Last night my neighboor “Mrs. Wilberforce” knocked at my door to ask a question and to chat a while about the other neighbors. She asked about the girl next door to me, if I’ve seen her lately, and I had to admit that no, I hadn’t. I’d never even realized that she was gone, but now that I thought about it, no, I hadn’t heard her coming in and out lately.

Apparently, she left a few days ago to have surgery. Ulcers or something. Her mother came by and took her, so her car has been sitting in its spot for days undisturbed.

It was odd to think of her as having ulcers. She’s a small thing. Petite. Long hair and size 1 everything. Pretty, but hard looking, as if she’d seen too much of life. Dresses young and hip, and cute, but looks as though she’d long given up on her girlhood dreams. So says H.E., anyway; he sees much more than I do in people, looks at their souls and determines what they’re really like, inside. Can’t be very reliable, though. He thinks my soul is sweet.

Anyway, this girl, tiny as she is, her footsteps are as heavy as lead, heavier than H.E.’s, and he’s probably twice or three times as heavy as she is. When she comes home, her feet pound the stairs just outside my unit with a thud, thud, thud, thud, thud. Heavy as hell and so contrary to her looks, like an elephant making little earthquakes in the ground. It’s really quite disturbing when I’m sitting at the computer trying to work.

In contrast, when H.E. walks those same steps, I hear nothing, and the man is 6’1″ to her 5’1″ and heavier than he’d like to be. And when I walk those same steps, he hears nothing as well, even when I’m leaping and bounding two or three steps at a time.

I don’t know why her footsteps are so heavy, but maybe that’s why she has ulcers. Maybe that’s why she looks so hard. She must be unhappy or angry with her life, deep down, that she unconsciously stomps through life, worrying about this or that. What a hard and heavy soul she must have.

I hope she’s okay.

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