Blind (5 page)

Then the world moved forward
anyway
in the relentless
anyway
way it does. Dozens of mothers came to our house with frozen blocks of pasta and breads and cakes they’d baked and their daughters, my friends from another life. I wasn’t hungry. I hid, refused to see anyone, and hung the green curtain over my bed in the guest room on the first floor, which was suddenly Naomi’s and my bedroom. My mom thanked everyone in what Sarah dubbed her “suburb-drug” voice. Sarah also later pointed out that our mom got pregnant with my littlest sister, Baby Lily, that August, so, well, whatever. That was what it was, but she was taking drugs? When our mom was pregnant with Benj, she wouldn’t even drink a soda or touch a piece of fruit that wasn’t organic and grown in front of her, but now her unhappiness and guilt were so profound that she was poisoning our new baby just to keep from dying of misery or maybe killing herself. Because of me. Knowing the depth of her fear doubled mine.

I met Dr. Sassoman every other week at her office, which smelled like vanilla beans and the color beige. It was so quiet the thoughts in my head pounded, bounced, and echoed: “It’s fall, fall, the world is racing by without me. Without me. Where am I? Where am I? Open your eyes, Emma, open your eyes.” On the in-between weeks, Dr. Sassoman came to our house, and talked with my parents, too. It was September and I was on our gold couch, in Dr. Sassoman’s office, back on the couch. Everyone else started school and I became part of the dark, scratchy couch fabric. I was clutching the braille cube I never learned to use, not moving, cold-sweating. When Logan said her dad was moving to California, the words sounded like they came from outer space and floated down. I couldn’t hold on to them or respond. I wasn’t there for her or anyone. It felt like I literally wasn’t there; everyone else was still human, living on the same earth I’d once been on. They were doing human things like starting ninth grade at Lake Main, but I had dropped out of the world. I lived in this weird, dark, spinning void. I lay back on the couch.
Open your eyes, Emma
. I thought of myself as “Emma” then, or “you,” or “she,” anyone but me.

Logan came over every day after school, and asked all the time when our other friends could come and see me. When I could manage to respond at all, I said, “Never.”

“But it might cheer you up, Em,” she said. “Everyone misses you.”

I said nothing. She brought and read me notes from girls I’d known since preschool: Deirdre Sharp, Claire Montgomery, Monica Dancat, Elizabeth Tallentine—their names were dimly familiar, like words from a language I’d once spoken but no longer knew. Logan said Lake Main was hell without me, that she was going to die if I didn’t come back. But I could never go back. If I’d never see anyone again, why should they see me?

My mom made me walk outside occasionally, made me feel the grass, the sunlight, fresh air, the world. She begged me to shower, but I couldn’t stand water on my face. No matter what she asked me to do, I said no, burrowed deeper. Then, a million no’s later, it was October. And even though July, August, and September had been the longest, worst months of my life, October’s arrival felt sudden. I was furious. How dare it be October? I was lying on the couch in sunglasses, fingering a braille alphabet page, trying to use it to line dots up in some meaningful way, but failing: A: 1; B: 1 and 2; C: 1 and 4; D: 1, 4, and 5; E: 1 and 5; and so on. I had just figured out that turning letters into numbers just took a 3, 4, 5, 6 in front and A became 1, B 2, C 3, D 4, E 5, and F 6, when my awkward dad I could no longer see came into the living room.

“Hi, Emma,” he said. Was he looking at me? I felt his weight at the foot of the couch, and smelled something funny and alive. I heard scratching. Fear rose in my throat, indistinguishable from the fury I couldn’t temper. “What are you doing?” my dad asked, waiting for a second, as if something was caught in his throat, before adding, “Sweetie,” my mom’s word.

“I’m learning my fucking ABC’s. What are
you
doing?” I responded. He swallowed a gulp of sorrow so hard I heard it. I had been so quiet my whole life; maybe my parents thought the vile things I now said were representative of who I’d been all along. I hoped not, even though I couldn’t stop being cruel to them. I wished I hadn’t been so quiet before, when my life had been easy. Why didn’t I say cheerful and clever things when I was still intact and happy? Now there’s no chance of it. My dad and I both tried to think what to say next; it’s hard to know who felt more lost or miserable. My dad is like me; he doesn’t like to talk, either. But the scratching sound saved us both, and a bark sat me up like I’d been yanked by a string. I dropped my cube and groped around.

