Mirror

She was looking in the mirror. At first, I thought the slight woman with the matted, auburn hair pulled into a haphazard ponytail was putting on makeup. But then I noticed her fingers manipulating her eyelids, pulling on the upper lid, then the lower. Stepping back, then up until her nose touched the mirror, then back again, the woman seemed puzzled by her image, as if she didn’t recognize herself. Suddenly, she turned to face me, whom she evidently recognized, and smiled wickedly, then lunged toward me. “Boo!” 

I had planned to run out of the park restroom the moment I entered and saw her old backpack and faded army-green sleeping bag thrown carelessly by the first stall, but a moment of fascination had overtaken me.

There was a time I would not have fled, would have felt sorry for the now familiar woman. There was a time when she offered me invisible hot toddies or papayas as I passed by her on my walk. It was hard to know her age, as the bug-eye sunglasses she typically wore shielded not only her eyes but part of her face. She would sit quietly on one of many park benches, everything she owned at her feet, and never talk to anyone else except herself and me. Maybe she sensed acceptance, maybe vulnerability. But she wasn’t the same person now, just the same body.

As the latter part of autumn approached with its colder, grayer days and swirling, crisp, crimson leaves darting through the air, she still arrived in the park at roughly the same time every day. She kept her routine of inspecting trash cans for food, which she shoved into her bulging backpack for later, and then occupied a randomly selected bench. There she sat at attention, stoic and stone-faced. But now the once innocent comments directed at me had turned into something darker.

No more offered hot toddies or papayas. Last week, as I passed by, her tone had changed. “Hey, don’t we get our drugs at the same pharmacy?” I shook my head no and continued walking faster. She insisted, “Yes, we do, the pharmacy in Denny’s restaurant.” Adding, accusingly, “And you know it, you crazy bitch!”

I don’t know why she had targeted me, but it made me think that maybe there is a little strangeness in all of us, just waiting for the right circumstances to emerge. And now, it wasn’t just me on whom she focused, although I was still the obvious favorite point of contempt.

Earlier this week, she seemed to come out of nowhere, stalking me from behind. Her anger was apparent. “Hey, bitch,” she screamed, “you really are crazy! All eyes are on you!” Then she suddenly rushed a few feet ahead of me, startling a young man nearby. He had stopped to put a pack of sugar in his coffee. She yanked the packet out of his hand, ripped it up, and threw it on the grass. Pointing at me, she blocked him, shouting, “She’s crazy! She’s a psycho!” The man, irritated, stepped around her and quickly continued on the path.

Yesterday, she grabbed a pack of cigarettes from another homeless person at the park. Then she threw the whole pack at me as I passed, an explosion of thin, white cylinders hitting me in the face. Noticing what happened, a security guard came from across the park grounds. He seemed familiar with her, calling her by name.

She didn’t acknowledge his addressing her but used the opportunity to once again disparage me, shaking her finger in my direction. “She’s a homicidal maniac! She’s diabolical! If you only knew!” I did not see what transpired after, as I left the area in a hurry, wondering what she thinks she sees in me that is provoking her.

Later, after the restroom incident today, when almost finished with my daily walk, I again spotted her. She was seated on a bench directly ahead in my path. An old, brown blanket wrapped around her shoulders, she was sipping something from a cup and seemed to be staring intensely in the other direction. Attempting to avoid her, I took a different route further away and to the side across the grass. 

But before I could get completely by, there she was, standing in front of me like a shadow, shouting, “Hey, Crazy Lady! If they only knew . . . If They only knew!”

I had become her nemesis, but is she my mirror?