Blind

by Rachel Dewoskin

  “Oh my god, Elizabeth has gained another fifty pounds,” Logan said, and then, “Blythe got her nose pierced, and has on four-hundred-dollar boots I bet she stole from Claire M.’s closet—” Here she paused, and then decided to go the worse of two routes I could hear her consider: “Or her body.”

  “God, Logan,” I said.

  I reached down to feel my outfit: the usual striped hoodie, long-sleeve V-neck T-shirt, and jean skirt. I had on blue Converse with tennis socks, and pink, cat-shaped sunglasses with jewels in their corners, from Logan. She likes to accessorize, which means she’s always hanging scarves and necklaces and glittering things off us so we sound like wind chimes. I love this about her; she’s festive and likes to decorate things, including me. Even though she has no money, she has bought me eleven pairs of sunglasses since my accident, including the athletic ones with a band to hold them on. At first, she was big into encouraging me to take my glasses off whenever I was ready, but I don’t want to, and I’ll never want to, and I can’t even stand to talk about it. And she’s figured that out. So we haven’t mentioned it in months. Kind of like how we’ve stopped saying the words driver’s ed, license, and car.

  As we walked, I tried to lead Spark, who Lake Main let me bring, maybe because they don’t know he’s not a real guide dog, or they don’t care, or probably they just figured it wasn’t worth arguing, since my parents fight so endlessly over everything that everyone else has to give in, just to avoid dying of exhaustion. Lake Main already knows that, because my parents love the separation of church and state, and famously made Lake Main take down all the Christmas decorations and remove “Away in a Manger” from the roster at the annual holiday concert.

  All day I kept checking the parts of my body, making sure they hadn’t disappeared just because I couldn’t see them. I counted my fingers, felt my knees, ankles, and elbows. I had to work not to rock back and forth or tuck my head down, habits I started when I first got out of the hospital. Last year at the Briarly School for the Blind, the king of my ninth-grade universe, a boy named Sebastian, used to come up and hold my shoulders whenever I rocked. His hands were so confident they felt kind of rough, and he smelled like leather jackets and tangerines.

  “Okay to rock out with me, Emma Sasha Silver,” Sebastian told me, “but you can’t do it with sighted people or they’ll think you’re a freak.”

  “Please don’t call me Emma Sasha Silver,” I said. “Just Emma.” And I kept rocking. But every time I wanted to rock at Lake Main, I remembered Sebastian telling me it would make me look like a monster, and stopped myself. Because unlike Briarly, Lake Main was throbbing with people who could see me; everyone I’d been to nursery school with, in school plays with, eaten cookies and Jell-O and macaroni with my entire life. I didn’t want them to think I was a freak. And knowing them wasn’t the relief I’d thought it would be. Not just because I stayed blind, but because they had all changed, too.

  Logan held my hand and pulled me along, whispering about where classrooms were, the newly lime library (“someone barfed green paint on the walls; you’re lucky you can’t see it”), electronic doors to the gym. “Don’t trip on that backpack, Em.”

  We were on our way to the office to “check in with” Principal Cates, which meant reassuring her that Spark and I had gotten to school without dying, and that Logan would get Spark and me to my locker, English, art, and the lunchroom without us getting trampled, lost, or devoured by rubberneckers. At the end of the day, Logan was to deliver me to Leah, who would take me home. Leah. Leah was my walk home, my finish line; she was like an icy lemon drink at the edge of a desert I still had to cross.

  Leah was hours away. The office smelled like the core of school-earth, an even more intense version of the hallway’s sloppy joe meat and hot Xeroxed copies, Bactine, Windex, sneakers, molding books. There was no laundry smell; there were no kitchens. I guess kids at Lake Main don’t have to learn “life skills,” or they get to learn them privately at home. The office, unbelievably, was noisier than the hall had been, and I couldn’t make any sense of the sounds until Principal Cates’s voice came both over the PA system and into my ears directly, because we were standing next to her. Her words doubled in my head.

  “Welcome back back to Lake Main middle middle and high high school school.” I inched away from the door, thinking I might be able to avoid the echo if I could hear only the PA and not also Principal Cates’s live voice. I thought, Focus in, Emma, focus in. Logan followed me. “Where are you going?”

