The Ghost

For almost seven years, I made the same trek into the city. During that time, I often observed a woman who was so pale, she looked like a ghost. Her ivory skin appeared translucent, and vacant eyes stared out from an expressionless face. She seemed to take up no space.

Her pattern was always the same. Dressed in black from head to toe, she sat motionless in the same seat moving only to stand and leave the bus at a predictable time. She carried her nondescript bag clutched closely to her side, and avoided all contact, physical and emotional.

One time I sat next to her, and she never turned her head. Not once. When my coat lightly brushed against her, she squirmed and slid over a bit more to her side of the seat. I felt her silent words loudly say, “Don’t touch me!”

Some days, caught up in my own world, I would purposely turn my head from her as I walked to my seat. It was hard to deal with her energy, or lack of it. Other days, I felt irritated by her and would say to myself, “I hope I don’t have to sit near the ghost.” Perhaps that was a bit mean-spirited, but her self-imposed isolation somehow felt like rejection.

On the last day before a work sabbatical, I noticed that she was on the bus. I don’t know what compelled me, but as I came down the aisle I looked straight at her and smiled broadly. I expected nothing. But then for a brief second, her lips turned ever so slightly upward. The movement happened almost in slow motion, as if I were watching a tectonic plate of great proportion shift.

It was a smile.