Riding The Bus With My Sister

“Lunch with Jesse” Summary

Rachel asks Beth about love and what it means to her. Beth says that she guesses “iz someone you trust” (123) and that she should ask Jesse if she wants an answer. When Rachel tries to explain to her friends that Beth has a boyfriend, they don’t quite understand. Rachel is interested in understanding more about Jesse and Beth’s connection. Beth and Jesse met when they were living near each other in group homes. Jesse is also intellectually disabled. Rachel doesn’t know Jesse’s diagnosis, nor did she know Beth’s until very recently (mildly intellectually disabled). Instead she focuses on what they are like: “Jesse’s Georgia accent, an inability to read, and how, beyond the walls of his apartment, he keeps to himself” (125).

Jesse lost vision in one eye when he was 13. He was playing alone in an abandoned lot and a pipe smashed into his left eye. No one would help him get to the hospital because he is black, and one lady even called the police on him for loitering in front of what he thought was the hospital. He needed multiple surgeries and was very quiet and shy afterward. Now he spends his days riding his bicycle through town, patrolling one part of a park for the local police. He gets his own police radio so he can call in suspicious behavior and keeps it proudly displayed in his apartment. Beth visits him at his home most evenings of the week. They like to talk, watch TV, and “as Beth gigglingly puts it ‘ha[ve] fun’” (126). They do not go out in public often because “a black man walking beside a white woman still seems to trigger hostility” (126). Rachel admires their relationship and wishes the naysayers could acknowledge how special their bond is. They get along and argue like any other couple and seem to have found genuine companionship in their match.

Jesse arrives at Beth’s apartment, and Rachel offers to take them out to lunch. Jesse is not comfortable with the idea, and Beth does her best to convince him. He says he will think about it. Rachel notices the comfort and ease between Jesse and Beth after almost 10 years together. She remembers longingly her own comfort with her ex, Sam. Jesse has a black belt in karate and agrees to show them a demonstration: “and as I watch what I later learn is called the Flying Fist and Kicking Foot, I find myself feeling more alive in my seat, in awe at his agility” (130). Jesse tells Rachel that “for years he practiced so long and was so submerged in concentration that he saw visions when he got into bed at night” (130). Jesse explains that he doesn’t have the visions anymore; he is more upset about his recurring nightmares of being back in school and being chased. Beth asks him again to join them for lunch, and he reluctantly agrees.

They walk to a restaurant that Beth frequents as a bathroom break on her bus runs. The hostess is not pleased to see her as they always refuse to let non-customers use the bathroom. Once she realizes Beth is there to dine, she is very friendly. Another customer, however, is not friendly with them. He glares at Beth and Jesse: “with each second, his face clenches more tightly in abhorrence” (133). Rachel tries to shoot back her anger at the man, and she is so upset that her hand is trembling. She now understands why Jesse was so reluctant to accept her offer of going out for lunch. Jesse notices her upset and says “don’t pay him no mind […] people is gonna look all day, and they might say that they don’t think it’s right, but it’s not really for them to judge” (133). Jesse explains that as a kid he was constantly picked on and he began to be filled with rage. He would get in fights and even broke a man’s jaw in anger. In his twenties his mother convinced him to take anger management classes, and they changed his life.

When Beth gets up to use the bathroom, Rachel asks Jesse about love. Jesse explains that love is about caring for a person and being willing to listen to them and help them when they need it. What he loves about Beth is that she makes him laugh, and she shares her feelings with him: “I guess I love her […] just to be Beth” (135). Rachel remembers her ex, Sam, and recalls the similarly sweet things he would say to her. She realizes “all over again how much I miss him” (135).

A few days after this lunch with Jesse, Rachel thinks about Jesse and Beth’s relationship, especially their sex life. She recalls with pain the conversation she and her family had to have with Beth about sex, the potential of her getting pregnant with Jesse, and birth control. They knew Beth couldn’t be expected to take a contraceptive pill regularly, she refused an IUD, and they weren’t sure if other methods would be trustworthy either. They convinced Beth that she should have surgery to become sterilized. Rachel accompanies Beth to the procedure, feeling guilty for participating in taking away someone’s right to have children, and knowing that it is the right choice for Beth, who would not be able to care for a baby on her own. Rachel and Jesse sit together in the waiting room while Beth is being sterilized, and everything goes well. She heals nicely, but “every January, Beth will mention the anniversary of her tubal ligation in a letter. Its Ten years, she wrote in the latest, since I cant Have a baby” (142). Rachel wonders if her own lack of desire to have a child is because she has spent so much time mothering Beth, or if it is because she saw how hard it was for her parents. Either way, she doesn’t possess a strong urge to have a baby like Beth does.

