Children of the Bus

There's a baby across the aisle from me who starts shaking his bunny rattle until he gets so excited that he bangs himself right between the eyes with it.

After the first hit, he's startled. He tries again. After the second th-whack, he's startled and quite concerned. He shakes the rattle harder. His mother offers him another toy. He refuses.

The mother returns with a "then-don't-listen-to-me-and-we'll-see-what-happens-ya-
little-bastard" look, almost a smile.

The third time he whacks himself right upside the head. His face wrinkles with injustice as he cries. The mother tries again to get the rattle. No chance.

People on the bus show signs of annoyance. The mother rummages in her bag of tricks again, this time producing a set of keys. Oh no! He'll poke himself in the eye. Wait. He turned away as if mortally insulted by such a petty offer.

She reaches in the bag again. Ah, yes. She confidently hands him a cookie. As soon as he sees it, he drops the rattle. He immediately bangs himself in the head with the cookie, but instead of crying, he eats what's left in his fist. Funny bastard. I mean baby.

The bus breathes and the normal drone returns. I inadvertently look over to find the baby staring at me. Smiling as maternally as I can on a bus, I say "Hi, little baby."

He never blinks as he inhales enough air to let loose a scream that gets even the bus-driver's attention. Never before has a baby looked at me and seen something so wretched, so heinous, that it made him scream bloody murder. It's a real esteem booster for a weekly pass holder like myself.

Babies, dogs and cats (creatures in our lives with the least intelligence) are often seen in movies as portals of a higher intelligence, a pure intuition. I know what everybody on the bus is thinking: Whatever made the baby wail at the sight of me was something hideous in my very soul.

I think I smell garlic. The mother is bouncing the screaming baby roughly on her knee. All she has to do is give him another cookie but it's like she wants to prolong the effects of my evil to intensify it.

One minute I'm riding high, venerating motherhood, contemplating the violence that innocence succumbs to, then suddenly everyone's looking at me like I'm a blood-drooling whore carrying Satan's baby.

Ah, time to turn on headphones ... the opiate of the buses.

I look out the window and calm quickly. I know from experience that the mother will only hate me as long as the kid cries. I've never owned a car and have been on the bus with my son, Leo, since he was a baby. When he was three (he's now ten), I started going to Community College on the North Side. I felt like the heroine of some After School Special about the realities of single parenthood. We started on the Carrick bus at 6:30 a.m., me with my book bag, him with his Joe Cool lunch box.

We arrived in the North Side around 8:30 and I'd be completely spent. Leo used to try and slide down the poles like a fireman. He'd try to stand in the middle of the bus to see if he could keep his balance while it moved. He wanted to run up and down the center aisle. Sometimes I'd have to hold him while he kicked me with his Stride Right shoes. I still have dents in my shins.

I remember how people looked at me as I struggled with him. I could tell who had kids and who didn't by the way they reacted. People who are parents see little monsters on the bus and look grateful because theirs aren't with them. You can tell they've experienced a bus ride with a child if they look grateful and scared.

Non-parents smirk as they fold their arms over their chests and emit what is part sigh, part huff. They suffer from Pre-Parental Denial. This assures the propagation of our species. After seeing "little brats" throw "fits" on the bus or in the grocery store, they're convinced their children would never behave like that. Or they'd never have any.

Let them think it. Someday the fruit of their loins will peel and eat chewing gum off the black-rubber floor of a bus. Someday they'll understand. But not all of them. Some women on the bus with grown children suffer from Post-Parental Denial. Their children were perfect, just darling. These women were always telling me to put a hat on Leo, to fuss with him constantly, always suggesting something was wrong with him. These are the moms who wonder why their children never call.

Parenthood is an incredible test of character. Knowing that I'm the only person to take care of Leo gives me strength and keeps me grounded. I can't imagine not having him.

I lie. Having a child-free life is a re-occurring fantasy. My apartment would stay clean. I could go barefoot in the house, no more mud or crumbs on the kitchen floor. No more carrying bags of groceries home until I have shooting pains in my arms. I'd never buy or be tempted to eat another Twinkie. I also love thinking about being a kid again — people begging me to eat. Man.

And I contemplate the days when beating your children was encouraged and even admired.

Frightened children are obedient. One night I thought Leo was playing with his Tinker Toys and instead found him cutting holes in the back of all of his shirts 'cause he didn't like tags. My thoughts turned back on the glory days of parenting: dads with belts, moms with wooden spoons or hairbrushes — and a cruel twist, when we'd get a paddle ball as a party favor, as soon as the rubber string broke, mom would add it to her panoply.

That night, Leo was around four, I started telling him how lucky he was that I didn't beat him. I wanted to tell him every gruesome story from my childhood but stopped when I realized that he shouldn't be made to feel grateful for being treated with respect. That's every child's birthright. It didn't seem right to ask him to thank me for it. Besides, I'm not always so good at it.

By the end of every August, the boy got whacked. I'd been with him all summer with no money and no car, day and night. Unless you have kids, you can't fathom the variety of ways they invent to make your life miserable. The problem is feeling that they do it deliberately. But after hitting Leo and seeing the how-could-you-? in his eyes, I knew it was wrong. So I don't abuse my son, I just fantasize about it.

I will miss him, though. Last week he was in the shower and I walked into the bathroom singing, turn around, you're a young man walking out of the door, thinking about how near the day is that I won't be able to hold him anymore, when he won't be my little boy, my angel.

He started singing, insane in the membrane, insane in the brain and showed me his hair, shampooed into a Mohawk. I smiled, picked up his muddy Major Damage jeans and quietly closed the door behind me....

Downtown already? I didn't even notice that the baby was gone. Okay. Maybe I got a little intense. It wasn't all that bad — never is once it's over. But everything seems so intense when strangers are watching, but the more intense things get, the more quickly they're forgotten.

No. They're not forgotten, they're actively ignored. I've learned the difference. The crossing guards at Leo's school were issued bullet-proof vests. He and one of his friends were jumped by a bunch of kids outside of his school. He got over it almost instantly. I started eating handfuls of Rolaids. How do you get over being attacked for no reason? And why would five older kids need to do that or even want to? Why don't people seem to understand that although frightened children are obedient, they grow-up to be terrifying teenagers?

Oh enough. Time to get off this bus.

The low, gray sky looks too tired to rain. How many times have I prayed for a bus; although, it's almost certain one will be coming? I guess that's the whole concept behind faith. That's why I have so little, especially when it concerns our children. No one seems to understand the "our" part.

And here's the 61A, right when I start to feel completely invisible. I get a window seat and take my headphones off. I listen to the engine of the bus rise and fall — just like everything.

Maybe it's a miracle that things aren't a lot worse. Or maybe that's the bullshit that justifies what is happening.