Riding The Bus With My Sister

“The Journey” Summary

Rachel is awoken at six o’clock by her sister Beth. They are both in their thirties, born just 11 months apart. Beth is intellectually disabled and has been living independently for six years in Pennsylvania. She has recently been laid off from her restaurant job and is living off of government assistance. Beth realized she was lonely in her apartment with no job, so she began to get up each day and ride the city buses—not to get anywhere, but just for the pleasure of riding: “she staked out friendships all over the city, weaving her own traveling community” (4). She began riding in October of 1993.

Beth wakes up early, takes a bath, dresses herself in the brightest colors possible, and takes Rachel out to catch their first bus. Beth moves very quickly, rushing into a McDonalds to pick up a cup of coffee for her first driver. Rachel can barely keep up. They board Claude’s bus. Claude and Beth have a good rapport, and he tells Rachel about how they like to listen to Beth’s handheld radio when the bus is empty. The bus passes Beth’s boyfriend, Jesse, as he rides his bike. Claude uses his driver’s microphone to call out a hello. Jesse is also intellectually disabled. He and Beth have been dating for about 10 years.

Rachel and Beth spend the day riding the buses, changing drivers often and each time being met with happy greetings. The drivers tell Rachel that Beth helps them out; she “reminds them where to turn on runs they haven’t driven for a while, teaches them the top 10 songs on the radio, keeps them abreast of schedule and personnel changes, and visits them in the hospital when they’re sick” (6). Most of the drivers enjoy having Beth as a passenger and bring her special treats. Some, however, refer to her as “The Pest” (7). Rachel notices that Beth is much more resilient in the face of people’s cruelty than she was as a child. Similarly, she is much more social now than Rachel remembers.

Rachel leaves Beth at the end of the day to return to her own apartment in Philadelphia. She reminisces about her own adult life:

I was racing my way to becoming a Somebody. A Somebody who would live a Big Life. […] Then, in the winter of my thirty-ninth year, I boarded a bus with my sister and discovered that I wanted broader and deeper rewards than those I would find in the Big Life (8).

Rachel works as a published writer, a college professor, and a bookstore events coordinator. Her career defines her, keeping her so busy that she has no social life. Since her relationship with a man named Sam ended, she has been single and has not dated. Sam proposed to Rachel, and she could not say yes, for reasons she doesn’t entirely understand. Since then she has been alone and working constantly.

Throughout this time Beth keeps in touch by sending letters. Her letters include simple phrases and brightly colored stickers, always signed “Cool Beth.” Rachel finds the letters a much better way to communicate with Beth than the phone; “when I phoned her occasionally the conversations were clumsy and joyless. She never volunteered information about herself, and when I divulged meager scraps about myself, she made no effort to respond” (11). On the phone Beth often asks Rachel to come visit. Rachel says no because Beth’s bus riding habits frustrate her and her family. They wish Beth would spend her days working or contributing to society in some way.

Rachel describes telling her friends about having a sister with an intellectual disability. She remarks that most people ask if Beth has Down Syndrome and what Beth’s “mental age” is. This term frustrates Rachel because it doesn’t help anyone understand Beth, yet it is one of the only ways people seem to relate to the concept of an intellectual disability.

Rachel is feeling alone and out of ideas, so she tells her editor she is going to spend a day with her sister riding the buses. He advises her to use the experience as research for a piece. The piece she publishes received a lot of attention and creates a topic for her and Beth to communicate about regularly. Their bond rekindled, Beth asks Rachel to attend her yearly Plan of Care meeting with her aides.

Rachel arrives at the meeting and is overcome with a memory of her and Beth crawling under the house as children to look at a beautiful spider web. Beth remains childlike in her clothing: “shorts. Always shorts, and often her trademark violet sandals or blueberry flip flops” (16). In the present, Beth and Rachel sit down with Olivia, Vera, and Amber. They begin by looking at Beth’s financial situation. Beth is receiving about $500 a month from Social Security, which covers her subsidized apartment, groceries, and bus pass. They move on to discussing Beth’s health, which is poor. She is eating junk food and has high cholesterol, doesn’t go to the dentist, and is not seeking treatment for a rare eye condition that is affecting her corneas.

