A Kairos Moment

I was seven and on an errand for my Nana. I left the house in its usual bedlam, my brother and two sisters watching morning cartoons, crying out and howling with laughter at the characters’ shenanigans; my mother running the sweeper; and, my grandmother darning whatever articles of clothing we’d managed to damage during the week. In the room off the enclosed, front porch, Uncle Dick snored softly. I knew that he’d been fishing before the sun had come up and I wondered if there were catfish in the dry sink in the basement. I didn’t like catfish, so I hoped there weren’t, but catfish were better than the occasional raccoon that may have hanged, skinned and gutted and stinking over the other sink. Maybe, both. Perhaps, together, they bemoaned their fates as I would if either showed up for dinner.

Outside, the quiet was otherworldly in comparison to the din I’d left behind and seemed to open itself to me. None of our friends or neighbors was yet outside. No birdsong or mower disturbed the stillness. Even my passage through it disturbed it not at all. This was a quiet so unusual as to be lightly oppressive, vaguely threatening, a gossamer trap. I clutched the money my Nana had given me and went on toward my goal.

I had just turned the corner from The Alley onto Beaver Street, wondering why I’d come the long way around. Then I noticed the woman standing at the bus stop, the quiet’s epicenter. Simply but elegantly dressed in a tweed skirt and jacket, she stood ramrod straight, her eyes fixed on something across the street. As proud as I’d been of my plaid knickers – handed down reluctantly by my older brother – my “Irish twin,” – I was entranced by this stranger whose profile, unwavering, etched itself on my mind. I wanted to say “hello” to her, to have her turn to me and smile. I did not. Neither did she.

I glanced across the street at the A&P parking lot, the houses beyond, the Rexall drug store, a laundromat, Yankellos’ television and radio repair and sales. These were places I had passed every day. I saw none of the Yankello boys – young men worth a prolonged stare.  A winsome smile. Nothing that I could see impressed me as worthy of her undivided attention.

My mind slipped its moorings, beckoning, willing something from her to me. She continued, stubbornly, to stare straight ahead, not even glancing to her left to see if the bus might be coming. I continued past her – on my way to do whatever it had been that my Nana had asked me to do. For the moment, gone from memory. There was no room for it now.

Something in me bade me turn around. To look back. She went on staring, but now, that perfect profile had gone. There was nothing where the other side of her face should have been – her profile’s twin- as if her cheekbone and jaw had simply gone. Melted. My mind blew up and out. I must, it told me, make room in it for what I had just seen. There would be more. There would be much, much more, but for now, my Nana needed her needles and thread and the 5 & 10 was waiting and the bus was coming and the woman and I must go our separate ways.