Riding The Bus With My Sister

“The Loner” Summary

Beth and Rachel are waiting at a bus stop when they overhear two white women making racist comments about an interracial couple walking by. Beth tells them they are wrong for using such hateful language. Rachel is impressed with Beth, telling her: “I think it’s really good you spoke up […] Most people wouldn’t” (204). They are on Jack’s bus, and he is a big believer in individualism. He tells Beth she should keep speaking her mind and going her own way, just like he does. He idolizes John Wayne. Jack explains that he learned to be “independent minded” because he lost his parents as a child, lived with his grandmother, and began working at six years old. He worked on an oil truck and then on a produce truck. He learned to get along with people from all nationalities and walks of life. He also enjoyed watching his grandmother cook, so he learned from her. He uses cooking as an adult to provide happiness and comfort to his friends: “That’s because no matter how many differences there are among people […] you know we all like to eat” (206). The author includes Jack’s recipe with his detailed instructions for a chicken pot pie. He notes that it isn’t like the frozen pot pies, but rather more like a stew.

Jack commends Beth for speaking to the racist women. He says that she helped them. Beth doesn’t think they were really listening to her, but Jack assures her that she probably got through to them on some level. He tells a story about a time he picked up a passenger who was having paranoid delusions. He asked her if she had a drinking problem. When she replied yes, he remembered his training from a course on counseling and offered to take her to get help. He dropped her at a hospital with instructions to ask for the detox team. She remained in detox, got clean, and returned a year later to thank him. He says that “helping people makes me feel good. I just don’t want anybody helping me” (209). Rachel sees that Beth and Jack are similar in this way. 

Rachel and Vera take Beth to the supermarket. Rachel recalls that before this new, independent Beth emerged, she was always fighting those close to her to assert her independence. Now, living alone, “every day is Independence Day” (209). Vera and Rachel wait in the car while Beth goes in to get her groceries. Vera explains how she used to try to convince Beth to buy fruits and vegetables and cook sensible meals. Vera taught Beth how to cook when she worked with her in a group home. Back then there were “two types of group homes […], one with twenty-four-hour care for people with severe and multiple disabilities, and the type Beth was in, with eight-hour care, for people who needed just some help” (211). Vera explains that the government moved away from those and toward independent living. Vera now supervises the independent living program that Beth takes part in. Vera says she really likes Beth and her “spunk,” adding, “I’m supposed to teach her to be as independent as possible […] That’s not hard because she’s a very smart lady and the most independent person I know” (212).

Back on the bus with Jack, he is talking about the downside of being so independent. He mentions the loneliness of being single and how he pines for a girl he once loved who was as independent as he is. He tells Rachel that he should have gone for that girl, “but this is what I learned too late: that you need to go for things when you can, because you might never get the chance again” (213). Jack shares his famous “red beet eggs” with Rachel (214). They are hard boiled eggs pickled in a sweet and sour vinegar marinade. As she samples the dish, she recalls Beth’s latest visit to the ophthalmologist. He told Rachel the “diagnosis: interstitial keratitis. Beth’s corneas are, as we’d feared, scratched and numb, to the point where she is barely able to see” (215). She has a secondary problem of her eyelashes growing into her eyes, further damaging the corneas.

Rachel thinks about Beth’s other health concerns: her poor dental hygiene, and uterine fibroids that she won’t deal with. Beth will need surgery for her eyes. Beth turns to Rachel on the bus and wishes for Jack to be reunited with his lost love. Rachel is touched by Beth’s kind heart. Rachel doesn’t know how to help her sister, who is so kind on the one hand, and so difficult to help on the other. Beth agrees to the eye surgery if they can give her purple eyes. Rachel agrees to try her best to make that happen. The section closes with Jack’s recipe for chocolate mayonnaise cake.  

“Nowhere” Summary

In a flashback to Rachel’s boarding school, Rachel still doesn’t know where her mother or Beth are. She stays up late each night talking to her friends about where Beth could be and what harm could befall her. She becomes an insomniac, stops taking care of her hygiene, and stops speaking up in class. Rachel tries to stay positive, as her friends suggest, but, she says of Beth, “her image keeps slipping from my mind, and her voice is already fading away” (221).

“Be Not Afraid” Summary

Jacob, one of Beth’s favorite bus drivers, invited her and Rachel to join his family at the Jersey shore one summer day. He emailed Rachel and asked “isn’t it time to start that second childhood? Isn’t it time to be a little younger at heart?” (222). Rachel recognized in her response that “the part of me that routinely answers ‘sorry, I can’t’ fought a little less fiercely” (223). She and Beth both swore they would not wear bathing suits or get in the water. Jacob and his wife, Carol, took Beth bathing suit shopping anyway and won her over with the brightly colored options. At the beach, Jacob and his children play catch in the waves with Beth. Rachel watches from the shore. Jacob joins Rachel, and they discuss “Big Things” like “prayer,” “being critical,” and “why we’re here” (224). They spend the day along the shore, going to the boardwalk for lunch and window shopping.

