Thursday

Thursday

The next day at school I was sleepy. I just went through the motions. I took notes when I was supposed to take notes, went to my classes whenever the bell rang, and didn’t cause any trouble. Jeremy avoided me, and I didn’t try to track him down. I stayed as far away as possible from Randall; he didn’t bother me at all.

I ate lunch alone.

In English, I didn’t look at Sarah as much as usual. She didn’t say anything to me, and I didn’t say anything to her. I just watched Mrs. Kortchek stand behind her lectern and talk and talk and talk, using her pointer stick to point to the chalkboard now and then. At the end of class, Sarah and Randall held hands and walked out of the classroom like they always did.

Nothing interesting happened for the rest of the school day.

I got on the bus to go home and heard, “Hello. It’s good to see you.” Manny was smiling at me with his warm, wrinkled face.

“It’s good to see you, too Manny,” I paused for a little bit. I wanted to say something else to him, as I stood there in the aisle close to the driver’s seat, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. And anyway a student behind me told me to get out of the way, so I got out of the way and took a seat somewhere in the middle of the bus, making sure to get a seat by myself, so I could look out the window.

The bus engine rumbled as Manny pushed on the gas pedal and the bus rolled forward. We passed by the usual scenery. With my cheek leaning against the glass, I saw a little patch of desert where birds perched on cactuses and ground squirrels poked their small, brown heads out of their holes. The bus ride continued and we got to a commercial part of town. I got a quick look at the people at the gas stations filling up their cars, people coming out of the grocery stores with karts full of groceries, a few people walking down the sidewalks.

It was comforting to think that every afternoon Manny gave all of us students a tour of the city. Of course, it was always the same tour, but the bus ride didn’t get boring, it got familiar and comfortable. The rumbling of the engine made a soothing, humming sound, and the occasional squeaking of the brakes added to the familiarity and regularity of the whole experience.

Jeremy’s stop came up, and he got off, without saying anything to me.

Manny drove the bus two more blocks, stopped the bus at my street, and opened the big bus doors.

But I didn’t get off.

I kneeled down on the floorboard, and curled into a ball. Manny stayed parked at the end of my street for a little bit, turned around in his seat and looked down the aisle. He was looking for me. Manny unbuckled his seat belt, walked down the aisle to my seat, and said, “Goodbye. See you later.”

I didn’t budge. I just stayed in my ball on the black, dusty floorboards of the bus. Everybody looked over at what was going on.

Manny leaned over and poked my back. “Goodbye. See you later.”

Uncurling from my ball, I looked back at him. “Manny, I don’t want to go home.” I was nearly crying.

“Goodbye. See you later.” Manny said in a firm voice, motioning to the bus door.

“Can’t you say anything else?” I shot back. “You’ve been in America a long time, Manny! Can’t you speak English by now?”

Manny let out a deep breath, quickly walked back to the driver’s seat, and hit the gas pedal. I curled back into my ball.

The bus route went on and on, and the bus slowly got emptier and emptier. When all the other students were dropped off, when only Manny and I were left on the school bus, I got up off of the floorboards. I ran my fingers through my hair and sat back in my seat. I resumed staring out the window.

We were headed back to school. Manny drove into the bus barn, the place where all the busses park overnight. I had never been to the bus barn before. I had walked by it a few times though. Manny parked the bus and turned off the engine, and it suddenly became very quiet. I stayed in my seat and kept looking out the window. Manny unbuckled his seat belt, and walked towards me. He stopped and looked at me, and I looked back at him. He peered into my eyes for a minute, cleared his throat, and said, “Why don’t you want to go home?”

My eyes widened. “Manny? You speak English?” I straightened up and rubbed my eyes.

Manny chuckled. “My English is not that good, but, yes, I can speak it.”

“This is crazy!” I yelled. “But all these years you never said anything but ‘Hello. It’s good to see you.’ and ‘Goodbye. See you later’. Why?”

Manny scratched his head. “I don’t know.” I watched Manny’s mouth in amazement as he spoke English. He was talking to me! I was talking to him! “Listen, Mickey. Right now my job is to get you to your house, but it sounds like you don’t want to go to your home. But, wherever you go, you just have to get off the bus. You can stay around the school until five and then ride the after school bus. Or you can call somebody to come pick you up.”

I put one of my feet up on the seat, untied my shoelace, and then started tying it again. I didn’t feel like hanging around after school alone again. I didn’t have anybody I could call to come give me a ride home; Mom wasn’t an option. My throat tightened as I finished making a double-knot. Tears pooled up in my eyes, wetted my lower eyelashes, and spilled over onto my cheeks.

Manny sighed, walked to the front of the bus and picked up his radio. He turned back to me and said, “I have to call somebody from the school to come and get you.”

I stood up. “No, please, Manny, can I just… can I stay with you?”

“What?”

I gripped the top of a bus seat, swallowed, and repeated, “Can I stay with you?” There was a pause.

“You want to stay with me?” Manny looked confused.

I nodded.

Manny put the radio down and touched his chin with his fingers. I thought I heard him laugh a little. “I’m a boring old man.”

“I don’t care.” My heart was pounding. “You’re not boring to me.”

Manny tapped his fingers on a bus seat and wrinkled his forehead. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t have any sort of plan. I just knew that I didn’t want to go home, and I didn’t really want to go anywhere else, and this old man, this wonderful, wrinkly old Mexican man who had been with me ever since I can remember, this old man was being kind to me, and I didn’t want to leave his side. I held my breath and waited for his answer. “OK. You can hang around with me for a little while.”

“Thank you!” I ran up to Manny, wanting to hug. I stretched out my arms, but when I got really close, it got awkward, so I just looked up at him and smiled.

