The Silence

The Silence We were on that school bus, a big yellow one with black letters on its sides, spelling out Whittier Union, and you and I sat next to each other talking, arguing and giggling, you not caring if someone told your boyfriend about our larks aboard that bus, long ago in 1970, while on a field trip with our psychology class to Pomona State Hospital, aboard that big yellow bus filled with white kids from Whittier, except you weren’t white, you were Mexican, and a beautiful one at that, with high cheek bones and brown eyes complimenting your mischievous smile. We had just met Ray, a microcephalic, inside the hospital and his miniature head made us wonder how such things happen to people. You were wearing your usual school dress that day, and your brown smooth legs were crossed as the bus careened down Highway 10 exceeding the speed limit, past burgeoning towns with cars passing by at seventy five miles per hour. And the young voices on the bus increased in loudness like a storm rising, and you flirted with me like there was a chance we could get back together, but, “what about your boyfriend?” “Take me away from him,” you pleaded. Then a silence erupted like a firecracker of impossibility, and you just sat looking out the window all the way back. You shifted your legs only once.