The New Coat

The New Coat
By Maggie Hall

We rode the same bus to school.
You lived in Brownsville – the ‘bad’ section of town –
Brownsville where all the inbred Browns lived –
All the ignorant, dirty Browns who kept all their dead vehicles
In their back yard and front lawns.
Piles of debris/bags of trash could be anywhere.
Tall grass growing up around a porch.
A trailer that looked abandoned – but really someone’s ‘home’.
On Sundays after church we’d drive through Brownsville but we never stopped.
My mom said that there had been a place like that where she’d grown up.
It had been ‘Harveytown’ and it was where all the Harveys lived.
You could get lice if you hung out with the Harveys.
Brownsville is where you lived -
Where fate had put a shy seven year old girl in 1973.

The bus picked you up in front of the house you lived in
– the first day back to school after winter break.
I’d never seen you before – you were new.
I remember you wore a brand new blue coat
– a beautiful blue coat with snowflake decorations on it.
And the coat had a wonderful faux fur white-trimmed hood.
You sat in the back of the bus and I sat in the front.
It was a rainy day and it was dark outside with the rain coming down.
The bus lurched and lumbered along our dirt road -
A beast staggering and swaying with its load and job.
It was hot and the windows were steamed.

You threw up on that bus on that first day of school.
I don’t know if it was nerves or what.
But you threw up on that brand new coat.
The bus reeked of your puke.
Rancid burning in our nostrils - we smelled it all the way to school.
Everyone on the bus talked about it.

You stayed through that first day of school.
You were tall and had long blond hair – you were pretty.
You sat in the back of the classroom and I sat in the front.
Somehow you got through that day.
And you showed up the next day.

And the thing that I remember is that coat.
That brand new coat.
The brand new coat that was puked on -
That coat that somehow never got washed.

Day after day you’d get on the bus in that blue coat.
And day after day that blue coat stank of stale vomit.
Day after day, you wore it.
With the stink still on it.
You wore it. You wore it. You wore it.

2/27/07