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I adjust the review mirror until I my face appears in the reflection. I go to work. A little lip gloss. A touch up of my mascara. It’s a silly dose of irony: Doing my makeup to go buy more makeup. Then again, finding yet another excuse to “people watch” at the mall doesn’t make a lot of sense either but here I am again. I’ve been studying for midterm exams for the past three days and could really use a break.

As I add a bit of eye shadow, I see a blue Volkswagen pull into the handicap parking spot across the way. A brunette, probably only a few years older than me, is behind the wheel. Lazy bitch, I think cynically. You’re not handicapped. I shake my head. Are people that lazy that they can’t be bothered by the few additional steps?

Glancing down at my bare thighs, tan and firm underneath my miniskirt, I feel a sense of superiority. I know I am fit, and that is because of the active lifestyle I live. I run and walk all across campus. I stop doing my makeup in anticipation of seeing this lazy woman drag her fat butt out of her car and waddle into the mall.

Strangely, she doesn’t get out. Instead I see her leaning around inside, as if she were wrestling. What is she doing? My earlier thought gets shoved back in my face as I watch her manually assemble a wheelchair. I feel immediate guilt for assuming someone my age wouldn’t have a genuine need for a disabled parking spot.

It doesn’t take her long, but it seems like a hassle. Four separate times she has to rummage around inside to get something and then reach out to assemble it in the parking lot. It’s hard to see everything behind the open car door but eventually I watch her slide herself off the car seat and onto the wheelchair. It looks like her arms do all of the work. She uses her hands to pick up each of her legs individually, placing them on her footrest. Her feet, covered in stark white canvas sneakers, droop downward as they’re lifted.

She wheels backwards and shuts the car door. Finally I see her full profile. She’s dressed in casual athletic wear. Even seated, I can tell she’s slim and attractive. Despite her slender appearance, her legs still look disproportionately thin in the grey leggings she has on. Her knees resemble bony knobs, tapering down into two very skinny calves. Her thighs, while certainly skinny, also appear to flatten out into her cushion.

What the…? Now her left leg appears to be shaking. My curiosity builds as I watch her press her hands down over her knee and hold it until the movement stops. I realize she’s likely paralyzed since she clearly does not have control over her own legs.

Studying her further, I find her face is actually quite pretty. There’s nothing remarkable about it, brown eyes framed within brown hair, but when she smiles it seems to light up her face like sunshine breaking through clouds. Behind her pretty eyes, I sense a quiet strength and wonder what she’s been through. Suddenly I realize she’s smiling directly at me. Oops! She caught me staring. I feel my face redden but before I can look away she’s turned her chair around and is wheeling confidently across the parking lot into the mall.

Before I know it, I’m out of my car and walking into the mall behind her. As the automatic doors open, I feel the breeze of air conditioning drift over my bare legs. I subconsciously smooth my hand over the back of my skirt as I enter. The hem ends a several inches above my knees.

Passing through the front entrance, I notice the collection of empty wheelchairs off to the side. No one is around them as I know they are only used for convenience by the elderly or overweight. There are motorized scooters but behind them are several manual wheelchairs. I slow my gait to study them more closely. They look much different from the one the woman is using. Her wheelchair frame is purple, while these are an ugly metallic grey. Her chair is much smaller and seems to fit her slight frame perfectly. These look big and bulky. I wonder what it’s like to need one to get around? To have to take it apart and put it together every time you get in and out of your car? Snapping myself out of my reverie, I look back up and keep walking forward.

There she is, rolling ahead of me. I become mesmerized at the way she seems to glide through the mall. I see the back of her shoulders rise and fall as propels her chair in rhythm. Slowly and methodically. Other shoppers appear in her path, but avoids them by deftly steers her chair to the left or right.

As she walks I notice the attention she is drawing. Wearing a mini-skirt with my makeup done up, I am accustomed to a certain amount of male attention coming my way as I saunter along. Walking behind this wheelchair girl, I feel invisible. It’s like she’s magnetized with everyone’s eyeballs glued to her. As people pass by, I see their gazes linger on her. A few even turn and stare after she has wheeled past. I don’t feel she’s any prettier than me, but the sight of an attractive young woman in a wheelchair draws everyone’s attention. As I continue to walk, I confirm this as I eavesdrop on the comments of passerby.

“Aww poor girl” ... “She’s too pretty to be in a wheelchair” ... “Bless her heart I wonder what happened to her?” ... “Mommy, why is that lady riding on that thing?”

I suddenly realize I’ve walked past the cosmetic store I planned to visit. Watching this girl my own age glide through crowds in a wheelchair had me transfixed. It’s not until I see her enter the department store that I realize I’ve been following her since I walked in. Snapping myself out of my trance, I decide to get what I came for and turn around to head back to the makeup store.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Over an hour later I pass through the same area, purchases in tow. In that time I have window shopped and drank a lemonade in the food court. I continue to stroll along but am not enjoying my people-watching routine as much as usual. The people I pass by, even the cute guys who I can tell are checking me out, don’t grab my attention quite like the woman in the wheelchair. Subconsciously, I find myself searching for her as I pass by each store. Finally I have completed another lap and am back at the department store I last saw her wheel into. Impulsively, I decide to go in as well.

I walk past the Sporting Goods and Appliances sections before making my way to Women’s Clothing. It looks pretty deserted and I don’t see her. I start to turn around and walk away when I realize that at the level of her wheelchair, I probably wouldn’t be able to see her from afar. I walk closer. And there she is!

She’s in front of me approaching the cash register. Something is different about the way she’s moving. She’s wheeling much more slowly than when I had seen her before. No longer with confidence and grace, she seems more unsteady in her movements, her shoulders no longer pumping in rhythm but now awkwardly as she has one arm across her lap.

