Seven Minutes to Noon

which had contracted against the shock. Hardened in a Braxton Hicks contraction, or just hardened.
    Panic saturated her, making her almost drunk, unable to think. She tried to drive forward. Backward. Nothing worked. The side of her car was locked against the front corner of the bus, which had squealed to a complete stop.
    A tall black man standing on the corner was waving to her. His ragged clothes seemed to be draped over a too-thin body. An absurdly large cross made of bumpy aluminum foil hung around his neck.
    “Lady, lady!” he called to her.
    Alice looked up at the bus. The driver, a stout woman with short, metallic red hair, was eyeing her fiercely through the broad windshield.
    “Lady!”
    The man was now walking toward her. Was he deranged? Alice didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t even sure what had happened. As he approached, she saw that his eyes were strikingly white around soupy brown pupils.
    “Just take some deep breaths and calm yourself down,” he told her. “Do it now, lady. One, two, three.” He breathed for her, showing her how, and for lack of a better plan she followed his direction. She felt the hard sheen of panic begin to ease off her. Her mind loosened. His face was now all the way up to her open window.
    “You know something, lady? Twenty years I drove a city bus. Retired. One time I did the same thing you just did. Let me give you some advice.”
    But what exactly had she done? All she knew was that for one brief moment, she had escaped. Maybe her brain had shut down. She didn’t know.
    “Every time you get ready to make a turn, check and check again until your strategy meets up with reality. You can’t get too familiar with the one-way streets around here. Always make sure. You hear me?”
    Horns were blaring behind the bus. Alice could see the stream of cars backing slowly down Union Street toward Clinton, trying to reverse into the flow of traffic. She took one more deep breath and got out of the car.
    Now, shading her eyes against the glare, she saw the one-way sign pointed in the opposite direction. So she had tried to turn the wrong way onto a one-way street. Glare or not, she should have known better; she knew these streets. She had vacated reality at just the wrong moment.
    “Holy lord!” the man exclaimed. “When you due?”
    “December.” Alice touched her belly; the babies felt still and heavy inside her. “Before the holidays.”
    The bus driver had descended to the street and was now shaking her head at Alice and the man. Faces had gathered in the bus’s windshield, staring at her. Voices spilled from the bus onto the street.
    “Get a driver’s license!”
    “You’re making me late!”
    “Wear your glasses when you drive!”
    Alice had never felt so foolish. She stepped forward to the bus driver.
    “I’m sorry. It was my fault. I turned the wrong way. I take full responsibility.”
    The woman seemed shocked by Alice’s lack of argument. This was New York City. This was Brooklyn. A pregnant woman with no fight was just not someone you could argue with. The driver shook her head again and turned to assess the damage. Alice joined her as if theywere comrades in the same assault. A long dent had buckled the passenger’s side door of Alice’s car. The bus was unscathed except for a heavy rubber bumper that was hanging partly off, but nothing was broken.
    “That dent was already there,” Alice lied; the dent was her fault.
    “Oo-we,” the man said, shaking his head at her.
    Alice followed the bus driver onto the bus, aware of all the agitated eyes on her. She turned to the passengers and repeated what she had told the driver. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I’m sorry if I made you late.” She could feel the deflation, as if the bus itself had lowered hydraulically to let on a disabled person. It had. It had let on Alice, one badly damaged soul.
    The bus driver took down all of Alice’s license, registration and insurance information. She continued to apologize and the driver continued to nod and say nothing, but Alice felt her compliance was appreciated. She couldn’t fight this. It was her fault. Then something else happened, something even more unexpected than the accident or the retired evangelical bus driver who had sprung to her aid. One by one, some of the passengers began to forgive her.
    “I did that before. Twice.”
    “Don’t worry honey. You’re human.”
    “Take care of that baby, okay?”
    “Don’t worry about us. We’ll