Spumona and me, a sad love story

Spumona and me, a short sad love story

fiction
edward w pritchard

First day after work at my new job, the blind girl, an aide at the School for the Autistic Children where I now taught sat next to me on the bus ride back to my neighborhood. It was my first time on a public bus in over forty years.

Her name was Spumona she said and she handed me her purse to guard as she laid her head on my shoulder, grabbed my left arm tightly and went straight to sleep. I must look like her Father to the other passengers. The bus driver alerted me at her stop and I walked her to her house.

Her Mother was disabled and sat in a wheel chair watching game shows. Two brothers played Euchre at the table in the small kitchen. Spumona made us peanut butter sandwiches. I ate the white bread just this once. I had Pepsi, first time in a long time. Her brothers left the kitchen, the older brother who had been a soldier called me sir.

Spumona had been working at the school for two weeks already helping organize the class rooms for the grand opening yesterday. I started today teaching English literature to the older students. Of Mice and Men and Shirley Jackson The Lottery. It was time for me to be getting on home. She walked me out to the bus stop.

Next day I picked Spumona up on the way to work in my car. I gave her the cell phone I bought her last night at Wal Mart. We sat together at lunch. Her job makes her very tired. Spumona is sensitive to noise because of her blindness. Hearing is important to her ability to perceive the world. The Autistic children can be loud sometimes, about like the regular students in the public schools where I taught part time the last four years. Spumona stayed at my house Friday night. She slept from five pm to seven the next morning. I heard her get up about two thirty am to have the rest of the Chinese food I had went out to get. I called her Mother and told her she was with me. Spumona is twenty five; she takes offense if people treat her as a child because of her blindness.

She told me to relax. I have quite a temper anymore. I hide it by teaching handicapped students. Saturday morning we watched DVD's on you tube. She wanted to go by the house I used to live at in the suburbs before I got divorced. Our first fight. I told her I hadn't been by in six years. since my daughter had been sick. My John Deere tractor was in the side yard; its still running I see. We sat just up the road from the house across from corn fields. Spumona liked it here. She said it must have been hard for me to leave. We went by Wal Mart and bought some things for my house in town. She spent a long time cleaning the kitchen. She asked first but she threw a lot of my stuff away. I still had nine or ten boxes in the garage from my old life.

Just after Christmas that year I told Spumona she should get a friend her own age. I have been teaching again in the public schools now and then. I spend a lot of time alone, like before. Sometimes I drive by Spumona's Mother's house. I always smile when I think of her hearing my car's unique sounds.
end