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I Know Why There Are Rivers

Visions of the old woman haunt me. I walk to work in the busy Chicago streets, the buildings towering over me like giant steel sequoias unmoved by the wind-whipping corners. The pedestrians are normally as thick as swamp mosquitoes and hundreds of people catch a glimpse of me as I pass every week, forgetting me immediately after in a blaze of schedules and alarm clocks. Don’t look under the bridge. A man in a suit coat, head cocked into his cell phone, blindly bumps my shoulder, but I do not see him either; I see my boss tapping me on that same shoulder as I daydream out the window at the glass squares on the opposite walls like sideways puddles reflecting my building back to me. But I always see the old woman. She sees me as well. And I cannot forget her.

Five minutes late, six minutes late, my power walk shoves the sidewalk behind me. I watch my dress shoes kick out in front of my black pleated skirt; don’t look under the bridge. I look. She is beneath the overpass, standing as usual, for weeks now haunting there, waiting for me, pinning me still with her eyes.

Seven minutes late. Eight minutes. I am still walking, but my eyes seem to have paused to watch the woman. Gray hair. Wrinkled face. Faded clothing, tidy, but dated. As if I am looking though binoculars, I am able to see every detail as I pass. She is cackling at me. And pointing.

I don’t know whether to feel sorry for her obvious poverty and ill placement or read into her gestures. Pointing to herself, then pointing to me. No, it is obvious. As if she is saying the words to my face: “You will be me someday. Look at me. Look at yourself. You are me.”

I pass on, shivering in the shadow of another skyscraper.

My boss catches me daydreaming again as the phone rings, unanswered.

“Well, Wren, looks like I’ll have to fire you again.” Emory taps me and I look up guiltily, covering my notepad with one hand. His handsome, bearded face grins playfully, so I relax.

“You fired me yesterday,” I say, unable to keep a smile out of my voice.

“Then you’re safe. I can’t be firing my secretary every day; what would people say?”

I don’t hear him say the words, but I know what he says every time at this point. I speak to the woman on the line, make the appointment, and look up to see Emory waiting for me to lay the phone to rest.

“What are you hiding there?” he asks, nodding meaningfully to my hand, still draping casually over a small legal pad.

“Oh, this?” I feel heat traveling up my face. “It’s just a habit, covering up my writing. From junior high diary days, I suppose.” I am babbling, so I impulsively offer him the notebook as a period to end the sentence.

“No, that’s fine,” Emory refuses, taking the pad anyway. “May I?”

I nod.

“‘Visions of the old woman haunt me,’” he murmurs, reading the first line.

I have no need of the rouge I forgot to add to my cheeks in the morning. My sketched-out words sound like a line from a bad paperback novel.

“Interesting.” He returns my flightless thoughts, stiffly limping toward his office. “Sounds like the homeless woman they found yesterday by the river. I saw the flashing lights on my way home last night and asked some bystanders.”

“Found?” I sit at attention, staring as his back disappears.

“Dead,” I hear.

Between calls and bloody duels with the coffee maker, I search for the bridge woman. I skim Internet and television reports but find nothing until the next day: the local news on my doormat features a tiny article in one corner. Her name is Thelma and she died of being too old and unlovely to care about. They don’t even include her photograph, but I know it is she. No one cares to show the world with a simple picture that she is a human being, not a statistic. Perhaps they feel, too, as her absent family must feel, that she became too ugly.

I close my newspaper. My gaze falls on a large photo of a beautiful young girl lying on my coffee table. Each eyelash is defined, her skin smooth and glowing, her lips parting provocatively and flashing perfect white teeth. As I look at the front cover, her beauty melts away. The old woman cackles back at me, skin sagging, smile rotting. I cry out, throwing the paper to the ground and bolting from the room.

I find myself in my apartment's small bathroom, splashing water repeatedly over my face. The cabnet mirror shows me what I already know: I am a dark-haired female, and, though no waif by any means, relatively skinny. All my teeth are intact, except for one small chip in the left incisor. A good many years away from gray. No wrinkles... yet. But when I raise my eyebrows like this... yes, some wrinkles. Or smile like that...

BOOM! My electric toothbrush reports its connection with the sink as I brush it in my panic. I wretch my mirror-cabinet open so that, for the moment, I can’t see the old woman smiling back at me. I can see her in my mind’s eye anyway... dark hair streaking with gray, deepening laugh-lines, and a rotting left incisor...