Afterward, Rachel decides she will get in the water after much cajoling from Jacob. She and Beth agree to go in together. As soon as the cold water touches their toes, Beth retreats. Rachel tries to go in deeper, but she can’t make herself, declaring, “No, no. The water seems warm, but the air is cold!” (226).

“Inside the Tears” Summary

In another flashback to boarding school, Beth has been missing for three months. Rachel receives an emergency call while she is in class. She finds out that Beth is on a plane to La Guardia airport and that their father has been informed to meet her there immediately. Rachel hangs up and faints. She waits at school all day long for her father, who is supposed to pick her up once he has Beth. Beth finally arrives, and Rachel runs down the hall into Beth’s arms. Beth is still her smiling self, but her clothes are filthy, and her hair is falling out. In the car on their way to their father’s house, Beth provides her version of what has been going on for the last three months. Her mother and her husband have been on the run, supposedly running from “KGB and CIA” (228). He would beat her mother and threaten her with a knife, drink constantly and sleep all day, and he wouldn’t allow Beth or her mother to speak to anyone. He kept a suitcase full of weapons and kept his money with them. He would make them run, literally, in the middle of the night from hotel to hotel.

Beth mentions that they sold their car and instead would ride buses: “Yeah, long, long bus rides. They’d sit together in one seat, and I’d sit in my own seat and look around to see if anyone could help” (228). Yesterday was the first time Beth managed to escape long enough to make a phone call with coins begged from strangers. She called her sister Laura, but the man found her on the phone and threatened to kill her. That night he held Beth at gunpoint all night long. Her mother said, “I have to send you back, if you’re going to stay alive” and put Beth on a plane (229). After hearing her story, Rachel, Max, Beth, and their father all break down crying.

Beth moves in with her father. During summer vacation, all of the siblings live together in his house. They hear nothing from their mother: “Maybe, we think, our mother liked it. She must have. She must be a monster inside. Why else would she do that?” (229). The children all cope as best they can, mostly though dark humor, but Beth does not recover. She spends most of her time sleeping, and she is losing all her hair. 

“The Jester” Summary

Bert is a bus driver and a comedic entertainer rolled into one. He asks if anyone has a birthday coming up and finally convinces one man named Domingo to let him sing “Happy Birthday” to him. Beth tells him “you sing terrible […] You need a tune-up” (236). Beth tells Bert to tell Rachel about New York, where he was a city bus driver for 30 years. He retired in Pennsylvania for affordability but became restless and started driving again. He says he likes it, but he doesn’t like the people in this town because “they’re rude and crude” (237). He experienced more tolerance in New York City: “in the Big Apple, you get people like Beth on every bus, and nobody would say a word” (237). He talks about his penchant for bending the rules as the driver in order to help people out. Twice he had to give a ride to naked women who had no money for the fare, because they were running from something or someone. He says he has learned from his experience “to be ready for anything. And to know that whatever the problem, you’ll figure it out. As long as you’re not too rigid. There’s always a solution” (238).

Bert starts singing and making up rhymes for his various passengers. Rachel is struck by a memory of tickling Beth when they were kids, and she realizes she should try that again to help bring them closer together. They ride out of the city and onto the country roads. They pass Jesse riding his bicycle. Bert takes a detour at a parking lot, where he tells them some of his darker stories. He recalls one event in which a man boarded his bus with a chain and beat another passenger. He found out that the man had been following the passenger, and he learned that he needed to be quick on his feet: “You got to look, and then you got to do a quick study, and then you act. The power to observe is the power to learn” (242). Bert returns to singing at the top of his lungs and trying to make people smile. After they leave Bert’s one-man act, Beth turns, and he yells “Beth, do the right thing” (243).

That evening, Rachel and Beth are watching TV, and Rachel asks Beth if she remembers how much she like to be tickled as a child. Beth does, and she wishes for Rachel to do it again. Rachel tickles her arms and back and legs while they watch TV, and:

[…] we don’t have an argument all night. In fact, my dark voice seems to have curdled and died at long last, freeing me to enjoy my sister without reservation. Perhaps she feels the same, because when I put in her eyedrops she doesn’t complain or push me away. Arm, back, calf: I tickle them over and over. ‘Dee-lee-shus,” she says, just as she always did (244).

“Surgery” Summary

On the day of Beth’s surgery, Jacob is driving her and Rachel to the hospital, blasting music and singing along. Rachel stayed with Beth the night before to make sure she followed the doctor’s instructions not to eat or drink after midnight and that she got herself to the appointment instead of getting on a bus. As they drive, Beth admits, “I’m scared of the operation” (246).

