What Is Visible: A Novel (10 page)

“Happy?” I ask him, and his fingers hesitate.

“Of course,” he writes. “My family.”

“I am still your daughter?”

“Always.”

My heart is full to bursting, but my temple has begun to ache. “Baby my sister?”

“You can call her that.”

“Play with her.”

“Very tiny. Mrs. Howe will decide.”

Mrs. Howe? I’m not calling her that. “Practiced with dolls.”

“Baby not a doll. Very careful.” He pats my hand, and I know we are finished with this subject. For the moment. “Like Miss Wight?”

“Very much. Very good.”

“Excellent,” he says, and then pauses. “Swift talked about God?”

“A little.” Not a tenth as much as I’d have liked.

“Wrong,” Doctor writes. “You were not ready.”

“Ready,” I write emphatically.

“I am the judge, Laura.”

“Thought God judge?”

His fingers waver. “God trusts me.”

“Blinds read Bible.” Anything I know I’ve gotten secondhand from Tessy or one of the others. Like the ridiculous idea that Doctor is a horse or a dog. I am tempted to ask him about that as well.

“But you are special,” he writes. “You inspire others.”

It always comes back to that. “Want God to inspire
me
.”

“When the time,” he taps, but I push away his fingers.

“He speaks to me.” This is not completely true, but when I try to pray, there is a voice that I am sure is not mine, that is louder than mine, except maybe when I’m angry. Then mine is very loud. “He wants me to know Him.”

Doctor drums his fingers; he does not know how to argue this, which is what I’ve counted on. A long moment passes before he writes, “Make a deal.”

I nod vigorously. Any deal should be worth this.

“Mrs. Howe says noises scare baby.”

I don’t understand.

“Your noises.”

Yesterday I allowed myself to yelp at Doctor’s return and to make all my naming sounds. I thought they would be happy.

“Made baby cry.”

That’s what they do all the time anyway, isn’t it? “Then teach me to speak.”

“Deaf don’t speak,” he writes. “Too hard.”

“I’ll learn.” I know I can. “What makes you speak?”

“A tongue,” he tells me, “lips, vocal cords at the back of the throat.” Mine obviously work since I can already make noises. I trace the perfect heart of my lips, and then reach inside for the slick curl of my tongue and pull it. Good and strong and very quick. It even has the bumps on it that Doctor says help you taste, though mine don’t work; otherwise it is fine.

I reach for Doctor’s mouth. “Touch tongue?”

“No,” and he pushes me off.

I only wanted to see if it feels the same as mine, so I’ll know mine is really working. That’s all right; Wightie will let me in her mouth later, I’m sure. But then Doctor says I need ears, ears that can hear. “Why ears?”

“Need to hear yourself to speak properly.”

I don’t think so. I would
like
to hear myself, but I don’t need to. I can’t hear my naming noises, but I can feel their vibrations in my throat. “No deafs speak? Ever?”

I can tell he is impatient, but I keep tapping, and finally he explains. Many years ago, Reverend Gallaudet, the founder of the Connecticut Asylum for the Education of Deaf and Dumb Persons, went to Europe to learn their methods of teaching. Only the British and Scottish had found a way to teach the deaf to speak, but they said it was a secret and would not share it with him. I know that Gallaudet married a student, and she was just a boring deaf girl. If I had been sixteen as I am now, I think Doctor might have chosen me instead of Julia. But I was only thirteen when Doctor’s affection bump forced him to choose an object, and we all know whom he chose: Julia Ward, known for being in possession of all five senses and then some. And anyone who has eyes to see confirms that Julia has not lost the weight from the child. Gossip flies into my hands as easily as it does into the ears of others, and lands buzzing on my palm like flies.

“So nobody here can teach me?”

He pats my hand. “Perkins is school for the blind, except for you.”

“But will inspire more children if I speak.” That’s the truth: if I can learn language
and
speak, then I will prove an even greater example. One would think that every effort would be made to assure that I’m accomplishing all that I’m able. After all, if the deaf are talking it up over there in the British Isles, then I should be able to grace our republic with speech.

“For your noises,” he writes, “need a private place.”

“What place?”

“Closet in kitchen.”

I know that closet; it is small and dank and couched with bags of flour. He has  this whole thing figured out, and I’d thought I was being the clever one. “Bible?” I will trade my silence—for now—for the chance to meet with God.

“Genesis I will give you.”

