{"id":365,"date":"2018-09-14T01:59:39","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T01:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=365"},"modified":"2018-08-06T02:00:10","modified_gmt":"2018-08-06T02:00:10","slug":"going-home-by-nicole-zdeb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2018\/09\/14\/going-home-by-nicole-zdeb\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Home by Nicole Zdeb"},"content":{"rendered":"
Nicole is a writer and photographer based in Portland, OR. She holds a MFA from Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop and a certificate in translation theory from CUNY. She has poems, translations, essays, and reviews published in numerous journals over the years, including Volte, Gulf Coast, VOLT, Full of Crow, Quarterly Conversation, Two Serious Ladies and others. Her chapbook, The Friction of Distance, was published in 2011 by Bedouin Press.<\/em><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

Going Home<\/h3>\n

They all had somewhere to go, the people streaming past her as she sat on the bench waiting for the bus. She did, too. Home. You can never go home.<\/em> Where had she heard that? The Wizard of Oz<\/em>? What nonsense. Dorothy made it back and she would, too.<\/p>\n

The people disappeared when she closed her eyes, almost. She could feel them the way you feel trees when you are in the woods at night. She peeked\u2014yes, the world still streamed. For the tenth or hundredth time, she checked the little packages stuffed in her backpack making sure she could account for each carefully chosen Christmas gift. The bright tissue paper packages nested between tightly rolled bundles of sweaters and jeans. They were mostly good intentions; she was broke.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter<\/em>, Mom said when she complained that she didn\u2019t have any money for gifts this year. All that matters is that you are coming home<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Of course I\u2019m coming home, Mom. It\u2019s Christmas. <\/em>Racking coughs swallowed her mother\u2019s reply.<\/p>\n

At last the bus rasped into its spot. Accordion doors jerked and people disembarked,\u00a0 pausing on the landing to gather their bags and gird their loins for the big city<\/em>. Not that long ago, Emma had been one of those people.<\/p>\n

Hoisting her backpack, she stepped into line. Without a glance, the driver took her ticket and she disappeared into the belly of the bus. Immediately, the city racket ceased. She slid into a window seat and exhaled. She didn\u2019t understand why people disparaged traveling by Greyhound. After a few months in New York, the interior of a Greyhound seemed almost luxurious, insulated and clean. As long as there wasn\u2019t a fussy baby, the next few hours promised to be a needed respite\u2014a mini-vacation nested within her vacation. Like a puzzle making itself, people assembled into the seats of the bus. When it was full and the driver was ready, the bus lurched out of the station and into the traffic river.<\/p>\n

Cool glass smoothed her forehead and the city unraveled between blinks. The buildings and people and cars seemed to wave good-bye, the way a crowded dock waves to a passenger ship. Don\u2019t miss me too much, New York. I\u2019ll be back.<\/em> After they surpassed the city, she settled into herself and dozed off to sleep over the susurrus of voices from her podcast.<\/p>\n

Minutes and hours became a continuous unfurling ribbon until something tugged the ribbon, bunching it up. She twitched her body toward the window. Her eyes flew open when she felt from behind a hand reaching between her legs, a finger extending into the vale of her jeans, searching for her hole.<\/p>\n

What the fuck are you doing? <\/em>she hissed, flipping to face him. His hand sprang back as if from a trap. Holding his wrist, he remained silent.<\/p>\n

Move<\/em>, she said, rising to pass.<\/p>\n

He sat statue still. Not wanting to press her body against him, into her seat she lowered herself. What now? Should she scream? Call 911? Punch him? What? What? In the watery dim, she fixed her eyes on him. She didn\u2019t blink.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m\u2026I\u2019m sorry.<\/em><\/p>\n

What?<\/em> She couldn\u2019t believe he had the gall to address her. What did you say?<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019m sorry I woke you. I\u2019m sorry.<\/em><\/p>\n

You are sorry you woke me? What the fuck? <\/em><\/p>\n

Please, please. Lower your voice. I said I\u2019m sorry.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lower my voice? <\/em>She didn\u2019t mean to, but she lowered her voice. She pressed her back into the wall of the bus and kept him pinned.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really sorry. I don\u2019t know what came over me. I\u2019m not\u2026I\u2019m not a pervert.<\/em><\/p>\n

You are a pervert. Obviously.<\/em><\/p>\n

No, I\u2019m not. I\u2019m an architect. I don\u2019t know what to say. Please forgive me. I\u2019ve never done anything like that before.<\/em><\/p>\n

Her silence loosened his tongue and he spilled words into the space between them. She tried to block them. She imagined her ears a fortress and his words puny pebbles cast against mammoth stone walls. Some words, like the cold, seeped in. Suicide. Son.<\/em> Architect. Washington. Funeral.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fuck you, creep<\/em>, she interjected and toward the window turned her body. She had heard enough and she didn\u2019t give a shit about any of it. Not one single shit. Was she supposed to feel sorry for him? As if his dead son gave him permission to be a perv? Once a perv, always a perv. Maybe your son killed himself because he had a perv for a father, she thought. Maybe he was a perv, too. Maybe it\u2019s inherited<\/em>. Anger like magma burned the column of her throat. She couldn\u2019t swallow. She wished she had punched him, drew blood, cracked teeth, made a scene. Next time bring your knife<\/em>, she told herself. She imagined flipping over and stabbing him in the throat. She imagined the look of surprise as out of his neck blood gurgled and bubbled. Next time, she would be ready. She would be ready next time. In the glass her reflection flickered and she held her breath between the pools of streetlight. Her heartbeat slowed to normal. She could swallow again.<\/p>\n

The bus wheezed into Hartford and the pervert shambled off. She thought about getting up and telling the driver, but didn\u2019t. What could he do? She squeezed herself against the window trying to occupy as little space as possible. Nobody sat next to her. She reinserted her headphones and turned the volume up. A few minutes later, the bus regained the highway and headed north. Emma kept holding her breath in the dark spaces between streetlights until the spaces became too wide and she couldn\u2019t hold her breath that long. Almost home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicole is a writer and photographer based in Portland, OR. She holds a MFA from Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop and a certificate in translation theory from CUNY. She has poems, translations, essays, and reviews published in numerous journals over the years, including Volte, Gulf Coast, VOLT, Full of Crow, Quarterly Conversation, Two Serious Ladies and others. … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-5T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}