The Disappearing Woman

It is so much work to be seen—to be recognized as something distinct from the world around you. There is no one person to blame for this, because, I’ll confess, sometimes even I struggle to see myself. I am often taken aback when I notice my hands clenched into fists, or my breath stuck in my chest, as if I were actively bottling it up for later use. How can I expect others to see me when I can barely look at myself?

Now, disappearing feels like the easiest thing in the world.

***

The first time I felt it, I was eleven years old.

Standing in my mother's empty room, filled with empty drawers and an empty closet, I was invisible. Of course, I was also alone, so there are no witnesses to confirm this. I had just gotten off the bus from school and walked into the house, sensing something was different from when I left that morning. Her room was adjacent to the kitchen where I ate my snacks, and its door stood open.

“Your mom...she just needed some time for herself,” my dad reassured me that night.

In the following days her door remained closed. There was no use for it anymore. But within weeks, that room reinvented itself. It became a hospital for sick dolls, a home to an aggressive hamster, an extra place for a cousin to crash. It couldn't seem to hold onto its emptiness. It begged me to follow its lead.

Sure enough, I did see my mother again. As I lay on the floor one year later in the early summer morning—with the grogginess that can only accompany a night of boy-crazed girls gossiping—the doorbell rang. Thinking it was another friend, I ran to open it. It was her, standing awkwardly. I couldn't help but notice the familiar car parked alongside the street, and seeing it there, so close to the house, made me want to scream and cry all at once. I wasn't sure what to say. She told me she wanted to speak with my dad. I backed away and ran up the stairs to find him. A short time after—what now feels like mere minutes in my head—her drawers were filled with clothes once more. I would once again stand in that room and wonder if I had imagined its emptiness, as if my imagination were strong enough to trick me out of an entire year.

That was the year my mother dissolved from my life. And to this day, with so little explained, it is a year of memories in which she doesn't exist. She was not there when I learned to shave my legs, when I microwaved my dinner until the plastic melted to the plate, or the nights I fell asleep crying over my inability to make her stay.

So I learned to be the person she would stay for, the one who brought good news and overlooked all the bad. The faultless teenager, so concerned with keeping her at home—or at least within driving distance—that no criticism was too harsh, no threat too malicious, and no smack without a reasonable explanation.

The strangest part, though, is that I'm the one who really vanished in the end.

***

He was the best man I'd ever met. Of course I married him.

But I couldn't believe it was possible for him to love me without ultimately tiring of me. When will the cost of me outweigh the benefits? I would ask myself after each failure to hold my tongue. I kept waiting for the moment his expression would twist into a mask, and he'd pull off the facade with a big “GOTCHA!” spat into my face. I anticipated this, prepared for it in my heart the way I prepared for the change of seasons. It would come, I believed, with such focused intent that I never considered it might come from me instead.

It was in the first breach, the first time I glanced at a few texts from a female coworker, that those thoughts floated to the forefront of my mind instead of staying dormant in the back. The second rupture came when I found an explicit movie on our watch list, knowing full well it wasn't something I had ever viewed myself.

He was a terrible liar, so it was that face—that genuine, honest and handsome face—I examined with my whole being. With each mistake it became the messenger I sought out, the tense moment of pain where I could see the remorse but still braced for a severe smile. It was this imagined smile I readied for, the mask I assumed existed but could never prove.

I found that in searching so desperately for a dishonest truth, I discovered a convincing lie. Staring at him so long, I didn't see my own hands hitting the send button. I didn't see the ways I needed the attention—from anyone—to ease the deafening fear that I would one day find myself alone in my own house. Alone with my own husband. Alone, with only myself to blame.

The moment I read the words, “I love you more than he ever could,” I swear, my hands faded from sight. They remained a slight shimmer above the phone and I barely took notice. The cost was too high to notice what I was losing, so I focused on what I might be gaining. Was he the one whose love would erase all need for fear? Were his words, so reassuring at three in the morning, the missing key to being free, or did I need more than just words?

