Staring

By Amethyst Turner

See me

Hold me in your eyes

 Witness my pain

Make my suffering real

But never help me

XXX

Ashley Briggs had been driving her school bus since the early eighties. The mean bus driver, the kids called her. Stupid brats, she called them.

And weren't they? How many times did she have to tell them to quit eating on the bus, quit bringing on their radios, quit spitting and smoking and swearing? They only sneered at her and blew their smoke toward the front of the bus.

But that wasn't Ashley's least favorite part of her job. What she hated most was watching the kids grow up. At Valley Hills, they taught children from kindergarten all the way to eighth grade. And thus, Ashely grew used to watching their slow decay.

Kindergarteners, wet-eyed on their first days of school. First graders, breathing in the smoke from the back of the bus. Second graders, watching the older kids puff away at their cigarettes with envy. Third graders, asking for a drag. Fourth graders, sneaking to the back of the bus to smoke and laugh with their older counterparts. Fifth graders, showing off their stolen lighters, stolen radios, stolen jewelry in the middle of the bus. Sixth graders, by then adept to themselves, casually smoking and arranging the trade of their black-market items. Seventh graders, copying homework and swearing loudly at each other. Eighth graders, drinking alcohol and making out in the very back.

How heartbreaking it was to watch those bright-eyed babies become the dark creatures blocking the emergency door in the back.

This September, Ashley watched the contents of this year's bus carefully as they filed in, the younger ones nervous and subdued, the older ones calling to friends and playing their music louder and louder to drown each other out.

She stopped once again, extending the stop sign into the road. She didn't like this bus stop -- this was where most of the ruffians got on, spitting and chain smoking. This neighborhood was "one step up" from the government housing facilities, but Ashley wasn't sure it was a step up at all. Rather, these people needed help, but they weren't getting it. There always seemed to be a foreclosure sale going on around here.

This year, nine kids piled onto the bus at this stop, every age from five to fourteen. She watched them jostle each other, elbowing, shouting like little animals. "Read the rules, please," she grumbled to each passing child, although none but the youngest, the most anxious were listening.

Finally, she closed the door. The bus stank of weed and sweat and hot garbage lined up for collection along the road. She could feel beads of sweat crawling down her forehead and into her eyes.

Ashley paused for a moment as she always did, looking up and down the street to make sure there were no stragglers just now coming out of their houses. No, none. But.

In one little house, there was a window open, not wide, but wide enough for a little face to be detectable behind it. A pair of sad blue eyes stared at the bus, heavy in their depression. Ashley waited a moment longer to see if the girl would come running to catch her bus. She didn't. Ashley closed the doors and went to the school.

XXX

Richard wanted to smile, but his face wouldn't.

She was like a little star, so bright and distant. How could he ever know what was going on in that beautiful brain, what she felt in that lovely heart? He could only perceive the angelic features that halfway reflected himself and guess.

"Hey, Sweetie," he said. He threw his coat over the couch and tossed his keys down after it.

Amethyst looked up at him, seeming to be waiting for something. He met her eye, a little warily. She wanted something, obviously, probably something he couldn't give her. He started toward the kitchen for a beer. His daughter followed.

Richard's head hurt from a long, dry day on his feet. As the wall of cold from the fridge hit him, he realized there were only two six packs left. He'd have to run to the store and restock.

The moment he collapsed into his usual chair at the kitchen table, one of the six packs in tow, Amethyst was in his lap. Richard startled slightly, still so unfamiliar with his daughter's affections. It wasn't often that she got close enough to touch. She mostly stayed in her own little corner with her toys and her books, murmuring quietly to herself. She knew Richard wasn't usually in a very good mood when he got home from work, so she mostly avoided him. And Richard didn't mean to, but he avoided her as well.

The idea of her terrified him. Things occurred to him, sometimes: had he fed her this morning? Her hair was so matted -- no wonder, he hadn't washed it in weeks. Was that her, crying in the night? Her little face had looked so flushed when he kissed her goodbye; could she be sick? Would she be dead when he got home?

Having someone so wholly dependent on him was horrifying in its own way. He could forget about her completely. And he had, before. She was so quiet, so good. If he forgot her breakfast, she never complained. If he didn't shower her at night and tuck her in, she simply crawled under her blanket and closed her eyes when she got tired. She lived so much of her life alone; maybe she would be just fine without Richard.