The women ask her about her important relationships, which she defines as her boyfriend, the bus drivers, and some members of her family. They ask her what her dreams are, and she replies, “To go to Disney World with Jesse. To live with my niece and nephew for one day” (21). Beth confirms that she does not want to take any classes, join any groups, or attempt to find a job. After the meeting Beth runs to catch the next bus, Rachel panting to keep up. Beth asks Rachel to join her on the bus, not just for the day, but for a whole year. Rachel agrees: “And I think, you need to do this, even if you don’t know where it will take you” (23). For one year she will ride the bus with Beth as much as she possibly can. 

“Hitting the Road” Summary

Rachel is awoken at five o’clock by Beth, who is ready to get her bus-riding adventures started. Rachel is staying in Beth’s apartment, sleeping on the loveseat in the living room. Beth calls Olivia, her aide, and leaves a voicemail describing the weather forecast for the day. Beth explains that Olivia “likes it. Iz good for her to know. I don’t do it on weekends. Iz okay” (32).

Rachel describes Beth’s apartment, which is full of Beth’s favorite childhood possessions, her keychain collection, tv, and radio. She goes to bed at nine o’clock each night, and sometimes Jesse comes over to visit, but he never spends the night. The apartment is located in a building with mostly senior citizens. Beth moved in after living in a group home for five years. She seems to like living on her own and is excited for Rachel to join her on the bus, although she feels that Rachel is too slow to keep up with her fast pace in the morning.

“The Professor” Summary

The first bus they board is driven by Tim: “Beth has nicknamed him ‘Happy Timmy,’ though some of his colleagues call him the Professor” (35). Tim explains that Beth likes to sit right up front with him and talk the whole time. She tells him all the gossip and what’s going on with the other drivers and passengers in the city. Tim and Beth recount a day when a rude fellow rider became upset that Beth was taking up a handicapped seat. Tim explains the concept of killing people with kindness to Beth, and she tells him he uses too many big words. Tim explains the words she doesn’t know, and Rachel wonders if she should start speaking to Beth like an adult so that she can learn more vocabulary from their conversations. Beth explains that Tim is cool, and Rachel notes, “as I have gathered from her letters, ‘cool’ does not concern hip attire or trendy indifference. Instead, it is the term of highest approval, bestowed upon only those people Beth deems worthy of her attention and trust” (38).

Tim explains how he became a bus driver, calling it “an evolutionary route” (39). He originally dreamed of becoming an archaeologist, then found himself working in a factory and enjoyed being around people, then attended college at night and studied photography. He dated a professor from college, married her, and took a job as a bus driver to support them, and now they have three children together. He explains that he likes to pay attention to the details most people overlook. After listening to Tim, Rachel looks at the scenery and passengers differently, noticing gradations of color and detail that she had missed previously. However, she wonders if Tim is as content as he claims to be. As the ride goes on, an elderly woman starts to talk about the day she met her husband, and the other passengers join in the reminiscing. Tim explains that he spends his “day meeting people who lived important parts of their lives before I was born […] every day right here in this seat, I have history riding with me” (45). Rachel wonders how Tim learned to look at the world through a “different eye” and if she could do the same. 

Beth mails Rachel a thank you card after their day together. In it Beth tells Rachel that she is “so great” and “who I DO love a whole lot. And forever too” (46). Nothing makes Beth happier than having Rachel ride the bus with her.

“Fighting” Summary

Rachel recalls a memory from when she was five. It is Halloween, and their mother has handmade all of their costumes. Their father wants them to put them on and pose for a family photo. Beth is four and fighting her mother because she doesn’t want to wear a dress. Beth still wears diapers, and her speech is difficult to understand. Rachel says that Beth is fun to play with; they get along well at this age. They enjoy laying under the house together and gazing at a big sparkling spiderweb.