“Matchmaker” Summary

Beth writes to Rachel to let her know that she would like her to marry a bus driver so that she can have a driver for a brother-in-law. Rachel politely declines. That evening, she is struck by how much she still misses Sam when she hears one of his favorite songs playing in the grocery store. Rachel does not know that Beth is secretly playing matchmaker. Unaware of this, Rachel is calling some of the drivers to set up interviews for a potential article about her rides with Beth. She is speaking with Rick, asking questions about his job and his relationship with Beth. At the end of the conversation, he asks Rachel on a date. She replies that she is too busy for a date. She then receives a letter from Rick saying that Beth encouraged him to try writing her a letter. He offers to take her to dinner at his favorite steak house. Rachel responds to Rick and insinuates that she has a love interest already. Beth says that since Rachel has a boyfriend (she does not) she will back off of playing matchmaker.

“The Pursuit of Happiness” Summary

In a flashback, the children are at a diner with their father, having dessert and listening to the juke box. They are teenagers and young adults now. Their mother is working a lot and dating, and they aren’t spending much time together as a family anymore. Their father and his “lady professor have split up, and he doesn’t laugh as much” (148). Rachel is thinking about her mother and why she always seems so down. She saw her the night before, kissing her date goodnight at the curb, “but when she turned toward the house I saw the look on her face […] failure, it read to me, and terror” (149).

Teenage Rachel is curious about happiness and studies all the ways people try to attain happiness. She most relates to seeking happiness through “romantic, head-over-heels love” (149). She talks about her first love and how she was unable to stop thinking about him, yet also unable to stop worrying “that he would suddenly stop caring” (149). He broke up with her suddenly because he was too busy with work, school, and friends. Rachel sees herself as being similar to her mother when he leaves her. Soon their mother meets a new man who is a self-proclaimed ex-con and alcoholic. She allows him to move in with her very quickly, and Rachel is horrified.  

“The Earth Mother” Summary

Rachel meets a driver named Estella. She is voluptuous with strawberry blonde hair and a maternal nature that makes all her passengers feel welcome and comfortable. Beth makes a comment to Estella that is a little cooler than usual, and Estella asks what is bothering her. Beth begins to explain that it has to do with a driver named Keith who had been mean to her when another passenger disembarks and engages in a quick conversation with Estella about her sick husband. Beth doesn’t seem to notice that Estella is speaking with someone else and continues on venting about Keith. Rachel is annoyed and frustrated with Beth: “You’ve said precisely the same thing to every driver today, regardless of how the last one responded […] Would it be such a hardship to listen to someone else for a minute?” (156).

As soon as Beth can get Estella’s attention again, she asks her for an opinion on “telling him off” (157). Estella advises Beth to give him another chance. Rachel notices that Beth calms as soon as she has Estella’s attention, and then she sees that Estella “seems to offer everyone such a haven, listening with gentle nods and encouragement to her next half-dozen passengers” (157). The scene closes with a man boarding Estella’s bus carrying a plate of his wife’s famous roast chicken, telling her she deserves a gift for being such a great “sounding board.”

Rachel’s enjoyment of her time with Beth is beginning to wane as her sister is unrelenting in her riding schedule. Rachel needs Beth to be flexible the following morning so that she can transport some of her belongings back to her own house for a class that she is holding at home. Beth is unwilling to leave later. She is also unwilling to come back and help Rachel move her belongings. The next morning Beth gets up and leaves at her usual time. She does, however, return with Jesse to help Rachel load her car. Then the sisters board the buses for the day, but Beth refuses to look at or talk to Rachel, and she gets off the bus early so she won’t have to say goodbye to Rachel. Rachel fights back the urge to cry: “did being a good sister mean having no needs of my own?” (159).

