Blind

by Rachel Dewoskin

  “What do you mean you’re vanishing, Emma?” Of course she would land on that. She sounded desperately unhappy.

  “I just mean when someone dies, they’re gone. So Claire vanished, and so did part of everyone who knew her. And I already lost my eyes, so it’s like, I don’t know, I’m being erased every time some new terrible thing happens, and they keep happening. Like the rabbit. And other things. It’s like I’m losing pieces, disappearing, kind of dying, even if it’s, whatever, gradual.”

  I don’t even know if I meant to make it better or worse, but my mom stopped breathing, and I kept on, picking up speed. “Now all that’s left of Claire is a conversation no one can even agree on—and a huge pile of meaningless junk: trophies and notes and photos. And that’s what it will be for all of us. Some pens and plastic grapes and diaries or whatever. It’s like we’re already ghosts stumbling through our own useless stuff. I mean, that’s it. That’s what gets left from our lives! Who cares how you live or who you are if it adds up to balls of clay and boards you formed into walls and a roof? And it does. That’s what I mean by shadows. That we’re all going to be utterly gone forever, so how real are we even now?”

  “But Emma,” my mom almost shouted, “we’re alive! And my god, what about love? What about family? Joy? And why is stuff meaningless?” She was panicking. “Objects help! They’re not meaningless, and we make them because they outlast us,” she went on, missing my point so wildly that I actually imagined her swinging naked into the conversation from some incredibly weird angle and crashing into what I had said. She was thinking of her sculptures, of course, trying to make everything better, but I didn’t want her to make it better. I just wanted her to hear me.

  “Stuff helps people when we lose each other. It’s not meant to replace human life, but to represent it, to memorialize. We need graves, shrines, art,” she said.

  I hadn’t been to Claire’s grave. Maybe it was covered with snow. Frozen lilies, teddy bears, goggles. I thought of Claire underneath all the stuff, alive. She ran into class once, late, flushed, her face all blotchy, almost as multicolored as her hair. I thought of her putting melty pink pills on her tongue, and then her tongue, also pink in my mind, like taffy. I saw her drinking, or doing whatever it was that made people say she had a problem—dizzy Claire; smart Claire; night-swimming, dancing-naked-on-the-roof-with-Blythe Claire; betraying-her-parents, taking-the-ghosty-bowl-that-day-from-the-Mayburg-place-when-we-were-kids, washing-up-dead-in-the-lake Claire. Which Claire had dragged her down to the lake and thrown her in? Which Emma might drag me into the water? Had Claire been terrified of herself?

  Baby Lily started crying, and I realized it was because I was crying. My mom reached out for me, but I pushed her hand away, recovered. “I’ll go, Mom,” I said.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll even write a note excusing you from the discussion if you—”

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “I already have people throwing special-needs favors at me day and night. Do you think I want to be considered mentally ill, too?”

  “Emma,” my mom said. “Everyone agrees that you’re doing brilliantly, in school and out. I mean, look at what you’ve accomplished, and it hasn’t even been two years! There’s no reason to throw barbs like that.”

  I almost told her about someone leaving the skateboard in front of my locker, because I knew it would be exponentially more painful for her than it had been for me. I almost told her about Logan and Zach. But I settled on a different and equally successful attack: “Yeah? Everyone agrees? Even Dad?”

  My mom swallowed hard, and Baby Lily’s crying turned into straight shrieking. I put my hands over my ears, saw flashes of the screaming, like lights in my mind.

  “Especially your dad,” my mom said over the screaming, loud enough for me to hear. I felt bad for her.

  She carried Babiest Baby Lily downstairs, and I pulled the wire glasses out of my new hideous lump of wet clay, rolled it back into a ball, and stuck two big, round plastic grapes in where the glasses had been. Then I taped surgical X’s over the grapes. Eyes. Isn’t it weird that in art, crossing out your eyes equals death?

  • • •

  My mom must have said something to him, because first thing the next morning, my dad came and found me in her studio, where I was shredding paper. He asked if I would go to the hospital with him. It was Sunday, so I was surprised.

  “To work?” I asked.

  “I don’t have to work, but I want to take you there. Would you mind?”

  I said of course I’d go, and felt excited and honored, even though I thought it was probably a trick of my mom’s to make me feel excited and honored. Sometimes placebos work even if you suspect they’re placebos.