Make-up and face revitalizers of all shapes and sizes spill from the hole in the wall, my hands feeling like clubs, unable to grasp a single object. Assorted bottles and plastic containers clatter into the sink to join the toothbrush, sounding like a slot machine jackpot winner. Many of the medicines and make-up tubes are from my mother; who knows what they are supposed to do to what. I try to read some instructions, to calm down, to concentrate on one thing at a time. Closing the cabinet takes a lot of willpower, but I do it. The hideous sight appearing before my eyes throws me into a frenzy again, and I scrub some miracle liquid into the crinkles of my skin. I attack my forehead, my chin, my cheeks, my nose.

I’m a little late for work in the morning.

“What are you so dressed up for?” Emory asks, eyeing me up and down. He is making his own coffee this morning, and I know that is going to cost me a tease.

“What do you mean? I always dress up for work.”

“It looks like you might have a crush on me.” He snickers, carrying a mug to his office.

As soon as he is out of sight, I yank open my drawer and riffle through the papers to find the hand-mirror I keep there. A list ticks off in my head of all the imperfections: eyeliner a little smudged, lipstick faded, blush uneven...

The closer I peer, the more flaws I see. If I look deep enough, I fancy, I would see something worse than that old crone. I shudder, but stare anyway. One dark hair on my upper lip. That does it.

I spill the contents of my purse all over the desk, my fingers fumbling over plastic wands and lid-snapping cases to locate the right items.

“Are you okay? I heard...” Emory pokes his head out the door, brow furrowing in concern. I touch my forehead in dismay, feeling his wrinkles. “Headache?” he tries again, looking from my make-up pile to my face, carefully.

“I’m fine.” My voice shakes as I drop my hand and try to look fine. My upper lip tingles.

“Look, I hate to preach to you, being that you aren’t exactly a kid anymore. Twenty-six, is it?”

“Five,” I blurt importantly.

He nods. “It just concerns me when girls your age wear so much... uh, paint. You don’t really need it, you know.”

I can’t answer. Or, rather, I don’t want to.

“But it doesn’t really change the way I see you,” he shrugs. “Wear it if you like. As long as it doesn’t interfere with your work.”

I carefully replace each item back into my purse so I won’t disturb him again. It doesn’t really change the way I see you, he says. My efforts aren’t working. The make-up must not be helping. I’m doomed!

Obediently, I keep my hands far from the contents of my purse, but my mind claws through it all day. I avoid the gazes from men in the office and the smiles from the women. My face is in ruins; I can feel all my work sliding down to my chin like whipped cream from a pie-in-the-face thrown by a clown. I wish a clown had thrown a pie in my face to give me the excuse to rush to the restroom mirror.

After five o'clock, I feel like a liberated tiger missing its stripes. The closest dark door in a neighboring skyscraper is the one I want, and I thankfully duck inside.

The aisles of the store are like the treasure chests of the dead, open arms of white, bleached skeletons holding out their offerings of plastered immortality. All my self-control barely keeps me from reaching out to those bony fingers and becoming a similar captive to their wares. I'll take two of everything if you'll teach me... rows and rows of red to awaken the lips, the lips not rosy enough for a man to wish to kiss, to massage to life with his own candy-apple tongue. Rows of the shade of rose to bring the flower back to the dying weed of a woman's cheeks, bring back the flush of girlhood and sun and April mornings, but never the feeling of breeze through thick hair. I shake myself from the illusion, but yet another aisle assails me with color and hope. Party masks one and all, party masks on the skeletons and the cardboard pictures of painted women and those on their wasting way to the catacombs, to the under bridges to die alone, too ugly to help.

Yes, she was too ugly to help.

But she did not come here. That was her mistake. There is nothing to feel sorry for; the crone killed herself. She did not cover the creeping cold blue that stuck itself under her skin and shivered her bones. Foolish woman. Under bridges thinking someone would help her fight off the fingers of death. Go to the grave with a smile. A cotton-candy-colored smile, with ultra-gloss, only two forty-eight plus tax. Then maybe I will cry at your grave.

The moment old age grapples with me, he'll have an army to contend with. My army of pink-bottled soldiers.

The checkout lady smiles at me. Touching my head, I can feel her thinning hair. I tear my eyes away from the taunting smile of the old woman.

Between experimenting with my new weapons, I paint portraits of my now-familiar likeness.

"Looks like you missed the canvas this morning," Emory teases, and I do not know if he means my new make-up or if he notices when I forget to wash the oils off my hands.

I feel like a painting, prim and beautiful. Something to be put behind glass and admired, but never touched. I am the product of two hours of hard work, now that I am getting good at application. I glare at the wind and sun as I walk to the office, lest they muse my skin and smear the perfection.

"But you're still beautiful." His eyes are steady on my face, making me squirm. I try not to touch. "Is something wrong...?" I indicate my smooth mask.

"No. A little too much red, perhaps--"

I scramble for my mirror.

"Hey, hey, I was just messing with you." Emory grasps for my arm and attention. "Take it easy. You're a young, lovely girl. You shouldn't worry this much."

