The Expectations of the Misunderstood
A short story from the 2008 college vault: What begins as an existential conversation between two women on a bus begins to descend into damning chaos...
The Expectations of the Misunderstood
Written by Jawanza D. Barial-Lumumba
“Fire the gun.”
The look in her cold brown eyes should have been that of a madwoman, for that was who she was. Instead, her stare was flooded with certainty. Her dark eyes darted back and forth between the gun—which had once been hers—and the temple of the trembling woman who had sat with her on the bus. The passenger watched this madwoman execute the bus driver, promising to leave only one survivor of her massacre—
The madwoman had said it was the only way she would be understood.
“Fire the gun,” demanded the madwoman again.
The gun was rattling, trembling closer towards the passenger’s head. The passenger could feel the warmth gun’s barrel slowly pressing against her head, still shaking. She took several deep breaths, trying to hold back the tear that fell from her cheek.
“Y-you don’t have to do this,” insisted the passenger, eyes locked upon the madwoman. “I know that… well—this looks bad. B-but it doesn’t have to end like—”
“This is the only way it can end,” replied the madwoman, whose stern and certain brown eyes then met with the passenger’s teary gaze. “’Cause, if it doesn’t, then I will fire that gun—and then all will be lost. Everyone will be dead. And I will just go on killing.” The madwoman leaned in closer towards the passenger’s moist, frightened face, until she was only inches away. “The only way to get out of this is to trust and believe me. Do you?”
“Trust you to stop killing by allowing myself to die.” She shook her head. “Never.”
Still staring into the eyes of the passenger, she replied, “Who said I was talking to you?”
The echo of the gun filled the bus as the final victim fell to the blood-drenched floor…
* * * *
The violent shaking of the bus jolted Kelli Meyers out of her deep, yet awkward, slumber. She blinked several times, wearily shaking her head. Her cheek had been pressed up against the cold window of the public bus that was carrying her away from the city. Sunset was swiftly departing, as the darkness of the night was seeping into the seemingly quiet bus.
Kelli’s bus ride had started pretty rocky. She had gone online, triple-checked the bus schedule, packed all of her belongings into two over-packed, over-flowering suitcases, gave her two daughters kisses goodbye, before warning her husband to cook, not order out. Then, Kelli headed down and out of her home to wait on the curb. She had arrived fifteen minutes early to the bus stop, reassuring herself that she would not miss it. Kelli was punctual. In all of her thirty years of living, the only thing Kelli hated more than waiting for others was when she was late.
Unfortunately, it was her bus that decided to be tardy, arriving over thirty minutes late. Flustered and agitated, Kelli heaved her two bags on to the small public bus only to find an unpleasantly fat, white man sitting in the bus driver’s seat, with an even more unpleasant mustache sitting atop his smug face. The nametag across his hefty chest read “Xavier.”
Kelli had specifically shown the man that she had the correct amount of money, before placing it into his machine, which then promptly noted that she had not paid enough. And it was his refusal to allow her on to his bus that then caused Kelli to erupt. She was a woman who would not stand for this kind of treatment.
“I guess, Mister Xavier, that you’re an asshole,” Kelli recalled declaring. “I suppose that actually stopping your bus in front of me might be asking too much of you. Or, helping me lift my shit onto your bus could be too big of a request. Hell—possibly just arriving somewhere close to on time, versus a half hour late, would just be too extreme of a notion for you.” Kelli remembered taking in a deep breath, trying to calm her rapidly escalating voice. She had also seen the other passengers angrily staring at her, all impatiently waiting for her—all except the peculiarly fascinated eyes of a mocha-colored, teenage girl who sat in the front of the bus and a small, blue-eyed child seated further back. Kelli then turned her head back to the fat bus driver. “But are you telling me that even though I showed you my exact change, placed it in your machine, and then your machine showed an incorrect amount, that you are still not allowing me on your bus?”
Oddly enough, the same mocha-colored teenager volunteered five cents to Kelli’s cause, allowing her passage onto the bus driver’s domain. The teenager had helped her settle onto the bus, assuming a seat behind the small blue-eyed child. Afterwards, Kelli just leaned her head against the window, closed her eyes, and let the world wash away…
Now, Kelli’s eyes fell upon the apparently vacant seat of the teenager who had been helping her. There was a cold, unnerving feeling rushing through Kelli. The bus hadn’t reached its next stop—and yet, the teenage girl had vanished. Where could she have gone?
In that very moment, Kelli felt a boney leg pressing against her own.