"How was your day, Baby?" he asked, popping open the beer bottle.

Aimee wrinkled her nose. She didn't like the smell of it. "Okay," she said.

"Do you need something?" The little girl nodded. She leaned against his chest, fragile and warm as an unhatched egg. Richard put his arm around her and tried to breathe. "What do you need, Aimee?"

"I saw something today," she told him.

"Okay. What did you see?"

"A big car. It was yellow."

"Ah."

"It said 'School Bus' on the front."

Richard paused mid-drink, astonished. He put down the beer bottle and looked into her still blue eyes. They were wide and earnest, no hint of deception within their depths. "How did you know that?" he asked.

"I readed it."

"Oh." Richard lifted the bottle to his lips once more. Oh, well. More perplexing things had happened in the past few months, that was for sure. The alcohol spread over his tongue like a sweet antidote to some poison woven in his veins. "What about it?"

"Is that what takes people to school?"

"Yup."

"Okay." When Richard said nothing more, Amethyst glanced up with a shy blush and said, "Can I go on the school bus?"

"You're three."

"I know."

"Three-year-olds don't go to school."

"Do four-year-olds?"

"The rich ones, sure."

"Am I a rich one?"

"Rich in love," he chuckled, patting his daughter's golden head. "And not much else. Ain't that the truth."

Amethyst stuck her lip out. He wondered where she learned to do that. "What does that mean?"

"Means you're not going on the school bus."

"Okay. How about when I'm five?"

"How about you go play and let Daddy relax for a minute."

"But--"

"Shoo."

"Okay."

XXX

The family that lived next door was so weird. Daniel liked to look out his window at night and watch their tall grass and wild brambles sway in the night wind, broken windows dark all the time, except the occasional flare of a cigarette from the second-floor bedroom.

And, sometimes, the streetlights reflecting off a pair of blue eyes in the living room window, still and blinking like a trapped animal.

XXX

There were so many things to read, once she started looking for them.

Things like Samuel Adams, Boston Lager, Rich, Balanced, and Complex. Amethyst didn't know what Lager was, but she'd heart of Boston before. It was a place far away in the North. Samuel Adams, she supposed, was the happy man holding the overflowing cup above the words. Balanced meant not falling, like on the tightrope. Complex meant hard.

Rich, she wasn't so sure about. Rich in love, she kept hearing. And not much else. Maybe it meant to have a lot of something, she thought. She had a lot of love in her, but her father was right: what else did she really have?

And then, was she really even rich in love? Who loved her, aside from her father? Who, aside from the inanimate objects in her bed and the people she was no longer allowed to see?

No one, really.

There were smaller words on the label, too, but they were too difficult to read. One afternoon, she pointed to one line of small white text and asked her father to read it. He squinted and laughed and said, "For brewery-fresh taste, enjoy before month notched."

"What does 'brewery-fresh taste' mean?" she had asked. He just laughed again.

She liked her mother's cigarette boxes, too. Often, when Libby was finished with them, Amethyst would ask her father to get them for her. She had five by now because, more often than not, Richard said no.

Her favorite one had a camel on it. "Camel filters," it said, which Amethyst thought was a little silly. She liked to imagine the camel on the box caught up in a long net, trying to be filtered through. There were pyramids in the background, too, and a couple palm trees. How glad that camel seemed, just to be alive and at home.

The rest of the box said, "Turkish and domestic blend cigarettes." Turkish meant something from a turkey, and domestic was a word she heard her mother shout sometimes to get her father to stop hitting her. She usually heard it as, I'll call the police, this is domestic abuse.

Amethyst didn't know what the police and turkeys had to do with camel filtering, but she liked the box and breathed in its musky smoke smell every night before she went to bed figuring her mother would smell the same way if she leaned down to kiss her goodnight. 

XXX

But does anyone notice? 
But does anyone care? 
And if I had the guts to put this to your head
But would anything matter if you're already dead? 
And well should I be shocked now by the last thing you said? 
Before I pull this trigger, 
Your eyes vacant and stained

-Early Sunset Over Monroeville by My Chemical Romance