Hongmei was touched. This girl had the eyes of an old soul and looked heartbreakingly familiar. She examined the pictures carefully, one by one, trying to think whose eyes these were. She was almost certain she’d seen them before. As she stared, she realized with a start that another pair of eyes was watching her through the daughter’s. Intuitively, she sensed that this person (whether a man or a woman) did have such a daughter, and that there had indeed been a tragedy with this child at its heart. She replied to say how pretty the girl was, though she had an air of misfortune. She said, I feel like I’ve seen those eyes somewhere before. No, it’s not a feeling—I actually have.

The person answered that the reason she’d lost contact with her daughter for so many years was because of a single misdeed. During the divorce proceedings, she snatched the child from her school and hid her away for several months. At the time, it had felt like the only way she could keep her daughter, but they were discovered, and she lost custody.

Once again Hongmei could tell there was real anguish there even if this specific story didn’t end up being real. Instinct told her this wasn’t the extent of the suffering. She asked, Since your daughter went back home after this visit, has she called often?

The person said that in the end, her daughter hadn’t completely believed her.

Hongmei asked, What do you want her to believe?

That I love her, that I’d never hurt her, no matter how many stupid things I’ve done, answered the person. Just as I don’t want to hurt you. If you agree, I’ll leave and never bother you again.

Since she’d stopped seeing this person as a “he,” Hongmei now felt safer. When she was out walking, she would stop abruptly and look to see if the tall woman had shown up. Yet nothing was ever out of the ordinary. She had returned to her usual routine: going to the library, to school, to the mall, to the supermarket. This was much better; she no longer felt like she was in the path of a pair of beastly eyes. She realized she was staring at the secret talker’s message, wondering which patch of shadow the woman had been hiding in to have seen her so clearly. She stereotypically imagined her to be like many of the other lesbians on campus: short hair, rimless glasses (or no glasses might be better?), defined features (but not a mask), and bottomless black eyes like the little girl’s.