“We brought you something, sweetie,” my mom said. So she had come in the room, too. My dad handed me Spark. I put my face right up to Spark’s, felt his warm, silky face with my cheek, his wet nose with my nose, his furry ears with my hands. He licked my face wildly, not even avoiding my sunglasses. It was love at first whatever isn’t sight.

My dad was talking: “He’s a K9 buddy, Emma, blah blah, so he’s not really allowed in restaurants or blah blah real seeing-eye dog, blah blah.” This turned out not to be true, except at the Briarly School for the Blind, where they were strict about distinctions between “real guide dogs” and “pets.” Other than at Briarly, I’ve yet to meet the shop owner who throws the blind kid’s dog out the door, pet or not. But there is a rule that you have to be sixteen to get a guide dog and my dad loves a good rule. “As soon as you’re sixteen, you can go to training school and choose a genuine mobility assistance dog, blah.”

I had tuned him out at “He’s,” was burying my face in Spark’s fur, crying. My mom and I were both crying and my dad was not. I was furious at my mom for crying and at my dad for not crying. And the more I hated them and myself, the more I loved Spark. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I loved him completely, the way I couldn’t love anyone or anything else anymore. Everything else was ruined and he was perfect.

“Spark can help by keeping you company as you get up and about more,” my dad continued.

I couldn’t stop crying. But I stopped kissing Spark long enough to say, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes, you are,” my dad said, but in the pause that followed my mom either shot him a withering look or grabbed him quietly, because he added, “When you’re ready.”

Then my mom came and put her arms around me, but I kept mine around Spark, who was wildly licking my face. Spark! Who understands me without any effort, who doesn’t care what I look like, who asks for nothing but love and to go on walks, and who is the only one who actually
always
helps. He has never once made being blind worse for me. I spent the rest of that day off the couch, roaming the house with Spark, laughing as he sniffed everything in the house and tackled and licked me. It was the first time since the accident that I’d heard my own laugh. July, August, September, October is a long time to go without laughing.

• • •

My father’s entire life has been a study in how patients who walk soon after their surgeries recover, whereas those who “mope about” stay bedridden disappointments to their parents forever. Which is why he was all over me to work my way back into the land of people who move and live. He got me Spark, my white cane, and, to my fury and embarrassment, a mobility coach named Mr. Otis who came and pried me off the couch so I could learn to walk, find my own room, pour and drink a glass of water without spilling it everywhere, and get to and from the bathroom without tripping and cracking my spine.

I could hardly breathe when Mr. Otis first started coming. While I tried to keep my hands and face from going numb, he showed my mom and me how to organize drawers, make braille labels, and sew them into my shirts and skirts and tights so I could choose my own outfits. We labeled the individual items with premade tinfoil labels Mr. Otis suggested at first and then, later, with pieces of plastic milk gallon cartons my mom cut up and used, her sculptor’s inspiration. But mostly, I tuned his bright red voice out and streamlined my clothes. I wore only jeans, V-necks (T-shirts when it was hot, long-sleeve T-shirts for in between, and striped hoodies when it got cold), and blue Converse all the time. I have three pairs. And four red nightgowns. I still dress that (and only that) way, because why change? All of my bras are nude, so they’ll never show through, no matter what shirt I choose.

Mr. Otis spent countless hours helping me click and slide the white cane in front of me, in step, back step. I thought of the ballroom dance class Logan and I had taken on weekends when we were eleven, trading off who had to be the boy: triple step, rock step, triple step, rock step. In step, back step, spark step, rock step. She was so loud and extroverted and crazy in those classes, and I was so quiet. I loved her, loved listening to her joke and be confident and laugh and stomp all over the place. It’s hard to believe how shy I already was. How will I ever dance again with anyone other than my white cane or Spark? Mr. Otis once told me, “The cane is an extension of your pointer finger, Emma. You are feeling your way. Touch, touch, find a shoreline, find a landmark. Indoor, outdoor, find a shoreline, where’s your shoreline?”

