The Messiness of Us

She moves apologetically, as if she is sorry for the space she inhabits in the world. Her steps are slowly measured, her back bent like a comma, the pause of an unfinished thought. Her stature speaks of age, but she does not appear to be an old woman. She seems simply beaten down by circumstance, her life nearly half over and the remaining years stretching before her like a dirt road with no visible end. As the wind blows her way, I hope it will bring with it a reason for her to stand taller. Hope. It is never much bigger than a grain of sand, but it is there. An ember covered in ashes.

The city around us is full, stretched at its limits with buildings no longer going out but up. With a backpack pushing her along, she is a part of the busy landscape, a nameless piece of scenery that people pass on their way to their jobs every day. No one gives her more than a glance. To stare any longer would be to acknowledge that she is a part of a greater problem, that she will lie down on the cold ground tonight while others snuggle under a down comforter smelling of sleep, the kind that wraps itself around you and holds you until morning.

I am one of those people.  

My introspection began at the end of my divorce when my life was wiped clean, and I had no choice but to rethink all my other choices. I suppose it is my sense of loss, or an attempt to redefine myself, that has caused me to really see this woman on the street, to finally understand that old proverb - There but by the grace of God go I. I was once a wife, a daughter until a few years ago when my parents passed just four months apart. I have never been a mother. My life, from the time I was nineteen years old, was intricately woven into that of my husband. I moved into his house, spent his money, and entertained his colleagues and friends. I faithfully undressed when asked, cooked his favorite meals, kept fresh flowers in every room. My own childhood was molded by parents who fought with words and fists then sloppily drank their way back together. I had no idea what marriage was supposed to look like, so I followed my husband’s lead, tried to please. Love seemed to be transactional. I do for him, and I get to be that woman who drives by another, never understanding that I was just as invisible in my own home as she is on the sidewalk.

Even when the marriage met its demise, I took it for granted that my lifestyle would remain untouched. Somehow, I thought I would be the star in a scene from one of those firefighter shows that have become so popular, that I would walk out of the fire intact with nothing to show my heroism but the smoke billowing behind me. Instead I am one of the walking wounded. I have scars inside that no one will ever see, and my heart, I’ll admit, is broken. Daniel has moved on with a younger version of me. She has my same long, dark hair and blue eyes, big-breasted and long-legged. It makes me wonder if he ever looked any deeper. In all of it, I think my greatest regret is that I have become the clichéd ex-wife. I could not even be original as my marriage crumbled.

Thoughts are distracting, and I am guilty of driving while contemplating. You know you have committed the crime when you pull up to your destination with no idea how you navigated to it. On this particular day, my end goal is the grocery store. The mundane task of buying food has become exciting to me since the divorce. Now I fill the grocery cart with all the forbidden items, all the foods I steered away from in my marriage for the sake of a thinner waistline. 

I was in the store for about half an hour when I saw the woman from the street walk in through the automatic double doors. On the outside it is easy to think that she may be invisible to others, but inside she is quickly noticed and promptly ignored. I watch her move to the public bathroom where I imagine her inside taking care of personal business, perhaps washing up at the sink and holding her hands under the warm water if only to feel the heat. My cart is nearly full, mainly with canned goods, cereal, and packaged cookies. On impulse, I park my cart near the bathroom door and enter.

“Good afternoon,” I say to her as I come around the corner. She nods her head toward me in response, obviously surprised at the greeting. I quickly go into a stall though I am not feeling the need. I do not want to alarm the woman on the other side of the door, but I realize that I want to know her story. I can see her through the gap in the stall. Her unkempt hair is straight and oily around the edges and up top, but I can tell by the color that she once had a head of red hair, more auburn than orange. Choppy bangs cover her eyes, and I notice she has a habit of pulling her hair around as if to hide her sharp features. She has a square chin that juts out a bit, and I briefly wonder if she sports one of those deep dimples. Her layered clothes make it impossible to tell her body shape. She is taller than she looked when I saw her on the street, and she looks healthy despite the cloud of dirt that surrounds her and the smell emanating from her as she moves. I see her shuffle toward the paper towels, so I quickly flush and make my way to the sink.