Kelli turned her head to discover the brown-eyed teenager occupying the seat right next to her. Her cold eyes drilled into Kelli, causing her to silently gasp. A jolt of fear momentarily surging through Kelli, quickened her heart as it began to viciously beat.
“Hi.” A strange, twisted smile arose from the tan and ashy girl’s face as her rattling voice spoke. Trying to catch her breath, Kelli noticed the girl’s tight, patchy worn out blue jeans. The teenager wore a black, puffy jacket that covered her white, raggedy shirt, which seemed to loosely hang off of the slender body.
Once recollected, Kelli inhaled once more before softly asking, “Why did you—I mean… you were seated over there before, yes?”
“Now, when you glance down the aisle of a bus and think, ‘I want this seat,’” murmured the girl softly. “Do you ever stop to look at another seat and then think, ‘But what if I was meant to sit here?’ Or do you eye a larger woman, taking up two seats, and ponder, ‘Perhaps one of her two seats was supposed to be occupied by me.’”
“D-did… you want… my seat?” wondered Kelli. Her eyebrow arched, unsure of what the teenager girl was saying—but it was in that instance Kelli noticed a strange, glazed-over expression covering the stranger’s face upon speaking.
“No,” insisted the teenager with a confident nod. Her cold brown eyes then met with Kelli’s nervous, hazel eyes. “I like my new seat just fine.” She extended out her hand to Kelli and said, “My name’s Andrea.”
“Oh.” There was nothing else Kelli could think to say. She was certainly grateful that this girl had helped pay for her passage, but that in no way had signaled a yearning or desire for this younger girl to sit with her. Kelli shifted uneasily, keeping her hands clasped together in her lap, before the teenager recoiled her hand. Kelli tried to pull her gaze away from the girl and back towards the window she had been resting her head on. As her eyes crept towards the window, she could not help but notice the small, blue-eyed child’s head slightly turned, listening to their conversation, and waiting for the next words to be spoken.
“What’s your name?” the teenager asked.
“Kelli Meyers.” Kelli released a silent and agitated sigh within her head. She shifted uncomfortably again, feeling Andrea’s chilling gaze still drilling into her. Sharply, Kelli jerked her head at Andrea and snapped, “What?”
“You’re an awful conversationalist,” insisted Andrea with a simple shrug.
“Why should I talk to you?” demanded Kelli, sharply crossing her arms. “Yes, you helped ‘pay’ for my ride—even though I had exact change—but that’s all I paid for. My ride. And for that which I paid, I expect to have a nice, silent ride to transport me from one place to another. Nowhere in that payment did I request for your crazed prattling. Feel free to sit wherever you’d like, but don’t expect a conversation out of me.”
“And I just expect to be able to say a few words with the person who I’m sitting with,” replied Andrea, with the same warped smile spread across her ashy face. “Is it asking too much to just stop and listen to the people around you?”
“I have a husband, two children, pets, and some noisy, obnoxious neighbors who throw loud, rowdy college parties—I have enough people to listen to in my life,” snapped Kelli. “With the small exception of several other people, I’d say I already listen to everyone who I need to.”
“I didn’t realize your time was so precious,” muttered the teenager, removing her large, black puffy jacket and placing it in her lap. Andrea’s eyes fell to her hands, which slipped beneath jacket, before her eyes drifted back to Kelli. “I guess my five cents wasn’t enough to buy a civilized conversation.” Andrea shrugged and replied, “Which is fine, since you don’t even seem to grasp a simple concept, like ‘listening’.”
“Actually, that’s what I do for a living,” defensively rebutted Kelli. “I’m a psychiatrist.”
And then the most unexpected of things happened: she laughed. Kelli’s eyes narrowed, realization that the laughter coming from the younger girl was filled with amusement and mockery. Kelli fought the urge to ask why Andrea was laughing, but hesitated upon feeling the gazes of every single man, woman and child aboard the bus, all focused on the two women. She shifted uncomfortably again, noticing the small blue eyes of the child in front of them staring up at her—right before Kelli noticed the large, agitated eyes of the bus driver watching her from his rear-view mirror. Instantly, Kelli snapped, “Shut up! People are staring.”
“So?” Andrea finally said, breaking free from her laughter. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
“Ask what?” sneered Kelli, watching the gazes of the other passengers fade away—all except for the blue-eyed kid.
“Why?” Andrea insisted. “Why the laughter.”
“No,” Kelli replied angrily.
“All I’m asking of you is a simple question,” continued Andrea.
