I closed my eyes and tried hard to pretend that he wasn’t there, that he couldn’t detect my sins, sniff them out like a bloodhound on a scent trail.
Sometime after noon I started to recognize the scenery out that tinted window: gigantic green signs with town names I knew, their names written in bold white letters: North Platte and Sutherland and Roscoe. A plaque lining the road: Entering Keith County. Familiar whitewashed barns and cattle fencing, an abandoned wooden farmhouse sloping so far in one direction I was certain, even eight years ago, the last time I laid eyes on it, it would slide right over onto the yellowing grass and collapse. I found myself sitting upright, my nose pressed to the frigid glass, hearing Momma’s voice against the drone of the bus’s engine: I love you like pigs love slop.
And then that bus veered off the road toward Highway 61, signs leading the way to Lake McConaughy where I built many a sandcastle as a kid, Momma waking up with the urge to go on the brightest of summer days and loading Lily and me into the Bluebird for the short drive to the lake. She never remembered the sunscreen, and we always burned to a crisp, all of us, comparing freckles and pink noses later in the day, pressing on the tips of our noses until they turned white. I stared out the window while that bus pulled right on into the Conoco parking lot, right there beside the Super 8 and the Comfort Inn, just across from the Wendy’s where Momma and I ate so long ago it was like another life. The Pamida was there and the truck stop; just like I remembered. I remembered it all. The bus was passing through Ogallala on the way to Fort Collins. This was Ogallala.
I was home.
When the bus came to a stop and passengers unloaded and headed into the Conoco to use the restroom and grab a snack, I had the strongest urge to snatch that suitcase and run. My heart was thumping loud and heavy in my chest, arms and hands quivering. I went so far as to push past the handful of new riders who were boarding the bus for the next leg of the trip. “Excuse me,” and “Pardon me,” I muttered as I pushed the suitcase ahead of me, lumbering down the narrow aisle in a clumsy manner. I got more than one dirty look. A girl with longish hair the color of pralines parroted, “Excuse you,” as I passed by too close, stepping on her fancy shoe. But I didn’t care.
I convinced myself that I had the tiniest inkling how to get home, to the prefab house, though chances were good I didn’t know how to do it when I was eight years old. But it didn’t matter. I could’ve laid down in a roadside ditch somewhere in Ogallala and it still would’ve felt like home. I could feel it in my blood and in my pores. Ogallala. Home. And wrapped up in all that: Momma and Daddy. There was this silly thought filling my mind: maybe Momma was still here. Maybe it was just a whole big misunderstanding. I’d walk back to the prefab home, and there Momma would be with Daddy and baby Lily, who was not Rose, who did not have a sister who was not me. And all of a sudden, walking through the rasping screen door, I’d be eight years old again and it would be as if time hadn’t happened. Time had stood still. Momma was alive, her energy and enthusiasm filling the flavorless rooms of that tiny home as it used to do. The house would be exactly the same as we’d left it. There would be no other family living there, no little girl sleeping in my bed. And I’d never have heard of a man named Joseph. Just a mistake, I told myself as I climbed down those enormous bus steps and onto the Conoco parking lot. The cold air startled me—begged me to change my mind—but I ignored it. I started off, across the parking lot, toward the street, a look of defiance streaked across my face. A refusal to believe what I knew inside me to be true. Just a whole big misunderstanding.
Momma is alive. Daddy is alive. My feet pounded on the pavement, fast and determined. The suitcase was awkward, smacking my right leg with each and every step I took.