The man in front of me looks about 70. He has fitted himself between two women, and is resting his hand on a black umbrella, carefully reading a piece of paper. He is wearing a white bow tie, a hat, and a suit. I want to call him the umbrella man. Next to the umbrella man, is the saddest, most insecure and introverted woman. A loose scarf is wrapped around her head. She is wearing jeans and sneakers underneath a long dress. She shyly glances around, but keeps her head down most of the time. I notice no rings on her slender fingers so I know she doesn’t belong to anyone. I feel as though on this rainy day, where traffic is slow, the grounds are wet, and all the lights are red, everybody is trapped in misery. And I’m just like them. I’m another miserable rider of this bus, and I’m looking for a story. I have run out of stories just like I have run out of songs. Everything these days is a rerun. The bus rides, the songs in my head, my fantasies, the cigarette lady who I see for the second time; it’s as if I’m living the same day over and over again. But let me go back to the people in the bus. The bus driver is a woman in her mid 30s. She is also carrying a yellow umbrella with her and she doesn’t enjoy driving on wet roads. Her smile is the fading kind because she’s had a long day and unlike me, she has many destinations to stop at. For her, life is a series of bus stops, of people getting on and off the bus, of dollars and quarters that fill the coin machine, of people who look for seats closest to the doors. These people, the ones who like to sit close to the doors, don’t take risks; they want to be safe. They don’t want attention so they sit somewhere where they can easily get out, with no hassle. I’m one of these people. I sit right next to the door so I can watch each face that comes in, so I can watch the roads, but most importantly because I’m insecure. I’m afraid that if I sit away from the doors, I’ll never get off the bus or that I’ll miss my stop.
I know there are more stories to be told. I know that the bus is not just about the cigarette lady or the umbrella man or that shy, innocent woman with the scarf. But, I like to wander off to my own world and become the shy, innocent girl with the head phones. That’s simply who I am on this bus. I’m a girl who can easily pretend that the life she is living, right now, right here in this bus, is nothing more than a movie, a comedy of happy, lonely people.

The rain pours and I watch it run down each balcony, hitting the cement surface of the walls and floors. On this lonesome, dull Wednesday afternoon, the only thing to watch from our window is the rainfall. And I wonder if this rain has its own story, its own secrets and lies. I wonder if someone has already unfolded the mystery of the rain. But even if there is no mystery, I will tell its story. I will tell my own version of this story.
But not today. Today I’m just a lonely watcher, one who’s tired of waiting. I’m not in the mood to dance to the rhythm of the rain.

He isn’t home today. My unborn baby and I are alone. I sip from my tea and wonder when he’ll get home, when he’ll be next to me and this baby, this living thing that I’m so afraid to have. I try not to think about my big belly, but it’s always in front of me, and I can’t hide it. I can’t forget that soon I will be a mother who has to feed this baby, nourish it, and take care of it. Soon I will have to teach this child the alphabet, the colors of the rainbow and numbers. I will have to hold it. I will have to love this unborn baby, and I will, I hope. Sometimes I hate my husband because I feel like he fooled me, like he promised me a false life, a big lie. But in the end he left it up to me. He said if you really don’t want a child, we won’t have one. But I didn’t want to feel guilty for the rest of my life; I didn’t want to carry the burden of knowing I deprived my husband of a child. I couldn’t do that to him. And most of all, I couldn’t do that to myself because deep down, I was dying to know what it would feel like to be a mother. I was a curious writer, in need of a story of a mother and her baby.

I stare at Lolita. She’s six and no longer has a father figure. Mama used to say, every little girl needs a father figure in her life, a father who knows how to get her daughter out of trouble, a father who knows how to hold her hand when mother’s hands are busy, a father who buys her cotton candy at the fair and shows her how to build sand castles. But my Lolita can’t rely on a man who may not always be there to pick her up. She can’t depend on a father who may not always be there to take her out, a father who may be busy with a new wife, a new family, a new home.
How many times did I tell him we shouldn’t have children? How many times did I tell him that it would be a big responsibility, a big risk, a big mistake? But he never listened and tempted me. He created the perfect family picture, where I was the sweet housewife and mother, and he was the architect who had made the safest, strongest and the most beautiful house. And he did. He made a house so big, so dreamy, so luminous that no wife could ever dream of. This house was even more beautiful than the Barbie house that I always dreamed of having as a child. But it never became a home. My husband knew how to build houses from scratch, he knew where to place things, but he didn’t know how to build a home, a home where he’d watch his family grow every day. Eventually he forgot that he had a pregnant wife waiting for him. He forgot that I feared seeing my doctor alone. He forgot that it if it wasn’t for him, I would have never agreed to be a mom. He missed most of my appointments and didn’t make it on time for the sonogram. During those painful appointments, where I waited alone, in doubt and petrified of the living thing inside me, I read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. On the day of the sonogram, I finished the book. When the doctor told me I was having a girl, I knew I would name her Lolita.

I take one sip from a can of beer that is not supposed to be in the fridge. It is bitter and disgusting. I swallow and immediately put it away. The night is humid, wet from an unpredicted rain, and warm from a prolonged summer that is too bland, too plain. I thought maybe a new taste, like a cold beer would add a little excitement to this night, but I didn’t realize that it would taste just as bitter as a cup of coffee. So I’m going to indulge myself with my usual hot tea, and I’ll just accept the fact that for now, life is stable, mild and dull.