  I didn’t answer; tried instead to tune into individual words: We . . . are . . . thrilled . . . to . . . have . . . you . . . herethisyear. PleaseriseforthePledgeofAllegiance. I felt the thunder of chairs being pushed back, bodies standing, hands clasping, and then more words, a chorus, vibrating under my bones and above me, the whole school shaking in unison with liberty and justice for all. At the end, I thought, as I often do, Okay, now I’ll just open my eyes. I can’t tell anyone that this still happens, because how stupid is it to keep getting re-surprised by what should be obvious now? After more than a year? I haven’t even told my therapist, Dr. Sassoman. She would just say it hasn’t been long at all and I’ve made amazing progress and blah blah yadda yadda. I don’t have to tell her anything anymore, because I already know what she’ll say. It’s almost like she lives inside of me. I shuffled back toward Principal Cates, disoriented, trying to feel Spark ahead of me and Logan to my left.

  “Emma Silver, glad to see you,” Principal Cates boomed. She shook my hand so vigorously I thought she might rip it out at the shoulder. Principal Cates is weirdly competitive. She was a runner when she was young, and then a running coach, and now she’s a principal who loves slogans. Her favorite is “Champions are made in the morning,” because she gets to school before dawn and roams the grounds, congratulating any other human being also running in circles before the sun comes up. Champions, in other words. She also likes to say, “Now is the time to do more than the minimum.” Until I lost my eyesight, she had no idea who I was. Which I preferred. I liked being invisible in my family, too, recording what I saw without being seen myself. I used to be the secret keeper of words, but in some very unfair way, being blind is the opposite of being invisible.

  “Logan, we’re all counting on you,” Principal Cates was saying. “Be a team player, please, and make sure Emma gets to her locker and her classes.”

  “Will do, Principal Cates.”

  “Good-bye, young ladies.” No matter what comes out of her mouth, it’s a cheer.

  And we were free. As if she were programmed to do it, Logan resumed her commentary instantly: “Oooooh. There’s Trey, more beautiful than ever. Be a team player, Emma, and go ask him if he wants to check out my Monday undies.” She laughed until she snorted again.

  “You’re still wearing day-of-the-week underwear?” I asked. “Are you in third grade?”

  “They’re thongs.”

  A crowd of people surrounded us suddenly, most of them to pet and play with Spark, and the first bell hadn’t even rung. I apologized to Logan for the nightmare of having to be my tour guide/bodyguard, but she slapped me and said, “Don’t be stupid. You’re famous. I’m living vicariously.”

  I am famous in the gross sense that my showing up means that everyone has returned from the new horror of Claire’s death to the passé buzz about my eyes. But only for a moment. Claire’s “accident” is a distraction from mine—and even though this makes me mean, I’m grateful for the weird demotion from worst-luck-girl-of-all-time in our town. What happened to Claire is so much worse than what happened to me that it makes getting blinded seem sneezy and manageable. Of course, Claire doesn’t have to come back and face whatever her story is. Or the crowds of people telling it to each other. I couldn’t help wondering—if this was what my dad called “back on track,” then what was a track? And why be on one at all, let alone back on one? Maybe if there was anything worthwhile about being
blinded, it was that it knocked me off the unthinking, lemming track I was on. For a moment, anyway.

  Someone came up and said, “Hey, Emma, nice to have you back,” and I realized it was Coltrane Winslow, and I tried not to rock, managed to squeeze “Thank you,” out right from the top of my throat like a bird, just as an adult voice, maybe belonging to a teacher, came from above me: “Excuse me!”

  I was still hoping to say something normal to Coltrane, who is a calm, really smart guy we all figure will be on the Supreme Court someday because his parents are both lawyers and he’s super ambitious and fair and nice to everyone. But I was dizzy and unsure if Coltrane was even still standing there when the big voice interrupted. Whoever it belonged to had cleared a pathway, because she was standing right in front of me. And judging from how high up her voice was, she was apparently the Jolly Green Giant.

  “You must be Emma Sasha Silver,” she boomed, so loud it sounded like she was standing on a building shouting down into a megaphone. I knew then that she was my “paraprofessional,” Ms. Mabel, because who else would be in the hallway armed with all three of my names? My parents had met her over the summer, but I’d refused to come.

