Passerby

(Published in the Arkansas Women's Journal)

I had begun the trek to my Expository Writing class that January afternoon, taking the high walkway in front of the campus bookstore, when my eyes flickered to the woman coming toward me. She was a frosted blond, middle aged, dressed professionally, and carried a soft side attaché. She held an ugly green umbrella over her head to stave off the light drizzle; the edge of the umbrella tilted just enough so that I couldn't see her face clearly.

These details swept into my brain along with a numbing suggestion that she was not a stranger, but someone I have known all my life. I looked away so quickly, caught up in my practiced apathy, that I was unable to get another look at her face, for fear she would notice me and that eye contact would result in a dreaded confrontation. My brain whirled away in a fantasy that she would see me and rush over to me, pulling at my sleeve, and tell me how very proud she was of my success at school, and of my courage in going back for a degree, and how sorry she was for the awful letter she had written when she excused herself from my life. And the fantasy evaporated abruptly when she passed by, and my heart thumped back into operation, and the veins in my neck seemed to swell, forcing the blood into my head.

I tried to catch my breath before I turned around to examine her as she moved away from me without pause across the red brick square below. Like a traumatized child, I stood there in the mist, trying to focus on her form before it moved too far away. It had to be her. But the green umbrella-- she would not carry a green umbrella. And the walk she never hobbled like that unless something happened. Unless she's had an accident of some sort since--I continued to watch her move under the canopy at the entrance of the student union, and beyond toward the parking lot, analyzing the reasons why it could not be her. She might have looked at me, but it was not for very long. I know, even though I was busy looking away. Maybe she didn't recognize me after two years. Have I changed that much? Maybe she didn't look at me at all, and that's why she kept walking. That's why she didn't react.

I stood there in my long, dark raincoat, the mist caressing my face, and wondered why it mattered at all. I wondered why I would risk being late for class for someone like her, who could not give me the time of day, nor acknowledge me as a valuable human being. How can a mother ignore her only daughter?

I checked my watch, and turned toward my destination again, refusing to take that additional glance my heart ached for. She's no longer part of my life.

If it was her.

Which I'm sure it wasn't.

Passerby