Rachel’s mother has an easel and paints in the living room. One evening while their mother is making dinner, Beth drinks the tubs of paints on the easel. She goes to the hospital but returns home unharmed. Their mother stops painting then and begins to take library studies classes. Rachel describes her mother as always sad.

Rachel recounts “the first most scary time I remember” (50). Beth is just a baby and their mother is not doing well. She is sad and melancholy, and their father is away at work most of the time. Her mother is on the phone with their father when Rachel’s sister, Laura, notices that Beth is completely still in their mother’s arms. Her mother screams into the phone and doesn’t know what to do. Her husband tells her to call a family friend who is a doctor. He tells her to use a spoon to press on Beth’s tongue. She does so, but nothing seems to be happening. She gives up and drops the spoon to the floor. Laura and Rachel walk into the kitchen and ask their mother what is wrong. Seeing her daughters jolts her back to action, and she picks up the spoon and continues to dig around in Beth’s mouth until they hear her take a gasp of air. Later the girls hear their mother on the phone telling her husband that Laura and Rachel saved Beth’s life, because if it hadn’t been for them watching, she wouldn’t have kept trying. 

“The Pilgrim” Summary

Ten days after Rachel’s first ride with Beth, she has returned to spend a few days. She plans to keep up this schedule for the year. Beth has arranged with the dispatchers for Rachel to leave her car parked at the driver’s station to make it easier on her. On the bus, Jacob, a 50-year-old Pennsylvania Dutch driver with a thick head of dark hair, explains how you can tell the selfish from the unselfish. He tells a story of the old buses that weren’t strong enough to make it up a steep hill, and how the driver would have to ask passengers to get off halfway up and walk to the top: “you could tell the unselfish people because […] they would be the ones to volunteer to brave the demanding hike in sometimes harsh rain and snow. And then they’d get back on the bus with a good feeling” (55).

Beth tells Jacob about Gus, another driver who doesn’t like her and doesn’t want her coming into the driver’s break room. Jacob tries to convince Beth to talk to Gus and hear his story to try to understand his perspective. She says he’s “a jerk” and “obnoxious.” Jacob reminds her of a driver who died. He convinced Beth to send him a card when he got sick, even though he had been mean to her on the bus, and Jacob asks Beth how it felt to make him feel good. She replies that she doesn’t know. Jacob tries to convince Beth that she really is a good person, but they are interrupted by a grumpy woman who yells out that Beth doesn’t have the right pass for the zone they are driving in. She tells Jacob that he should kick Beth off the bus because she has the wrong pass. Jacob says nothing until they come to the next stop, at which point he tells Beth to hold up her pass and show it to the woman: “Beth turns to the woman, and hoists her pass as if raising her fist in a Yes! [...] The woman clamps her lips shut, and stares out the window, fuming in defeat” (58).

Two little girls board the bus with their mother, and Beth plays with and encourages them. She adores children and delights in their noise and games. Jacob continues to discuss the golden rule and tries to impart this wisdom on Beth. She resists. She prefers to be nice only to people who are nice to her. Jacob then explains why he is such a believer in the teachings of Jesus and tells the story of his near-death experience. He was an alcoholic and his life was going poorly when he went into a coma for three weeks. He felt he died then and describes the feeling of being touched by God when an organ donor saved his life with a new liver. He and his girlfriend had a baby girl, and Jacob turned to the Bible to keep his newfound sense of awe alive. He says “once you look at Jesus, it tears you apart piece by piece. All your pride, your anger, your selfishness” (64). Rachel ponders her own moral compass after hearing Jacob’s story and wonders if she would have been one of the people to volunteer to get off the bus and walk up the hill.

