Devotchka

29 October 2008

I was sitting on the bus this morning, facing the back, when a little devotchka with her mother sat down.  The mother sat next to me, facing the back.  The little girl plopped down in the seat across from me and promptly rested her shoes on top of the toes of my boots.  Not an inquiring glance, not an awkward apology came my way. Her little dinner roll feet sat on my leather toes as though it were the hardest material on earth.  She tapped and rolled with abandon, and looked out the window.  She had a bright, orange coat and a great furry hat on and her tiny head peered outside to see where they were going.

“There?” she kept asking her mother.  “There?” And came the weary grunts of her mother in reply.  Where was she going?

As her soles tapped on my toes I could only freeze, and sit, and all the breaths I’ve ever breathed were held in this little girl’s lungs under her orange coat.  Her round rolling eyes gripped my anxiety and laughed, like winter to summer.  It took all I know of God and Death and Science to keep the bus on the road, for sure we would coast away to a far green country. 

“There?”  “There?”

Where?  I wanted to ask.  Where?  They got off, mother and daughter, at the same stop as mine.  When she stood up, she stood up right on my boots, and I sat as still as possible, like a maiden trying not to disturb a dragonfly, like a poor brother slowing his breath as not to wake his sister, whose head had fallen upon his shoulder on the train.

She stepped off the bus and so did I, she walked away without a backward glance; like a viper not to apologize for its kill, a king not to feel shame for his domain.  An empire was upon me.  This worldly empire and it’s crushing me.  I crossed the street to where the beggar woman always sits and the wind wasn’t cold enough.  I raked some small coin out of my pocket and gave it to her.  Not for charity.  I needed it to be away from me.  Like dropping ballast from a sinking ship I heaved the gold into her twisted cup and never broke my step.  But I don’t feel lighter.  I don’t feel swifter.  I’ve this dark web wrapped around me and it’s ever tighter, ever tighter.  I’ve dropped all my weight, jettisoned all my heart’s anchors, yet I’m falling falling falling falling falling falling.