"What's your name?"
"Call me what you please."
I stared blankly at the girl beside me, biting my lip.
"How do I know what to call you if I know nothing about you?"
"You examine, observe, then deduct."
I closed my book then, setting it on my lap. I was used to conversing with strangers at the bus stop for the sake of preventing an awkward silence from dominating the time, but this one, this stranger, was different. Unlike all the others, who happily obliged to tell me their name and share a conversation, she did anything but. She wasn't exactly avoiding conversation, but she most certainly did not indulge in it either. For lack of anything better to do (the book was rather boring) I did what she told and examined her.
She was a young lady trapped in an old body. She couldn't have been more than twenty, yet grays popped out of her thick auburn hair like clingy spider webs, and she was unhealthily scrawny in the shoulders and chest. Her eyes might have been chocolate diamonds at some point in her life, an exceptionally warm brown, but now they were unnaturally dim and dark, concealing a certain grief and a certain anxiety and a certain acceptance.
So I called her Storyteller.
On the way to work the next morning, I saw her again. She was sitting with a book in her hands, the title written in some language I wasn't familiar with. It looked old and tethered, like it hadn't been touched until her frail hands had found it.
"Hey." I greeted in an attempt to be friendly. She simply nodded in acknowledgement, eyes still scanning the words of her odd book. I sat down beside her, and intrigued I looked over her shoulder. Still, I couldn't understand the words or determine what language it was written in. I frowned at the wrinkled pages. "What language is that?"
"Zulu."
I stared at her, dumbfounded, perhaps racially doubting her due to her exceptionally pale skin. She looked up quizzically. "Whites live in Africa, too, you know."
I shook my head and mentally slapped myself. "Of course I do!" I answered indignantly, feeling my cheeks flush with embarrassment. A few moments passed before I spoke again. "Were you born there?"
"No," Storyteller answered firmly. "I lived there the past four years, since I was eighteen. I was born in California."
Slowly, a little bit more about the stranger was known. Her approximate age was twenty-two, she spoke Zulu, and she lived in California. I nodded to myself.
"Mind teaching me a few words?" At first I thought she didn't hear me, eyes scanning the pages of her book, flicking from one word to the other. Then she set the old thing down.
The first word she taught me was luhlaza okwesibhakabhaka. Blue.
I wasn't sure if I believed her.
At our next meeting the following day, it was September 13th, and she was dressed completely in blue (the Zulu word for it I had already forgotten). A long, dark blue skirt with a lace brim, a shoulderless, plain, smoky blue blouse, blue jewelry... Despite myself, I found she looked elegant in her current attire.
She didn't have a book this time. Instead she hugged herself like she was cold, boney knees pulled up to her equally boney chest, but it was confusing as it was of the moderate temperature of seventy degrees. Her dark eyes stared lifelessly in front of her, darker than the days previous, and her blemished face looked sunken in. I didn't say anything as I sat beside her, perplexed by how stiff she was, like she was in postmortem.
"You've an obsession with blue?" I asked her when it reached the ten minute mark. No response, not even an exaggerated breath. Not a flicker of her unseeing eyes. I was not the best at suffering silence, so I asked again. Still she gave no response, or any indication she was about to give one. It was the first awkward silence I'd experienced in two years.
"Have you ever seen sapphire eyes?" Storyteller asked in a sudden, quiet, half-dead burst of noise, so silent in tone I had to lean in closer to hear her. I wondered what she meant, and when I realized I had no idea I simply shook my head. Before she could explain herself or continue the conversation, her bus pulled up to the stop, coming to a screeching halt. Without another word, she stiffly proceeded onto the tall, cyan-colored vehicle. I could feel goosebumps form along my arms and neck as the bus pulled swiftly away.
I would not see Storyteller for another month. No one else came to the bus stop; ultimately, instead of conversation, I turned to reading a Zulu-English dictionary so that she and I might hold a conversation - however limited - in her second language.
When I did see her again, it was the opposite of what it was. She would come off the bus at the stop rather than sitting there, already waiting. I was amazed at her condition when she stepped down on the cracked concrete sidewalk. She was even thinner than when I had last seen her, and her vibrant hair was cut short, with more strands of gray in her voluminous locks. Her eyes were of an even darker shade, like dark, pitless abysses, with bags hanging heavily underneath them. Before she was in postmortem, stiff, like she had been posed for some Victorian-aged family portrait. Now, she was a ghost. I feared that if a gentle breeze came along she would fall into an unexpected and young death.