“That I simply have not asked you,” countered Kelli, “and I don’t care to play your game. I am not giving in to whatever it is you’re trying to do.”
“But you’re a psychiatrist,” reminded Andrea, smirking with pleasure. “It’s your job—to read into me and diagnosis me.” She lightly shrugged and said, “And if you can’t tell by now, I’m someone who might just need a little aid in being understood. So, I pose this to you: Will you try to understand me?”
“And why should I help you?”
“Because I paid for your services,” joked Andrea, “and I expect some results.”
“All you paid was five cents.”
“And I hear that’s all you’re worth.”
Tensely, Kelli clenched her eyes shut and gripped her fingers together into a fist. She took a moment, taking in a long, hard deep breath in, before exhaling. Carefully, Kelli released her fist, revealing her hand still quaking with anger. She darkly stared into the eyes of the raving girl, tightening her lips together, not saying another word.
“Did I strike a nerve?” Andrea continued holding her smile. “May I take a stab at it and guess that you’re thinking something defensive right now? Probably along the lines of: ‘How dare you!’ or ‘Who are you to say that?’ or ‘Don’t speak to me as if you know me’—so on and so forth. But, my favorite reaction will always be the deep defensive silence that follows, illustrating that you won’t cave to my bombardment of questions.” Her hands submerged from her jacket, carefully intertwining over her lap. “I’ve dealt with one or two shrinks before.”
Kelli simply shook her head.
“So my taunting of your title won’t get you speaking, huh? That’s fair. I’m just testing the waters.” Andrea stared upward, with a deep look of ponderment across her dried-out face. One of her hands arose towards her chin, before her fingers began to lightly tap it. “Now, you would be my… well, I guess you’re my fifth shrink—but, if it counts for anything, you’re the first I’ve driven into silence in less than an hour of knowing me. Now, what could I say to make you speak…?” Kelli hook her head again, while Andrea’s chin-tapping progressed. “We could really start anywhere. Why am I here? Why, of all the places for me to be, why would I—the slightly crazy teenager—be here, next to you—the irritated and seemingly-overworked psychiatrist—on a bus headed to only God knows where? Is it some weird, coincidental life-moment? Life-cruelty? Or maybe life is just a smidge-bit ironic, eh?” Andrea shook her head this time, watching and waiting for Kelli to break. “No. Then, why?” Kelli did not respond nor did her expression change. “It’s simple: There must not be a God.” This time, Kelli’s expression did change; her brow began to furrow. “No God, eh? Why would I play that card? One could guess I’m crazy and that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Another would say that I’m just probing to get a reaction from you. Another person might just simply agree with me and say, ‘Damn straight!’ But, what I would gander that the reasoning behind that statement is this: The kind of shit that I’ve had to deal with—starting with my own particular incident—is proof that nothing who would deem itself to be all-holy and all-mighty would ever really exist with so much cruelty, torment, and pain in the world. My mere existence is proof that God doesn’t exist.”
But Kelli just stared, silent still. She clenched her eyes again, trying to fade away from Andrea and back to her two daughters back at home. Kelli imaged her husband burning their dinner, prompting the two girls to coerce him into picking up the phone to call Pizza Hut—because they were the only two people in the world that had a tighter grasp on their father than she did. However, when her tightly clenched eyes released, the blue-eyed child seated in front of them stared eerily back at Kelli.
“How old is he?” wondered Andrea aloud. “Or she, it’s kinda hard to tell, right?” She sighed before saying, “Do you remember what it was like back then?” In unison, Andrea and Kelli returned their gaze from the young child to one another. “To be so innocent… so loved and cared for… to be so easily understood. Anything you did, an adult could readily justify it. It’s because we, as adults, hold certain biases that children have yet to develop. Whatever you said as a child, whatever you did—it was easily understandable and brushoff-able back then. You could steal and vandalize things, fight and assault anyone, lie or even joyously plagiarize—hell, there’s probably only one thing that’s never acceptable or understandable no matter what age you are…”
Kelli narrowed her eyes again. They followed Andrea’s hands, carefully slipping back beneath her big, black puffy jacket. There was a soft click that came from beneath the jacket that made Kelli’s blood run cold.
“I realize now what has to happen,” insisted Andrea. She gave again the simplest of shrug. “I realize… that you’re never really going to hold the same knowledge that I have. Ever. And my words won’t make you understand anything—but my actions will. So, just as I’ve given up with the rest of those who have sworn to me that they could help and fix me—when all I asked of them was to understand me—I have now given up on you.”
“What’s underneath your jacket?” Kelli finally asked.