  Logan sang, under her breath but not quietly enough for my taste, “Wonder Woman, Diana, Princess of the Amazon!” I tried to slap her quietly, but missed, and ended up waving my arm around like some kind of useless flapper. Spark perked up, anxious to see why I was moving and whether we were headed somewhere. I bent and petted the top of his head. It was hard to stand back up, honestly. As soon as I touched Spark I wanted to fold up on the floor next to him. But I didn’t. I stood back up, straight, like I was proving to myself that I could.

  “Are you Ms. Mabel?” I asked.

  “Yes, dear. I certainly am. May I walk you over to English class, Emma Sasha, and help get you situated? And who is this?”

  “Um, my friend, Logan.”

  “Hi, Logan. And your dog’s name?”

  “Oh,” I said, realizing that she had meant Spark the first time and I had introduced Logan. I flushed. “He’s Spark.”

  “Hello there, Spark,” she said. “Come, Emma Sasha, we’ll go meet Ms. Spencer.”

  I wanted to tell her that Sasha is my middle name and I prefer to be called just Emma, like a normal person, but I couldn’t think of a way to do so politely, and anyway, as soon as Ms. Mabel took my hand, Logan said, “See you after class, Emma Sasha! Good-bye, young lady! Be a team player!” and took off, laughing and snorting down the hall. It was the first time all day that I’d been away from her, and my knees wobbled as I took my first solo steps. I wondered if anyone was watching. Or everyone.

  Logan had promised both my mom and me that she wouldn’t leave my side for a single second except during English, because I’m in accelerated and she’s in regular, what she calls Lobotominglish. Logan doesn’t care about school and she hardly tried last year in ninth grade, because her dad moved away to California and I got blinded and went to Briarly and she skipped a bunch of school and didn’t turn in her papers, so she got put in the lower-level class. It’s not because she’s slow. She’s amazing at the things she cares about. But in my family, if you don’t turn in an English paper, you might get executed or, worse, disappoint Dr. Dad, so none of us would ever skip a single class or turn in anything thirty seconds late, let alone miss an entire paper. Well, except Sarah, who didn’t start her college applications on time and apparently also got a snake tattoo around her ankle, according to Leah. But our parents either think the snake itself is punishment enough or they pretended not to care that Sarah had defiled her skin, because Leah said they just shrugged and Sarah’s been wearing kneesocks lately. Sarah once joked in front of me that it was a good thing I got blinded in the summer, or I might have missed a day of school, God forbid. Of course that was before I had no choice but to miss half of ninth grade. And who knows how I might be this year, who I am now?

  Spark nosed my leg, which gave me enough confidence to keep walking. And Ms. Mabel lowered her giant hand onto my shoulder and guided me, pointing out the girls’ bathroom, the teachers’ lounge, rooms 214, 216, 218, and then, maybe sensing how overwhelmed I was, she tried small talk and told me her family had lived in Sauberg for three generations, her father was the chief of police for forty years, and she lived with him until he died, and yadda yadda. Maybe she hoped she’d be the Anne Sullivan to my Helen Keller. Then she asked about my family. I said there were seven kids, and she whistled low under her breath, and thought about my parents having sex while I thought about her thinking about my parents having sex. Whenever anyone finds out that there are seven kids in my family, they imagine my mom and dad having sex. I mean, be honest. You hear “seven kids,” and you’re immediately like, “Wow, those people love having sex. It’s all they do. Constantly.”

  When we finally arrived at English, I was exhausted and ready to go home and hide under the cushions of our gold couch. I heard frantic scratching and clicking, and smelled so much white dust I felt like I’d swallowed a hopscotch. Spark sneezed.

  Ms. Spencer either didn’t notice Spark and me, or she chose not to say anything as we settled ourselves in the first row. I was grateful to be left alone. “I’ll read what she’s writing on the board as soon as she’s done,” Miss Mabel told me.

  Ms. Spencer was scribbling so fast and wildly I wondered if we were starting the year with The Odyssey (which Leah read to me when I was frozen on the couch, missing ninth grade, and trick or treating, and homecoming, and everything else). Maybe Ms. Spencer had decided to transcribe the entire text in chalk. A piece snapped and I heard it hit the floor.