“Oh, don’t make a big deal out of it. You can hang out in the bus barn with me and some of the other bus drivers for a little while, that’s it. Students aren’t supposed to be in there, so if you pull any funny business, I call the vice principal and you’re out, understand?”

“I promise I won’t do anything bad. I won’t touch anything or anything.”

“OK. We’ve got about forty-five minutes. Then I’ve got to start the after-school route. But right now it’s my break time,” Manny said.

We left the bus and walked towards a white brick building.

“This is the break room.” Manny explained to me as he stepped through the door.

I followed Manny inside the building and saw three people sitting at a long dining table, a table like the ones they have in the cafeteria, only this one was missing one of its metal legs. Instead of the leg, the tabletop was held up with a stack of cinder blocks. Two of the people were playing cards, and one guy was flipping through a magazine. An old lady crept around the room with a flyswatter.

A few cracks ran along the bare concrete floor. A table fan sat on top of a mini-refrigerator in the corner and whirred, and I realized that there was no air conditioning in here. A radio was quietly playing on one of the Spanish stations. I saw a poster that said, “Remember, their lives are in your hands,” and it showed a picture of a bunch of elementary school students riding on a school bus.

The guy with the magazine looked up at Manny and me.

“Hola”

“Hola” Manny said

“?Qué usted encontraría en su viaje?” The guy with the magazine said.

“Él olvidó conseguir apagado en su parada de omnibus. Él colgará alrededor de aquí conmigo hasta que lo tome casero en después de que ruta de la escuela.” Manny said.

I wish I knew what they were saying. Whenever people talked in another language around me, I always thought they were talking about me.

I sat in a folding chair next to a water cooler, and Manny sat at the table and started talking with the other bus drivers in Spanish.

One of the guy’s playing cards looked like a teenager. He looked up at me and asked, “You a student?”

I nodded.

He was skinny, both his ears were pierced, and he fidgeted. “Well you better stay in school, man, I’m serious. ‘Cause if you don’t stay in school man, you’ll end up like me,” He laughed. “And that ain’t cool.” He quickly became serious.

Manny turned around and held out a piece of wheat bread in front of me. “You want some?”

“Sure.” I wasn’t that hungry, but I took the bread, mostly to be polite. “Thank you.”

“You want some jam?” Manny held out a glass jar of raspberry jam with a butter knife sticking out of it.

“Sure.”

The bread looked grainy and darker than the wheat bread I was used to having, and it was unevenly sliced; one side of the bread slice was thicker than the other. It felt heavier than normal bread. I spread the jam on the bread and took a small bite out of a corner. I pressed the small hunk of bread and jam between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, found that it wasn’t gross, moved the food back to my molars, and chewed. The hearty bread spread slowly throughout my mouth, and I let each one of my taste buds absorb the flavor. It was delicious!

“Manny, where’d you get this bread?” I asked.

“I made it,” He replied.

“What?”

“I made it. I made that bread.”

“You mean, like, at your house?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Manny smiled at me. “You’ve never had homemade bread before?”

“No.”

“Hmm. Well now you have. You like it?”

“I love it!”

**********

Manny turned around and started talking in Spanish to the other bus drivers sitting at the busted table. It seemed like Manny got along with everybody in the break room. He talked with everybody, and smiled, and laughed.

I finished the bread Manny had given me and got another cup of water from the water cooler. I picked up a newspaper. I read the headlines, looked at some of the pictures, and read an article or two. Then I got out my backpack and did a little homework.


Eventually, some of the bus drivers started getting up, checking their pockets for keys, and heading out the door.

Manny stood up and yawned. “Alright, Mickey. I’ve got tot take you home now. Let’s go.” I stood up and followed Manny out to the bus and got on. He got into the driver’s seat, and I sat somewhere in the middle. It was just Manny and I on the bus again, and I liked that.

“Mickey,” Manny called.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell anyone I speak English.”

“OK.” I sat back and smiled.

Manny drove the bus from the bus barn to the place where they pick up all the students and parked. He opened the big bus doors, and some students, who looked like juniors or seniors, talked loudly and got on the bus. I avoided them.

We stayed parked for about five minutes, and a few more high schoolers got on. After observing them for a minute or two, I came to the conclusion that there are basically two types of after-school students. First, there were the athletes. These were the most prevalent and obnoxious. And second, there were the overachievers, people who felt compelled to fill their time with something school-sponsored. The overachievers were always doing homework, stressed out, and fake-happy. Then there was me, a kid who either hid in the desert alone after school or hung out with the bus drivers.

Manny took the bus out of park and pressed on the gas pedal. I looked out the window, down at some of the other cars on the street. We were so much taller than the other vehicles on the street, and for some reason that made me feel safe. But soon this bus ride would be over. Soon I’d be on my street, walking home, and soon I’d be getting my house key out of the fake rock and letting myself inside.

Maybe I could go to Jeremy’s house.

When my bus stop came up, I didn’t stand up. I stayed in my seat, and Manny stayed parked at the end of my street for a long time.

“Hey Manny, there’s nobody for this stop.” Some athlete wearing a sleeveless shirt said. His armpit hair looked like a mole had curled up under his arm and set up camp.

“Keep going, you idiot!” another athlete yelled while he pounded his fist on the bus seat.


Manny stayed parked, looked back at me, but I froze. Something wouldn’t let me get off the bus. I wanted to say something to those jerk athletes. I wanted to go over there and beat them up like Magma Man beats up Dr. Distresser, but I just sat in my seat and listened to them taunt the old Mexican bus driver who had been so kind to me.