It isn’t much, but it’s a start. I laugh and put my hand to his face. The beginning! It’s the beginning of everything.

S
arah Wight had a headache; she got them frequently. Laura stood over the settee where her teacher lay, dipping a rag into a pan. She tried to wring the cloth, but water dripped onto Sarah’s forehead, and then in tiny rivulets down her cheeks and chin onto her collar. Sarah had given up wiping it away; she was now fairly soaked by her pupil’s frenzy of attention. She should never tell Laura when she had a headache.

Jeannette brought a vase of fresh-cut lilies into the parlor and surveyed the scene. “At least she didn’t dump the whole pan on you like last time,” she said.

Laura reached down and felt the wetness, and began to pat wildly with the rag. She covered Sarah’s nose and mouth, and Sarah pushed her hand away more roughly than she intended. The girl’s anxiety was telegraphed through her fingers, though Sarah knew it would be even worse if she sent her to her room. Relieved of her duties as teacher’s nurse, she would spend the night in an agony of retribution. Nothing made Sarah’s headaches worse than the sound of Laura’s keening in that frightening, guttural way of hers, unaware that her sorrow made her far less sympathetic. Sarah had delighted in teaching Laura the Bible, knowing how long the Good Book was kept from her, but she had to admit that the introduction to religion had made the girl much more highly emotional, and worse, even harder on herself than she was before.

“You’ll be drowned if you let her keep on,” Jeannette said and tried to take the rag from Laura’s hand. A tug-of-war ensued, during which Sarah got even wetter. Jeannette finally wrested the cloth from her, and Laura turned round and round in near panic. Her fingers quivered on Sarah’s arm until Sarah wrote that she was the best nurse ever and that she was all better.

“You spoil her to bits,” Jeannette said. “I’ve warned you. Tell her it’s supper, if you can get her to eat.”

Sarah pried Laura’s arms from her waist. “She’ll likely skip table entirely in this state. She’s wasting under my care.”

Jeannette snorted. “She’s always been a terror to get fed, worse than a two-year-old. She used to throw half the food down the table and spit the other half out on her plate. A mess to clean, every blessed day. Only reason she’s up to eighty pounds is to impress Chev. Stuffed herself for weeks before he came back.”

“Dinner,” Sarah signed into Laura’s palm and the girl shook her head vehemently. “Doctor wants you to eat,” she tried again.

“Doctor eat with me?”

“No, but I will.”

Laura smoothed the front of her dress, considering. “Feed me?”

Sarah cast a despairing glance at Jeannette, who laughed. “Ladies eat on their own.”

Laura stood up straighter. “I use fork better than blinds,” she wrote, and Sarah agreed. She took her arm to escort her to the dining room.

“How’s the spell?” Jeannette asked. “You still look peaked.”

“I’ll be lucky not to lose my soup,” Sarah said, “but it will be worth it if she eats hers.”

“My brother has found an angel.”

“Send that birdsong into his ear then because he finds me far too human.”

“Heaven help him, he rarely gets the worth right.” Jeannette walked with them down the hall.

“You mean Julia?” Sarah whispered.

Laura poked her teacher in the arm. “What talk?”

“Worth her weight in gold or coal, I cannot say.”

“You tempt me with such palaver and deliver nothing,” Sarah said. Laura poked her harder in the arm. “We say how nice Julia’s having another baby.”

“Stay fat,” Laura wrote.

“She’s sick most every morning,” Jeannette said. “Says the house full of blinds bodes ill for her laying-in.”

“All this time, and I think she’s still actually afraid of them,” Sarah said. “Or afraid she’ll birth one herself, God forgive me.”

“Afraid of that one most of all.”

“As well she should be.” Sarah helped Laura into her chair at the head of the first table. Laura pressed her teacher’s arm to sit beside her.

“You’ll catch your death, still half-drowned,” Jeannette warned.

Laura held Sarah’s hand tightly and banged their twined fists upon the table. When the dishes were served, Sarah found she could only manage a few spoonfuls of soup, which was nothing more than hot water afloat with a few limp vegetables. Since Doctor believed that any spices added to the food would be too stimulating for the blind, Cook was not allowed to use even salt or pepper, and no sugar for tea. Fruit was never served raw, but cooked for so long you sometimes couldn’t tell if you had an apple or a pear before you. Desserts only on Christmas, when the girls devoured them and, sure enough, were often sick. Maybe Doctor was right—maybe they were too sensitive—but Sarah missed sweetness most of all, a good chess pie, even a fry-up dusted with sugar. Of course, it was all the same to Laura. Sarah ended up spoon-feeding her half the bowl of soup, but Laura removed from her mouth each of the beans and placed them around her dish. “Like bugs,” she said. It was always something.