“Do you know what a friend of mine who’s a writer told me once?” asked Andrea, with her head lowered and her eyes locked onto her jacket. “She said that when she has a character who’s coming off as being kinda dull, she makes the character more interesting through loss. And it’ll be the loss of some thing that is either a treasured item, someone close to them, or some sort of feeling is stripped away from that character. The latter is my favorite—specifically when a character loses their sense of security.”
With annoyance still filling her voice, Kelli repeated, “What’s underneath your jacket?”
“It’s a gun.”
This time, a different kind of silence overwhelmed Kelli.
The bus came to a halt. Xavier the bus driver had forewarned them that there would be stops periodically so that he could stand up and stretch—now was one of those times. He opened the bus doors, arose from his seat up front with a bag of potato chips and a carton of cigarettes in hand, before stepping off of the bus.
“Why do you have a gun?” Kelli softly and slowly asked.
“It’s interesting that you only begin to ask questions and really care to listen when your life is being threatened,” murmured Andrea, still looking down at her jacket. “It should definitely force you to wonder if life-threatening events are the only times in life when you find yourself really listening and telling the truth to others.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” demanded Kelli shakily.
The shiny metal barrel of the gun peeked out from beneath the puffy jacket.
“Need any sort of demonstrations of the truth of this gun?” mocked the madwoman.
“What are you planning to do?” gasped the passenger.
“What any logical or even illogical person would do if they had a gun.” Andrea winked as she finished, “Pull the trigger.”
“Why?” Kelli demanded loudly now, with a hint of hysteria in her voice.
Andrea released a deep sigh, before she dryly recited, “So that someone can finally understand me.” She shook her head. “Thought you could have figured that out on your own.”
“And how are you going to do that?” asked Kelli, nearly shouting. Others on the bus were staring now.
“My actions will speak louder than my words,” reminded Andrea, holding her soft tone. “That’s what my first psychiatrist told me. So, I’ve finally realized that the only way for someone to understand me is for one to go through the very same incident that I experienced.”
“What did you do?” asked Kelli slowly.
“So do you want to know because you’re curious,” inquired Andrea, still holding her amused smirk, “or because your life is being threatened?”
“Tell me what I want to know, now,” demanded Kelli angrily. Her gaze briefly met with Xavier’s, who had just walked back onto his bus. An inquisitive look expression fell across his large, blubberous face, as he stood there watching the two passengers argue. “What did you do?”
Still maintaining her shaky, but calm, voice, Andrea quietly replied, “Fine.” She looked up, but instead of staring into the eyes of Kelli, Andrea was staring right at the blue-eyed child. “When I was almost six years old—about the same age as this kid—I was the sole survivor of a massacre onboard a train. But, the last person who was to be murdered… well, the man with the gun handed it to me, made me hold the gun up against the temple of a young, pregnant woman, and I was forced to shoot her.”
A cold silence filled the air between the two women. Andrea knew exactly what Kelli would say next:
“You don’t have to recreate that,” Kelli immediately said.
“Is there a problem here, ladies?” asked Xavier loudly, slowly walking down the aisle.
“I do what I must,” quietly replied Andrea. Her eyes shifted from the shocked and fearful expression spreading across Kelli’s face to the snobbishly triumphant smirk of the fat bus driver. “And I must begin with him.”
“Don’t do this!” shouted Kelli.
“Because if you’re causing more trouble, ma’am, then I can happily have you removed from this bus,” said Xavier in his forcefully deep and authoritative voice. Her eyes never left Andrea, but Kelli knew it was she that Xavier was talking to. “From my bus.”
“All my life, people have been scared of me, unable to comprehend what I was forced into or even being to fathom what it could be like to be me in that moment,” reminded Andrea softly. She pulled away her jacket, fully revealing her hand wrapped around the gun. “All I need in my life is for one person to understand me.” Andrea arose from her seat and pointed the gun straight at Xavier. A loud shot rang from the gun and seconds later, the bag of potato chips that Xavier had been clinging tightly to fell to the ground. The large bus driver fell to the floor shortly thereafter.
Screams filled the bus. It was a shame that the bus was stopped in the middle of nowhere. It would be a great many hours before anyone ever found what remained of them…
* * * *
The smell of death and decay swamped through the stale air on that small, public bus. The bodies of the passengers littered the bus’s seats and floor, with its large, fat driver still bleeding in the middle of the aisle. Andrea and her gun towered over Kelli Meyers, who rocked back and forth in her seat, her arms wrapped around her legs. Andrea had bound Kelli’s wrists and ankles together, ensuring that there was no way to escape.
