Trust issues

When I was in grade school, I called my school bus—actually, it was a jeep—Mariposa because of the colorful words written on the “forehead” of the vehicle. The name the signage bore was usually that of the jeepney owner’s kin, but I didn’t know who Mariposa was exactly. Mariposa, the jeep, was unusually long. It could accommodate up to 25 students. It was fast. It was not as noisy as other jeeps. And one day, it ran over a child on our way to school.

We felt the bump a millisecond before the sudden brake. For a few seconds, everyone held their breaths. I remember my knees were shaking.

I’m not sure if I saw the incident or if I just conjured a scenario according to what Kuya Ronald and my “ka- service” said. But what happened was this: The boy was crossing the six-lane Governor’s Drive just past Trece Martires City’s arc. It was an accident-prone area. He was running with a few friends, or siblings—or was it a guardian and an older sibling? I’m not sure anymore. He was the last to cross—maybe his limbs were too short— when Mariposa hit him.

Kuya Ronald carried the poor child inside Mariposa. His companions also climbed in. The boy was crying. Although there wasn’t a lot of blood, his knees were bent at a weird angle. The impact wasn’t that intense, I thought.

Looking back and contemplating this memory, almost forgotten because it happened so damn fast, I think that this may be one of the fragments making up my trust issues. Imagine a school service—a vehicle supposed to protect kids—almost killing a child. Even before this incident, Mariposa wasn’t always a place of refuge. Physical bullying happened there. Kuya Ronald also touched my ass a couple of times, but let’s not talk about that.

We visited the boy (a detour before we went to school) a few months later and he was doing better, thanks to Mariposa’s swift trip to the hospital.