It had been sixteen hours since I'd been on the ground. The plane had hummed me to a semi-conscious state of sleep when the seat belt light dinged on. It was almost over. A baby cried somewhere far off in the upper cabin and I had felt somehow like it was my fault. The lights flickered on and my ears popped as we descended down below the clouds. I needed fresh air and a shower. Sleep.
I don't remember pulling my baggage down from the overhead bin. The dingy cream-colored plastic probably bore the same scuffs and rubber tracks as every other plane. The carpet beneath my feet was probably worn and the same ugly red you find in cheap movie theaters. I do recall saying good morning to the captain as I got off and he corrected me with "Actually it's only 11 p.m." But I was already moving along with the herd as if on auto-pilot.
My phone flashed low-battery. I'd been laying on the metal chairs in the terminal waiting area, I was small enough to fit underneath the arm-rests and they hung over me like long cold fingers stretching out as though to grab me. My analog watch said 3:27. My eyes felt puffy and kept watering from lack of sleep. I grabbed my rolling bag and swung my laptop case over my shoulder. The cavernous airport echoed with my steps as I looked for the lit bathroom sign; no one was there to quiet me as my shoes clacked on the reflective floor.
My first thought was that she was sick and had decided to lie down. Not many women I know would be comfortable sprawled out on the cold, dirty tile floor of one of the busiest airports in the world, but one thing I'd learned from my travels was that you could never be too sure what someone might do. Besides, it was the only answer my confused and sleep-deprived brain could arrive at. For a few seconds I think I just stared at those legs wondering what had happened. The entire room was silent.
"Hello?" My voice echoed back to me with a tinny, halted tone. "Ma'am, are you alright?" Already I knew the answer was no, but I wasn't sure what to say.
The image will forever be seared into my brain, flashing up across the screen of my eyes when I lay down to sleep after a long day, when I feed my youngest daughter in her high chair, as I'm taking out the trash on a rainy day. Her porcelain legs were long and set at odd angles across the floor. She was half in and half out of a stall furthest from the doorway I stood in. Her right knee was slightly propped up and both of her shiny black heels still clung to her small feet.
She still lay silent on the floor waiting for the right words to speak up.
Slowly I moved toward her. When I was close enough to touch her legs I noticed the bruises. Nothing beyond her knees was visible to me, the door had closed over her leaving her body to fit in the gap underneath. 'She must be beautiful' I thought. I was dumbfounded. What could she possibly be doing? Meekly I whispered "Miss, are you okay?" No movement.
Pushing back the stall door I remember trying to prepare myself for what I might see. I sucked in air quickly and turned my head away. My stomach flipped but I was surprised that I wasn't sick, just cold. I towered over her thin form trying to assimilate all of myself back into a coherent being. I felt like I was being pulled in a thousand direction at once, my body was here and there and a part of her and the cold tile she laid on and the chrome of the stall wall I leaned against and the bright fluorescent glare above my head. Not once did screaming for help or running away come to mind, I just stood trying to forget what I was now. That day took a part of my innocence in a way that when I shake someone's hand I wonder if they can feel it, or see it in my eyes. Do people see her in me? What she took away from me?
Man was without mercy.
She was completely naked except for some small pieces of jewelry and those garishly shiny black heels. They seemed too vulgar for her pale skin, so I took them off of her and set them aside. She was bone-thin, her ribs protruded obscenely and her tiny breasts has settled high on her puffed up chest from lying on her back. Her throat had swelled to the point of blending with her chin. Shadows of long thick fingers still haunted her neck. Blood covered her mouth and nose and I could see two shiny teeth through a large hole in the bottom lip. She was gorgeous. Even through the crazed violence of it all I was taken aback by this woman. One eye was open and it stared nonchalantly at the floor, the other was drowned in a pool of coagulated blood from a cut above her brow.
Involuntarily one of my hands flew over my mouth and the other over my chest as though the moisture of my breath might have destroyed her death-mask. Her hair was the color of the thick heavy pages you find in old books. One thick lock of hair hung over her cheek to settle on the side of her swollen purple lips, I swept it away leaving a paintbrush line of blood across her chin.
I slid to the floor, accidentally bracing myself in a pool of blood with one hand. I slipped and my face cracked against the tile so I became eye-level with her milky one-eyed stare. I went to scream but the only sound was a hollow wind rattling in my throat. It would break the respectful silence of the mausoleum that the bathroom had become if I made another sound and so I laid there wide-eyed trying to see nothing but unable to close my eyes.
Years later, I flew through that airport again, trying to forget where that bathroom was. The man who said he came in to clean the bathroom and discovered us both laying on the floor still works there every night. I bought him a cup of coffee and we sat in silence as all around us military men greeted their wives and children and business people rushed about. He was a grizzled old Hispanic man, barely taller than myself. He knew. When I shook his hand he saw her. When I said hello, whatever he imagined her voice to sound like echoed with mine in his head.
"Every time I close my eyes," I jumped slightly at the sound of his voice. He reached across the table and patted my arm. He didn't say anything after that. My coffee grew cold. I stared at all the people running by, some stared back. I bet they can see her. I wonder what she would look like as she strode across the lacquered tile of the airport. She would probably have a grace matched by none, she would be the woman people would slow down to stare at.
Her black pumps would click on the ground and no one would know her.
