Don’t Laugh by Val Bramble
“Don’t Laugh” is one of three editors’ choice selections for the CRAFT 2023 Flash Prose Prize, guest judged by Kathy Fish. Our editors chose these pieces as exemplars of the power of flash prose to convey complexity of emotion within the constraints of concision.
Alice Munro, one of our greatest contemporary short story writers, has often noted that her stories are inspired “by listening to how people talk to one another.” Likewise, in her author’s note, Val Bramble writes: “How people talk and carry themselves through the world, how they engage with others, or disengage, has always been something I’ve paid attention to.” Bramble’s flash, “Don’t Laugh,” illustrates how a simple moment between children on a school bus, when closely observed and carefully rendered, can reflect an ocean’s depth of experience and emotion. Loss, longing, insecurity, the weight of poverty—all are held in this fresh, deceptively simple piece. We are thrilled to publish Val Bramble’s debut flash story here at CRAFT. We are certain that our readers, like us, will want to hear more from Rosie. —CRAFT
Sometimes Mrs. Bowman rode the school bus to her jobs. She’d be waiting on the road with her children—her daughter, Suzette, and son, Buddy—both of whom I knew to be in High Levels of reading and math, as were my sisters.
We all lived far out. Our bus driver’s name was Hans. His impartial smile, if you noticed it getting on the bus, stuck with you. Hans owned his own school bus and kept it well-cleaned. Even the rounded roof he hosed off by his milk house after the chickens had roosted on it a couple of nights.
Mrs. Bowman wore the zippered jumpsuit everywhere you saw her. Her knuckles were dark, but not as black as the creases of her fingers. She had a charcoal smell. If my sisters and I smelled like cotton, it was from the fabric sheets my dad used when he took over the laundry when Mom died.
This was a time, a long time ago, when I knew the names of the families in the houses and the trailers we passed. I abstracted ideas about what marked us each. My sister, Rhea, for example, said we were half-orphans. The Bowmans had lived in a half-painted house since Mr. Bowman left the ladder standing the fall before, then drove off in the family station wagon.
Hans almost looked like Jesus with his hair grown out. Mrs. Bowman had scoliosis. Her black eyes turned inward. She was a nonprofessional mechanic and fixed people’s cars in their driveways. People had loads of broken cars. Hans kept a tool bag behind his seat that Mrs. Bowman borrowed from. He’d let her off at the end of a long driveway with his torque wrench. Other kids never followed her path; not even her own, Suzette or Buddy, looked up to watch their mom go, too busy reading or sharpening pencils. I’d open down my window. If our countryside was sometimes bleak, there was a feeling of promise I got in watching Mrs. Bowman. Everywhere she walked she leaned forward from the waist to carry her hump, hands in their two fists, head bobbing finely, never bothered at all by any dogs who came to smell her.
When Mom died I told Dad, Now I’ll never learn to read. I dreamed my eyes turned inward like Mrs. Bowman’s, when letters on pages gave me that sick feeling. There was a discarded library book on the nine planets that was mine. It nearly fit perfectly into my bookbag that used to be my sisters’ though it concerned me how the corners of the book were looking shabby under the strain of the buckles. In my bus seat, I might wedge it out to examine its condition, then open it onto my lap and go over the colored pictures again if I needed something to do.
My greatest appeal with the other kids were my takeoffs of themselves or others. I had a talent for it that drove people bats. They even paid me. My sisters, being brilliant, read their books straight through any hysterics I’d create, till at dinner they’d tell Dad. I won’t hear it again, Rosie, that you’ve taken another child’s lunch money. Now pass the noodles.
Bebe Baughman was a high schooler with feathered hair. She carried a color guard rifle onto our bus, white with only a pretend trigger. Driving in our car, past the trailer where the Baughmans lived, I’d seen Bebe throw that rifle twice as high as their roof, which was a terrifying sight, till Bebe caught it with two hands and snapped it to her side, which was brilliant.
The back seats belonged to Bebe and her cousin, Kel. One morning they were French braiding on the bus and Bebe caught me watching her. “Come back here, you,” she said. When I did, she said, “Do her,” meaning the cousin.
“Can’t.”
“Why can’tcha?”
I shrugged. “Something needs to stick out.”
“Have you not seen her boobs?”
Kids died laughing till Bebe said they were all morons. Embarrassed, I waited, remembering what my sister, Claire, had said. Nobody thinks you’re funny.
“Do her then,” said Kel, meaning Bebe.
I demurred. Kel waved a dollar. I could do Bebe in my sleep.
I cracked my neck and yanked on my pretend bra. I shook out my fingers to dry my polish and sauntered down half the aisle with my hand on my bum. An explosion of laughter happened in back. Up front the four Miller kids got on and found seats. Half the bus watched. Then Suzette said, “Do my mom,” meaning Mrs. Bowman.
“I won’t,” I said.
“She too gross?”
I looked at my feet, imagining I had matching eyelashes like Mom’s that were as yellow as her hair. Gross is a mean word for another person, especially your mom. I looked at my feet some more. When Mom died Mrs. Bowman arrived at the funeral in the jumpsuit. The next week our bus got stuck and Mrs. Bowman chaperoned while Hans ran to use someone’s phone. She joined me in my seat, told me how smart it was having a book on the planets to look at, reading me names of planets with her finger. That’s when she said I smelled like cotton. And an idea came into her head: at our feet was Hans’s tool bag—on top sat his pair of gloves, Hans written across each one. With a Magic Marker Mrs. Bowman wrote Right and Left, respectively; with her finger she read these captions twice or three times till I died laughing, thinking, How brilliant.
Her whole self seemed to fit inside me. I turned my eyes in like hers. I bent from the waist-folds of my jumpsuit, a torque wrench in my fist, on my back a heavy hump to carry on and on into the world. I carried it all that way up the aisle, kids on their knees in their seats turning to see—only they screamed laughing—though I didn’t want them to, recognizing at once who I was.
VAL BRAMBLE is a nurse at a small island health clinic off the coast of Portland, Maine. When writing stories, she draws from what she is learning about people struggling with illness and social stressors. She also draws from her experiences trying to pursue theater acting, and from her childhood growing up on farmland with her sisters and brothers in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. “Don’t Laugh” is her first published story, and she’s so grateful to CRAFT.
Featured image by Faith Enck, courtesy of Unsplash.