“I see now.” Kelli chuckled, as another tear streamed down her tired face. “I see now what you’re doing. You think… you think by showing me a massacre just as you did I can begin to understand you so I could see what you saw—see these horrific and disgusting acts, so to feel compassion for you. You expected me to feel sorry for you. But do you know what I feel?”
“Honest to God,” said Andrea, looking down at her gun and then looking over at Andrea, “I don’t really care.”
“But why?” This time it was Andrea that wore the look of confusion when Kelli asked her question. Andrea crossed her arms and waited when Kelli asked, “You say that you cause so much… torment and bloodshed and pain. Then, why on Earth would you go out of your way to help me when you paid for my fare? As if to show… dare I say, an act of kindness? Why would you go out of your way to help me?”
The chuckle that Andrea gave was rather reminiscent of her earlier laugh, still filled with amusement and mockery. “Remember when I wanted you to ask the question… ‘Why the laughter?’” Kelli closed her eyes and shook her head with grave agitation. Kelli knew what Andrea would say next. “All I ever expect from people is to receive the same kind of treatment that I give to others. So, I try and surround myself with other people, just silently hoping to understand them, so that in the end, I can find someone to understand me. All I expected to get from you was some kind of response—but all I received from you was silence.” Andrea took a deep breath and simply shrugged it off. “But right now, the only expectation I have for you will come to pass in the next few seconds. Actually, most of my expectations are for the next person to fire my gun.”
“What do you want me to do with the gun?” asked Kelli.
That same twisted smile spread across Andrea’s face when she said, “Who said it would be you?” It was then that Kelli heard a soft whimper in front of her. Slowly she turned her head and peered over the seat. Curled up and softly rocking back in forth in the fetal position was the small blue-eyed child.
“No,” helplessly whispered Kelli.
“Get up,” ordered Andrea.
Slowly the blue-eyed child uncoiled and arose from the seat. The kid walked over to Andrea and looked up at the madwoman with those silent blue eyes.
“This is yours.” The gun was now in the child’s hands. “Fire the gun.” Andrea’s eyes darted back and forth between the gun that was in the child’s hands and the sobbing psychiatrist. Very sternly and clearly she repeated, “Fire the gun.”
Slowly, the blue-eyed child walked away from the madwoman and towards the bound and crying passenger. Kelli struggled to get free from her bindings, but the rope was too tightly wrapped around her wrists and ankles. Shakily, the blue-eyed child lifted up the gun as it pressed against the passenger’s head, as Kelli took several deep breaths, continuing to cry.
“Y-you don’t have to do this,” insisted Kelli, struggling to free herself. Her sight did not leave Andrea’s, but her voice was trying to reach out to the small child. “I know that… well—this looks bad. B-but it doesn’t have to end like—”
“This is the only way it can end,” snapped Andrea. She assumed the seat immediately in front of Kelli, where the young child had once sat. “’Cause, if it doesn’t, then I will fire that gun—and then all will be lost. Everyone will be dead. And I will just go on killing.” Leaning over the seat, Andrea moved in closer towards Kelli’s moist, frightened face, only inches away from the bound passenger. “The only way to get out of this is to trust and believe me. Do you?”
“Trust you to stop killing by allowing myself to die.” Kelli shook her head. “Never.”
“Who said I was talking to you?” replied Andrea. Her cold, brown eyes darted towards the blue-eyed child, who was helplessly staring back at her. Andrea grinned, knowing the very thoughts that were burdening the youth.
A heavier silence rang throughout the bus between the firing of the gun and the sound of Doctor Kelli Meyers’ limp body slumping against the cold bus window where it once had rested. Andrea knew an adult would wear a look of shock and fright—but the child held the same confused, bewildered yet… intrigued expression that Andrea had held so many years before.
“Hand it to me.” Without a word, the child complied, returning the gun to Andrea. She softly seized the gun and looked at the child. “Thank you. Those were the words he had uttered to me after my incident… and I know you won’t understand this yet, but you can’t even begin to understand the weight that has been lifted—knowing now that I am not alone. Knowing that when you are grown, you will understand what I did here today.” Andrea had more to say as she always did—but she knew this had to be cut short. Closing her eyes, Andrea took a deep breath before a smile crept across her face. Her last thought before death was that the only wish she had held since her incident had finally been granted…
[Author’s Note: This short story was later rewritten and expanded upon a play format. This play will be available for paid subscribers later this month.]