I see them the minute I haul my ass up the bus stairs and pay the fare. It was a rough shift at work, and I’m bone tired. The kind of tired that makes your head fuzzy, your muscles ache, and your feet heavy.

​

She’s sitting in the window seat; he’s on the aisle. She’s redheaded and pretty. He’s leaning in and talking to her in an intense whisper, sounding like one of those preacher-screecher sermons on the TV with the sound turned low. He’s angry. My first impression is that he looks like one of those sexy bad boy types who gets you all hot and bothered and breathlessly drowning in your infatuation when you first meet, but who ends up being just bad, period, once you get to know him. The kind of man who leaves a bitter taste of regret lingering long after he’s gone.

​

They’re sitting in the first row after the priority seating. I like to sit in those aisle-facing seats if they’re empty, so I can watch the city go by through the opposite window without having to turn my tired head. If I sit in the first seat, I’m close enough to pass the time of day and flirt a little with Joe, the regular route driver. I’m not Joe’s type, but it doesn’t matter because we’re just playing and it’s never going anywhere.

​

Last time I had a man I called my own was five years ago, when Aaron was still alive. Took me so long to find a good one, and then he was gone in the blink of an eye. It’s true what they say about the good dying young. Five years was all we had together, while the lowlife cockroach who was my man before him — Jack, of the wasted years — is still alive. The jackass giving the redhead a hard time reminds me of Jack.

​

Joe’s off today, and the woman filling in for him doesn’t return the smile I give her, so I sit in the third seat instead of the first, across from the couple, him still leaning in, still bitching at her. She’s retreated up against the window as far as she can, and has her head down.

​

“Please stop. We can talk about it at home,” I overhear her say. “You know I don’t like you making a scene when people are around.”

​

I been there, girl. Bargaining that tolerating a man’s bullshit in private will save you from having to put up with it in public. That never works. Let a man abuse you in the house, and sooner or later he’s going to abuse you on the street.

​

He’s stopped whispering. “I can’t believe you’d disrespect me like that,” he says. “Why can you never keep your mouth shut? What makes you think people want to hear what your stupid ass thinks?”

​

The young woman glances up and I catch her eye and nod to her with a faint smile that I hope conveys empathy. I know what it’s like to have a man all up in your face. You’re ashamed people can hear and see what you’re allowing yourself to endure in the hope it will calm his anger; embarrassed that they might assume you think what he’s doing is okay. All you want to do is sink into the floor and wait for the humiliation to stop.

​

The boyfriend — nobody is wearing a ring — follows the young woman’s gaze and I meet his eyes until he scowls at me and turns back to her.

​

Now the redhead is sticking up for herself. Good for her.

​

“Having my own opinion isn’t disrespectful. That’s a stupid thing to say. You’re just taking stuff out on me because — ”

​

“Shut the hell up,” he says. “Stop being such an uppity, know-it-all bitch. Just sit there and shut up, miss don’t-make-a-scene.”

​

He’s getting louder now, playing to the audience of me, the bus driver, and the people on the bus pretending not to listen. I’ve been where the young woman is, and I can read this guy’s mind. He’s not going to let anyone interfere with him giving his woman a lesson about accepting being the punching bag for his stress.

​

I can see the lady bus driver I’m wishing were Joe right now keeping an eye on things in the mirror, but I’m betting the only way she’ll get involved is if blood is spilled and she has to call the cops.

 

Now the redhead has had enough. She’s shoving away from her pushed-against-the-window position. “Don’t tell me to shut up. I’m not putting up with your shit anymore — ”

​

She stands up and tries to push past him. He takes his large hand and pushes her back down in the seat, and with his other hand, he reaches out and smacks her face. A quick little slap. Hardly any power behind it, but enough. It’s what he thinks he’ll easily get away with without anyone on the bus feeling the need to protest his abuse. The kind of slap I may have put up with once or twice, or a dozen times.

​

The young woman gives up and crumples in her seat. I can see her determination running out of her like water through a sieve, and my Rosa Parks indignation — because we’re on a bus, and I’ve had enough of the oppression going on here — rises up. “Hey! You can’t be hitting her. What kind of man takes a hand to a woman?”

​

I think about standing up to look a little more intimidating, but that’s a lost cause. Aaron used to call me his little mouse that roared. I’d get mad over something silly, and shake my finger in his face and give that six-foot-four hunk of man a piece of my mind, and he’d wrap his arms around me and tell me I was beautiful when I was angry, and then he’d kiss me — soft and sweet — and take me to bed. He was a wonderful man, not like Jack or this idiot with his stupid throwback eighties hair and his cruel hands.

