The garden is my refuge. It’s the reason I bought this house. Even a small leafy space is unusual among Philadelphia rowhomes and I craved a private place with fresh air and shaded light. I water my three trees in hot spells and nurture cool white moonflowers. The unseeing trees and plants comfort me. Pacing the bricks, I fought the instinct to go into the house and hide. I can’t spend my entire life in bed, I told myself, brushing Japanese maple leaves against my cheek to soothe my skin and my spirit. Hiding was a cop-out — not the mature thing to do.

I don’t usually hide. I live in Center City Philadelphia where I see — and am seen — by people on the street all the time. I teach at a local university. I go out to dinner with my friends. But the cashier’s reaction shook me. I told myself she was new to that supermarket, didn’t know me, hadn’t been the recipient of my considerable charm. Still her words stung. Among my pots of fragrant herbs, I stripped a thyme frond, crushed the petals and inhaled their fragrance. I felt an overwhelming need to chuck my afternoon class, avoid my merry students’ faces, and burrow under my flowered quilt.

I settled in to the wrought-iron chair next to the garden wall and recalled a humid Philly summer day in 1953, when I was 7 and my mother took a flock of kids — me, my brother, and two of our two young cousins — to swim in a suburban pond turned swimming club called Martin’s Dam. Nonmembers like us paid a small fee at the admissions gate beyond which the spring-fed “swimming hole” rippled under hanging maples. Carrying our towels, we kids scampered after my mom who strode up to the gate to pay for us. When I got near the gatekeeper, she fixed her gaze on my abnormally red face and the shards of skin scattered like salt on my arms and legs. I lowered my eyes, tugging shame and surprise and fear into tight cords in my chest. “What’s going on here?” the woman asked.

“Nothing that’ll hurt you,” my mother shot back. “Just dry skin.” The gatekeeper let us in. I ducked past her and ran nearer to the pond, pretending nothing had happened. My mother did, too. I slithered into the cool green water up to my neck. When we left I draped my towel around my shoulders and scurried past the woman at the gate who had wondered if my scales would grow on her if I brushed her thigh.

That was more than 60 years ago, but I can still inspire fear in ordinary strangers, people who glance at me at the movies or on a city sidewalk. I tense up every time I stride past the iron railings through the park across from my house. I feel my jaw tighten at the sight of all those people. Will the guy in shorts ambling along with his groceries stare at my crimson face? Will the red-haired boy chalking an airplane on the bricks look up as I pass him by in flip-flops? In truth, most of these people are simply more interested in their own affairs than in me. But the starers have entered my inner eye. Whether they stare at me or not almost doesn’t matter.