Weekly Read: “Bus” by Joan Leegant
BLR’s Weekly Read brings you one outstanding story, poem, or essay from our archive. This week’s read is “Bus” by Joan Leegant, which was awarded honorable mention in BLR‘s Goldenberg Prize for Fiction in 2013.
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So this morning I decided I would work up my courage and, even with my limited vocabulary, ask the driver, no matter how impatient or brusque he seemed, if this was the right line. I practiced phrases while I waited in the shelter, trying not to attract the attention of the other middle-aged women standing there with their packages and bulging plastic bags of groceries. But when I climbed up the metal stairs and heard the whoosh of the doors closing and felt the bus lurching down the tree-lined boulevard, I forgot all about asking the driver. All around me were stuffed animals. Plush brown teddy bears and monkeys with curly tails, and baby kangaroos in their mother’s pouches, turtles and lions and soft yellow ducks. They were strapped to the poles and tied to the overhead hangers and swinging from the ceiling on fishing line. A pink and blue snake was threaded through the grab bars between the first three rows of seats, linking them together like a pillowy chain, and I stopped worrying about the bus and my appointment at the university and thought about the last time my son got an infusion.
Why this story?
“Joan Leegant’s distanced voice at the beginning of ‘Bus’ does a fantastic job identifying the washed-out emotional state of its narrator—a mother who seems to be living in the wake of her son’s death.
While it’s never explicitly mentioned, it can be assumed that he did not survive chemotherapy and now our narrator is unable to escape her grief even in a foreign country. The impassive introduction also seems to justify its short length and allow for a strong emotional punch right at the end.”
– Owen Spina,
former BLR intern
More from Joan
Joan Leegant’s story collection, Displaced Persons, was a Finalist for the 2025 National Jewish Book Award and the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Prize. Her first collection, An Hour in Paradise, won the PEN/New England Book Award, the Wallant Award for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. She is also the author of the novel, Wherever You Go. Learn more about Joan on her website.
BLR published another of Joan’s short stories, “Sisters of Mercy,” in Issue 20. Suzanne McConnell, BLR‘s contributing fiction editor, describes one of the characters to be “as vivid in my mind’s eye as if I’d known her all my life.”