My head had gone to the clouds, and the only thing still holding me down was the dense stone that had replaced my heart. That cold anchor that reminded me I needed something, or someone, even if they would never really need me.

***

I met my own gaze for the last time in the window's reflection on the train to the airport. As we zipped through dark tunnels, what was lit up inside reflected back at us. I looked over my comfortable clothes and my one heavy bag, and thought: This will be me for the rest of my life. Always thinking of what to say when we finally got the chance to catch up, buying clothes that best suit economy class seats, existing to my daughter largely as some floating head on a screen.

Will my long hair surprise her? I wondered. Will she be taller than I remember? I'd been told they shoot up so fast at that age, or maybe I was a bit late for that. Before getting on the train I had had a spontaneous urge to print every moment of the past few months into a book. Easy and efficient.

Stepping off the platform and into the check-in line, I received a text from her. “We'll see you soon!” it read. She'd already informed me that her new stepmom would be driving us, but seeing it written in plural like that felt akin to a small electric shock.

When I was growing up, I was constantly reminded of all the big mistakes I could make, like doing drugs, getting pregnant too soon, or skipping college—those foolproof ways to kill success. But no one mentioned the small fractures, the tiny splinters. No one told us how the roles we were forced to play as kids would become the ones we're best at. How the things that kept us safe would be the things that infected everything else.

“Can I have your passport, please?” the agent said, raising her voice a bit to bridge the distance between us as I stood in a daze at the head of the line.

“Uhm…sorry, never mind,” I said loudly, and shuffled away as if I were in the wrong place.

I lingered at the tiny convenience store next to the bathrooms, waiting for my nerve to propel me forward once more. I felt it run away, so I grabbed a few snacks to put the panic out of my head. When I moved clumsily to the cashier, the woman at the register stared right through me. She refused to meet my eyes or take my money, as if she knew what I'd just done and wanted to shame me for it. Her lack of acknowledgment shrieked of disapproval. I was so enraged I picked up my food and walked straight out of the store. Then I kept walking. The entrance doors slid open, turning into an exit. I didn’t call a cab. I just kept walking back towards the city, down the coastal highway. My body shuddered alongside each passing car.

Once I had made the decision to exit that airport, I became undetectable. Indistinguishable from what was around me.

While I was expected to be with my daughter and her new family, I began floating through a city completely unaware of my presence. It's incredible what people miss right in front of them when they are so absorbed in their own lives. I could get away with anything I wanted, go anyplace I liked, even follow a person home. This I resisted.

Yet, without fail, I found myself wandering down to the harbor every morning. At first it was by accident; I just wanted to listen to the sound of the sea as it was picked up by the tides. But that third day, as the sun started to rise and dawn’s fog rolled in, my identity was almost compromised. A boy spotted my silhouette in those mists, and for a second, his eyes found my face from a short distance.

“Uhm…hello?” came a weak and hesitant voice.

I stood there, wondering what to do, when the second question came.

“Are you…a ghost?” he asked.

“Yes,” I whispered with a hidden smile, then laughed as he scrambled up the rocks back to the main road. Back to safety. I didn't know I would see him again. Or that I'd soon know him by name. All I knew then was that I was merely a ghost in the harbor.

***

His name was Jon, or at least that's what his older brother called him. They came back the next morning together, and I stood in amusement as they paced around the beach looking for a glimpse of me. After twenty minutes of searching, I positioned myself as much as possible in their line of sight, so when the wind and mist picked up and glided past my shape I could be noticed.

“I SEE IT,” Jon's brother yelled in excitement as they both pointed in my direction. I felt so giddy looking at the mixture of terror and amazement on their faces.

The physicality of my flesh would pulse into view depending on the course the winds wanted to take and whether the fog obeyed. Such a delicate silhouette could not hold its shape forever, so I vanished quickly. 

Then a curious thing happened. They left, just as the sun crept brighter over the water. I felt sheer disappointment run through me as I watched them hurry off. I mourned the loss of two strangers I’d known for no longer than an hour of my life. My grief didn't make sense. It was as if a voice spoke—a deep resonance in my bones—telling me that without others, I ceased to exist.