I grin at him, the words young and lovely settling like rose petals on my ears. He smiles back, lets me go, and is gone. Just as quickly, my face falls to the floor.

I SMILED!

No! Super-models don't smile! They keep their faces perfectly calm--no use forming new wrinkles--unless they are hopelessly old and need those wrinkles to slope upward, easing the whole face into a mass of smiles... how could such a person live with themselves? Like a freak show! A hundred mouths!

My drawer is open, mirror ready like a handgun pointing at my head, make-up applicators poising for surgery, the lipstick in my hand suddenly turning to blood...

“I’ll have to come and see your work,” Emory calls from his office. “What’s the subject?”

Jumping, I realize he is still thinking of my paintings at home. If I tell him it is myself, he’ll quip that I am painting my real self enough already. So I feign some sort of humility and keep my secret.

Truth be known, I cannot get my image just right. By now, I have thirty canvases scattered all over my apartment, mostly half-finished or covered up. There is something unnerving about seeing dozens of imperfect representations of myself everywhere I turn. I find enough of that in the mirrors.

I tackle one portrait on my day off, trying to paint myself a smooth brow, when my doorbell rings. I answer the door, paintbrush in hand, and cry out. Emory is standing there.

“Hey. You don’t remember? I said I was coming to see your paintings.” He has the gall to say I look beautiful and kiss me on the cheek.

“I’m hardly-- don’t touch--” I sputter, wondering whether I should slam the door in his face or run for the bathroom and my make-up kit.

He walks in before I can do either, unveiling the nearest canvas. “Aren’t we self-absorbed?” he teases, reaching for the next sheet. “You, you, and you.” He continues to rip off the coverings of all the portraits.

“Oh, please don’t,” I cry, covering my face from all the eyes gazing at me. All my eyes, all mocking and penetrating. They are growing old as I watch, skin melting like wax and dripping like paint. I can’t stand it; I shake and scream, “Cover them! Cover them!”

“This is really creepy, Wren.” Emory grips me by the shoulders. “What’s going on? Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“Visions of the old woman,” I cry, nearly out of my mind.

Emory grabs something off my coffee table; I can hear the rustling of lustrous pages in his fist. I peer from between my fingers to see one of my fashion magazines in his disgusted grip. His eyes are on me now, the real me, as if he is revolted by what they are resting upon.

“Get help. Get over... whatever this is,” he growls. “And if you ever do, your job is waiting for you.”

I gasp as he throws the pages into the wastebasket and storms out my door. I cannot move for fear that the eyes behind me are coming to life again.

He fired me.

No. I refuse to be let go, kicked out of society as the old woman was. She is not me. I still have hope...

I run to the bathroom cabinet, refusing to meet the eyes. The door is open, and I slam the mirror shut and scream. The old woman stares back at me and screams. I slather on the foundation, but the wrinkles won’t fade. The woman in the mirror shrieks frustration, haggard underlined dark eyes searching each feature. The face is so familiar, and now it fails to frighten me.

The make-up falls from my hands. I am what I always feared to become. But now it does not seem to matter.

All I feel is relief.

I rub one eye, smearing blue mascara, navy eyeliner, and rose-petal eye shadow across my face. That feels good; as a child I always rubbed my eyes when I was tired. I scrub my face with both hands, finding ecstasy in the destruction of my artwork. The faucets on full blast, I fill my hands with colorless water and splash myself until I can no longer breathe. The water swirls down the drain, black and blue, then clear. I don’t even bother to fight back the laughter, though it must seem strange bouncing off the walls and out the windows, half drowned in gurgles. The air tingles about my wet skin, fresh, purified, new.

I look in the mirror one last time. The crone smiles back. I walk away.

She is under the bridge waiting for me. Staring at me and grinning as usual, I can now see that her laugh lines are friendly and matronly, not hostile and mocking. This time I take the stairs down to the riverside and come near enough to touch her hand.

She is reaching her hands out to me, speaking clearly despite the roar of the cars overhead and the loud trickling of water below. “It is time.”

“Will it hurt?” I ask, knowing where she will take me.

She laughs the joy of the angels.

I take her hands and glance over my shoulder one last time. To my surprise, a young woman, about twenty-five with black hair and business attire, is walking on the opposite overpass as I did so many times before. She sees me, and a frightened look passes over her face as she touches her cheek. To grow old isn’t so bad, I want to reassure her, but I can only wave and laugh before giving in to the inexorable pull of the old woman on my arms.

My eyes are no longer on the girl, but I know she is watching, startled. She sees me, and I am alone. I am the cackling old woman, waving to her, arms stretching toward the river, right before I jump in.

Emory will always remember me young.

©amanda johns, 2004