The athlete with the armpit hair, who I had heard the other guys call Dave, leaned over the seat in front of him and yelled, “Manny! El push-o el pedal-o with your foot-o!” Most of the people on the bus laughed.

“Rapido! Rapido! Un-delay Un-delay!” another athlete shouted.

Finally I stood up. “Hey why don’t you guys shut up?” I yelled.

A dozen athletes turned and looked at me with scowling faces.

“What’d you say to us?” Dave said, spreading his arms out like peacocks spread their wings.

My chest and arms were trembling, but I pointed right at him and said, “You heard me. I said shut up.”

Dave left his seat, stepped into the aisle, and came towards me. My heart pounded. Not knowing what to do, I sat back in my seat and watched him walk down the aisle towards me, making two fists. Just then, Manny slammed on the gas, the bus zoomed forward, and the jerk-athlete fell face-first onto the floor with a loud smack. All the athletes laughed while Dave groaned in pain.

Blood ran from Dave’s nose and oozed onto to his mouth and chin. He pushed himself up from the floor of the bus and limped back to his seat. Another athlete, trying to be helpful, took a sock off his foot and stuck it on the bloody nose.

“Ugh! This sock stinks!” Dave shouted in a funny voice, the voice you get when you plug your nose.

“Quit whining, it ain’t that bad,” the other athlete said.

Dave turned and shouted at me, still holding the sock to his nose, “Hey- you better hope I don’t see you around school. ‘Cause if I do- I got two fists with your name on it.”

I smirked. He should have said ‘two fists with your name on them,’ but I didn’t tell him that. I just stayed in my seat and looked out the window. I started to understood why Manny didn’t let the kids knew he spoke English. Who would want to talk with jerks like Dave?

A few stops later, Dave got off the bus, still holding the bloody sock to his nose. More and more people got off the bus at their stops, and eventually it was just Manny and me.

Manny didn’t say anything to me right away. He just steered the bus and looked through the giant windshield at the city, taking diligent notice of all the traffic lights, stop signs, turn lanes, other vehicles on the road, and all the other things a good bus driver has to look out for. I wondered if he was upset with me for not getting off the bus again. After all, it was his job to take me home on either the regular bus or the after school activity bus; he wasn’t getting paid to baby-sit me all the time. I almost said something to Manny. I wanted to thank him for slamming on the gas and making Dave fall, but I stayed queit.

I folded my arms and looked out of the window. Afternoon gradually turned into evening. The sun sat on the horizon and shot its rays straight out, the yellow light just hitting the tops of trees and buildings. Sometimes sunlight got on the ground, in open clearings, but mostly the ground was in shadow.

I wondered what Mom was doing. Maybe she was watching TV. Maybe she was working late. Or maybe she was at a restaurant, putting leftovers in a to-go box. Or maybe she was at some rich new guy’s house, flirting, trying to convince him to marry her.

Jeremy was probably at home reading comic books. Or doing homework. Or outside playing with action figures. Or maybe Jeremy was sitting at the dinner table with his family. I could picture it. His Dad was reading a newspaper article out loud and his Mom, in an apron, was setting a steaming casserole on a hot pad on the table. Maybe he was telling his parents about what a bad influence I was.

And Sarah. What was she doing right now, as I sat here, looking out the bus window? Sarah was probably doing something really cool and popular. Maybe she was at the mall again with Molly and Trisha, trying on different kinds of perfume. Maybe she was getting dressed up for a date with Randall. She could be standing in front of her bathroom mirror, putting on a necklace, rubbing scented lotion onto her arms. I hadn’t thought about Sarah in a while. Whatever she’s doing, she’s not thinking about me.

Eventually Manny and I got back to the bus barn and parked in the same spot as before, between two other busses. Manny turned off the bus engine, and everything was silent.

Manny unbuckled his seat belt, stood up, leaned on the top of a bus seat, and smiled. “What are we gonna do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you get off at your stop?” Manny asked.

“I don’t know that either. But I still don’t want to go home. I don’t know where I want to go.” I looked away from him.

Manny stretched. “Well it’s time for me to go home.”

I looked up at Manny’s wrinkly face. “Can I go with you?”

Manny shook his head. “Look, Mickey-”

“No, Manny, I was thinking. Remember how you gave me some of that bread earlier?”
Manny took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his nose. I continued, “Well, maybe I could come over to your house and you could teach me how to make it. I’d really like to learn.”

Manny drummed his fingers on a bus seat.

“I haven’t told you this yet, but I meant to tell you that I tried to make bread before. Just yesterday, actually. I tried to follow a recipe from a cookbook, but I don’t know how to cook at all, and so it didn’t turn out very well, and I ended up burying it in the backyard.”

Manny started laughing. “You buried bread in your backyard?”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “Well actually it wasn’t even bread yet. It was just like, ooze.”

Manny laughed harder.

“Yeah, it really was. And I think I was missing some ingredients. I was missing something I had never heard of before. Oh yeah, Yeast. That’s right, I was missing yeast.”

“Well you can’t make bread without yeast. Not any kind that I’ve made, anyway.”

“Do you have any yeast?” I asked.

“I do.”

“Well, then, maybe, I could-”

“What will your parents say, if I let you come over to my house?” Manny asked.

“Oh, they’ll be fine with it. Totally fine. They won’t care at all. They’re really cool,” I said.

“You promise?”

“Yeah.”

Manny thought for a moment. “All right, you can come over. It’s about time for me to make more bread anyway.”

“Thank you, Manny! Oh, thanks so much! This is so cool!” I stood up and put on my backpack.

Suddenly Manny looked at me sternly. “But after the bread is done, you’re going to call your Mom, and she’s going to come pick you up. And if she can’t, I’ll give you a ride home.”

