In life, I feel like I consistently make the wrong choices. Two roads diverge in a yellow wood and I always choose the road least favorable. Thinking on my toes is just not my thing.
***
Over the summer, I have become a Marta frequenter. People love to make jokes about it.
While playing Catchphrase—“this is something I use a lot. I really like it” and a few people shout out “MARTA!” I become done with them.
However, Marta has given me experiences I will forever cherish. I have been proposed to by men with no teeth; offered a new phone (which I almost obliged). Paranoias are self-induced. For a little edge I get strange paranoid visions of someone pushing me into the train tracks.
***
First week back at school and I am already intensely homesick. I hate how distant I grow with the people that matter most to me—my mom and sisters, but my boyfriend I need to see every week or else I will have a conniption, an aneurysm, seizure, you get it. The point is I just had to go back to see Danté, my boyfriend. I took my trusty friend Marta to go to his work and once he was off I realized the unspeakable, he decided to bike from Stone Mountain to Decatur that day instead of taking his car. I drearily realized: I have to take Marta again!
As annoying as it is, nighttime Marta trips with people you care about is as romantic as it gets. The night seems endless. The trains run slower so it is just you and your person, waiting, talking, catching up after the strain of routine daily life has been busy keeping you busy. There’s no school, no work, nothing but you; at least until your ride is over and you get home and realize how tired you are—pass out, before—.
We arrive at Indian Creek Station at 11:30 and head to the buses. The bike rack on the one bus we need is full. The bus driver casually tells us to take the next bus, which will take about another hour to arrive. As much as I enjoy long trips at night there is only so much you can deal with in one day. Also, any longer and I’d be close to collapsing of exhaustion. My boyfriend, Danté takes my hand and rushes me onto the bus. I watch him get on his bike and then peddle off. I did not like this. I, being the aforementioned paranoid maniac that I am sit down and stew in what was the “obvious” turmoil of Danté.
He is off biking the roads for twenty minutes, then the bus takes off and we’re driving. It must have been about 20 minutes in route and Danté must have been peddling his legs to the bone because low and behold I see a figure biking and he stops at the very next bus stop. He is still alive so I am stoked, the bus approaches the stop, and then the bus driver drives past him.
This is when I get worse. Before he left he said to stay on all the way until I reach my usual road, but I am in crisis mode and having an unshakable meltdown even though I really should have just kept myself in my seat and waited until I got where I needed to go. All I could think was, he’s all alone—it’s past 10, the rapists are out, he is kinda attractive too—he needs me.
This is a grown boy. He did not need me. I pull the cord hoping he would catch up to the bus in time. He didn’t. This is where my judgment hits the “Effing Stupid” notch. I don’t like being the person who requests a stop and doesn’t get off. That’s not me. They call me Tamera Always-gets-off-when-she-pulls-the-cord Pillay. I didn’t want to get off and I spent an extra ten seconds doing the back and forth, awkward shuffle. At least, if I get off I can keep him company. I walk off, happy with my decision, like it would be labeled, “Decision of the Year” at the Decision Awards. I could see all these confused eyes because I disembarked in the middle of nowhere.
The bus leaves me.
Immediately, I see a little Lance Armstrong wannabe peddling past his heart’s content the bus doors closed and it takes off. It was indeed Danté. I yell for him but the wind overpowered his hearing and his bike just kept moving.
I freak. My phone is dead. Not the dead where you turn it back on and magically have three percent again, but the dead where your phone is angry at you for letting is get to this state and doesn’t even vibrate when you hold the power key—dead. I was riding the bus for a long time. I’m practically there, right? Eternal optimist, I am, minus being a hypochondriac at heart. So I walk. Pretty positive that it is a straight shot I try to power walk to make it faster.
While I walk I think. Teleportation would be nice about now. Portals! There should be portals too. There are, according to a friend I knew in high school that traveled through them on a monthly basis, weekly if he was lucky. God, if portals exist can I walk through one right now, please?
To make time go by faster I daydream—night dream. I try to think of some funny story but all I can think about is my best friend from my youth, Jasmine. We were best friends off and on from 6th grade until about my first semester in college. Oh, did I mention I am the Godmother of her first child?
The case being made (by everyone that I know) was that I could not even take care of myself yet. I got it. Now that we don’t talk I am not ever sure if I’m still the Godmother. Maybe the masculine girl she made “Godfather” is the Godmother now. Sometimes, like this moment I just think about how much they might hate me. She would be the type of person to train her child to assassinate me.
My night dream concocted this vision:
20 years from now Jasmine dies. I show up to her funeral, genuinely sad over the loss of her at a pretty young age. I see her parents who I never lost contact with. We hug. Everyone’s happy. I see her son. He approaches me distraught. I lean in for a hug and he pushes me aside. After the funeral, I linger in Savannah seeing my friends that ended up moving back. I visit my old high school. I feel like I am being followed. I am! It is by Jasmine’s son. I am happy to see him, but he yells that his mom’s dying wish was for me to die. Typical. He assumes the responsibility. He snatched me from outside the school and since the school is closed for holidays he throws me into the cafeteria. He feeds me our grotesque school lunch that no one ate, likely to be the same food they had while I was still going there, until I die.
I snapped back to reality with the last stiff pizza. “It is dark and dangerous and why did I get off the bus?” I grumble, furious with myself, as I usually am when I make the wrong choice and realize that this problem goes back with me to my very first friendship. One day I chose to ignore a message, a plea, and it ruined a friendship.
A car that looks like Danté’s dad’s pulled up. I approach it. The driver’s door opens. Then Danté’s car comes behind it before I get close to it. So I wave and head to Danté’s, open the door. Overjoyed I say to Danté, “You’re a lot smarter than I credit you for.” The first car drives off. I guess I’ll see him at Danté’s place. I get into Danté’s car, collapsing into the seat. “Your dad left kind of abruptly. No hi or bye,” I say. I could tell Dante was frustrated with me. He waits a minute. “That wasn’t my dad Tamera!” I tense up and start feeling nausea on overdrive. I narrowly missed another bad decision.
Tamera Pillay 