  In spite of the thrill of being asked to go somewhere alone with my dad, I felt so tired in the car that my head kept falling down onto my chest and then snapping back up. My dad was telling me a story about a colleague of his who thought a patient had one disease but then it turned out she had some other disease. Then he asked me about school, about Logan, about Mr. Hawes, about my LFTB presentation, about gym, English class, Antigone, The Inferno.

  I felt like I couldn’t really respond. “You tired, Em?” my dad finally asked, and I felt him turn away from driving, toward me, and the car swerve a little. I reached up involuntarily and grabbed the bar above the window. “Why don’t you rest a little bit and I’ll wake you when we get there,” my dad suggested.

  But I didn’t want to. Even though I didn’t want to answer his endless questions, I also couldn’t remember the last time I’d been alone with my dad, except on occasional doctor visits and once when he took me in for my final surgery. But I could hardly remember that, and I had been too afraid and miserable to think, let alone enjoy his company in the car. Now here I was, in the front seat, going to work with him for some reason other than my own tragic health, and I was too tired and distracted to absorb it.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t want to sleep. Tell me why you wanted me to come.”

  “There’s someone I want you to meet,” my dad said.

  “A doctor?” I asked, my hope sinking.

  “No,” he said. “A child, actually.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Her name. Annabelle,” my dad said. “She’s nine.”

  “Why do you want me to meet her?”

  “Because I think you might be able to help her,” he said, and I was surprised. I was used to my parents taking me to people who they thought might be able to help me.

  “Really? How?”

  “Wait until you meet her,” he said. “I think you’ll understand each other.”

  By the time we pulled into the parking lot at the hospital, I felt both accomplished and also wrung out, like I’d just taken a standardized test. And, as always, unsure of whether I’d passed.

  The smell inside the hospital made my pulse quicken, and the birds inside my body started flying in opposite directions, pulling my ribs and lungs apart. I held tightly to Spark’s leash with my left hand, and my white cane with my right. My dad put his hand on my shoulder and guided me to the cafeteria, where I said “no thanks” to food or a drink but he bought two muffins and two juices anyway, and a little bag of Swedish fish, so I would have something to take to Annabelle. I began to feel nervous that I would be a disappointment to her, and therefore also to my dad. When he’d first asked me to come with him to the hospital, I thought it was a favor to me, but in the café, when he was buying the Swedish fish and asking me what else I might want or thought a nine-year-old might want, I began to feel like I was actually doing him a favor. And I didn’t mind, but I also didn’t want to get it wrong.

  “I don’t know her, Dad,” I said. “Maybe after I meet her, I can come back down and get something she’d actually want.”

  “Good point,” he said.

  “Have a good day, Dr
. Silver,” the cashier said, and I had a flash of his being famous at the hospital, everyone knowing him as Dr. Silver. I wondered if I’d ever be known anywhere for anything other than being a tragic disaster girl. I moved along the slick floor and into the elevator, where my dad said, “Em, can you please push sixteen?” This was another test I wanted to pass. So I slid my index fingers across the cold steel braille, felt for the backward V that turns letters into numbers, then found the 1 and the 6 and pushed.

  “Thanks,” my dad said—proudly, I thought—and his voice bounced off the metal walls of the elevator as we rode up and up. There were other people in the elevator. I wondered who.

  On the sixteenth floor, my dad pushed open the door to Annabelle’s room, and I smelled lilies and balloons and something else—candy, maybe; a plasticky red cherry smell I couldn’t quite identify. Maybe lip gloss. Or Twizzlers. It reminded me of Logan.

  “Emma, this is Annabelle. Annabelle, I brought my daughter Emma to meet you today.”

  There was no voice, just a sound I recognized right away as the movement of a mechanical bed. I couldn’t tell whether its occupant had moved it up or down. I can tell if people have moved higher or lower only if they speak; closer or further away I can hear in other ways.

  My dad waited a bit for Annabelle to say something, so I tried to be Leah about it, said in a friendly, big voice, “Hey, Annabelle, so nice to meet you.”

  Still nothing.

  “Emma is blind, too, Annabelle,” my dad said, and I heard a swallow come from the bed, like maybe some crying was rising up in Annabelle’s throat.

  “Can I sit on your bed with you for a little while?” I asked.

  My dad said quietly, “She’s nodding.”

  I nudged Spark forward, and we made our way to the side of Annabelle’s mattress, which I felt with my hands before hoisting myself up and sitting on the edge. I felt small suddenly, my legs dangling off the mechanical bed. Annabelle still didn’t speak, but I felt her hand come out from under the thin, bleachy hospital quilt and feel around for where I was. She found me and, once she had, left her hand limp on my lap, like it had died there. I picked it up and held it.