As Rachel finishes her ride with Estella, she hears her life story. Estella had a rough childhood and married at 16 to escape it. When that marriage ended, she dated “one man after another who was nothing but trouble” and became a mother of four children (160). She began working as a “call-taker for a tow truck company, and one particularly rough winter when they needed more drivers I asked to take the wheel” (160). Estella began driving regularly, and she liked working and making her own money, but she was in an abusive relationship that she had to end. After that she began attending therapy and doing personal and spiritual growth work, and she explains that “I realized I would never be perfect, but I was still a good person. My sense of self-worth began to come back. It’s been so much better ever since” (161). Rachel wishes she could “talk to someone about the dark voice, someone who would listen without judgment and suggest what I might do when I hear it” (161).

Rachel cannot get Sam out of her mind. She knows through mutual friends that he is still single, and she wonders if it is too late for her to tell him how she really feels. She recently got up the courage to dial his phone number, but when he answered she hung up. A woman enters the bus asking if her ex-husband is anywhere in sight. Her funny embrace of her woes leads other women on the bus to chime in with their own marital struggles. The bus gets loud and happy with the sounds of the women sharing in their struggles and “Estella mothering them all” (163).   

“Disabilities” Summary

Rachel and Beth have spent so much time together at this point that their older sisterly dynamic is re-emerging. Beth is “self-absorbed and contrarian” while Rachel is impatient (165). Rachel complains that it’s getting difficult to “speak with kindness” because Beth doesn’t notice anyone else’s needs: “lately, she’s entered a phase where she won’t listen to other bus riders, not even her most adored drivers, when they talk about anything non bus-related” (165). Rachel doesn’t understand how Beth can be so outgoing and kind one minute and so defiant and self-absorbed the next, and she suspects that Beth does this on purpose. Rachel reaches a point of frustration that is unbearable to her, so she decides she needs to find out what an intellectual disability really is.

She calls Olivia, Beth’s case manager. Rachel asks her what she learned about people with intellectual disabilities when she entered the field. Olivia explains that she saw a video of intellectually disabled babies and learned that their brains want to process things like crawling, but their bodies don’t respond in kind. She says “eventually it happens, but it takes longer than with other babies. That was when I saw that what I’d need to deal with these people is patience, patience, and more patience” (166). Rachel thinks it must be hard for Olivia to be patient with Beth, believing they have this in common, but when she asks her if that’s the biggest challenge, Olivia replies: “the worst part of it is the way the people around Beth deal with her […] I don’t have any trouble with Beth […] I think she’s a joy to work with” (167). Rachel is ashamed that this is the first time in her 39 years that she has stopped to ask what her sister’s condition really is. She realizes that although her parents did a great job including Beth in their lives, they did not spend any time educating themselves or the siblings about intellectual disabilities.

The next day Beth’s behavior is particularly difficult for Rachel to bear. Beth is being rude to other riders and talking very loudly. Beth tells Rachel that she “gonna tell that fat girl off tomorrow. I’m gonna tell her like it is” (168). Beth and Rachel get into a heated argument with Rachel telling Beth that she is rude and needs to be nicer and more considerate of other people and their feelings.

A few weeks after this fight Rachel finally delves into researching intellectual disabilities. She discovers it affects “2.5 to 3 percent of the American population […] twenty-five times as many people as those who are blind” (171). Rachel also delves into the concept of mental age, something she has always hated. She finds out that the actual definition is very different than its colloquial use: “the mental age only refers to the intelligence test score. It does not describe the level and nature of the person’s experience and functioning in aspects of community life” (171). She discovers that people can be diagnosed as having mild, severe, or profound intellectual disability. Beth’s diagnosis is mild. Her development is close to an adolescent’s, “although they tend to lack the normal adolescent’s imagination, inventiveness, and judgment […] Often they require some measure of supervision because of their limited ability to foresee the consequences of their actions” (173). Rachel now understands her sister much better and sees that her treatment of Beth has been vastly misguided. She recognizes how foolish it is to be angry at Beth and expect her to quickly accept whatever Rachel teaches her.    

“Goodbye” Summary

In a very brief flashback to a “sleeting February afternoon, exactly one month since Mom met the ex-con” (177), Rachel, Laura, and Max are all moving out of their mother’s house because she has demanded that they do so. She wants to live with her new boyfriend, and he doesn’t want the kids in the house. Max will live with his father, Laura will live with him during the summers away from college, and Rachel is being placed into a boarding school with her friend, while “no one made plans for Beth. It seems a given that Mom will continue to care for her” (178). The siblings load their belongings into their father’s car, and Beth is speechless as they say goodbye. Rachel waves to Beth, holding the family dog in the window as they drive away. Beth lifts one of Ringo’s paws in farewell.