Curiosity gets the better of me and I walk down a small aisle into the lingerie section and approach her and the sales counter from the side. I see the cashier folding a red blouse and placing it in a bag. I pick up a sales tag but don’t read it as I subtly shuffle closer to the counter. The music playing across the store’s loudspeakers hits a quiet note and I hear her hushed voice.

“I had an accident” the young woman in the wheelchair whispers. What does she mean “accident?"

“...need to get out of here now” I hear her say to the cashier. Stealing a quick glance up, I see a look of anguish on her pretty face. Compared to the confident smile she flashed out in the parking lot, I feel my heart clutch. What’s wrong?
The cashier hands her an empty bag.

“Set that across your lap, sweetie.”

She does so but not before I see it. Her grey leggings. The soaked area sticks out like a sore thumb. The young woman clearly wet herself and a lot of things start to click in my mind. Not only are her legs are paralyzed and out of her control, but her bladder must be as well. The music starts up and I can’t hear the rest of what is being said, but I can’t help but keep watching. What is it about her and why is all of this so fascinating?

I see more customers gather behind her and so as not to attract attention with my staring, I casually look over a few items before stealing another glance. The young woman is now rolling away. Her wheelchair still has me in a trance, and I find myself walking away as well.

I lose sight of her as she wheels through the Kitchen Appliances department. It isn’t until I reach the store’s entrance back into the mall that I see her up ahead. She is moving fast and has put a lot of distance between us. This time her head bobs up and down in accordance with her pushes, which appear to be quicker and more rapidly paced. Knowing full well she just had an accident on herself, I understand. To keep up, I quicken my own steps. The leather strap of my sandals begins to rub across my toes, but I keep up my brisk pace.

The mall is much busier and there are people walking in both directions. I side step around several slower walkers. I walk past a couple of guys standing off to the side, and one of them makes a less-than-subtle glance over me. I can feel his eyes roam over my body, trailing over my legs. My legs, bare beneath the mini-skirt, are tanned and toned. Normally I feel a surge of adrenaline knowing I am being checked out. As a college coed, hormones and sexual appetite are all around me. This time, I don’t feel that. Instead I feel a longing, that instead of two healthy limbs, he was looking at my legs because they were slender and paralyzed. And that he was looking at me not walking past but instead rolling past him in a wheelchair.

What is happening to me? I just saw first-hand the embarrassing aspects that accompany a disability and wheelchair. And yet, something about being like that is now so very appealing to me.

As we both approach the main exit to the mall, another thought hits me. Is it wrong to watch her this much? I’ve been observing her for quite awhile. On one hand she's an adult, we're in public and I’m certainly not exploiting her. It’s not like I have any type of physical or sexual attraction to her. I don’t even like women. Nevertheless, here I am following her. Quite a bit. Probably too much. Oh gosh…what am I doing?

I slow my steps as she rolls out across the parking lot. I linger at the automatic doors. I was curious to see how she handles getting back into her car with her wet pants. She’ll have to lose the bags in her lap. I could watch her again from my car. Then I think about myself. About how I felt that time I got my period right in the middle of yoga class. We are both young women. We want attention, but we want it on our own terms. I doubt she wants anyone seeing her right now. She deserves her right to privacy in this moment, even if she’s in a public setting. I do the right thing and decide not follow any further.

Turning back at the entrance, my gaze falls back onto the empty wheelchairs. The ugly grey metallic manual chairs are pushed to the back. Before I know it, I’ve walked over to them. Feeling a little self-conscious I glance back over my shoulder. No one is in sight. I quickly sit down in one of the wheelchairs. I feel the cold vinyl of the seat cushion against the back of my bare legs. I pick up my legs, with my hands just as I saw her do, and place my feet in the two individual foot rests.

I lower my hands to the sides, gripping the metal rims outside the tires. I push forward. It takes surprisingly more force than I expected to move just a few feet and I realize how impressive the young woman’s upper body strength must be to wheel as far and quickly as she did. I look down at my thighs, emerging beneath the hem of my mini skirt. Seated, they squish out slightly but my muscle tone is still apparent. I imagine what it would take for them to flatten out further. Weeks, months, or years of muscle atrophy? What would it feel like to not be able to move my legs anymore?

I realize anyone in front of me would be able to see up my skirt and to the black lace panties I am wearing. I feel a tingle in my bladder from the lemonade I drank earlier and think of my bodily functions. What would it be like to have no control over that. What if I suddenly started urinating on myself while seated in a wheelchair? In my wheelchair. I start to imagine what I look like in a smaller, sleeker wheelchair. What it would feel like to wheel through the mall and get all that attention. These strange thoughts create butterflies in my stomach, and send tingles down my spine. What is happening to me?

Suddenly I hear the automatic doors open. A group teenage girls enter together. Sitting in the mall wheelchair, I know I’m caught red-handed! They are laughing loudly and talking excitedly. From my seated position, I’m startled at how tall they seem. Is that what it feels like for all wheelchair users in a world of able-bodied people towering over them? To my relief, the group of girls walk right past me. They don’t even glance in my direction. Is that also what life in a wheelchair feels like? Beneath everyone’s eye levels?

I notice one of the girls in particular. She’s taller and is wearing a short denim skirt. She seems to be the leader of the group. “I totally want to get new eyeliner...” She says. As she does, she reaches back to run a hand down to the hem of her mini-skirt, before continuing her saunter forward. Her perfectly-shaped and fully-functional legs propel her ahead.

I realize that used to be me. But now it feels and looks wrong.

Sitting here in this wheelchair, just feels right.

-The End-