She twisted her bread into a sort of animal shape—it had four legs anyway—and galloped it up her teacher’s sleeve. She’d mostly broken her student of playing with her food by constantly reminding her of her age—seventeen!―but this often led to a discussion of what other girls her age were up to—walking out with beaux, going to balls in carriages—and Laura usually ended up weeping at the bleakness of her own life. It was one thing to admonish her to act like an adult, and then another to refuse her any adult activities. Sarah wondered if this disparity could ever be resolved; might Laura at say, twenty-one, finally accept her limitations and be able to fashion some sort of real life for herself in the world? As difficult and heartbreaking as it was for Sarah, she hoped to stay at Perkins long enough to find out. Sarah finally popped off the head of the bread animal, which by now had lost a leg anyway, and pushed it into Laura’s mouth, caught open in a laugh. The girl chewed the bread, but complained that Sarah had destroyed her dog. In moments like these, Sarah found it almost impossible to reconcile the Laura who devoured the Old Testament and pelted her with incisive questions with the petulant, crumb-covered child before her.

The blind girls chattered loudly in the hall, and today Sarah wished they were all deaf-mute as well. She offered up a quick prayer as the milksop was served, asking God to forgive her for such terrible thoughts. Usually she ignored the girls, so occupied was she with her one demanding charge, but today she heard something that pricked her attention.

“She got up in my bed again last night,” said one of the older ones, gesturing at Laura. “Kept me awake all hours, petting me.”

A pigtailed girl across the table nodded. “Just push her out. That’s what I do. But then she makes that awful noise, like a horse dying.” The girls instinctively inclined their heads in the direction of Laura’s table in case her teacher could hear. “I never push her hard, though,” the girl said loudly.

“Doctor would have your head,” the first one whispered. “You must not injure the star of his shows.”

The girl with pigtails said, “I think I’ll put a bag over my head so she can’t get at my hair,” and the table was overcome with giggling.

Sarah was accustomed to the blinds discussing Laura right in front of her. Sometimes it was useful, but often it was cruel, and Sarah wished that she herself couldn’t hear. As much a trouble as she was, Laura was the beneficiary of all of her teacher’s stored-up love, for which she had no other object, with the exception of her family out in Wayland.

Girls routinely slept together at the Institution, just as they did at home with their siblings. Only Laura had a private room, and though her teacher’s room was beside hers, Laura managed to sneak out quietly enough that Sarah missed it half the time. Whenever she did hear the patter of Laura’s slippered feet inching down the hallway, she roused herself from her bed and collared the girl. Sometimes Laura was so startled that she let out an alarming yelp, and then everybody woke up. No matter how many times she’d been reprimanded, Laura thought her midnight larks were funny, and so she was in high spirits for an hour before Sarah could settle her down again. Sarah knew exactly what the blind girl meant; her own hair seemed to be a source of endless fascination for Laura, who alternated between stroking it gently and pulling. It was only when her hands strayed down Sarah’s neck and began exploring below the collarbone that she firmly pushed Laura’s fingers away and back up to her head. Sarah was constantly in a state of rearranging her bun as Laura dislodged it. A teacher must always be a model of modest perfection, even if her students couldn’t see her. “You can play my hair too,” was Laura’s open invitation, as she tickled Sarah’s nose with a stray lock. Sarah did play with Laura’s hair, brushing it, braiding and unbraiding, but she stopped short of the rougher work that the girl asked for. Why would anyone want their hair pulled? But then again, on the occasions when she helped Laura dress or bathe—she did most of her grooming herself now―she saw tiny lines of dried blood on the insides of Laura’s thighs and upper arms.

