Girl and Five Brave Horses, A (17 page)

The knowledge wasn’t frightening. On the contrary, it was deeply reassuring. It contained peace and majesty and an infinity of comfort.

Lost for a moment in its vastness, I thought and heard nothing. Then the quiet ebbed away as unobtrusively as it had come and I discovered that in some totally inexplicable manner I had received a blessing. It was as if God had laid His hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t be afraid. You will see.”

It took a while for me to absorb this experience, since it struck at the very bedrock of my existence, but when I attempted an interpretation I concluded that the promise had not meant the restoration of my physical sight. What God was promising was greater mental vision to compensate for the loss of eyesight. If I could believe this, then I was well content. I told myself I would rather have an intelligent brain, capable of greater mental vision behind eyes that were sightless, than a stupid brain behind eyes that could see.

With this understanding of God’s promise to strengthen me I prayed for the courage to hold firmly to my resolution, made so long ago, never to become a burden to those around me. Next I began to catalogue my personal assets; if I were to succeed in climbing the wall that stood before me I would need every asset I could muster.

I began to give my attention to what was going on around me, trying to interpret the information which my other senses were pouring into my mind in an unabating stream. Sounds, odors, tastes, forms, and textures were uniting, it seemed, in an effort to present the world around me as it had always been.

I was delighted to find that nothing had changed. Food still tasted the same; things smelled as good or as bad; form and texture were wonderfully reassuring when I ran my hands over objects on the table beside my bed. And sounds? I was startled to find that many sounds were already as familiar to my ears as the actions that produced them had been familiar to my eyes; I had just never been consciously aware of these sounds.

Further observation taught me that nearly all activity within the hospital tended to produce definite sound patterns. In the beginning, collecting different sounds and then transforming them into a mental picture was laborious, but my mind gained speed with practice and the process became automatic. The realization of what all my other senses could do to help me was wonderful. It gave me confidence in my own resource and enabled me to make an important decision before I left the hospital.

After considering the matter from every angle I decided that the best strategy I could adopt would be to treat my blindness as if it were a minor detail rather than a major catastrophe. I would thus be turning the tables on my handicap; in fact, striking at its very potency. I was careful, however, not to delude myself; the way would not be easy. Although I was over the wall, there was a wilderness beyond it, one totally unknown to me, and I would have to remind myself constantly that the manner in which I traveled through this wilderness depended a great deal on my attitude.

Once I was home, I insisted with a fervor so intense as to verge on passion, that I be allowed to do as many things for myself as possible. My loss of sight had aroused the sympathy of everyone close to me, and their natural reaction was to wait on me hand and foot. Gently but firmly I refused to accept most of their services, for I realized the importance of building a firm foundation of self-reliance right from the start. The habit of being waited on could grow into a dangerous one, possibly weakening and eventually conquering my determination to do it alone.

My first victory in this direction had to do with bathing. For some reason (perhaps he feared an accident), the doctor had suggested that I have someone bathe me, so Arnette appointed herself to perform this operation. I stood it for a couple of days and then had had enough. “What in the world is to keep me from rubbing a washcloth over my own face and back?” I said. “This babying is nonsense. I’m not crippled.”

The next night, before going to bed, I got my towel and washcloth and the soap and placed them within reach of the tub. Then I laid out my night clothes and proceeded to fill the tub with water. After that I got in and bathed and that’s all there was to it. This taught me a lesson I was to keep on learning over and over again—if you don’t know whether you can do it or not, try it and see.

After my siege in the hospital I was sick to death of having someone feed me and, from the moment I returned home, would allow no more of that. I let Al cut up my meat because he said it made him nervous to watch my efforts with a knife. Beyond that, all he did was place the vegetables on my plate and tell me where they were. The rest was up to me.

