Windows

Fake vines drift lazily over the edges of terracotta-colored plastic planter boxes and twinkling white Christmas lights drape counterfeit tree limbs. Hard rock music blares from open doorways and neon lights are absorbed by the black clothes that hang on the racks in exactly the same way they hang on the annoying "cool" kids lusting in front of the shop windows. Walking past the laughing crowds of teenagers huddled in front of the "cool" stores is like walking on another planet: alien life forms watch her with lowered eyes and both know that she is the one who doesn't belong. So much has changed since she was last here--different stores, different clothes, different culture--who would have thought so much could change, even though so many years had passed.

Wearily, she sits down and rests, rubbing her calves; her legs have not walked this far for quite a while, except for the pacing. But that boundless walking was frequently interrupted when she dropped down onto the cold, painted metal bed and held her head in her hands. She cursed and screamed and cried for the first few years but then it became apparent that she would not be rescued. She would clench her jaw and angrily push herself onto her feet to continue walking the well-known circular path again and again and again. In those hours of walking, she began to understand things that she could not have known before she was sent there to live. Events remembered that she was not sure had actually happened--her brothers, when they had finished with her, left her tied up in a dank basement for the neighborhood boys to "play" with; her mother turning a blind eye to the nights her father spent in her bed; her sister's screams in the night--were they real or did she invent them as a convenient excuse for running wild? The memories ran together with reality under the buzzing fluorescent tubes that left no shadowed areas for hiding even her most private moments.

The circle that she would spend her years walking wasn't really a circle; it was more of a rectangle with rounded corners. The long side ran the length of the small room she endured. Chips and dark smudges spoke history of the grey painted cement where other souls had exhausted this dark, sad track before she ever thought about where she would spend the greater portion of her adult life. And after the lights were turned out at night, the pits in the cinderblock walls formed faces that matched the voices that echoed down the corridor crying for mercy from some unseen demon or, worse, a cellmate. For all her loneliness, she had been fortunate to be alone--at least she knew and could escape from her demons. She always wished they would leave the lights on so the faces couldn't see her looking at them.

Reaching into her pocketbook, she retrieves a cigarette and lighter. A mall security guard wearing a familiar uniform; crisp and straight, though not the color she was accustomed to seeing; walks by and gives her a hard look. Instinctively, she catches the cigarette as it falls when her lips open in surprised protest. The cigarette and lighter disappear back into the pocketbook and with a tooth-bare grin and a wink at the handsome young man, she remembers where she is; the guard gives a curious nod and walks off, glancing back at her from down the way. She would have to work at remembering that smoking in public places is not allowed.

Stretching her legs out into the walkway and leaning back on the planter, she closes her eyes and allows her mind to drift. She was the gregarious young woman that everyone wanted to know; always the first one to do something or suggest something or start something. She was the first to slip a pack of cigarettes into her pocket and skip out of the store. Her friends huddled around as she ceremoniously gave each one a cigarette and then held out the lighter she had taken from the drawer of her mother's bedside table. For that moment, her friends, if they could be called "friends", were almost elevated to her status of daring.

They loitered outside of the storefront smoking and cussing and harassing the parents of the nerdy kids who shopped for the newest designer jeans for their little Johnny or Jill. She was Eve in the Garden of Eden holding a freshly bitten apple and filled with the shame and indignation that comes with a newly acquired knowledge of good and evil. Then the day came when her best friend's twerp little brother pulled a pack of smokes out of his pocket and everyone gathered around him with their hand out and looking at him to be their cool friend; that was the last day she ever passed cigarettes. After that, the cigarettes she stole were hers alone. Now, she needed to do something bigger, better, more impressive. She had to stay on top.

The next day she proudly pulled a $20 blouse from under her skirt. "Nothing to it," she boasted. "I can grab anything and that goofy-lookin' red-haired manager is just too damn dumb to catch me." Before long, she was the consummate thief of choice. Everyone wanted her to get something for them; they were placing orders and she was making a shopping list. They stood outside shop windows gazing at the merchandise and biding their time until she would go in and steal it. She could sell a stolen $20 blouse for $10 and actually buy cigarettes. She was living the high life.