Manny and I walked out of the school bus. He locked it, and then I waited outside while he went in the break room building to get his lunchbox. Then we walked over to a parking lot to a brown, beat-up old car. It was Manny’s car.

Manny opened the passenger side door and pushed some junk off the seat.

“The car is messy,” he said.

I got in, sat down, and put on my seatbelt. Manny started the car and turned on the radio to a Spanish station

“I hope you don’t mind my music.”

“No, it’s cool,” I said. “I don’t understand what they’re singing about, but it’s still cool.”

Manny started the car and we started moving.

**********

A half-hour later, I found myself standing in Manny’s kitchen, holding a rubber spatula. He was rummaging through his cupboards, looking for salt. Manny lives in a small apartment, in what my Mom would call the bad part of town, but really what she means is the poor part of town, a neighborhood that wasn’t part of a Homeowner’s Association.

“All right, we have the salt, here…” Manny said to himself as he picked up a blue container. I couldn’t believe I was actually at Manny’s house. Manny, the old Mexican bus driver that nobody ever talked to. Manny, the guy who always only said, “Hello. It’s good to see you,” and “Goodbye. See you later.”

But there I was, in Manny’s apartment, with a rubber spatula in my hand, learning how to make bread. Manny poured the salt into a tan ceramic mixing bowl and told me to stir the salt and the flour together. I don’t think the ingredients had to be stirred that much; I think Manny was just looking for something for me to do. But that was fine. Stirring the stuff in the mixing bowl was better than standing around doing nothing. I slowly stirred the flour and salt together with my rubber spatula, trying to get the salt evenly distributed throughout all the flour. Manny got a bag of sugar from a cupboard, dipped into it with a little spoon, and then dumped the sugar into my bowl. I started stirred the flour, salt, and sugar together. It was funny; Manny was doing all this stuff but he didn’t even have a cookbook out.

“Don’t you follow any directions?” I asked.

“Nah,” Manny said. “I’ve done this so many times, I know the recipe by heart.” Manny put a dirty spoon into the sink, turned around and looked at me. “Oh, and here’s one of the best pieces of advice I can give you about cooking. If you want to cook something, make sure you have all the ingredients first. Because if you’re missing one of the ingredients and you start cooking, then, uh… either you’ve got to throw it away, or try to save it until you do get ingredients, or you just got to eat something gross. Maybe you should write some of this down, if you want to learn how to make bread, and not just watch me do it.”

Writing down the bread recipe, along with Manny’s cooking advice, sounded like a good idea. With Jeremy mad at me and Sarah ignoring me, I didn’t have much to do with my spare time. I might as well become a baker.

I went to my backpack and started writing down everything that Manny did. I wrote down all the ingredients so far: flour, sugar, and salt.

“Manny? How much of each thing did you put in the bowl?” I asked.

“Uh… the bread needs about six cups of flour, total, but you don’t put the flour in all at once, two tablespoons sugar, and one and a half teaspoons of salt.” Manny said.

“And how big was the cup that you used?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“You said six cups of flour, but are you supposed to use a small cup, or a really big cup, or like a medium sized cup?”

Manny started laughing. “Come here.” I stood up and went over to him, taking my notebook and pencil with me. “Now, I don’t mean to laugh, but I just thought that someone your age would have known this by now.” He pulled a plastic container with a handle out of the sink. “This is a cup. OK? This is what they call a measuring cup. It’s not the same as any old cup you’d drink out of. When a recipe calls for a cup of something, you need to get out one of these measuring cups and use it. Same thing with the teaspoons and tablespoons. Teaspoons and tablespoons are units of measurement used in cooking. They’re not any old spoon you’d find in a kitchen.”

“Oh.” I was writing furiously. No wonder my bread ended up buried with Sir Chirpsalot.

“Now we got to mix a tablespoon of yeast with some milk.” He got out a bowl, poured some milk into it, dumped in the yeast, and stirred it with a fork. I didn’t get too close of a look at the mysterious “yeast,” but it reminded me of like light-colored dirt, and the smell was faintly similar to some of Mom’s alcohol.

“Now we combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients.” Manny said. He poured the contents of the little bowl into the big ceramic mixing bowl, and then started stirring it. Now you stir it for a little bit.”

I put down my notebook and pencil on the couch, went over to the table, picked up the rubber spatula, put it into the middle of the mixture, and stirred. It smelled funny, but kind of good.

“Scrape the sides of the bowl while you do it. Get all that stuff mixed together really good.” Manny said.

I scraped the sides of the bowl, and the mixture sloshed around. “Isn’t bread dough supposed to be, uh, like thicker or dryer than this?”

“That’s just what I was about to do.” Manny brought over a big cotton sack of flour and set it on a kitchen chair. He dipped his measuring cup into the sack and came out with a heaping cup of brown flour. He dumped it into the mixing bowl, and it got harder to stir.

“Now we have four cups of flour in there,” Manny said. “But we’ll add the other two cups in later. Now we need to wipe off this table.” He got a dishrag and wiped it over the tabletop surface. “OK, it looks pretty good to me. Now we sprinkle some of this flour on the table, like this.” Manny grabbed a handful of flour from the flour sack still sitting on the chair and started sprinkling it on the table. “Then we dump out this bread dough stuff on to the table. Go ahead, dump it out.”

I tipped the bowl over and the dough-mixture rolled out, plopping onto the table. To get the rest of the flour and stuff out of the bowl, I scraped the sides with the rubber spatula. When I finished getting all of the sticky-flour stuff out, I looked at the brown, soggy lump sitting on the table.

