I get hit by the same bus every day. At least I think I do. I don’t always know the difference between what I know and what I think. But I do know that it hurts, every time. And the day is always divided into before I get hit by the bus, and after I get hit by the bus, but it hurts on both sides. Sometimes I’m in the hospital, sometimes I’m at home, resting. Everyone calls it resting. I don’t know what they mean by that. I don’t know that resting is the best response to being hit by a bus. But I do it anyhow. Sometimes I’m back at school, and I’m in the middle of a conversation that I didn’t even know I was having, and I’ll think, I think I was just hit by a bus, but no one around me is acting like I just got hit by a bus, so I act like I wasn’t hit by a bus, either.
Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between what I know and what there is to know. I’ll know—I’ll think I know—something, like “Everyone in Africa can read Swedish.” But I’m not sure if I know that. So I try to run tests in my own head before I say something. I’ll ask, Where in Africa do I think people can read Swedish? And then I’ll think: I don’t know. And then I’ll ask, Can I name a specific country in Africa where people read Swedish? And then I’ll ask, Can I name a specific country in Africa at all? Do I know where Sweden is? And I can’t, and so I think, I probably don’t know that after all. So I don’t say anything.
I heard she got hit by a bus. But hearing someone got hit by a bus, and actually getting hit by a bus, those are two different things.
Once, I was on a stage and I split something very important into pieces. I gave the pieces to everyone I could reach. I think that’s sort of what happened to her.
It wasn’t a party, exactly, and I don’t remember what I was onstage for. But someone handed me something beautiful, and I cracked it open. I think afterward people applauded. I don’t remember why.
Now I have a boyfriend who lives very far away. I don’t know when I’m going to see him again. I don’t remember if he’s trapped, or missing. But I know he’s somewhere very far away, and I know that sometimes I feel like I’m just floating. If I think about what’s happening around me very carefully, I can sometimes get a sense of whether he’s here, if he has his arm around me or if it’s someone else, or if anyone has their arm around me at all. I don’t know what he does with his arms when he’s not here, or how he gets here at all, or what happens when he goes away. I don’t think he’s here right now. But I’m not sure. I know it’s never her arm around me. I would remember that. I think I would remember that. One of us would remember. There is a limit that exists there.
But the bus has never hit me. It comes close, sometimes, but it’s never happened to me. There is no limit there.
My curfew is 1:00 a.m. I don’t have anything else to say about this. About what’s happening to everyone. What’s been happening to everyone. I’m not getting out of the car, and I’m going home.
I’m not going to apologize. So it doesn’t matter, whether I wish I could apologize, or whether I thought I was wrong, or whether—it doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to apologize, because nobody else seemed to think that I should. So I don’t get to. Everyone else gets to, and I don’t.
Michigan isn’t in Africa. I don’t know why I have to keep telling people that. Well. I know why. But I wish they would remember that I’ve said it before.
Maybe I’ll stop telling people I’m from Michigan. Maybe then something different will happen.
Maybe tomorrow I will ask everyone, “Are you from Michigan?” again and again until someone admits the truth.
For the record, I don’t like it when she says it, either. But you pick your battles.
Did he say he didn’t like it when I say it, either? He did, didn’t he? But he didn’t say that he doesn’t like it to me. So what am I supposed to do with that?
I’ve never eaten cheese fries. I’ve never actually gone shopping, if I’m honest. I just drive around for hours until eventually I’m the only one left in the car. Then I go—home, I think? I go somewhere. When I go home, the phone is ringing, and there’s a woman’s voice on the other end of the line. She always wants something from me, but I can never make out what she’s saying. She never hangs up, so neither do I, and we fall asleep to the sound of each other’s questions.
She could stop saying it.
I know that there is only one pair of pants that fit me right now. But I don’t know where they are. And I’m not going to ask anyone. It’s not that I don’t trust them. It’s that I don’t know if trust is a reasonable expectation to have of another person.
I was never talking about you, when I said that. When I said—that thing I always said. The thing you don’t like me to say.
I know that. Do you think I didn’t know that?
Then why—okay. Okay. I don’t think I knew that you knew. And I didn’t know that I knew. And—you should know—you know that I’m not going to apologize about it. I can’t. But I won’t say it again.
I function.
I know you do.
I function like an ecosystem functions. Like a galaxy functions. I function.
Maybe you should have joined the Mathletes.
Is that a joke?
Yes.
It’s a good joke. You should tell that kind of joke more often.
Look—
Okay. Maybe I should.
And I’m on the Mathletes.
You are?
I’m an alternate. Three years running.
You know I can’t say it.
You could say it. It’s not as hard as you think it is.
But you don’t have to say it.
I don’t speak Vietnamese. And—obviously—they know I don’t speak it, but they never do anything about it, and there’s always a seat there for me, so I keep coming back, and I think, God, just please don’t let me say anything today, but then I can feel it coming over me all in a rush, and I hear myself start to speak whatever it is that I’m saying, and I’m horrified, but I can’t stop. I wish someone would stop me. I wish I would stop me.
Ever since she got hit by that bus, I can’t stop coughing. “I’m sick,” I say, and people nod their heads like they’re agreeing with me, but then nobody does anything, or says anything in response. So I don’t think I know what agreeing is. I thought I did, but it can’t be this. It can’t be nodding your head and not doing anything. Maybe I’m not sick at all. Maybe I’m sicker than anyone has ever been, and that’s why nobody’s doing anything.
There was a week—I think it was a week—when I knew, I absolutely knew that everyone around me wanted me to go to the projection room above the auditorium. Everyone wanted me to go to the same place, at the same time, and for the same reason, but no one asked me to do it. They kept trying to—I would see people I knew, but they weren’t the people I knew. They were in disguise. I know how that sounds, but they were. They were all a part of it. And I didn’t know why. I just know that I hated it.
I don’t know why we still have the bus. The day is going to be over soon, and the bus is going to come, and nobody is going to do anything about it.
Everyone gets pregnant and dies. He was right about that much. That’s how I start the morning announcements now. That’s all I say. They don’t let me on the air anymore, but I keep saying it.
The bus is going to split her wide open. Into pieces. But all I can do is solve the problem that’s right in front of me. And she’s not in front of me right now.
Everyone is going to let it happen again. I’m going to let it happen again. And when she calls tonight, I know I’m not going to answer any of her questions.
There is a limit to certain things. There is a limit to me.
Sweden is a country. I know that. I know that I know that. Africa not a country. Africa is a continent with fifty-four countries, none of which is Sweden. I know that. I know that I know that. I looked it up in the library today. I’ve never eaten cheese fries, and I’ve never gone shopping, and I never put my arm around her. I’m never going to. I don’t know that. I only think that. Maybe I will put my arm around her tomorrow, or maybe she will put her arm around me. When the bell rings, I will get up and I will go outside, even if I don’t want to, and the bus will come or not come, and then something else will happen. Something else is always happening.
Whenever someone has put something beautiful in front of me, I have always tried to solve it. I don’t know if that’s something I should apologize for or not.
I’m not going to say it.
She thinks that she can’t say it until someone makes her say it, but that’s not how anything works.