“Streetwise” Summary

Finding public bathrooms during her daily bus rides is one of Beth’s biggest challenges. Some establishments are kind to her, but many don’t let her use their restrooms. It is difficult for Rachel to watch people treat her sister poorly because of her disability, but Beth doesn’t seem interested in fighting with anyone for better treatment. She goes in search of the bathrooms she knows are accessible and decent. As they traverse the city streets, Rachel notices the influence of the Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry in the shops and foods for sale. She asks Beth if the streets are safe for her, and Beth tells her that the crime is getting worse.

After they use a restroom in Jesse’s old office building, they are behind schedule due to Rachel’s slower pace. Beth gets very frustrated with Rachel for not being able to keep up: “You take too long […] I’m fast, why’d you take so much time, iz too slow, now iz all messed up, now we have to wait” (70). As they walk along in frustration, they run into Beth’s caseworker, Olivia. Olivia tells Rachel that she usually conducts her meetings with Beth on the street because it’s the only place to get her attention. Olivia manages to get a few questions in about Beth’s eyes (she did have an appointment and is supposed to return in the summer for another check-up).

On their way to the next bus stop, they pass a homeless man, and Beth says hello. She explains to Rachel that they get along, so she is nice to him, but that she is not nice to other homeless people who are rude to her. Beth tells a story about a homeless girl who threatened to kill Beth after a negative exchange, and Beth doesn’t seem to grasp the seriousness of her situation. She explains that the girl’s boyfriend got involved, as did Jesse. There was fighting, and the boyfriend ended up going to jail. Beth tells the story as if it were an exciting adventure, clearly not understanding the implications or danger she was in. Rachel is concerned about Beth being out on the streets alone now that she has seen how naïve Beth is. Rachel doesn’t want to create a rift between her and Beth now that they are finally getting close, so she decides not to push too hard on the safety topic, yet she is concerned and frustrated with what she perceives as Beth’s “bullheadedness.”

“Into Out There” Summary

In a flashback to when Rachel and Beth are 10, they are driving home from their grandmother’s house with their mother. They have moved into the mountains of Pennsylvania and drive to their grandmother’s each weekend. Their father left their mother for another woman who works at the college where he accepted a position as a dean. Their mother is sad and crying most of the time, spending their weekends with her own mother for consolation. She has become a librarian. Beth and Rachel play games and listen to music together. The siblings try to include Beth in all their games and help her learn her letters and numbers.

Their mother pulls them aside and tells them: “Beth needs a little extra help sometimes, and whenever you see that she does, help her. Don’t you ever forget: it could have happened to any one of you” (82). Her mother explains that it used to be common practice to hide children with intellectual disabilities. She and their father refuse to do so, and Beth will always be part of the family like any other child.

Rachel spends her time trying to perfect an “anonymous” letter to her father, written on her typewriter. The letter explains that it would be best for him to return to his family now. Just as she finishes typing, her father arrives and takes the children out to play basketball. Rachel is trying to figure out how to get his work address so she can mail the letter but gets distracted telling her father about John Lennon leaving his wife for Yoko Ono. Her father says that sometimes people aren’t right for each other and can get to the point in a marriage where they feel dead inside. Rachel realizes that must be what happened to her parents and feels foolish for wanting them to get back together. When she gets home, she throws the letter in the trash. Soon after that, Rachel’s mother begins dating. She brings a man to the house that “looks like Clark Kent” (87).

The children are playing in their new neighborhood when a local boy encourages them to learn how to steal like he does. They are tempted, because their mother doesn’t have much money for them, but they decide not to steal from the corner store. Instead, they make a fake charity collection and go door to door asking people to donate money to a foundation for intellectually disabled people because “our sister is retarded” (88). They collect money two nights in a row, but on the third their conscience kicks in and they stop.

Soon thereafter, Rachel is up late with her mother when they see Beth sleepwalking. They stop her just before she walks into the street and wake her up. Rachel wonders if Beth was “just doing what the rest of us secretly want: trying to run away?” (90).