“Now here’s the fun part.” Manny said. “Stick your hands in it.”

“Excuse me?”

Manny smiled and pointed at the brown lump. “Stick your hands in it. Press it down, smack it around, it’s not going to hurt you.”

I poked it. I put my finger on it again, and pressed my finger in to it. My finger hit a gooey spot, and I retreated.

Manny laughed. “It’s moments like these I wish I had a camera. You look like you’ve never cooked before in your life.” Manny put his hand on my shoulder and pulled away from the table. He put both his palms right on the ball of dough. “Let me show you how it’s done. Like I said, don’t be afraid of it, just put your hands on it, smack it around, throw it around a little bit.” Manny pressed down on the ball with both hands, flattening the dough out, and then folded the dough back on itself, sort of forming another ball. He pressed the new ball down, and then folded it back on itself again. He moved the ball of dough around the table, letting the dough absorb the flour he had sprinkled earlier.

“This is an important step.” Manny said. “It’s called kneading. It’s where you mix in the rest of the flour and you pound it around and get it all mixed up nice.” Manny worked his hands around the dough, and I was about to go back to my notebook when he said. “I need some more flour, but I don’t like to reach into the flour sack when I’m all doughy like this.” He held up his hands, showing me the chunks of brown dough stuck to his palms and around his fingers. Brown flour covered his wrists and part of his forearms. “Can you get me another cup of flour and put it over here?”

I looked for the measuring cup. Manny said, “You don’t need to use the cup. Just reach into the flour sack with your hands and get me a little more flour. It doesn’t have to be exactly a cup of flour.”

I went over to the flour sack sitting on the chair, stuck my hand in there, and scooped up a handful of warm flour. The flour felt pleasant in my hand, kind of like very fine sand from the beach. I sprinkled it on the table, letting the tiny grains of flour fall between my fingers.

“A little more.” Manny said.

I scooped my hand into the sack again, and got a little more flour. I sprinkled the flour over the ball of dough, and watched Manny knead the bread for a moment. Then I asked, “Can I try?”

“You’re not afraid of this stuff anymore?” Manny smiled.

“No.” I shook my head.

“Alright.” Manny took his hands out of the dough mixture, rubbed his hands to let some of the dough fall off into the dough on the table, and then went over to the kitchen sink to rinse his hands off.

I plunged my hands into the ball of dough and moved it around the table. I banged on it a little bit with my fists, and then tried to knead it like Manny had done.

“That looks pretty good,” Manny said. He brought a big bowl and a rag over to the table. “Now, we put the dough in this bowl, cover it with a rag, and let it rise.”

I washed my hands, dried them, and sat on the couch. I didn’t know what “let it rise” meant, but I gathered that it meant waiting around for a while. Manny sat down on the couch with me. I looked around the apartment. Something was weird about this room. Something was missing. He had a bookshelf, a couch, a lamp, pictures of family members on the wall, a stereo, a few houseplants, but still, something was missing. Finally I realized what it was.

“Where’s your TV?” I asked.

“Don’t have one.” Manny said.

“You don’t have one?”

“Nope. Never bought one.”

“That’s crazy,” I said.

“Why is that crazy?” Manny asked.

“Well, because, everyone I’ve ever known has a TV. It’s always in their living room, across from the couch.” I pointed to the wall in front of us. “See, it should be right there. The couch is here, so we should be looking at a TV now, instead of a blank wall. That’s how it always is.”

Manny laughed. “See, I told you I was a boring old man.”

I smiled. I didn’t think Manny was boring.

“Manny, how long have you been a bus driver?”

“Oh…” Manny counted on his fingers, “coming up on twenty years now.” Manny was silent again.

“What did you do before that?” I asked.

“I used to pick fruit. Sometimes cotton. Sometimes in California. Sometimes here in Arizona. Went to New Mexico one time, but didn’t stay there very long. I got really tired of picking fruit and cotton, though. When you pick fruit you gotta go where the work is, it’s hard to have a family when you’re moving around so much. And sometimes there’s not enough work for everybody that needs work. And it’s hot out there, in the fields. I used to sweat all day. There ain’t no air conditioning out there, you know.”

“That sounds like hard work.”

“You’re right. It is hard work. But you’ll probably never know about it.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “I already know about it. Stuff grows out of the ground, and people walk around the crops and pick it and put it in a bag. That’s how we get food. I know about it.”

Manny was quiet again. He seemed to be deep in thought.

“But I didn’t mean to stop you.” I said. “Keep going.”

“Oh, you don’t really want to hear about my life.” Manny folded his arms.

“Yes I do. I mean, I’ve never met anyone before who has picked fruit as much you have. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who has picked fruit for a living.” I fiddled with the zippers on my backpack. Manny was still quiet. I thought of a question that would make Manny talk again. I asked, “How much longer do you have until you retire?

“Three years.”

“Three years? Cool! I have three more years left of high school.” I said. “That means that you will have been my bus driver from elementary school all the way through high school. Isn’t that pretty cool?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty cool, alright,” he said. Manny stroked his chin with his fingers, and then unfolded his arms. “Mickey, let me tell you something that’s bothering me. You said you knew all about picking fruit. You said the farmer grows fruit, people walk around and pick it off the vine and that’s it. As easy as that, one, two, three.” Manny leaned forward and raised his voice. “Well, just because you know about it that way doesn’t really mean you know about it. You don’t know what it’s like to pick cotton. You don’t know what it’s like to pick peaches. You don’t know what it’s like to spend a whole day in the summer outside, working, bent over a row of cotton from sunup to sundown, going hungry sometimes, with no lunch. You don’t know what it’s like, and I don’t think you’ll ever know what it’s like.”

