Oh, how I nearly felt, in the midst of all that looking. Though, as a matter of fact, where I saw my own reflection may well have been in a bus window.
Like that Polish film, or French film, I only know the title in English. I read the subtitles like I understood. I always get lost when reading, especially subtitles, and then all of a sudden I am convinced I know German or French or Polish. It was a film about Veronica, or Veronicas, because there were two of them. I think I mispronounced the name. I think I misinterpreted the reflection.
There is a mother yelling at a child—more of a baby—on that bus. I see it while I pass my reflection. I am ashamed for the baby, for the woman. I’m sure I am that mother in another language, though I can’t imagine how. At any rate, the two stories are adjacent. And by stories, I mean my reflection and the mother’s profile lined up.
Actually, one can be misplaced, letting one’s self into a story and not being able to recognize a single person in it. That is how I felt that day; astray in a story. This day, lost in Manhattan, a city I never knew one could be lost in. This is where I will begin. Disregard all the other words. They mean nothing to me, now that I have these words.
Like a new day for a new baby, everything is unfamiliar. For an adult it can be disorienting; you feel lost. I don’t feel lost, but you may feel lost. I don’t know you, though. What I mean, naturally, is that language is so confusing. I never know what you mean when you speak to me. I never know if I have done something or think I have done something wrong. It’s even more confusing when I speak to you.
Like that time you told me you would be a terrible mother. You said something like, “You are a child. How can you have a child?” I thought you were speaking about me, but it was someone else you were speaking about. You left me some months later. We didn’t have a child, at least I don’t think we did. In fact, I think you were the child. You left me because you hated your mother. At least, that is what I tell people if they ever ask. They say, “Why did it end with so and so?” and I say something about the fact of you being a motherfucker.
I didn’t mean to be this angry, naturally, I am sweet and innocent. Some even say childlike. But standing at this bus stop, I feel a bit distracted now, having missed several buses. They go a certain way, and I’m not so sure that is the way to go. You see, how do I say this? I’m lost. Not in the existential way, though (who is not existentially lost), more in the symbolic way, if that is a way, I’m not sure, because I’m lost. There was a baby crying. There was a mother, oh, and there was a reflection. That is what started all this nonsense. There was a reflection of someone I did not recognize, and now I don’t know which way is north or west or any of the directions an adult is supposed to know.
When I learned to read, as a child—two, maybe three—my father fell off a building. He didn’t die, not immediately at least. He slowly turned into an idiot. Or maybe he started as an idiot and returned to that state, like some regression. I’m not sure if I am using that word right. Well, I was learning to write, and he was learning to write at the same time. And I never knew if that was right. I mean the right way to be a father. Eventually, I read in books that fathers come in all sorts, not just idiots. But they all have one thing in common, which is that they are motherfuckers. Naturally, they fuck a mother and make a baby. That is what I read, of course, but I wouldn’t know. I’m not a mother.
I didn’t mean to make this about sex. I’m not that type of girl. This is where I get confused, speaking words to you, as if we didn’t try and try to have that baby. You know the baby I’m speaking about. We lost it a few months later.