She lifts her face and lets the light back into her eyes. A slight teenage girl with pink hair, wearing black tights with a black lace skirt and a black tee shirt with an emblazoned skull and an unpronounceable band name written backwards, and wearing chains over chains of heavy silver jewelry, catches her with the corners of her mouth upturned. Out of habit, she forces the expression to disappear. The sprite whispers into the ear of a friend; they looked her right in the eye, laugh, and walk away looking over their shoulders as if they knew something about anything. Any bitch who dyes her hair pink can't know too much.

Gathering herself up, she meanders in the direction from which she arrived. A pretty blue and green dress on a faceless, bald manikin catches her looking into a shop window. Her reflection comes into focus and she is taken aback by her own appearance. She smoothes her parched face hoping that some of the wrinkles will not reappear so quickly this time and runs gnarled fingers through thin grey strands. Suddenly, a young girl is grinning back at her. The girl takes aim and, with a defiant swing at the window, the glass shatters as the baseball bat connects. They are in the store like a swarm of locusts devouring everything they come into contact with. The shop had been closed for more than an hour. No one should have been inside but, as she went around the counter and into the storeroom, she found herself face to face with a startled manager holding a box of shaving cream cans. He had stayed late again that night to finish counting the inventory and hang up the last of the designer knock-off handbags on the little silver hooks by the cash register. She could hear her friends in the front of the store tearing the handbags apart--they were ugly anyway. The manager's wife had asked him not to stay too late because she was tired of eating dinner alone and the kids needed his help with their math homework, and he knew she was no good at math. He had promised he would be home early.

She jolts as she thinks of the manager's wife's face during the trial. Sometimes red with anger, other times pale with disbelief, but always tear-streaked and dark circled eyes. She wondered how many sleepless nights the widow had spent hoping her husband's killer would be found guilty; questioning God; praying for the death penalty. From the defendant's table, she silently prayed for it too. Her attorney argued that she was a victim of abuse and neglect by her parents and that the real crime was that society allowed this fragile young girl to "slip through a crack in the system." The jury didn't buy it. The guard led her away with ൺ years in the state prison" and the banging gavel still echoing in her ears. Finally, the wife's tears, the attorney's objections, and the judges "order in the court" stopped.

The security guard walks by again slowly looking her from foot to head and back down again. Without meeting his eye, she turns from the picture window and continues moving toward the automatic doors at the end of the mall corridor. She passes a mother scolding her young boys for taking candy from the drug store without paying for it and wonders what it is like to have someone love you enough stop you from destroying yourself. Her mind goes back to the only time she ever saw the manager's kids. They must have been around six and eight years old; two red-haired boys holding the hands of their distraught mother as she spoke to a newspaper reporter behind the prosecutor's table. She knew that they couldn't understand why this big girl had smashed in their father's head with a baseball bat. She remembered that she expected to feel some sort of remorse when their eyes met, but felt only surprise at her own lack of emotion. The kids bore more resemblance to their father than their mother; tall and pasty, too thin to be healthy, freckled faces and the brightest red hair she had ever seen. She tries to push the picture of the manager lying in a pool of blood and shaving cream cans from her mind, but it stays... a bright shadow as clear as a mirrored-reflection that she can never grasp. If she could get just get hold of it, she would break it into a million tiny shards like the shop's window glass when she smacked it with the bat... like the manager's skull after the third swing.

Stepping onto the mat, the automatic door swings open to reveal the warm spring evening. The birds sing happily without any knowledge of the manager, his wife and half-orphaned kids, her long-gone friends, the circle she walked for so many years. The sky has never been so blue, she thinks, and then, what was that old song she used to like so long ago? She begins to hum off tune under her breath as she makes her way toward the bus stop. Without so much as a downward glance, she opens the pocketbook and takes out the cigarette and lighter. Sucking in the hot smoke and holding it for a moment, she sees the bus turning the corner and coming down the road. She quickens her pace. She can't miss the bus this time; there have been too many other times. She pushes her free hand into her pocket and feels the crumpled note, making sure it is still there. The paper has been nearly worn threw but the writing is still legible... but only just. She reaches the corner and the bus is coming toward her. She knows she will catch it today.

The bus driver steps on the accelerator to make it through the intersection before the light changes. She sees his opaque face through the large windshield. The driver, sitting up high in his seat, has come too close and cannot see her through the front window. Taking a deep drag and tossing the cigarette on the sidewalk, she closes her eyes and steps off the curb.