“How are you doing today?” I ask her, not sure how to begin a conversation but wanting to hear her voice.

“I’m doin’ okay,” she says. Her words sound like they are being crushed beneath gravel or perhaps as if they are digging themselves out of a rocky grave. I wonder how often she speaks out loud. Does she have a family? A pet? Does she suffer from mental illness and talk to herself? Where do her words land when she makes the effort to share them?

“Glad to hear it,” I say to her, casually, as if I always talk to strangers in this manner in public bathrooms. “Listen, I still need to check out, but I was planning on going next door to get a bite to eat. Would you like to join? It’s on me.”

I could almost see her mind picturing the diner next door, with its flashing neon OPEN sign and a promise of fresh coffee. By her hesitation, I expected her to decline my offer, but she slowly looked up at me and nodded up and down, just once. I was taken aback for a few minutes with the intensity of her look. She had an air about her that suggested strength, though it was an oddly embarrassed strength.

“Okay, then,” I say to her. “Let me go through the line, and I’ll meet you outside. What’s your name?”

“Mary,” she responds. “My name is Mary.” She repeated it as if to convince herself as well as me. 

“Well, Mary,” I say, “it is great to meet you. I’m Chantelle, but most people call me Chance.” I have to admit that my name is honestly the only interesting part of me. It’s a name that was met with ridicule in school, but I liked being the only one in the midst of all the Emilys and Ashleys.

As I stood in line, I kept an eye on the broad store-front window where I could see Mary sitting on a bench. I wondered what she must be thinking. Maybe her mind was only on the impending meal and talk would not be the appetizer. I had a sense of anxiousness spreading. It was a forgotten sensation that I welcomed because it proved I am alive. It showed that I am acknowledging a twist in life in which I do not know the outcome. Rarely in my marriage did I go off routine or off the script that played in my head every time Daniel walked in the room. I could tell his mood by the way he drove into the driveway of our postcard-worthy, three-story, brick home. I knew when to greet him with a kiss and when to busy myself in the kitchen, hands sticky and untouchable. I knew by his smell if he’d been to a bar with his co-workers or to a hotel room with a prostitute. Of course, I was aware of his vices even if I never acknowledged them. I just never thought one of those vices would turn to virtue in his eyes and cause him to leave me. 

“$62.57,” the cashier says to me, startling me out of my thoughts. 

I tap my debit card against the flashing arrows and hear the familiar ping of approval. In the divorce, I was given alimony, my lawyer explaining in depth that I had given most of my adult life to the man. Making a home for him had been my job, so I never sought another. I was left unskilled and uneducated beyond a high school diploma. Still, I had to be careful with my money. I did not want to remain dependent on him to thrive. The vision board I kept in my head had all alimony money going to charity one day. My ex is a political conservative, so I am savoring the thought of helping fund abortion clinics, gay rights advocacy, and safe houses for undocumented immigrants, all with his money.

With food bagged and ready to go, I head outside and motion to Mary who follows me at a distance to my red Lexus SUV. It is a beautiful vehicle I realize as I see it through her eyes. It is another one of those moments that I am struck with how much I took for granted in my married life. I grew up without, but that is easily forgotten after years of never having to worry if the power bill will be paid in time or if there will be enough money at the end of the week to put gas in the car. No doubt I earned a few luxuries as a wife, given that the worst part of my marriage was the man himself.

“Let me just throw these in the back,” I say to Mary when she approaches from the side. “No perishables, so we can take our time eating.”

The diner is a local, family-owned establishment serving meals like those you would get at your grandmother’s back in the day, if she lived in the South. Homemade biscuits and cornbread. Fried squash. Pot roast and mashed potatoes. The menu even included chicken gizzards and frog legs, though in all my time eating there I had never heard anyone order those particular entrees. The diner had a comfortable feeling about it, and inside it smelled of contentment, a belch of satisfaction in the fullness of both stomach and heart. 

“Come on, let’s find a window seat,” I say to Mary as we head into the diner. A cow bell chimes to announce our presence, and a server we can’t see shouts, “Seat yourselves!”

