SKETCHES

SKETCHES 
Ananya pushed the metal book cart back into its parking space in the Document Delivery Department of the St. Louis Public Library. She hung the last sticky note for October 30, 2012, on the wall by the head of the department’s closed door.
Retightening her brown scarf under her chin, she tucked the wispy hairs above her ears back into hiding. Ananya’s hair had started to gray prematurely when she was a teenager, and it had left its mark on her. Her mother had worn scarves around her wrists, and when Ananya began to wear scarves to conceal her salt-and-pepper hair, her mother had just smiled.
The clock hanging on the wall above the children’s section read 11:28 p.m. Two more minutes. She reorganized the pens and books on her desk and set the box labeled NOTES on the right corner of her desk with three blue pens and a stack of note cards. Her coworkers had quickly learned that Ananya did not like to talk, avoided eye contact, and cherished silence.
Her manager had given her the NOTES box after a month of miscommunication, and every day it filled with requests for books or tasks that Ananya had to complete. She worked the night shift and locked the library up every night. When she was alone, she would talk out loud to herself, the only voice she cared to hear.
“Goodnight, books. Goodnight, rooms.” Ananya shut the heavy wooden door to the library, placed the color-coded keys in the front right pocket of her jacket, and began her walk to the bus stop a corner away. She avoided the main road, taking her first right onto a side street that she knew would lead her directly to the bus stop.
“Goodnight, Taco Bell sign. Goodnight, Rite Aid. Goodnight, Westside Apartments. Goodnight, Jack-o-Lantern smile.” She stopped in the middle of the alley and peered up at a Jack-o-Lantern grinning down at her from a third-story window.
“Mother wouldn’t’ve liked your smirk, Jack. She would’ve slapped it right off your face.” Satisfied, Ananya smiled as she trotted on. “Mother carved smiles into her arms, and that’s why Daddy left, it is, it is.” She kicked at a crushed Mountain Dew can as she remembered that night from years ago.
“Mommy?” Ananya had pushed open the door to her mother’s bedroom and seen moving boxes torn open, their contents scattered across the floor. She had tiptoed through piles of scarves and silverware until she reached the bathroom.
 “Come to us like rain, oh lord, come and stay and sting a while more, oh lord…” her mother’s voice had slipped off the tiled bathroom walls. Ananya pushed open the door and saw the blood for the first time, pouring from her mother’s wrist. Her mother was naked, perched on the bathroom sink, singing to a red razor blade.
“Mommy?” “GET OUT!” Her mother had jumped from the counter, growling and speaking in a voice too deep to be her own. “Mommy! It’s Ananya!” Ananya had cried as her mother, still naked and bleeding, writhed on the floor, crawling towards the door behind which Ananya hid. “Thirty-three percent, dear. Just a thirty-three percent chance.”
Ananya shivered, trying to clear the memory with the words that all the therapists had echoed over the years. “Schizophrenia is directly related to genetics, little is known about the type of schizophrenia mother was diagnosed with except that it is definitely passed on genetically.
But there is only a thirty-three percent chance you could have it, dear. Thirty-three percent.” The sound of the bus stop ahead reminded her it was time to be silent again. “Disorganized schizophrenia,” she mouthed to herself as she stepped back out onto the busy street from her alleyway. She tightened her scarf and saw the bus pull into the pickup spot. She walked forward to the bus, again immersed in her self-imposed silence.
Stepping out of the February cold, Ananya removed her wool scarf as the bus doors closed behind her. “Where to, baby?” The driver smiled a sticky smile. Her nametag read “Shalini” and had a decaying Hello Kitty sticker in the bottom left corner. “The Clinton Street drop.” Ananya handed the driver her $2.50 fare and avoided the woman’s questioning eyes. The night drivers were always more talkative, curious.
“Your ticket, hon.” Shalini tore Ananya a ticket stub. “Everything is pretty dead this late; I’ll have you there in ten minutes tops.” Ananya shuffled towards the seats, ignoring the woman. “You mind if I crank up the music?” the bus driver asked, purple fingernails scratching in her thick blonde hair. “I need to keep my eyes open and blood flowing, and music is my fire of choice, you know?” “Sure.” Ananya shrugged her bag onto her shoulder and walked on before the woman could say anything else.
