The Woman on the Bus

I thought of little else than Janine over the next few days. Heeding her warning about when it would be safe to call, I waited until Monday and looked in the pile of dirty laundry in my room for the shirt containing her number in its pocket. It was not there. I asked my mother where my blue shirt was and she told me she had washed it. In a panic, I went down to the basement, found the shirt in the dryer and found the small brown mass of paper that had previously held what I regarded as the key to my future happiness.

Never having learned Janine's last name, I was unable to look her up in the phone book. My only recourse was to go to her house but other family responsibilities kept me from being able to do so until the end of the week. The five days until I was able to go seemed like an eternity to me.

Finally that Friday, I rushed to Janine's house and found an angry looking, short heavy woman sweeping the front sidewalk.

"Can I help you?" she asked with an exaggerated sarcastic tone.

"I was looking for Janine, do you know if she's in?"

"Who are you, are you family?"

"Uh, no. I'm a friend, uh, just a friend."

"Well she, her kid and her no-good husband left in the middle of the night."

I stood dumbly, as if I had been struck. I finally pulled myself together enough to ask, "Do you know how I can get in touch with her?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing. They still owe me three months rent."

I shook my head sadly and walked away, leaving her to continue sweeping the sidewalk, angrily.

I never saw or heard anything about Janine again. Not knowing her last name, I have not been able to try to track her down. But in spite, of the brief time we spent together and the number of people who have come into my life since then, barely a day has passed when I don't think about her.

I always hope that, somehow, things would change for her and her life would come together. I dream that she managed to finish high school, and maybe even go to college so that she could pursue the further education that so clearly had intrigued her during our conversation. Most of all, I hope that she left her abusive husband and found someone who would properly appreciate her.

As sad as I am at never having seen her again, the thing which depresses me the most is imagining her awaiting a phone call from me that never came. I fear that, not knowing that there is nothing that I wanted more than to speak to her and see her again, my silence would have only fed her lack of self esteem. It is unbearable to me that she would think that she was too plain and unexciting and that our afternoon together meant too little to merit a call back, never knowing that to one young, love-struck eighteen year old, she was the most beautiful woman in the world.