I grew up in small-town Iowa and got tired of everyone knowing my
business. I hated that news of the argument I had with my boyfriend at high school preceded me home at the end of the day. The expanse of Los Angeles was a soothing contrast when I first ventured here years ago. Back then, this large, embracing city widened my world. I grew dizzy with the scent of freedom.
One Halloween I was taken back through time, reminded of that gleeful feeling. I was graciously allowed to tag along with my child and some friends who were trick-or-treating. The proviso was that I had to go in costume, fade into the background and stay there. I had played this "supervising mom" role often in the past, but I had never been so extraneous or so thoroughly cloaked.
Wearing a cast-off hood from a dismembered costume of Death--a faceless black nylon mask with cobwebby straggles of gray cheesecloth--and a long, black witch's cape, I was a passable, mildly idiosyncratic ghoul, the serene, observant embodiment of Death.
It was hot and smelled faintly of Krispy Kreme doughnuts inside my faceless garment. Though the black nylon dimmed my vision, I could still see an indistinct world. We were embedded in a North-of-Montana-Halloween-Trick-or-Treat-Specialty-Event, a Westside spectacular of lights, decorations and costumed figures of all sizes. The sidewalks were crowded like Manhattan's on a workday morning. My altered view affected me profoundly. I watched the world, distant and diminished. Who was I, hidden in here, peering out? How I saw and how I was seen had shifted, literally. I felt as if I'd been dropped onto a dark and entertaining alien planet.
From time to time I lifted the fitted veil and blinked at evening, and the world would slowly shift back to normal. But normal wasn't nearly as interesting.
A group of small children stopped on the sidewalk, eyeing me. A little girl demanded, "Aren't you supposed to have glowing pink eyes?" (Yes, in the costume's original version.) Without them, I was only mildly disconcerting.
I passed a male version of Death, and he theatrically proclaimed to his friend, "I looked in the mirror and saw myself, Death, staring back at me." Apart from his glowing pink eyes (which he had, unlike me), our heads were mirror images. Was it random coincidence, these words uttered as Death passed Death in the Halloween parade?