Beth needs a corneal transplant, but because her eyes are already so damaged and she can’t be trusted to do the required care after the surgery, she is not eligible for the transplant. So, she is receiving a surgery to correct her ingrown eyelashes and prevent further damage. After surgery, Beth is supposed to “lie down every two hours with ice packs on her eyes” (246), but she says she will not because she wants to get back to the buses. Rachel admits that if she were following the concept of self-determination, she would allow Beth to avoid this surgery and the post-op care, but Beth “seems unable (or unwilling?) to acknowledge that the future could be drastically different from the present. This, in turn, might explain her dismissive attitude toward consequences” (247). Rachel pushes on, with the help of Jacob, in getting Beth to the appointment and forcing her to get the anesthesia. As Beth quiets, she looks into Rachel’s eyes with “a fullness of trust that I seldom see. And something happens: the ice in my heart starts to melt, and I feel a rush of love pour in” (250).

Jacob stays with Rachel throughout Beth’s surgery and afterward as well. He provides the driving, food, and comfort. Rachel stays for two days, during which Beth is cooperative and follows the doctor’s instructions. Beth then goes to stay with Jacob and his family for an extra day of care. During that time, Olivia calls Rachel to check in, and Rachel learns that “this is how it’s supposed to work. The system that supports independent living relies on it: the cultivation of friends in the community, who will, out of kindness and generosity, help out” (251). As Rachel leaves Beth in Jacob’s care, she marvels at their generosity.

“Releasing the Rebel” Summary

In a flashback, following Beth’s return to her father’s house after her escape from her mother’s husband, Beth, Rachel, and their father are in a department store trying to get new clothes for Beth. Beth doesn’t know what size she wears, and her father has no idea how to shop for women’s clothes, nor does Rachel. After calling for help and reaching his threshold for frustration, her father finally takes Beth into a dressing room himself and helps her find her size and clothes she likes. Getting the new clothes seems to help Beth settle into living with her father in Pennsylvania. The rest of the kids are trying, “but it is hard because we are all so bitter about our mother” (254).

That summer, Beth, who is 16, makes a new best friend named Juanita. The only problem is that Juanita is four. The family is worried about what will happen between them, and late in the summer, Juanita’s brother starts to taunt Beth, turning Juanita against her. Rachel sees “Juanita’s older brother, who is seven or eight […] circling Beth on his bike as he shrieks at her, calling her stupid, a baby, a freak. Juanita is skipping along at his side, a savage smile on her face” (255). Beth is heartbroken, and Rachel has no idea what to say.

After Juanita’s betrayal, Beth’s inner rebel begins to emerge. Beth begins to tease her siblings, eats only junk food, tells lies, and makes mayhem in the house. Rachel’s feelings toward Beth become complicated: On the one hand, she adores Beth’s spunk and creativity; on the other, she feels that her “sister is becoming a bitch” (256). Her father enrolls Beth in special education classes, but she “acts up in school, too. Impertinent and pugnacious, she ignores Mr. Laredo’s instructions” (256). After a year of this behavior, their father removes Beth from the classes and begins bringing Beth to work, where she performs light office duties. He commutes 75 miles from home to work, so he is in the car with Beth for hours each day and shares his work space with her. She doesn’t like his music, and she talks incessantly during the drive. Her father is barely able to tolerate the arrangement, and it only gets worse when Beth starts to purposely fumble her duties at the office.

Soon, “Beth does what we suddenly realize she’d secretly wanted to all along: she spends every day, from the moment Dad parks at dawn until he warms up the car at dusk, hanging out with the printer in the back” (257). Beth is obsessed with the printer, a kindly family man, much like she will later become obsessed with her favorite drivers. Beth is now so bossy and adept at getting what she wants that her father nicknames her “The Sheriff.” Beth is so enamored with this idea that she takes her behavior even further. She sneaks out one afternoon and begins to walk to Queens (an impossibly long walk) along the highway on a cold day. Her father guesses she is trying to walk to see a salesman she has developed a crush on. Indeed, he finds her and picks her up along the highway. Occasionally during their many hours of driving, Beth talks about her experiences with her mother and the “bad man.”

Just before Beth started going to work with her father, they saw a bankruptcy notice in the newspaper for their mother. The notice shows that she is living only 30 minutes from their house. Their father drives over and find her at the address listed: “Dad learns that the bad man is gone. He also learns that Mom is a librarian in a nearby college, that in fact it was the job that brought her here, but that she has not tried to reach us” (259). The children are hurt and angry, and they all refuse to talk about their mother. Rachel focuses on earning good grades in school and does her best to repress her anger, but it comes up at night when she is trying to sleep.