​

“Who asked you?” he says to me. “Mind your own fucking business.”

​

I narrow my eyes at the man before turning to the girl. “You sure you want to be with him, honey? No man at all would be better than being with this guy.” Then, because I know this conversation will be used as an excuse for him to beat his anger out on her later, I tell her, “If you don’t have a place to go, I got a spare room. You’re welcome to it tonight. Longer if you want. There are plenty of good people in the world, baby. But not this guy. This guy is bad people.”

​

Before I can silently count to three, he’s up out of his seat and getting in my face. “I thought I told you to mind your own business, buttercup. You must not have much of a life if you care enough about mine to stick your big nose into it.”

​

“I don’t care about your life, mister. You look like a lost cause who’s sinking fast, but there’s no reason you have to take her down with you.”

​

The redhead sits up in her seat a little and her expression turns into a half smile, and I realize she reminds me of my sister Anita when she was young, who had plenty of bad men who helped suck the life out of her, leaving her old before her time and dead at forty-two. Is that why I feel the need to try to help this girl I don’t know? Maybe. Things might have turned out differently if more people had stood up for Anita, and the world would be a better place if more people stood up for their fellow human beings in general. Aaron used to say that you’ve got to pay into the good karma bank if you want to get any back later, so I guess I’m about to make a deposit.

​

The bus is stopping now, and three of the passengers are getting off. Two go out the side door, but a big old lady pushing one of those folding shopping carts — full of groceries — barrels toward the front, and the guy has to take a quick step back to avoid being bowled over. She gives me a big smile as she rolls past.

​

The boyfriend is yelling nasty stuff at me — every other word the f-word — but the big grandma momentarily situated between us gives me a chance to stand up before he gets in my face again. He calls me more names, including a short little piece of ass, but I’m tall enough to stand up to him, no problem.

​

I nod at the door where grandma is huffing and puffing her cart down the steps. I hope she gets out of the way in the next minute. “Okay, tough talker,” I say to the boyfriend. “Let’s take it outside. I bet I’m a lot harder to push around than your girlfriend.”

​

He looks stunned for a moment because he’s probably not used to getting called on his bullshit by someone like me. I’m not a naïve, babe-in-the-woods-of-romance young woman willing to put up with pain in exchange for what I mistakenly think is love, which is the kind of woman men like him seek out. I see right through him. I’ve had true love, and I know what he’s been selling to the girl who reminds me of Anita ain’t it.

​

“Okay…okay, asshole,” he stammers, talking up his machismo. He starts his shoulders swinging, and he’s holding his fists halfway up his chest like he’s getting ready to wind up his arms and slug me.

​

The bus driver turns to look and raises her eyebrows.

​

Big grandma has cleared the steps. She moves a short distance away from the bus, then turns around to look, waiting to see what’s going to happen.

​

I extend my arm toward the door. “After you, tough guy.”

​

He bounds to the front of the bus talking trash like Muhammed Ali — if Ali had been a stupid asshole with a ridiculous haircut — and I follow him. Then he’s down the stairs and off the bus, dancing around, jabbing the air with his fists while he talks smack about how he’s going to beat my rainbow-shirt-wearing ass and make me sorry I ever opened my Tinkerbell, gay-boy mouth and gave him shit over how a real man treats a woman.

​

I don’t know why some people want to take love and say it’s something bad and detestable and shameful. Love isn’t that. This guy isn’t worthy of any love. He’s not good enough for the redheaded girl who likes to give her opinions. She deserves better. Just like my sister deserved better. Just like a whole lot of us deserve better than what we get from people like this guy.

​

I’m standing at the front of the bus, and I stoop down so the idiot can see my face through the door from where he’s prancing on the sidewalk, and I smile and wave goodbye. Then I turn around and lean over the lady bus driver and tap the button that shuts the bus doors, and she pulls away from the curb. The traffic light ahead is green, and we fly through it, free as a bird.

​

As I walk down the aisle to sit next to the red-headed girl and ask her if she’d like to stop for a drink before we go home and I show her the spare room, in the rapidly receding distance behind us I see big grandma standing on the sidewalk. She’s laughing — open-mouthed and smiling, girth jiggling — one fist clutching her grocery cart and her other hand pointing at the ex-boyfriend, standing alone on the sidewalk as he watches our bus drive away.