“I’m gonna go back to the first place and see if they have it again tomorrow.” The little boy with the curly hair sat on the seat to the right of me, he looked to be about eight or nine. His sister, a sullen pre-teen, sat to my left, his father stood between them in front of me. As the boy talked he looked up at his dad, his big front teeth protruded from his lips even when his mouth was closed.

“You’re gonna try again?” His father held the bar above my head for balance, he seemed old to have such young children, his graying hair tucked under a crumpled black baseball cap, his posture a little hunched and his voice sounded tired.

“Yeah. I’m gonna go back to the first place. But, I always feel a little like, a little guilty when I go into a store or somethin and ask for somethin and they don’t have it and then I just leave.” The boy’s energy pushed into his words, so each popped like a bubble as he discussed this uncomfortable experience.

“Don’t feel guilty son. That’s business. That’s just business.” The father senses his discomfort and attempts to impart a lesson.

“I’ve got math tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, but it’s really easy stuff. Like Kilometers and centimeters and stuff… well actually now that I say it out loud, that doesn’t sound so easy,” the little boy laughed nervously, and continued, “but easi-ER, because today we studied it.”

“That’s good.”

“Like I learned that a kilometer is reeeaaallly big, like a mile,” his arms stretched out into the aisle of the train to show how big.

“Even bigger than a mile. It’s not the same, though. We don’t use that system anyway,” his father dismissed the study of this system. His voice still low as if trying to balance the loudness of his son.

“No, you know we’re the only ones that use feet and inches in the whole world!? We’re the only ones.” The boy served his father’s disbelief right back.

“You gonna move to Europe then?” His father countered.

“What?”

“You’ll be ready to move to Europe then.”

“No, I’m not movin to Europe!”

“Well, you never know. What if Newt Gingrich gets elected? Then we’ll be outta here.”

“Haha. We’ll move to Europe for the four years if he’s president, then come back?” I was surprised that such a young boy would be concerned with something like presidential politics, but maybe I just forget what it’s like to be his age.

“Maybe, maybe not.”

The little boy paused to think about this proposition.

“I dunno. I think I’d rather stay here,” another pause, “with my frieeends.” His lips spread over his large teeth as he said the word, stretching it in his mouth, so that he sat there smiling sheepishly at his father, considering this life of parental freedom.

“‘With yer frieeeeends?’” the father mocked gently, “You sound like a hillbillie.”

“Huh?”

“Nothin,” he ate his unkind words.

“I could stay with..hmm..” he considered his options, “I could stay with Colton … or Ross. No, not Ross. Me and Ross and two babies! No way.” Ross was out.

“Chaos.” The father agreed.

“But I could live with Colton for four years while you live in Europe. Colton doesn’t have a brother or a sister,” he thought of what this could be like, “Or a father.”

“Well, he has a father.”

“No, they got divorced. They’re divorced now.” Again the boy shocked me with his easy ability to bring up such adult subjects.

“Well that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a father still.”

Though I guess no subject can ever be strictly adult.

“Next stop Myrtle-Willoughby,” the crackly subway PA announced.

“One more stop! Our stop is the next one.” The little boy jumped from his seat and grabbed his father’s hand, staring to his silent older sister, plugged into headphones still on the seat next to me and motioned for her to join them.

“Yup, everyday.”

They exited the train together, the little boy running ahead on the platform, while the other two moved slowly behind.

Mertens is also an experienced web producer with two-plus years of production experience at NPR, Kaiser Health News and Bloomberg Government. She is proficient in basic HTML, Dreamweaver and multimedia editing.

Mertens earned her B.A. in English and Italian Studies from Smith College in Northampton, Mass. She is currently a candidate for an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction Writing at The New School University.

Follow Maggie’s current writing project: Moving Right Along: Lives in Transit.

S4 Bus Washington, DC

S2 bus – Silver Spring, MD. The woman sat at the front of the bus, talking to the driver. 

The man got onto the train, two cameras strapped to his body and holding a small black Bible in his hands. He sat quietly. His feet stuck out into the aisle as he unscrewed the lens covers on each camera, turning them backwards and screwing them tight before loading each one preciously into his backpack. Throughout the process he kept glancing at the Bible. Flipping it open, then closing it in his lap after a moment.

As soon as he put the second camera safely in the bag he stood, he moved suddenly from his seat next to a young woman into a seat across the aisle next to another man. The two open seats behind him were also hedged in by a man sitting between them. 

A woman fell into the seat the photographer had just left empty. She turned toward him, moving her lips around the words “thank you,” though little could be heard above the rumble of the train. She kept her eyes slightly down, looking out over her glasses which rested on the tip of her nose, and beneath a blue and white headscarf covering her hair and chin completely. She clutched a cloth grocery bag on her lap and caught her breath.

The man who gave up his seat opened his Bible toward the back, nodding a silent, “No problem,” at the woman while he started to read.

The two girls discussed their teenage love lives, lounging across a bench of the G train in Brooklyn as if it were a couch in one of their bedrooms. 

Distracted from my book for a moment, I looked up, and realized we had been sitting in traffic for several minutes. The road was gridlocked as far as I could see.