I was a novice writer, 19, and he had found me. When I finally agreed to go out with him, he thought he’d won; I was a lottery and he was a lucky player. We had a lot in common. We both had dreams, mine was to be a big-shot writer, his was being a famous architect. We both wanted to travel and see the world outside of our dorm rooms. But the one thing that made us different was the way we loved each other. He was in love with my writing and I was in love with him, with his gestures, his smiles, his grins, his kisses, his passions. I don’t know how it was that for the 13 years that we were married, I didn’t see that his love was the dying kind, not the everlasting kind. And despite his lack of attention for me, the woman who slept next to him every night, the woman who gave him her whole heart without any exceptions, I was still blinded, maybe because I was too in love to realize his weakness, his inability to give me his heart.
He read every single article that I wrote, every single piece of writing, every poem, every story, but somehow he forgot to read the sadness in my eyes, the pain I felt every time he didn’t tell me he wanted me. But I let it go, I pushed my feelings aside and focused on pleasing him. I wrote about him every chance I got and I let him read. I had become an expert on pleasing him, making him happy and I never asked for anything. I saw him, but he no longer saw me. He kept telling me to write more and tried so hard to encourage me, to make me the best writer the world had ever seen, but he didn’t try to open his heart. And I, I waited. I waited for 13 years before letting him go.

A writer’s world is often lonely, empty, and illusive. This world can be bitter, dry, yet intoxicating and toxic. I live in one such world; I am a traveller. What I write is who I am and sometimes my inner personality can become deceptive. The roads are so wide in my illusions; there are no dead-ends, no stop signs, no walls or metal bars.
But I live in isolation. I may act fearless, I may act like a fighter, but I am still afraid of this world I live in. I’m afraid that I might slip up, or even fall. Whenever I’m alone, I think and sometimes these thoughts carry me to unreal, false destinations, ones that are so beautiful in all their fallacy and misrepresentation.
Tonight I have found myself once again in such position. I have turned myself into a fake doll, a beautiful doll with red lips, black, shimmering eyes. In my head, I belong to a prince, a prince whose lust for me will never die. I’m not in search of love. I’m too simple and I don’t live by rules. I am just a doll tonight, just a lonely, plastic doll. But this identity is too superficial, full of flaws and misrepresentations. But just as I can write anything, I can also become anybody…and that can be dangerous.

A little girl in ponytails sits across from me. Her mother has placed her hand on her little legs to make sure she doesn’t fall; the roads are too bumpy. I watch the two of them and they’re picture-perfect. I suddenly miss being held. I miss being touched by mother’s hands and I feel like a child who wants to cry for mom’s embrace. I’m suddenly weakened, vulnerable, and my eyes are watery. I have forgotten how good it feels to be held by mother, the woman who knows every detail of your face, every little speck on your arms. I have forgotten her smell, her voice, her songs.
Can I be a child, just one more time?
She is sitting there quietly and I smile. I smile at her; I haven’t forgotten how to smile.

Lolita doesn’t talk to me these days. She no longer giggles when I rub her tummy; she becomes stiff, and doesn’t want to be touched. I keep reminding myself that everything will be okay. I keep telling myself that we’re going to make it work. But my daughter is too little to know that. She is too little to know that even though her Daddy is gone, even though he doesn’t come for dinner and is no longer here to give her a good-night kiss, he still loves her.
Lolita doesn’t tell me she misses him. She stares at his photograph, the one right next to my bed, the one that used to make me fall in love with him all over again. I pad her shoulders and read for her stories that were once her favorite. I make her spaghetti, her favorite food. I kiss her before she goes to bed, after she wakes up and when she goes off to school. I hug her and take her horseback riding on Grandpa’s ranch. I do the things that I would have wanted Mama to do for me. I do the things that I always dreamed of when I was little. I tell myself I’m a good mother. I tell myself that what happened doesn’t mean I’m a bad mother. I tell myself and yet I know that her life will never be the same. She will always remember Daddy’s empty seat at the table. She will always remember her mother’s pallid face. She will always remember the smell of his shirt, the cologne that he always wore to work, the way he ate his spaghetti and the way he slept on the yellow couch. She will remember every little detail, and she will always wonder why he left, why he walked out and didn’t kiss Mommy. And I, I will know that I broke my own promise, the promise to never let my daughter see her Daddy leave.

The sun came out today and I walked to a lonely, isolated bus stop. A woman joined me in my loneliness just a couple of minutes after I came. She constantly moved her right leg, an uncontrollable habit of hers, and inhaled her cigarette like oxygen, smoke floating around her. Then, when she got tired of puffing it in and out, she threw it a foot away, on the edge of the crosswalk. I had met a living cigarette. From the corner of my eye, I could see her glancing at me, wondering why I was addicted to the music that played through my earphones. We were both addicts.
Inside the bus, where I was still lost in my own state of mind, there were many lonely people who had destinations, jobs, families, dreams even bigger than mine. But I had no destination. I could sit in my seat for hours, and I would not be late for any meetings, for any dates, for any dinners. I would be late for nothing. I wished I had a destination. I wished I had a plan, a little agenda that would break me away from my solitude, away from my languor.
I left the bus with my headphones still in my ears. And she left the bus with another cigarette. The cigarette was her only companion that day and the music was mine. I could not part from the songs that kept me moving straight ahead, to a path that was already drawn for me. And she couldn’t part from her lighter, the only one that lit her lonely mind.