The booths, donned with checkered tablecloths, line the windows and are empty just ahead of the dinner hour, so we slide into the first one. A bouquet of plastic, purple flowers sits at one end along with a napkin holder and Coke bottles turned into salt and pepper shakers. 

“Order whatever you like,” I tell Mary, hoping that she will order a large meal that will extend our time together. She did not disappoint.

“Thank you. I will have the fried chicken platter with macaroni and cheese, green beans, and banana pudding. Sweet tea, please.” A woman after my heart.

Mary repeated her order to the waitress who swayed from side to side as she pulled out her notepad and pen. Did Mary make her nervous, I wondered? For a moment, I pictured Mary out behind the restaurant pilfering through the cans with the waitress watching her from a back window. I shook my head to rid myself of the image and ordered my usual, a BLT with extra mayonnaise and homemade potato chips. While we waited, I ventured into conversation much the same way as entering a cold swimming pool, one toe at the time. It did not take long before we were both fully emerged.

So, her story began.

“I was born with a full set of silver spoons, believe it or not,” she says, lifting up the cheap diner spoon for emphasis. “Rollin’ in the money, as they say. Not a care in the world as a kid. Spent my days runnin’ free and my nights safe at home. Wouldn’t know it to see me now, but I was a cutie. My father called me Little Red because of my hair, and he took me to baseball games and stock car races. Mom stayed at home, fed and clothed us. Brother, sister and me. A trio of happiness my mama used to say when she was proud of us, a trio of trouble when we were on her last nerve. It was all good until I was about twelve years old. It was then I knew for certain that something was off kilter.”

“Off kilter?” I asked. “You mean with your family?”

She grabbed a chicken leg with her right hand, and, in comparison, I could see that her hand was much larger than what she held. I hadn’t noticed before because I was too busy focusing on her dirty nails that made me a little queasy that close to food. She bit hard, letting the juice from the meat run down her chin. Without thinking, I handed her a napkin though she already had one resting in her lap. 

“With me.” She said it matter-of-factly, like it was a decision made long before she knew it. “I felt like I was living the wrong life.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Mary, I felt that way my whole marriage. It was like I was in someone else’s reality. It wasn’t me. My husband never understood who I was or even who I could become.”

She nodded as if she understood.

“Have you ever been married?” I asked her. 

“Oh, heaven’s no,” she said with a sideways grin that said more than her words. “Relationships, yes.”

For a moment she hesitated, as if she was having an internal debate about how much to share with me. The silence was uncomfortable, and I felt like I was taking a test I was sure to fail. Then she looked me straight in the eyes with a look that reminded me that not all tests have one correct answer.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

“You see, I didn’t just feel like I was in the wrong life. I was in the wrong body.”

Her words settled in me like syrup being poured from a bottle, slowly filling the gaps.

She was born a he.

It was nearly a decade ago when I met my best friend Mary. We are connected by a thread that started as a lie in the lives each of us had lived. It ended in the truth of who we are individually and together. Mary had never, in all her life, had a friend to confide in, to ask the hard questions about being a woman in our patriarchal society. Her family had broken ties. On her own as a young adult, she had been unable to find work. Her appearance and the social norms of the time would not allow it. Eventually, she gave up and decided the only way to be a part of this world was to exist at its fringes. I had never had someone to accept me as a woman who had tried so diligently at traditional marriage, only to end up with no husband, no children, no education, and no job. As our friendship grew, so did our understanding that we have more in common than not.

The alimony is still coming, but I don’t need it. I took classes at the community college, and I am now a certified beautician. It does not pay much, but Mary especially enjoys the hair styles I suggest for her. When she comes to the salon, she is just like every other woman. In fact, she was hired as the front desk receptionist. The irony doesn't escape me that she once preferred the anonymity of the streets and now she is the first face people see when they walk in the door.

Daniel has moved on to his third wife. The three of us are shadows of each other, though mine casts the farthest. I could take his money and have the life I had before, minus the man, but, truthfully, I do not want it. It makes me smile every time I send his money to support those who are often made to feel like lesser humans. For I know that humanity, if turned inside out, would not show gender or race or sexuality or even beauty. We would just see the messiness, the jumbled up living that is in all of us.