At first, she’d believed Laura’s explanations: “Fall down,” she’d say, or “Pozzo scratch,” or “Blind play hard.” But after finding a very precise trio of cuts on her inner thigh, Sarah knew they couldn’t be accidents. “Who’s hurting you?” she asked, but Laura only shook her head. Perhaps it was retribution for the higher status bestowed on Laura—her own room, famous visitors, private time with Doctor—or maybe because Laura simply annoyed the living daylights out of some of the girls. Laura was plenty capable of protecting herself, however, as her ferocity in gym games had proven, and Sarah couldn’t imagine her being that abjectly passive. She certainly wasn’t with her teacher. Maybe it was some perverse adolescent game; she herself had never engaged in such activities when she was at school, but there had been a group of girls who fancied themselves some sort of secret society with strange rituals. Sarah shuddered at the thought of blind girls playing with razors. Maybe she should tell Doctor, but she was afraid to even ask the other teachers or Jeannette if any of their students suffered similar wounds. If they didn’t, she would only arouse suspicion about Laura, and goodness knows the child had enough on her plate as the only deaf-blind since Oliver left. But after months of finding the tiny incisions, Sarah realized that Laura herself was doing the cutting, though so far Sarah hadn’t been able to find the instrument. When she asked Laura why she did this, the girl denied it, her face a mask of pure innocence, not even the sly expression she usually wore when caught at something. Sarah held Laura in her arms and told her that she didn’t have to punish herself for anything.

“Not punish,” Laura said. “God punish. Doctor punish.”

Sarah lived in fear that her charge would cut too deeply one day in her quest for whatever it was and seriously wound herself, but she still didn’t dare tell Doctor. She considered taking Laura’s hatpins, but then how on earth could she secure her hats? It was a conundrum she couldn’t see her way clear of, so until she could come to some logical conclusion and solution, she kept Laura safe from prying eyes and prayed for guidance, for answers.

Thank the Lord, Dr. Howe didn’t pay much mind to Sarah. He respected her, she thought, but he kept his distance and, at this stage, rarely inquired after Laura’s progress. Jeannette said he used to demand a daily report of her, which then dwindled to weekly, and now he merely asked offhandedly if he happened to pass Sarah in the hall. Now that he’d given in to Laura’s demands for the Bible, he seemed to regard her as a lost cause. Sarah knew from reading the papers, even before she had arrived at Perkins, how important a pawn Laura was in the battle that Doctor and Horace Mann waged against the Calvinists. Doctor insisted that the girl was a blank slate who would come naturally to God, proving man’s innate religiosity and spirituality and refuting the idea of original sin. But the crumbs he dropped were never enough for the voracious Laura, and though her moral sense was well developed, she insisted on learning the tenets of Christianity and studying the minutiae of the Good Book, contrary to general Unitarian beliefs. Sarah herself was a Unitarian; her father had been the first Unitarian minister in Wayland, but she still found herself leaning a bit dangerously toward Calvinism with its more concrete view of the Holy Trinity. Her father had once spanked her for going to services at a Baptist church with a friend. If he were still alive, he would have gotten along famously with Dr. Howe.

When Doctor summoned Sarah the next week, she knew it would not be good news. Doctor didn’t take interest enough in the teacher or the pupil for it to be good. She came to his office at the appointed time and knocked repeatedly, but no one answered. Then she heard the low rumble of male laughter from within. She was ready to leave when the door opened and Charles Sumner emerged. Generally he was one of the best-kept gentlemen that Sarah had ever seen―white shirt collars starched, even a velvet riding jacket once―but now his wide cravat was askew and his dark hair tousled. He must have been riding.

He bowed. “Good day, Miss…” And Sarah curtsied and supplied her surname. She didn’t expect the great Sumner to remember it. He extended his arm with a flourish, indicating the room within.

“The Chevalier is all yours,” he said and smiled his thin smile.

Sarah made it a rule to at least attempt not to think uncharitable things about anyone, but she could never summon anything but distaste for Doctor’s famous friend, probably because Laura disliked him so strongly, more than anyone. She claimed that Sumner was rough with her, and she wouldn’t let him even try to write upon her hand. Sarah had heard from another teacher that Laura had actually bitten him once, but she couldn’t believe the girl would go that far with Doctor’s dearest friend.

“Come,” Doctor said and motioned toward the straight-backed chair in front of his enormous cherrywood desk. The desk was piled with newspapers and loose sheets and a teetering stack of books, and Sarah felt the itch to tidy everything up; that or sweep it all away. Didn’t he let the maids clean in here? She wondered how Julia felt about the office’s disarray. There was definitely not the slightest hint of a woman’s touch anywhere in the room. Sarah had to remove a book from the chair before she could settle herself. Her palms were sweating, her anxiety made worse by the fact that Doctor was not saying anything, only watching her with a slight frown and that wrinkle between his eyes that somehow made him even handsomer.