This was what music would be for me: Mr. Otis’s voice; this was my sad dancing: my “feeling my way” with a long, bony, witchedy digit scraping the sidewalk. My graphite finger tapping, searching for a shoreline. I can’t remember how many times Mr. Otis showed me a new one, or asked me to name a landmark: here’s where the grass becomes a curb, where the curb rolls into the street, where the carpet meets the wall. Here are the planks of the porch, down one stair, two stairs, three stairs, grass. Maybe ten million times, maybe twenty. My mind gets melty when I think of his voice, of those gasping weeks or months or whatever they were. Listen to the traffic. Hear it stop on your left, and when the rush of it starts on your right, stick your cane straight out into the crosswalk in case. Everything was “in case” with Mr. Otis: in case someone is turning, in case you’ve made a mistake and it’s not actually a red light, your light. Listen. A landmark can be the smell of the Mantroses’ rosebushes, or the sound of cars at the end of Oak Street, the grind of engines stopping or starting up at an intersection. Once you’ve stuck your cane out and no one has hit it with a car, then okay, strike out into the crosswalk, try to stay straight. If the engines have just begun to idle, then you have the whole light, Emma. Remember, the band of that walk inside the white lines should be approximately the same width as the sidewalk. It’s Mr. Otis who told me that, and when I have that thought, even now, I have it in his urgent red voice. Hug the side away from the cars that are moving, try to stay straight, in case.

In case. In case. In case. Even though we were too late, because the worst thing ever had happened, in spite of whatever “in cases” I had tried my entire life leading up to it. Mr. Otis and I walked down the five porch steps, our minds humming a stupid chorus of “in case.” We moved, slid, tapped, stumbled onto the band of sidewalk over and over and over, and when Mr. Otis wasn’t there, my mom used Spark as an excuse to get me out of the house and make me practice. She told me what was going to happen before it happened, every second, like some kind of psychotic robot: “Now I’m going to turn the coffee grinder on.”
Wherrrreww, grrrrrrrrr
. “Now I’m going to start the car.”
Griiiind
. “Now I’m going to light the burner.”
Foooshmp
. Now I’m turning on the water now I’m closing the door now I’m walking behind you now I’m opening a drawer now blah blah now now now now, Emma, Emma, Emma? I was so sick of her voice, but so terrified each time a sound ignited without any warning that the terror made me furious, too.

Mr. Otis programmed my phone to speak to me, but I couldn’t find the right spots to enter my password, couldn’t stand the speed of the voice-over voice, maniacally shouting, “Insert passcode, four digits required, one a b c, two d e f.” Mr. Otis’s voice was the opposite; his was human and patient: “Tap the number twice,” he said, “and then tap elsewhere on the screen twice.” I hate the word
elsewhere
; it’s where I used to be, where everything I used to be able to see still is. One, tap, tap, six, tap, tap, nine, tap, tap, three, tap, tap: Leah’s age last year, followed by Naomi’s and Benj’s. Every year I change my passwords for everything and learn a new finger tap dance.

My life with Mr. Otis was another life, another surreal tutorial in how to relearn everything I’d known as a toddler. My dad, who believed rehearsing moves would make me feel happier and more confident, demanded progress reports. He reminded me between five and twenty times a morning to practice, and on the rare nights when I could be forced to sit and rock miserably at the dinner table, he asked what progress I’d made, even though for me practice and progress felt like opposites. The work was a choking, incessant reminder that I was back at a zero flatter than any baby starts at, learning to guess which sister was which. To use a fork and knife. To know where I was standing, whether I might get run over, what I might be eating. To survive. It was all a matter of survival, even though it was literally stuff like learning to walk down the sidewalk or across the street.

My mom fed me grilled cheese sandwiches cut into tiny triangles, baby carrots, pizza, and fake-chicken tofu nuggets, all of which I could pick up and eat with my fingers. She stopped short of mashing my food up or cutting grapes in half, but just barely. And only because my dad, who made me eat tomato soup on Sundays, just because I couldn’t use my hands, told her I would never recover unless I “gained my independence.” Late at night, when they shouted and fought, she screamed about how and what chances and danger, and he said I had to learn braille, had to learn to walk around by myself, eventually to “take the bus.” My dad’s big goal for me was to take a bus, even though I had never taken the bus anywhere before my accident, so I didn’t really see why that would be such a major breakthrough. My mom argued that I should practice at own pace, figure the world out slowly if I wanted to, and see people only when I was ready, talk about school when I felt up to it. He said no; they had to help me, had to push me, or I might something—fall into something. Depression? Death? I can’t remember, because it was too terrible and because it was the same night that I heard my dad cry, the only time I ever have, and it was so sad that I shut the sound out of my mind so fast I can’t hear it now, even if I try to.