The Window

San Francisco, 2000
I’ve been through San Francisco a few times, usually stopping for a few hours at most for the driver’s purpose, but most of the time just passing through. Regardless of reason, or time of year, or time of day for that matter, what ever ride I was with would be in some sort of traffic jam while in this beautiful city. This time was no different, except that it was a June afternoon in the year 2000, and I was in a converted, brightly colored bus that was so old that I doubt that it had ever seen air conditioning.
Even with these ingredients for a bad day, I could not be irritated – this was San Francisco! We were moving at less than a snails pace, since there were periods of five minutes and maybe even more that we did not move at all, but that just gave me more time to take in the view. We were on one of those famous hilly streets…the bus’ straining breaks reminded us of that constantly, headed for the Golden Gate Park where a police man with a nice smile told us we could park the bus and spend the night. We would head north at daybreak.
We estimated later that we had spend forty minutes going two miles on this road…it seemed much longer in the heat and noise of traffic all around us. But as I mentioned I kept my gaze on the town. The bus was crowded, with people and things, so I could only see well out of my window, which opened to the left side of the road, which was lined with those colorful little houses that sit side by side that you see on TV. Each one was completely unique and as we inched along I carefully took note of each detail…the shapes, shades of paint, doors, etc…and of course, the window treatments. Many had luxurious velvet draperies of red and gold, and some had only slatted blinds, but everyone had sort of curtains, except one house.
Many of these houses had a bay window, and so did this house. As careful as I was to observe details at this time, I could not tell you anything about this house because as soon as we came to it, as we crawled along the street, I was offended by the structure. To be more precise, I was upset by what I saw in the bay window; clearly a prop from Halloween, more than seven months past, I saw a shape of a woman hanging by her neck.
She had long brown hair that covered her bent head and face and she was wearing a printed dress that reached down to just below her knees, and she wore no shoes. She swayed slightly.
I was appalled, at both the house owner and the City for allowing such a display, especially in June. I had been impressed with San Francisco for its friendliness and cleanliness but as I sat on the bus that day I considered whether I should change my mind. And then the bus moved forward and the woman turned toward me, as though by someone’s hand. The original sight of the woman was a shock but this was more of a fright and I’m sure my heart skipped a beat, when, in the next moment, as the bus’s wheels moved another inch forward, the image of the woman turned again, but warped in an impossible way. My brain struggled for a second and then I realized that I had been looking at a reflection in that window. The window was so old that it was not flat and so did not give a true reflection.The entire image had been made up of dozens of small reflections, when put together, had appeared as something that had never been…or had it?
All that I can really say is that the window did not truly reflect what it showed on the outside, which was a stuffy crowd of cars, buses and trucks trying to get through a traffic jam. It might have been the heat, or the automobile fumes, or my shock from what I thought I had seen, but as the bus made its way to the Golden Gate Park I was plagued by the notion that the window had reflected something that had happened on the inside, maybe long ago, and it was still looking to share its secret.