Center of Center (15)

a serial novella-in-flash by Chris Wiewiora

I park well behind the stop for Towers—the dual brown brick dorms on the southern outskirts of C.U. I don’t switch my destination sign to BLUE because I’m so early before I need to run my extra route through campus. I’ll drop off students to class and clear the way for the regular BLUE that will be a few minutes behind me so it can stay on schedule.

On route, I have to have an atomic watch with a second hand, pen, run sheet, and transfer packet. I need to have a snack, water bottle, Sauvé Salve, and a book. I’ve learned to use the 30 seconds waiting for usual connections and transfers and timepoints to expire. Thirty seconds is a munched handful of peanuts, a swig of water, dab of balm, or skimmed stanza.

These additional minutes behind Towers feel like a dangerous luxury to just sit and think. I try to empty my mind and just appreciate the landscape. I look out at the snowy cross-country field to the west. The sun glares down on two balls of snow rolled into boulders at the base of a tree trunk. At least the students didn’t add sticks for pubes. The tree cock’s snow balls glisten in the melting light as a woman jogs on the cleared asphalt track parallel Field Avenue. Her black tights cling to her bouncing butt.

I think of Vanessa Reed. Vanessa had this great big butt that she acted like she didn’t like. She also had a seemingly perfect sounding last name for being a reader like me, something that made her seem so rare and made me like her more than her butt. I began to see Vanessa when she neared the end of her PhD in Texts and Technology at C.U. I don’t know what to call what we did except seeing each other again and again until we didn’t.

The radio crackles, Mobile to 957.

957 copy, I say.

Are you the extra?

10-4.

Next time, you need to wait by the Alumni Center.

10-4.

My radio crackles off.

Miles drives a minibus past me. He must have seen on the Torideo Tracker my bus number 957 parked by Towers too early for an extra. Miles checked out from dispatch at H.Q. He got in a mini going mobile just to check on me, or to do a loop of the routes, or to correct me. I can’t decide which as he drives the minibus over the icy road to campus.

It’s lonely in my bus. I’ve felt like I’ve been alone for so long, but it’s barely been a semester. The only connections are the radio, an occasional driver riding as passenger, the rare Polis besides my former students that I know, and the frequent driver in another bus waving, because they have to. This time I would have preferred to be left alone, instead of being called out by Miles and heard by all the other drivers tuned in to the fixed-route channel.

I quickly run my extra through campus, keeping my eyes forward. I close-and-go, shutting the door before runners catch up. I have to leave them behind. There’s another bus—the regular bus—behind me and I just want to finish.

Before Ma’s viewing, I sat at our kitchen table. I lifted my suit coat off the plastic-covered seat and watched Babcia scooping grounds into a basket filter. Next to the coffeemaker still sat Ma’s sign, All in Ready to Go <3. Ma would be gone so early in the mornings to go make her prayer rounds at Loop Hospital. Ma always reset the coffeemaker for Babcia, me, and Pop.

Babcia flicked on the coffeemaker. The aroma of coffee rolled through the room as a fresh brew sputtered. Outside a thin layer of snow brushed Babcia’s garden hibernating next to the backyard’s chainlink fence. Pop was in the basement practicing his eulogy for Ma. I had taught public speaking for four years, two at Bellow during my graduate school and two at C.U., the time it took people to earn a degree in communication. Still, I wondered, What words do you write to say about someone you love who you will never hear from again?

The coffee finished brewing and Babcia poured it into Bolesławiec mugs. We wrapped our hands around the mugs. I admired the glazed blue crosshatch, warming my palms.

Do you want the cup? Babcia asked.

If I said yes, then I knew she would wash it, dry it, and wrap it for me.

Instead, I asked, Do you remember Poland?

Of course, Babcia said.

Babcia must have thought that was a silly question. But I wanted to ask about something that was gone that had made her that didn’t exist anymore. I really wanted to ask her about Ma, to find out something that I didn’t know so I would know something new and I could still keep knowing her.

Babcia wiped her hands on her apron and then took my hands in hers. I knew the calluses; so many, so soft, from a lifetime of work. Despite the coffee, I smelled dried mushrooms. Babcia always smelled like dried mushrooms, like she was part of the earth, she was part of an old kingdom of people.

 Secre, Babcia said. Ma was my heart, Pop’s heart; the woman who wasn’t Polish, wasn’t even Catholic, but the woman Babcia accepted, who Pop loved, and made me.

We wept.

The old man wears a ski mask, but I see the dulled twinkle in his eye. The old man must be Clive. He’s always at the corner of Bloomington Road and Parade Boulevard when I finish my BLUE extra. I’ve usually dropped off all the remaining students by the time I get to the corner. Clive is always early, but he’s also always forgetful.

Are you new? Clive asks as he boards my bus.

I re-introduce myself and point to my nametag on my hat. I wear it there on cold days so my jacket doesn’t cover it. I hope the pointing to my head doesn’t come off as conotating craziness. There is always possible distortion in communication.

Clive gets off at the Parade Mall where I don’t have to stop unless I still have passengers. I don’t mind, though. Clive always thanks me before I return to the Alumni Center’s lot where I wait for another extra run.

This is a theft, Pop said his last English words. He stood behind the pulpit at the Parish. Ma was in the casket. The priest said it was okay to have her service there even though she had remained a Unitarian after marrying Pop.

Ma had been laid up with a bloodclot in the fall. I had almost told her about Vanessa, but I hadn’t told her about J.J.’s death during our holo-link catch-ups. I wanted to talk to her in-person about so much after the fall semester during winter break. She held on until I arrived. Then that night, like her regular routine she had gotten up at night, albeit without her compression sleeve on her leg. She returned from the bathroom, got back under the covers with Pop in their bed, and died.

Babcia held on to me in the pew. It felt like the rules of my world were broken. I knew two deaths too soon and that was too much. I had put in for a leave of absence from teaching in the spring semester.

Pop asked, KTo 3Ta?

I couldn’t understand it. Babcia hadn’t thought she would have to fathom that language again after the War.

Russian, Babcia spat. Pop kept talking, not realizing that he was speaking the language he had spent his adulthood learning and teaching despite Babcia hating it.

I pulled Pop away from the podium, wrestled him out of the Parish and into my Coup, called his department chair for a good Panoptic translator, and rushed him to Loop Hospital. The E.R. doc said Pop had had a stroke. Pop had forgotten his mother’s language and he had forgotten Ma’s language. I didn’t know what to say.

CENTER of CENTER is a serialized novella-in-flash by Chris Wiewiora. Go here to start at the beginning.

Installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

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