Walking down the narrow and dimly lit aisle, I saw her. Seat 8F. The fearful girl hid her face under the faded blue hat that was tilted low enough to show only the red puffiness under her eyes, and the stream of tears that traveled down her neck. I passed her, recognizing her sweet cotton-candy-like perfume that had been sprayed a few too many times to cover up something dark that laid beneath, something not so sweet. Unwashed hair fell from under her hat. The curls were loose and messy as if they were leftover from the previous day. Maybe she meant to wash her hair, but decided to cover it up instead.
While people were still funneling in, she weeped softly, hoping the baby’s crying would mask hers. It was obvious she did not like the attention. Her shoulders told me this — crouched inward towards her chest as if she were a turtle trying to hide every part of her body, leaving only her shell visible to the sea of strangers. Here she was hidden and here she was safe.
Choking on her own heartache, she pulled out a stack of skin-colored Dunkin’ Donuts napkins acquired from the coffee shop that resided just outside gate C16. She was a wanderer, I concluded, because our plane left from C2, right next to the security check. Maybe she liked the exercise or maybe she could not bare the thought of sitting alone, waiting for her boarding time with the eyes and judgements of fellow travelers drawn to her.
“Ma’am,” the flight attendant found herself standing in row 8.
The girl removed her left earbud and paused her song. I had not realized she was listening to music until then, and I wondered if the song contributed to her anguish or her recovery.
“Ma’am, could you please adjust your tray-table for takeoff?” The beaming flight attendant could have been anywhere from an old-looking 25 to a young-looking 45. She had cheekbones that protruded like ankles and carefully painted red-lipstick to match her carefully tied neckerchief.
The girl removed her napkins from the table, careful not to look up at the flight attendant or speak in her wavering voice, which would reveal her carefully concealed disposition. She seemed like someone who would usually apologize in this situation, or at least shine a remorseful smile at the worker. I wondered if it made her uncomfortable not to acknowledge this woman, but her face could not have turned any darker shade of red to show it.
Even in the midst of her breakdown, she was not ugly. When some people cry, their face creases up like they just smelled something rotten and their nose runs like an allergenic child on the first day of Spring. But not her. She had a glow to her like a mother who had just given birth, with physical signs of pain but a beauty that was based on a raw face and pure heart.
As the plane took off, I wondered who or what made her cry.
Maybe she flew down just yesterday with hopes of surprising her long distance boyfriend of eight months. When she walked into his apartment, there he was in bed with the girl that she “did not have to worry about.” “You are never around!” he yelled, and she started to believe the cheating was her fault.
Maybe, this was not a return flight at all. She could be flying to her grandfather’s funeral in the town he was born in. “I will go out where I started,” he would always say. It is not like he remembered where he was born anyway — the Alzheimer’s took over every piece of him, and the nurses said that he died simply because he forgot how to live.
Or maybe he did not. Maybe he is happily playing checkers with the lady living down the hall of his retirement home, and the Alzheimer’s never plagued him. Perhaps this was not a boyfriend matter or a family matter, but that of a best friend, or one that no longer exists.
Maybe she had been living with her best friend for three years. Her depression had always been the strongest bond in their relationship, because her friend was what kept her going. However, it turned into the largest wrinkle as well. After months of not getting out of bed, therefore not contributing to cleaning, maintenance, or bills, she was kicked out of the apartment and her best friend’s life. Here she is, homeless and boarding the first flight available, off to nowhere specific but away from where she came.
Maybe the answer is simple. She is afraid of flying. That is it. She has built up anxiety over the past few hours because the thought of not being grounded scares her. She is afraid of heights, and here she is seven miles above the ground.
Every window on the plane was closed except hers. I guess her music distracted her from hearing the announcement of keeping windows closed to maintain cabin temperature. Or she decided not to listen.
In the dark, her face was illuminated with self-hatred, and in the light, her facial features were clear. The skin under her eyes swelled to the point where there was only a sliver of her eyeball showing, like a crescent moon right before it goes black. The redness was concentrated on her cheeks and nose, looking like a child who had gotten into mommy’s blush for the first time. The tears fell from her eyes in a subtle but steady stream as if she did not even know they were falling. The streaks of water reminded me of claw marks, as if she took her red acrylic nails and carved from her eyes down to her neck, leaving a trail of brokenness behind.
In the dark, there was something about her luminous face that was angelic. The beauty in the pain, the solitude in the crowd, the fragility in the destruction — something about it seemed so real.
A sheet of blue engulfed the plane with a landscape of sporadic clouds. She liked the feeling of being engulfed because it helped keep her hidden, like she was a small part of an endless horizon. As the plane got higher and higher, the tears slowed and the redness faded. It was as if the sky was hugging her, telling her it would be okay.
When the plane hit its highest point before falling, everything stopped — the tears, the fear, the hatred — all stopped as if hitting this altitude hit the switch on her emotions. She was no longer a hopeless victim but a tranquil champion. Her expression was frozen but it did not look hurt, rather, indifferent. Her thoughts were simplistic, I assumed, as if she was no longer thinking about the past or future, but only the shape of the clouds.
Why was it the height that cured her?
Maybe the size of the shrinking world put her problems in perspective. Trees were the size of ants and fast cars were crawling. Everything slowed, everything shrunk, and maybe she felt better because she was on top of it all.
Maybe it is because the height made her closer to God. On the ground, the bond that connected them was stretched like a rubber band that had been pulled too far. The height of the airplane loosened the pull of the band, and maybe she felt His physical presence that had been lost from her life for so long.
Maybe it is the sheer acceptance that she is on the verge of death — that the plane could plunge to the ground any moment and life would end as quickly as a pin dropped. Her problems would turn to dust, just like her. Maybe she liked this thought because it showed her that life was out of her hands, and in a moment it could be gone.
Throughout the duration of the flight, I watched her. She sat still as a statue, with her head resting on the wall and her eyes glued to the sky. The slow turns of the plane rocked her like a mother rocking a child to sleep. It was a slow revelation that things would be okay, but a revelation nonetheless.
The plane hit the ground with a heavy force that jolted everyone forward like the end of a roller coaster ride. The girl in 8F began collecting her assortment of napkins and pulled out a small black mirror. She reflected on the appearance of her face for a long minute as if convincing herself nothing had happened.
Everyone was quiet — an unwarranted quiet where there should be noise, like an audience who had nothing to cheer for. Her head was fixed forward, as if she was too nervous to look around and see the various sets of eyes that had been following her actions throughout the flight. She was naked in a crowd — completely exposed and susceptible to the judgements of those who preferred the public to be a place of monotonous conformity. Maybe that’s the problem with this world. We are too afraid to show genuine emotion in front of people, so when a stranger shows it, the only thing we know how to do is marvel at them like a museum exhibit.
She stood up and reached for the luggage container, revealing the full-frontal that had been buried in her shell for so long. Her face had a much different complexion than earlier. The redness faded into what could be passed as a sunburn and the puffiness under her eyes sunk like the sun at the end of an exhausting day. The tear trails that once marked a shattered soul seeped into her skin like a flower taking in water to bloom.