Some meals were not easy. One of the first dinners after I returned from the hospital included a bowl of soup. I had thought in advance that nothing could be simpler than soup. There was nothing to cut, untangle, or skewer; just the soup, the spoon, and my mouth. But, without fail, somewhere en route to my mouth from the bowl the liquid spilled out of the spoon and back into the bowl. The difficulty, I discovered, was that I hadn’t the slightest notion of how to keep the spoon on a level. Any way I tried to tip it to bring it to an even keel proved wrong. For a long time thereafter the spoon remained empty better than half the time. I would have surely starved to death if I had had to live on soup.

There were also canned peaches. The blind person doesn’t need a spoon; he needs a trap. One night I kept trying to get them into the spoon as they slipped and flipped and flopped like a bunch of live goldfish, and suddenly I heard Al say, “It isn’t as easy as you thought, is it?”

Thinking he was referring to my awkwardness, I looked up and started to answer, but before I could speak Arnette said, “No, it certainly isn’t.” Then she explained to me, “I watched you struggling with those peaches and wondered why you were having such a time. I closed my eyes and now I know.”

If I had been willing to dispense with good table manners, feeding myself would have been much easier, but I had set a fairly high standard for myself, which added to my difficulties. I had resolved to eat as properly as I had done when I could see, or possibly even a bit more properly. Above all, I would not allow myself to eat with my hands. Once or twice I yielded to the temptation to pick up a piece of pie or cake instead of eating it with a fork but found I didn’t enjoy it. I had to use the tip of a left finger to guide things onto my fork or the tip of a right finger to judge the depth or heat of Liquid in a glass or cup, but I made certain these motions were brief and unobtrusive, for I would sooner have died than appear boorish.

Occasionally Al sneaked in some help without my knowledge, but whenever I caught him I displayed so much anger that he didn’t try again—at least for a while. I realized he was helping me one day when my fork banged down on his. He had been scraping food together on my plate to make it easier for me to find the pieces, but I told him I’d rather find them myself than have him piling up my food. It made me feel like a four-year-old and I didn’t like it.

I was equally stubborn about moving around the house without the use of a stick. In the beginning this insistence achieved painful results, for my judgment of direction and distance was very poor and I constantly banged and bumped into all sorts of sharp-edged obstacles—open doors and doorframes and pieces of furniture—and usually hit them hard, because I had vowed to blunder into things rather than creep about as if I were afraid. Although I had never paid much attention to blind people, my one deep impression of them was the uncertain way they moved, and I wanted to avoid developing that characteristic. The more confidently I moved and the more I managed for myself, the less attention I would attract to my blindness. I hated the idea of using it to win special compensations.

My intimate associates readily grasped the idea of my wish for independence and co-operated, but I had scarcely launched myself on this program when I discovered a lack of understanding on the part of casual acquaintances. This was particularly true of those who let sentiment rule reason. To refuse the services of such overly solicitous friends required a great deal of tact and patience, for some of them were extremely persistent. As a matter of fact, as my ability to do things myself increased they actually seemed to resent it. After a while I gave in and let them perform small services which I could perfectly well have done for myself, for it made them happier or at least seemed to confirm their impressions of what a blind person should be.

This attitude of overprotection toward the blind, not infrequent among the sighted, often can be more of a handicap than blindness itself, and one of its most damaging aspects is the continual effort to help the blind person physically at the expense of the blind person’s feelings.

This was amply illustrated by an occurrence one day shortly after I came home. A friend who lived next door dropped in one morning to say hello and found me busily engaged in making my bed for the first time. I refused the help offered, telling her I wanted to learn to do it myself, and we chatted while I finished. I asked her how it looked and she claimed it looked fine. After she left, Arnette came in and said, “You’ve got the bedspread on upside down.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” I said furiously.

“She said she didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“But that’s not helping me!” I retorted. “If somebody tells me something looks fine when it’s a mess, how am I going to learn?”

Learning to do things was indeed difficult but not nearly so difficult as learning the patience it took to do them. Performing domestic tasks in the dark produces constant and infuriating frustrations. This reaction can be understandable to the sighted if they recall nights when they have gotten up in the dark and tried to accomplish some objective without turning on the light.