Manny looked away from me and leaned back on the couch. I had never seen him so worked up before. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But I didn’t mean to yell at you. I just don’t like you saying that you know all about picking fruit when you haven’t even done it for one day.”

We sat there in silence for a while, and then I thought of another question.

“Have you ever been married?”

Manny smiled. “Now why are you getting so personal?”

I tried to think of an answer, but then Manny said, “Oh it’s alright, I don’t mind getting personal, I guess. Yeah. I was married. Married to a good woman for a long time. And we had some kids. Six of them. My wife died a few years back, but all my kids are alive. Some of them live in different states. They all got different jobs. Some of them are married. One got divorced.” Manny put his hands on his head and yawned. “But, that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you. Now why is it that you don’t want to get off the bus these days?”

I chuckled. “Well, I don’t know exactly. Part of it’s because the last time I saw my Mom, she was pretty mad at me. But that’s not the only reason. I think I don’t want to go home because I’m bored.”

“Hmm. Is your father mad at you, too?”
“I don’t have a father.”

“Well sure you do. Everybody’s got a father.”

“Not me. My Dad left when I was really little, and Mom and I don’t know where he is, so I tell people that I don’t have a father.”

“Hmm. Well, that’s too bad.” Manny stood up and paced around the living room. “But, Mickey, I’m not your father. I can teach you how to make bread tonight, but that’s it. After the bread’s done, you’ve got to call your Mom and get a ride home, and if she can’t come pick you up, I’ll give you a ride home. Today was the last time you don’t get off the bus at your stop. If you don’t get off the bus when you’re supposed to again, I’m going to call a teacher or the principal.”

“I know,” I said.

“The bread still has to rise for a while.” Manny said. “I’m going to go read. Maybe you could do your homework. Homework’s good for you.” Manny walked down a little hallway, went into another room, and shut the door.

I looked around his apartment at some of the pictures on the wall, some of the books on his bookshelf, and then I sat back down on the couch and got out some homework.

After a while I got up and looked at the big bowl on the table. The rag covering the bowl had plumped in the middle. Wow, the ball of bread dough was really rising! I lifted a corner of the rag and peeked at the dough. It was probably twice or three times bigger than it had been before, and it was smoother now.

“Having a little peek at the bread?”

I turned around and there was Manny, in sweat pants and a T-shirt, standing in the kitchen. I laughed. “Yeah. Does lifting the rag hurt it?”

“Nah, not really. It looks risen pretty well. Now it’s time to pre-heat the oven and put it into loaf pans.”

Manny turned the oven on to 350 degrees, and went over to the table. He dumped the dough out of the bowl, and it seemed to collapse and get smaller.

“Then you gotta form the bread into little rolls of dough, like this.” He rolled the dough between his palms and the tabletop. “Some people use a rolling pin, but I just use my hands.” He then formed them into three rectangles, and pinched the edges of them, like he was sealing them shut. “See what I did?”

I nodded my head and took notes. Manny washed his hands at the kitchen sink with a bar of soap and then wiped his hands dry on his jeans. He opened a cabinet and pulled out three black, rectangular pans.

“These are called cast-iron loaf pans.” Manny said. “I like them better than glass or metal loaf pans because they retain heat so well. And I’ve had them forever.”

He opened a cabinet door by his feet, got out a metal can, and put it on the counter, next to the cast iron loaf pans. He took off the lid off the can, scooped his right hand into it, and came out with some slimy, grayish-white stuff on his fingertips.

“What’s that?” I asked, ready to write.

“Lard.”

“What’s lard?”

“It’s made out of pig fat.”

I scrunched my nose. He continued, “Some people use shortening or uh… non-stick spray stuff, but I like to use lard. Probably because that’s what my nana used to use.”

“Your what?”

“My nana. It means grandmother.”

“Did your nana make a lot of bread?” I asked.

“Oh yes. She was always in the kitchen cooking. She made bread, flour tortillas, corn tortillas, enchiladas, menudo, stuff you wouldn’t like. She made it all from scratch, too.” Manny kept rubbing the lard into the insides of the cast-iron loaf pans while he talked. “We didn’t go out to eat back then, the way people do now. Sometimes we’d go over to the neighbors to eat, but we never went out. We were too poor. Food was different back then.” Manny finished wiping the bread loaf pans down with lard. He washed his hands again and put the metal lard can back in the cabinet by his feet. “Now you put the dough in the loaf pans, cover them up with the rag again, and let it rise back up.”

“Let it rise again? For how long?” I asked.

“About half an hour.”

“Wow. Now I know why people don’t make their own bread,” I said.

“Why?” Manny asked.

“Because it takes forever.”

“Yeah, it takes a long time. It’s a lot easier to buy it from the store. But I think the bread tastes better than the store-bought kind, anyway.” Manny said.

“Yeah, me too.” I said.

He moved to the living room area and sat down on the couch where I was sitting.

I looked over at him. “Manny, I think it’s awesome that you’ll be my bus driver all throughout high school.”

“Well, I’ll be there for another three years, and they probably won’t change my route, but you probably won’t ride with me all that time. You’ll probably get a car when you’re sixteen, you won’t want to ride the bus anymore, and that will be it. That’s usually what happens to kids from your neighborhood.”

The idea of not riding Manny’s bus bothered me. “No, I don’t think my Mom’s rich enough to buy me a car. She won’t tell me anything about how much money she has, but sometimes I’ve answered the phone and it’s been a bill collector. But maybe if Mom gets a rich husband I’ll get a car. I don’t know.”

Manny sat silently, looking out the window.