She paused in front of me instead of going her way to what I presumed was home. She cocked her head curiously to the side. "Attempting to learn Zulu?"
"Attempting, yes." She smiled. It was not her normal smile, however, which was always closed-lip and thoughtful, but broader, happier. I smiled back and closed the dictionary. "Of course, I can't pronounce the words properly."
Without blinking an eye, she said, "The best way is to read the Bible."
Upon my bewildered look, she explained that Zulu (which was technically isiZulu, I learned) was translated by European missionaries, so any religious books - regardless of my standings on such matters - were the surest way to learn the Zulu language next to living in the regions speaking the language.
The next day, she started reading me the Bible in Zulu.
We would meet every weekday after that at the bus stop and read a little more of the isiZulu Bible. It was after we had gotten half way through Genesis that she, without warning, disappeared. I thought it was perhaps another one month break, like how it was before we started to read the Bible. But then two months had passed, then three, then four. Despite myself, I grew concerned, which intensified when another stranger - not her - took her place on the bus stop.
"How's it going there, sir," he greeted cordially, nodding in my direction, doing just as I did before meeting Storyteller. To my partial surprise, I just nodded rather than giving a full answer. The stranger raised an eyebrow before extending a hand. "Name's Jeff,"
I stared at his hand for a moment before reluctantly grabbing it. "Benjamin."
"Off to work, I'm guessing?"
Another nod. Jeff tore his gaze away from me to inspect the houses across the street. I examined him as I did with Storyteller. He had short, plain brown hair and lackluster, mud-brown eyes. His skin was of an olive complexion and overall flawless. Average build, not scrawny nor muscular. I decided Jeff wasn't suiting enough of a name and mentally I started referring to him as Ordinary.
"Same here." Ordinary leaned back in Storyteller's seat. I felt my hand clutch more tightly around my Zulu-translated Bible. He glanced down at it through the corner of his eyes, surprised by the language. "You speak Zulu?"
I lied. "Yes."
"Really?" I nodded. He smirked. "Interesting."
Instead of pursuing the conversation he had initiated, I found myself pursuing information on Storyteller. "Did you know a red-headed girl who came to the bus stop every day?"
Ordinary frowned. "I know of her. She was one of my neighbors."
My throat began to close. "Was?" 'Was' implied the past.
Ordinary nodded in that overly-simple, uninteresting way of his. "Yeah. Poor thing got real sick recently. Ambulance came one day and I saw them take her in. Haven't seen her in months…"
Before the conversation could be continued, before Ordinary could continue his talk in his boring old tone, I had stood from my seat and was half-running down the sidewalk, Bible in hand. My cheeks were flushed, and my throat was closed. I didn't even process the fact that I was skipping out on work.
I was not a religious man, but all the while I was praying, for Storyteller's sake.
"I'm looking for a sick, red-headed girl."
"Her name?"
"Storyteller." The nurse looked at me like I was insane.
Damn her.
"I...don't know her real name." The Bible in my hand had been replaced by a bouquet of red roses. The nurse raised an eyebrow quizzically.
"Sir, I cannot permit you if -"
"Please."
The nurse frowned yet again, and my nails dug into my jeans. She pulled out some files, and after twelve minutes of shifting through the packets and looking at pictures, she pulled one out and showed me the photograph. "Is this her, sir?"
I looked at her eyes. Dim, dark, containing a certain grief and a certain anxiety and a certain acceptance. I nodded. The nurse then looked at the file in-full. She frowned. "I'm sorry, sir, she passed away this morning."
I wanted to sink to my knees, tears threatening to gush out of my eyes. The roses fell to the ground. And I didn't even know her God-damn name. "How?"
"Heart failure. Doctors are doing an autopsy to see exactly from what." The nurse paused, then, "She had this on the end table. I will I think. It was...like she planned this."
I grabbed the paper from her with shaking hands.
To the Bus Stranger,
Here is a list of things I'd like you to know.
1. I make a living as an author, in Zulu and in English.
2. I am fluent in French, Italian, Afrikaans, and Zulu.
3. I hate talking to strangers.
4. We never would have had a full conversation outside of tutoring.
5. I am not obsessed with blue; it was my friends favorite color. He died the thirteenth of September ten years ago.
I'm going to die, so thank you for being a friend.
Oh, and I have some Zulu books for you at my home, 4698 Winston Ave. The key is under the mat.
Keep learning friend, and tell a story or two.
Love,
Storyteller
"I can tell you her name if -" The nurses voice didn't process further; I was already walking away.
I didn't want to know Storyteller's name anymore.
ns 18.68.41.137da2