“Are we stopped? Where are we?” A man sitting near the front of the bus asked out loud to no one in particular. Sunglasses shaded his eyes and a service dog was curled at his feet.

A man sitting to his left looked around the silent bus, then answered, “Yup, traffic.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” The man paused before inquiring further. “Can you see why?”

“It always gets this way, during the tennis tournament,” the other man went on. He spoke hesitantly as if feeling out the interest of his audience.

He was bald in an awkward way, his head wasn’t very attractive and his eyes bulged unnaturally.  He was actually almost frightening to look at straight on. But the other man listened intently.

“Tennis tournament? Here?” The blind man asked. He sat facing the window that looked out on the tournament grounds, unseen to him.

“Oh, yes, a qualifier for the U.S. Open, Andre Agassi played here last year. Didn’t you hear?”

“You don’t say? Well isn’t that something. And it’s happening now?” He was hungry for the information, for a connection, to see what everyone else could.

The other man took the hint and happily became his eyes. “Yes, now. The parking lot is so full, and it just kills the traffic on this road about this time, when everyone is trying to leave. Yup, there they are, huge parking lots, all full here,” he paused, gathering more material through the window. “And big white tents, several of them. That’s where the matches are played, under these tents. And people have to park way out and then walk all the way here.”

“They play tennis under tents? Huh, isn’t that something.” The blind man seemed to recap to himself, filing away the scene he heard about somewhere in his brain.

The bald man moved over so he was sitting beside the blind man. “Well, now it looks like we’re moving finally. What’s your stop?”

“Rittenhouse Street.”

“Oh yeah? You live on Rittenhouse? Me too!”

“Well, no, I live a few blocks down, on Somerset.”

“Oh, Somerset, so you live near Stewart House?”
“Stewart house? No? I don’t know. What is it?”

“Oh, it’s a safehouse, a halfway house for addicts. You didn’t know it was there? It’s just on the corner of Somerset. You sure you don’t know it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t hear anything from it.”

“Well, I’ll point it out to you, I have to walk that way anyway. Here, our stop’s coming up.” The bald man pulled the bus cord. The digital sign at the front of the bus read Rittenhouse Street.

The blind man smiled and stood up when the bus stopped and lowered to the ground, urging his dog to lead the way. The bald man rushed off before him and stood waiting on the sidewalk.

I watched through the window as he stooped down to pet the blind man’s dog before waving goodbye to the driver.

“Are you expecting?” The loud voice carried from several rows behind me. A very personal question you don’t often hear in the anonymous world of the bus, my ears picked it up over the buzz of conversation around me, and the book I had been using previously to tune it out. Once I zero in on one, I can hardly ever tune it out again.

“Oh, no! No, no, no.” A young woman’s voice emphatically denied, laughing nervously the way people who aren’t ready to get pregnant do when asked about being pregnant.

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t see you behind the seat, so that’s not why I said it, nothing about the way you looked, just because of what I overheard.”

The girl laughed, “No, I’m not,” the girl’s voice was giddy, “but we did just get engaged.” Her excitement broke through the usual wall between bus passengers, spilling details about her personal life.

“Oh my! Well Congratulations, then. That is wonderful news. But you two, how old are you?”

“I’m 20, and he’s 21,” the girl replied.

“So young!” The woman voiced my own response. “Well, let me just tell you, not that you asked, but I’ve been married for 15 years. My husband was 25 and I was 24 when we met. Both just out of college, just starting our lives, and now I’m almost 39, I’ll be 40 next month, my 40^th birthday.” The woman paused. She was a storyteller, the type that would talk to you on the bus, tell you her life story, personal details or dispense marriage advice. 

I wondered if the woman was like that with everyone, even people she knew. Or if she talked to strangers because the people she knew wouldn’t listen.

She launched into her wisdom. “Know that you are young. Let each other grow and change. Are you all creative? Do you do art or music or…?”

The girl must have nodded.

“Work on projects together. Grow together. And above all else, listen. Communication really is the basis of a marriage.”

The young couple was giggling, nervously happy as this stranger explained unsolicited the trials they were bound to face in the near future, and maybe the rest of their lives.

“Did you all watch that series last summer on CNN? Black in America?”

“We might have,” the young man said, speaking up for the first time.

“They had this one segment, on black marriages and the high failure rate of them. They had this woman on who does marriage boot camp. It’s a free class where you go and learn the basics of communication and the work it takes to be married. And it’s free! I saw that and I just thought, everyone should have to take this class before getting married.”

The girl responded, “Really? That sounds interesting.”

“Yes, she works out in Arlington. I think she does the class for military families a lot, but anyone can take them. And she says, listening, communication, that’s the key. Believe me, if I would have known about her, I would have taken the class.”

“Park Road,” the automated bus voice announced my stop. I pulled the cord and walked to the front, before I could find out how else the young couple could make their marriage last.

—You’re kidding?

—No, the same as if I had been stocking shelves at Wal-Mart.

—Wow.

—Yeah, I’d probably be better off if I had, too. You know? Wouldn’t have had to deal with anything complicated during the day.

Two young men on the bus behind me. One tries to convince the other that things will work out while he waits to hear about a job.