Jon came back the next morning alone. He was there before the sun, there before I was, sitting on the tiny patch of sand that separated the water and the giant rocks. This time, however, he was crying into his knees. From the tiny murmurs under his breath, I gathered he was upset over his father. His father had been in an accident earlier that month, an accident he had yet to wake up from. Like me, his father was now invisible—just not physically.

“Maybe he'll become a ghost, too,” Jon said, before dusting off the loose sand and slowly walking away. I watched him uncomfortably, wondering if I should say something. But how could I possibly console him, when the touch of my hand alone would give him nightmares for weeks?

“Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll say something,” I confided to myself, hours after he had left.

***

The next day, Jon did not come back.

I lay there all morning in a small patch of dirty sand, imagining I looked like the imprint of someone who had once been there and left. I lay until my neck grew stiff and beads of sweat framed my body. Hours after the air cleared of any haze, I placed my palms on the ground to stand up, brushed the sand off my arms, and froze at the sensation of scorched skin.

Owwww, was all I could think as I slowly opened my arms and set them back on the earth. I couldn't see the burns, but I felt my arms and face radiating heat.

How funny, I mused. As I lay there thinking how unnoticed I was to everyone, how unimportant, how insignificant—the sun stared down at me. Its rays reached my skin with an invisible touch. They left their invisible mark.

And with that, I remembered the fog. How it danced around me, painted my picture with water and air. And the sand—it hugged my body as close as the spaces between my toes, or the creases in my elbows.

Then, dragging my toes deeper into the soft ground, I wept. For the moment, the fact that I was not being watched was a consolation. Tears rolled off my cheeks, landing softly in the sand and leaving the earth darker on impact. Watching them brought images of my daughter back, and I wondered if she had cried just like this when I told her I suddenly couldn't come. When I told her I had too much work to do. I wondered if she had disappeared, too.

Filled with regret, I could have spent hours right there in that spot on that tiny beach, but I was abruptly interrupted by a giant PLOP! I heard the muffled sound the same moment a heavy weight hit my chest. I was so startled I sat up immediately, bringing the face of a small child just inches from mine.

“Found you,” he said with a grin, displaying the innocence of a kid who knows only play, snacks and nap time. Eyes innocent enough to see the hidden nature of everything. He spoke those two words and at once raced back out towards the water, gathering more wet sand in his arms to cover his next unsuspecting victim.

“You can see me?” I whispered in amazement, forgetting the sand in my lap, or that the small boy was already gone. I stood quickly, once again flinching at the tightness of my tender skin. When I saw a person approach, I ran straight at them, testing to see if they would meet my eyes, watching for the slight hint of hesitation at the sight of me in broad daylight.

While I did this, I made my way closer to the edge of the beach. I climbed the rocks along its border in big steps. I wanted to take up more space, to be more than wet footprints left behind. To not fade away so quickly. I thought about the sun, the wind, and the sand. I took strength in what was unseen, because it recognized me too. Standing at the top of the rocks, my sunburn throbbed under the open sky—a sharp, stinging reminder that I was still here.

***

Twenty years later, disappearing was still the easiest thing in the world.

“Oh, hello. Don’t tell anyone…since it's late, okay? Just go back to bed, sweetheart.” I had walked right past my daughter, my suitcase in hand, and she had not even glanced up. Had not seen me. Maybe she was still upset about our fight earlier. But my grandson—barely in kindergarten—had found me in the dark. 

“Where are you going?” he asked sleepily.

“I have to break a curse,” I explained in a low voice. “A curse has been leeching off this family for generations. I have to break it. Somehow. Before it erases more of us…” I knew he couldn’t possibly understand all of this, but I had to try—try to give him something.

“Ok Grammy…” he mumbled back, then shuffled over and squeezed me around the waist, his face wiping eye boogers onto my shirt, before staggering back towards his room.

Then I disappeared. I knew in my gut I would reappear at some point, maybe even by the time the sun came back out.

“The sun finds me eventually,” I whispered after him, hoping he could still hear. But he had already vanished from sight.