“You know what, though, Manny? Even if I do get a car somehow, I think I’d rather ride the bus.” I said.

“Nah, no you won’t.” Manny said.

“Yes I will. I mean, if I ride the bus, I won’t have to pay for gas, and I know I won’t get into a car accident, and I’ll get to look out the window and see the city like I always do. And anyways I don’t want to turn into a snob. Seriously, some of the kids at school think they’re royalty just because their rich Dad gives them a car for their sixteenth birthday. I think it’s unfair. What did those rich kids do to deserve that car? Nothing. They just happened to be born in to a wealthy family. So what?” I held my hands out, gesturing passionately and talking louder. “But now look at you, Manny. You’ve worked long and hard. I don’t think I’ve ever had a substitute bus driver, it’s like you never get sick, and you’ve always been there, every single day, just saying, ‘Hello. It’s good to see you,’ when I get on the bus and then ‘Goodbye. See you later,’ when I get off the bus. Every single day, no matter what!”

I started crying.

All of a sudden it hit me how much I wanted a father.

I wanted Manny to reach out to me. I wanted to put my head on Manny’s shoulder and keep crying, but I couldn’t do that. I knew when it came down to it, we were merely strangers. I happened to ride the bus he drove sometimes. That’s all. As much as I wished that Manny were my father, he wasn’t, and he never could be.

Manny and I sat there on the couch for a long time, without saying anything. I kept crying and Manny looked away.

Finally Manny said, “It’s time to put the bread in.” He stood up, walked into the kitchen, took the rag off of the three loaf pans, and then put the loaf pans into the oven. He came back into the living room and rubbed his hands together. “Now it’s got to bake for thirty-five minutes, and then we’ll eat it.” Manny went back into the kitchen and started cleaning off the table.

I stayed on the couch and closed my eyes. I was through crying. I felt very sleepy. “Manny, thanks for teaching me how to make bread,” I said.

“You’re welcome. You think you can do it by yourself now?” Manny said.
“I think so,” I said.

Manny wiped off the table while he talked to me. “And thank you for keeping me company. I don’t get too many visitors. It’s nice to have somebody here. But like I said, you can’t come over again. I’d probably get in trouble if the boss found out about this.”

“Why?”

“Oh, it looks fishy I guess.” Manny stopped wiping the table and looked at me.

I nodded my head. Manny went back to cleaning off the table, which still had some bread dough stuck to it. Then he went over to the sink, plugged up the bottom, and filled it with warm water. He took a plastic bottle of orange dish soap from a cabinet and squeezed it into the water. I walked into the kitchen and offered to help.

“I’ll wash,” Manny said, “and you rinse and dry and put away. How about that?”

“Yeah.” I rinsed the dishes off with water from the faucet and then put them in the plastic dish drainer. “Can you tell me more about picking cotton and stuff?” I asked. “It’s interesting.”

Manny laughed. “Well, alright, if you wanna hear it, I could tell you a little more if you’re interested I suppose.”

“Yeah, I wanna hear it.” I said.

Manny cleared his throat, kept his hands busy in the soapy water, and started telling me about his life. He lived in tents sometimes and worked all day in cotton fields, and he told me that his hands would get rough and his back would get sore. But the hardest thing to him was moving around so much. He said if fruit was always in bloom, year-round, in one spot, then maybe he would have picked fruit his whole life. But migrant workers, the people that move around and pick fruit, they have to move around. They have to go where the work is. But when Manny got a wife and got some kids, he decided to try to get a better job, so he become a bus driver. I wondered if Manny was an illegal immigrant, but he didn’t say anything about that, and I thought it would be rude to ask.

The time passed quickly, and soon the dishes were done. I sat on the couch again, and Manny wiped off the counter with a rag. I closed my eyes and remembered that I was sleepy.

“Mickey, the bread’s just about done.” Manny said. “You need to call your mother and ask her if she can come pick you up. I’d take you home myself, but I get a little tired of driving all the time, you know. But don’t worry, I’ll give you a ride if she can’t.”

I stayed sitting on the couch for a moment and let out a deep breath. I still didn’t want to go home. But I had to. I had nowhere else to go, and maybe Mom was wondering where I was. I went over to the phone and dialed Mom’s number. It was an old-fashioned type of phone, one with a cord connected to the wall.

Mom picked up. “Hello?”

“Hi Mom.”

“Oh hey Mickey. Long time no see.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do you feel like coming home any time soon?” Mom asked.

I hated it when she got sarcastic. “Yeah. Actually, I was wondering if you could come pick me up.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m over at a friend’s house.”


“Is it far away?”

“Maybe about fifteen minutes.”

“Do you want me to come get you now?”

“Yeah.”

Mom was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “OK, I’ll come get you.”

**********

I walked into the kitchen and told Manny that Mom was on her way to pick me up. Manny had already gotten the bread out of the oven and was slicing one of the loaves on a wooden cutting board.

Manny put two thick slices of bread on a plate and set it on the table. “This is for you,” he said. He got out butter knives, a variety of jams in glass jars, honey in a bear-shaped squeeze-bottle, two cups, and a jug of milk, and put it all on the table.

I sat down at the table, picked up a slice of the warm bread and smelled it. I was about to put it in my mouth, but then I thought it would be polite to wait for Manny to join me. Soon enough he had everything prepared and he sat down at the table, across from me.

Manny smiled at me, and I smiled back. There’s nothing quite like one of Manny’s smiles. His face is so wrinkly, and he has dimples. But this particular smile seemed more powerful than the other smiles I had previously received from him. This particular smile was given to me across a dinner table, after a long day, with wheat bread we had just made on our plates.