If it’s merely finding the route to the bathroom, one may do very well, but if it’s nose drops in a cabinet or a blanket on a closet shelf, the search becomes complicated. Even if one is absolutely certain of the location, there is still the unforeseen. Reaching for the nose drops turns over a box of boric acid; pulling down the blanket releases a cascade of boxes.

It is these constant incalculables that make the world of the blind so hazardous—these plus the fact that it takes two or three times longer to dress, for example, than it once did. Several personal factors entered into my case, however, so perhaps my difficulties in getting dressed were only enhanced by my blindness.

First of all, I am meticulous about my appearance. I have never been able to abide messy hair or a crooked stocking seam or a slip that showed. When I became blind, this feeling was intensified and, being uncertain of exactly how I looked, I took special pains. I loathed the thought of having some woman say to herself, “Poor thing. Her sweater is buttoned up crooked, but she can’t help it. She can’t see.”

In contrast to my meticulous attitude on the subject of clothes was my hitherto scatterbrained nature. I had always found it difficult to keep my mind on the task at hand, preferring to let it amble off onto such matters as gravity or Rudolph Valentino. I often mislaid things or even forgot what I was doing. As a result, almost everything took me longer to do than it took anyone else, but now I had to get rid of this habit In fact, I had to fight it by making a special effort to concentrate on what I was doing, for if I did not I was hopelessly lost Should I let my mind wander for a second while putting on my powder, I was just as likely as not to set the box down someplace and then immediately turn it over, which of course meant more time spent cleaning it up. Fortunately I had a good memory, and as time went on I became more and more adept at putting it to work.

(Al always says that he marvels not so much that I finally made a satisfactory adjustment to blindness as that I have managed to live long enough to adjust to anything. In this there is some truth, but there is more truth in the maxim which I devised personally: “Blindness is not so much a tragedy as it is a damn nuisance.”)

Another factor having to do with appearance which concerned me greatly was the desire to avoid falling into the habit of letting my face assume, by gradual stages, the appearance of a death mask. I wanted my face to be warm and alive, a part of the living world around me. I had not lost control of my eye muscles; the eyes themselves were still clear and of normal shape, and I could move them in any direction I choose. Outwardly they did not in any way evidence the fact of their blindness, so I knew that if I concentrated on keeping my expression lively there was no reason that it should ever become wooden.

I encountered one difficulty, however. I was told that for some inexplicable reason I had a tendency to focus upward when I looked at someone, and yet when I focused my eyes lower I felt as if I were looking at the ground. This made me uncomfortable, since I was afraid unsuspecting people might think I was trying to avoid their eyes. I had always made a point to look directly at people when talking to them and wanted to continue to do so. Consciously remembering to keep my eyes properly focused while trying to concentrate on the conversation was at first extremely tricky. When I bent my mind to focusing, I lost track of what was being said, and if I became too engrossed in words I forgot to shift my eyes. It was a difficult situation which I never resolved to my own satisfaction, but I have gradually become more adept.

Sometimes, of course, I was lonely. I had occasional visitors, but Al and Arnette were home only at night after the last performance, aside from hurried meals. My one steady companion was our cook, Mrs. Van Myers.

Al had hired Mrs. Van Myers as soon as he knew I was coming out of the hospital. While I was gone from the apartment he and Arnette had eaten in restaurants, but they both agreed that it would be simpler for me and for all of us to have our meals at home once I was back. He got in touch with an employment agency, and the result was Van Myers.

She was a mountain of a woman, weighing, she admitted, 250 pounds. She had the tread of a mastodon, a deep and hearty laugh, and a wheezing breath which seemed to be drawn through a straw from somewhere down near the feet. Her principal hobby was beating the drum and singing with the Salvation Army. Actually she was a blessing. Not only was she a good cook, but she loved to talk and often kept me entertained for hours with stories about her relatives. From time to time even she would lapse into silence during the day, and it was always ominously quiet after she left in the evening.