair so like. . .so like. . .  He turned away, daring his reflection in the grimy bus window to respond.  It refused for a moment, but his mind provided the words anyway.  She has to sit here you know, those dirt-encrusted, transparent lips seemed to say, there aren’t any other seats.  Ignore her, ignore her. . .

But he could not.  Should have helped her, should have helped, should have…

Finally, she must have untangled the bag, he felt the bus lurch unsteadily forward, heard the woman grunt as the movement pushed her against the legs of the short, gray-haired man across the aisle from him. He heard the creak of the seat as she sat next to him, carefully avoiding casual contact.  The woman coughed, on purpose, blaming him, he imagined, for her dirty bag and her wrinkled stockings.

He pushed his face forward again, daring to glance at her under his greasy bangs as she dragged her bag into her lap–too color-bright against the dimness of herself.  The diffused light of the bus made her look like a rag-doll thrown on the ground and the green plastic seat made her thighs look jaundiced as they peaked out from under her faded raincoat.  Blaming, he knew, she had always blamed him.  He was not surprised to see her, she had followed him to this place; she had driven him here.  No, his reflection said in the window, calling him back to stare into its sinking eyes,  you don’t know this woman.

But I do, he said against the denial,  I do, I do. . .

A strange odor, musky, warm crept up on him, dragging thoughts of mimosas and of that other place; that place where he should have helped her.  For a moment, the bus became a helicopter flattening the green water-fields of a place he should have never seen.  The remembered itch of the metal bucket helmet made him reach to rub the bare scalp of his hair cut too short.  He nodded to his reflection, I knew it was her, I knew it.  No, his smudged face replied, shot through with trees.  No, you don’t know this woman.  He almost smiled at the scared, avoiding mouth in the glass, he knew that no other woman smelled like her. 

The face shifted, rising and then falling again, blurring a little as the bus rounded a corner too fast.

The woman moved, making the seat cry out like a dying baby.  Yes, that was the sound, he had heard it before.  A sharp quick squeal and then a long sighing breath.  She glanced towards him with a tight frown under runny makeup.  Did she know he could see her, that he was watching her fading in and out next to his other face?  But his reflection would not fade.  Perhaps he was fading instead… Where are you going?

Where are you going?

Why would his face ask that?  Ah, not him, that woman, that woman that was not that woman.  He saw her full, drooping lips moving in the half-lit world of his window-world.

He wanted to answer, he needed to answer, but he was trapped in the staring of his eyes from the window—sometimes green with tree or blue-gray with sky.  So he whispered, instead, to the mirror of her, almost lost against the emptiness between buildings.

“I am following you, I am running from you, I am going to see the Black Wall and the white stones in rows on rows on rows.”  No, said his reflection to her reflection, he does not know you, ignore him, ignore him…

But she hadn’t heard anyway.  He could see her as she turned away toward the gum-sticky aisle, angry at his lack of response.  Her yellowed raincoat made a slick sound against the seat plastic, reminding him of rain on wet rifles, just as they are being drawn.  He could see her back in the window, dull yellow suddenly on fire with the sun through her like blood, like blood from bullet holes, like blood from her…

No!  Screamed his mouth without moving in the plastic-glass, no, you do not know this woman!

Yes, screamed his hands, naked on imaginary black metal, fingers hovering near the trigger.  Yes.  I do know this woman.  He broke one hand from his remembered weapon and ran it down the pseudo-glass of the metal-framed window as if caressing the image of the woman’s hair.  It came away with a light coat of dust and oil. 

See the mud caked in her dead hair where she has been lying in the ashy mud of this burned village?  He squinted at the laughing sun being smothered by a dirty gray cloud, the light forcing it to pink.  See her blood seeping into the mud, turning it to red clay?  He inhaled like a man tired of fighting the water, drowning himself in the musky smell again, sipping it, analyzing it.  There, smell the heat of the humidity and the choke of the fire; the stink of the ruined rice patties and the flowers and the bodies?                                       

The woman turned again as the bus drew up to her stop, pulling her raincoat close around her, like a shroud, like a shroud…  Her rainbow bag made a dull, wet sound as she rose, bumping it into the driver’s seat before pulling it close to her chest.  She spared a glance at him as she gathered herself.  He could still see her, even clearer now against the slowly graying sky in the reflection of the smudged glass. 

He whispered again to her, but he was afraid she might her, that she might speak again. “Crazy Bastard.”  she muttered under her breath, not noticing that he could see her lips moving in the window.  He did not know those words. He turned to her to stop her, to ask her what she meant, to finally ask for her to forgive him.  She moved forward, without turning back as the bus came to a halt and carefully went down the steps, one hand on the railing, one protecting her handbag.  

He drew back against the lukewarm seat, turning back to his reflection, watching the light fade from its dark hole eyes.  That man in the window never noticed when she left, she had only faded from beside him.  She would be back, he knew; maybe in the glossy surface of the Black Wall, her eyes accusing between the names.  Or flashing, briefly, on the polished white stones laid so neatly in rows on rows on rows.

No, cried his image in the window, unnoticed, no, you never knew that woman!

But he knew her, his hands remembered the feel of her cold stiffness.  I have always known her.