  People were shuffling in, some pausing to gasp over the sight of me, others stopping to say hi, maul Spark, or marvel over my HumanWare brailler, the one Sarah made sure I was aware cost almost six thousand dollars. Ms. Mabel read the board into my tired right ear: “Assignments, reading, writing, journal, two analytical papers. Books: A Raisin in the Sun, Macbeth, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Stranger, The Inferno, Antigone.” I jotted the titles down in my brailler, and Ms. Mabel stayed the entire time, telling me whenever Ms. Spencer wrote anything on the board, which was approximately seven hundred times a minute. Had teachers always written on the board this much? How had I not noticed, and how would I ever manage without help? Before my accident, I would have celebrated extra hours to write my in-class exams or finish assignments. But now that I need extra time and someone else to read the board to me, I feel furious and proud and want to show everyone that I don’t need anything “special,” even though I clearly do. I hate the word special.

  I was considering this when someone started crying uncontrollably. I didn’t know who it was, except that it wasn’t me, thank god. No one was surprised; since Claire, crying is like clearing your throat in Sauberg. People walk the streets weeping. Ms. Spencer just clucked her mouth and said there were grief counselors downstairs to help us “deal with our feelings.” When class ended, Ms. Mabel stayed to talk to Ms. Spencer about getting me my assignments in advance so she and I could translate them into braille, and I tuned them out until they were done, when Spark and I felt our way toward the door and stood there groping around for Logan. But she wasn’t back yet.

  “Hey, Emma,” someone else said, and I recognized Blythe Keene’s musical, twinkling voice.

  I thought maybe I could feel her gloaty, working eyes bore a hole into my face, like she was trying to melt my sunglasses and get a glimpse of the damage. But then she put her hand on my arm and said, “Welcome back.”

  I said, “Thanks,” and she left her hand on my arm, like she wanted me to know she was still there, or was going to lead me away or something. People are weirdly casual about touching me now. It’s like I have to see by feeling, so everyone gets to feel me. Or maybe they just don’t want to shock me; it’s like the animal way of warning some other animal that you’re nearby and aren’t going to pounce. The truth is, I was surprised Blythe
had come up to me at all. She’s like a dream girl, beautiful and funny and, I don’t know, herself, I guess. She doesn’t try as hard as everyone else, and she never has. I don’t know why. She didn’t ask how I was, and I was glad.

  But then I couldn’t think of anything to say and we were standing with her hand on my arm, so I asked how she was.

  She said, “I’m managing,” which was very Blythe—honest, not insane or melodramatic or anything, just okay and true. Because Blythe and Claire were best friends like Logan and I are. Inseparable. So even though Blythe’s life is perfect in every way, it’s also ruined. Then she offered, super casually, to walk with me to art. She wasn’t like, “Can I medevac your basket-case ass to art class because you’re blind flying the halls”; she just said, “Wanna walk to Fister’s together?” like we were old friends. Which I guess we are, in a way. I mean, I’ve known Blythe my whole life, but it’s not like she’s ever really paid attention to me.

  I tried to say, “Sure, thanks,” in a normal human voice, without crying or throwing myself into Blythe’s arms. I didn’t wait for Logan, just followed Blythe like a pitiful puppy.

  When Blythe said, “Hey, Zach,” my heart catapulted up into my throat. Zach Haze. I tried not to rock, not to turn my head too wildly toward the sound of his voice when he said, “Hey, Blythe. Hey, Emma, nice dog,” as if nothing had happened, a year and a half hadn’t passed, I hadn’t been blinded, and I hadn’t brought my K9 buddy dog to Lake Main after missing ninth grade. As if I weren’t an invalid. I knew if I opened my mouth I would barf my heart straight into the hallway, so I stayed mute, as usual. I’ve never been able to talk to Zach Haze. Once, in sixth grade, right after Benj was born, Zach asked me if my family was Catholic, even though he must have known we’re not, since my family is famously the only Jewish one ever to live in Sauberg. I’ll never know why Zach asked, because I tried so desperately to think of a fascinating answer that would engage him forever that I stood there for ten minutes like an absolute salt statue. And then he assumed there was something profoundly wrong with me, and never spoke to me again. Which is a tragedy, because I love him desperately. I always have. And he’s one of the few people who has only been made better by my new ability to listen closely: his voice is amazing, deep and smooth and patient—not like he’s slow or searching for the right word, but like he has all the time in the world to talk to you, and wants to mean what he says, so he gets his words right. They always sound sweetly musical, and you can feel the vibration of his voice coming up from the floor, so it shakes you up a little, makes your bones rattle and chatter.