My Baby Rides the Short Bus by Yantra Bertelli

Author:Yantra Bertelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FAM012000
ISBN: 9781604861099
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2009-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

A View through the Woods

by Christy Everett

To the Woman Who Stares and Looks Away,

I want to tell you, “Don’t be afraid”—but truthfully, I’m terrified too.

Sometimes I want to be the one walking past, in your comfortable

shoes, with no more than a twenty-second stare into this life of mine.

This life that is not what you think it is, not even close, so don’t feel

sorry for me, just slow down, and listen for awhile.

I’m crying by the second page, but I keep reading the book aloud. It’s called Nick Joins In, by Joe Lasker, about a boy in a wheelchair who prepares to go to school for the first time and wonders if the other kids will like him. The boy’s fears echo my own as I prepare to send my son to his first day of preschool.

Will they think he’s a baby because he crawls? Will his walker and braces scare them? When Elias doesn’t look into their eyes will they think he’s ignoring them? Will they understand what he does and does not see? Will they grow impatient with his pauses, with his processing delay? Will they understand what he says or become frustrated when his words don’t make sense? Will he be excluded from their games? Will they laugh at him? Will they point and stare?…Will he learn that he’s different and that different is not always “OK”?

Elias loses interest in the book and squirms from my lap to explore the basement where I sit in the gliding rocking chair that used to be in his room before we rearranged it to make more space for playing.

I stay seated in the wooden rocker and keep reading. Elias pulls playing cards out of the deck and spreads them across the green carpet, folding the Queen of Spades in half and chewing on the edge. I keep reading. The teacher in the book lets the class ask the boy questions. Why are you in a chair? Why do you wear braces? Why can’t you walk? My voice breaks and I heave as I read but I can’t stop. Can’t stop reading it aloud. Can’t stop crying. Not little tears but full body sobs. Alligator tears. Dinosaur drops.

As I read on, I wonder why the teacher doesn’t let the boy ask the other kids questions when they are through interrogating him. It’s only fair. As if any of this was fair.

“Mama’s just a little sad,” I tell Elias between sobs and he repeats my words. Mama a yittle ad. “Mommy’s crying.” Mommy kying.

I keep reading. Keep heaving.

Elias just smiles and cruises from the desk to the bookshelf with dusty books about glacier travel, long-distance hiking, and white-water rafting, the bookshelf to the desk with piles of insurance paperwork and therapy notes, the desk to the milk-stained rocking chair where he smiles at his Mama’s tears.

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