“Route E-2, homebound.” Shalini’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker. Ananya shuffled down the bus towards her usual seat, second from the back on the right side. Shalini started the bus rolling before Ananya reached her seat, and Ananya could hear her singing along to “Summertime” by Janis Joplin.
The bus floor was sticky because of the morning rain. Two years of riding public transportation had taught Ananya that staring at the floor as she walked to her seat was better than the risk of making eye contact. The bus was usually empty this late, but if there ever happened to be anyone else on, it was better not to converse. Safer that way.
She plopped into her seat, filling the indention left by ghosts of past passengers. The seat was still warm, and Ananya squirmed around until the stranger heat was forgotten. She tightened her scarf and sighed. The brown pleather seatback in front of her was peeling towards the top. Ananya leaned forward and idly picked at the scab-like dangles of brown as she watched the sodden city canvas roll past her out the foggy window.
As she picked, the hole grew. She twisted and dug her unpainted nails into the seat until her hands felt wet, warm. Looking down, they were covered in blood and mud. “What. The. Actual. ****,” she whispered, wiping her hands on her pants leg. She cautiously picked off another piece of pleather, and a trickle of deep red began to run from the seat back, clumps of mud falling onto her knees.
A puddle of blood and mire splattered down her legs and pooled around her feet as she picked at the seat. Her white tights were definitely beyond saving now, so she dug faster until her thumbnail caught on something, bent back, and cracked. She gasped and withdrew her shaking hand, watching her own blood mix with the clotting muck in the seat, half of her thumbnail completely stripped off.
Looking around, all else seemed normal. The driver was now muttering along to some banter by Kanye West, completely unaware of Ananya’s predicament. She closed her eyes. This is a dream, this is a dream, wake the **** up. She opened her eyes to see the pool of filth around her feet trickling towards the front of the bus. Panic set in with a whisper, They’re going to think it was you, your fault, you’ll be thrown in jail. “But I didn’t do this.” She lashed out to herself. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”
“Next stop, E-2,” Shalini blared on the intercom. “It’s just a dream, get your **** together, Ananya.” She laughed at herself, manic. Prove it! Her subconscious screamed. Convinced to end this moment she had to continue, Ananya plunged her hand into the pleather grave one more time. Frantic and confused, she laughed as she dug, spittle of muck splashing on her bus window. Faster, faster, faster. Deeper, deeper, deeper. Realer, realer, real.
Wake up, now! Then, as the bus slowed, one last chunk of mud splattered to the floor, and Ananya saw a pink piece of her thumbnail stabbed into the white of a bone in the bottom of the seatback pit. Her white Keds were becoming so red they were almost black. She pulled her knees up to her chest and began to rock back and forth. Clenching her eyes shut, she began to hum.
Ananya’s sweet soprano harmonized with the bus’s deep droning purr. Their wet melody interweaved with the driver’s alto and Lil Wayne’s screech, making her feel dizzy as the bus turned right. She take my money when I'm in need Yeah, she's a trifling friend indeed Oh, she's a gold digger way over town That digs on me. The bus slowed to a stop, and the bass was shaking. Ananya was cold. She slowly peeked out of her right eye, expecting to be instantly immersed in the same dismal scene. The seatback was whole again.
Releasing her knees, her feet fell back to the floor, and her shaking fingers stroked the solid pleather. “Ma’am? We’re at the Clinton Drop.” Ananya hurriedly picked up her bag and fled down the aisle to the bus doors. “Everything alright, dear?” the bus driver asked, smiling. “Fine, just fine.” “You be safe out there tonight. The night is dark, and only ghouls stroll the streets this late.” Shalini laughed as Ananya’s jaw dropped. “Happy Halloween, dear. It’s midnight, today is October 31st.”
The bus doors opened, and a cold wind sucked the warm bus air surrounding Ananya into the streets.