Manny folded his arms and said, “I’m going to say a prayer.” He bowed his head and was silent. I felt awkward. I hadn’t really been around people that prayed before. I wondered if he was going to say something out loud, but he just lowered his head for a minute, stayed quiet, and then raised his head. Manny unfolded his arms and started spreading strawberry jam on a piece of bread. I wondered if he said anything about me in his prayer.

Without putting on jam or honey, I took a big bite out of bread, the warm wholesome bread filling my entire mouth with scrumptiousness.

“I’m glad you like it,” Manny said.

I swallowed and said, “I love it.”

I drank some milk, took another bite of plain bread, and then decided to try one of the jams that Manny had put on the table. I looked at the three jars of jam, read the labels, and then settled on orange marmalade. I took my time finishing that slice, savoring each bite, and then put honey on my second piece of bread. I ate that one, and then Manny offered me another piece of bread. I said yes, and he got up and cut off another thick slice from the loaf sitting on the cutting board on the counter. He carried the slice of bread in his hand over to the table and set it on my plate. I thanked him, and ate that one just as pleasurably as I had eaten the last two pieces.

I was just about to finish my second glass of milk and my third slice of bread when there was a knock at the door.

My shoulders drooped when I realized who it probably was. I got up, gathered my backpack, homework, and my bread recipe notes, and answered the door. It was Mom.

“Hey, Mickey,” she said. She looked upset. “I didn’t know you had a friend in this part of town.” Mom stood in the doorway. She wore sweat pants and a T-shirt; a purse hung from her right elbow.

“Yeah. Well, I’m ready to go.” I said.

Mom said, “Why don’t you introduce me? I want to know who your friends are these days. I’m your mother, I should know these things.”

Manny came up behind me, looked at my Mom, smiled and said, “Hello. It’s good to see you.”

Mom smiled politely at the old man, looked around, and quietly said to me, “So Mickey, where is your friend?”

“This is my friend,” I said, pointing to Manny.

“Who?” Mom asked.

“Him. His name is Manny.”

“Oh, this gentleman?” she chuckled. “I guess I just didn’t realize that one of your friends would be so… so mature.”

There was a pause, and then Manny spoke up. “Ma’am, I’m a bus driver for the school, and I drive Mickey’s bus. I’ve driven his bus since elementary school. The reason he’s here is because your son didn’t want to get off the bus today. He had a rough day at school, I think, and uh… so we just ended up spending the afternoon and some of the night together. I hope that’s not a problem.”

Mom gave Manny a suspicious look.

“Do you want some bread?” Manny asked, hoping to smooth things over.

“Bread?” Mom looked confused. “No thank you.” Mom put her hand on my shoulder and guided me out of the door. Then she looked at Manny and said, “Listen, I don’t know who you are, but I know what kind of neighborhood you live in, and I’m not being racist or anything, but you need to stay away from my son, understand?”

“Yes, I understand, ma’am. I’m sorry.” Manny put his hands behind his back and lowered his head.

“If this happens again,” Mom put one hand on her hip and pointed at him, “I’m calling the principal. Or I’m calling the police.” She turned away, grabbed my arm, and took me to the apartment complex parking lot.

I started crying again.

“What are you crying about?” Mom asked me as she pressed a button on her key fob to unlock the car.

I didn’t say anything. I just put my backpack in the back seat of the car, got in, and put on my seat belt.

Mom started the car. “Mickey, I asked you a question. Why are you crying?” She backed out of the parking space and started driving out of the apartment complex parking lot. “I hate it when you don’t answer me. Was that Mexican really your bus driver?”

I didn’t say anything.

Mom stopped at a stop sign. “Answer me!”

I bit my lip, put my hands in my pockets, and looked out the window. I tried to focus on the streetlights flooding buildings and sidewalks in ugly yellow light. Mom pounded a fist on the dashboard, put her forehead on the steering wheel for a second, and then looked up and drove forward.

It didn’t take to her too long to try talking with me again. “Mickey, I’m sorry about the other day, what I said to you, when I was on the couch with that man.” She lowered her voice and tried to sound calm. “What I said was bad. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. And I want you to know something. It’s not your fault that you don’t have a father. It’s my fault, OK? It’s my fault. I’m not attractive enough or sane enough or interesting enough or something enough. I don’t know. But you don’t have to worry about any of that, OK, Mickey, because you’re too young for all this.”

I looked out the window at some people standing on a street corner, chatting and smoking. I wished that I was back at Manny’s apartment. Maybe I could beg him to let me live with him. I’d tell him I could get a job and help him with the rent. Maybe he’d really take me in.

Mom interrupted my reverie. “And I didn’t mean to yell at you just now. It just drives me crazy that you never want to talk to me. Am I so scary or so mean that you never want to talk to me?” Mom took a hair tie out of her hair, undoing her ponytail, and ran her fingers through her hair with one hand while she held the steering wheel with the other hand. “Listen, I just need to know, who was that man you were with tonight? I need to know that you’re safe.”

“I already told you.” I finally said. “His name is Manny. He’s my bus driver for school.”

“And what did you do all that time while you were at his apartment?”

“Nothing.”

“Mickey, you need to tell me. I’m your mother. I need to know. What did you two do all that time? Did he do anything inappropriate with you?”

“Mom, all he did was talk with me and… and he taught me how to make bread.”

“He taught you how to make bread?” Mom said, confused.

“Yeah.” I said. “He taught me how to make bread.”

“Hmm. Well I don’t want you going over to Manny’s apartment or hanging out with him at all anymore. It’s weird. If that man really is your bus driver, you can still ride the bus, but just watch out. Keep away from him.” Then she added, “But thank you for talking to me.”