  My dad must have been watching this. His voice sounded like a clogged drain when he said, “I’m going to let you two hang out together for a bit. Emma, push the call button on Annabelle’s bed when you want me to come back.”

  “Okay, Dad,” I said, and the words sounded strong to me, like soldiers marching out of my mouth in a neat line. Maybe because my dad was sad and scared for us, or because Annabelle was too freaked out even to speak yet, the fact of my being able to talk seemed suddenly like a huge achievement, one my dad would have no choice but to notice. We knew something he didn’t know—what it was like to lose our sight. We were older than my dad in this regard, more experienced. His shoes made a shiny sound on the floor, and then he pulled the door closed after him. I heard the swallowing sound in Annabelle’s throat again, and I knew she was trying not to cry.

  “You can cry in front of me,” I told her. “I can’t see anyway.” I laughed a little bit and squeezed her hand, hoping to cheer her up, but she took a short, gasping breath and started to sob. I was afraid then, because I didn’t know her story, or what had happened to her or her vision or her face, but I reached over and felt her face anyway, thinking if it was as terrible as mine, she would be bandaged. I put my fingers lightly on her cheeks, then moved them up to her eyes, which were closed and wet from crying but not wrapped or patched.

  “It’s really scary, right?” I said. “I cried all the time, too. But not anymore.” I didn’t mention Claire, or the fact that I had cried the day before.

  I felt Annabelle’s small face bob up and down on the pillow. She had a cute nose, I noticed, tracing my fingers over it: little, with a slight tilt up at the bottom. I leaned forward and felt around on the tray I knew would be right next to her bed. I found a box, felt its edges, slid it toward myself, and pulled a tissue out. I put it in Annabelle’s hand, and she took it, lifted it almost involuntarily to her face to wipe the tears, but I stopped her hand. “Feel it for a second,” I said, and she did.

  “It feels white, right?” She said nothing, and remained motionless on the bed.

  “You can wipe your face if you want to,” I said, and she did. I felt her little arms move up to her face and scrub at the tears, and deduced that she hadn’t been in an accident, because she wasn’t gentle with her face. It must have been a disease that made her eyes stop working.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” I asked her, partly because I thought she might, and partly because I thought she might want me to tell her what happened to me; I think it’s weird for older kids to talk about themselves before younger kids get a chance to. It’s something I learned from Naomi and Jenna and Benj. Mostly, if a little kid wants to know something about you, they’ll ask. Adults who talk about themselves in front of kids are creepy. And so are big kids who don’t ask little kids questions first. But since Annabelle didn’t say anything, I was kind of at a loss.

  So I asked, “Do you want me to tell you what happened to me?” I put my hands gently on her chin, so I could feel her nod.

  “I was at a Fourth of July party with my family—my mom and dad and my sisters and brother. I have five sisters—I only had four then because my littlest sister, Lily, wasn’t born yet—and my brother, Benj,” I said, feeling like I was falling headfirst down a mole hole. I steadied myself, remembering. “We were standing in the front—my dad and I were, I mean; my sisters and my mom and Benj were on a blanket. But anyway, we got there early, just so we’d have a good place to see the fireworks, and my dad and I love them most, so we wanted to be right up near where they were lighting them. But then when they started, one of them blew up backward and sprayed fire and pieces of the bottle rocket into the crowd right where we were standing. And some of it hit my eyes, and they were burned.” My face felt very cold, and there were colors all over the place in the room.

  Annabelle was making the swallowing noise again.

  I tried to focus on her instead of myself, even though it was the first time I’d told the story. It hadn’t sounded sharp and broken and dangerous, the way it felt in my mind. I added, in a quiet voice, “So that was a really bad thing that happened, right?” I could hear her crying, and feel her nodding.

  “I don’t know what happened to you,” I said, “but I bet it was also bad. And scary. Did you used to be able to see?” She nodded again. “And now you can’t, right?” Right.

  We both sat there for a while, thinking about each other.

  “I learned to read again,” I told her. “Braille. I can get all my favorite books, and my computer talks to me.” She stirred a bit at this, not enough that anyone watching would have been able to pick it up, I think, but just enough that I could sense it, feel it.

  “You like computers?”

  More nodding.

  “Me too. I like science, too,” I said, thinking before I added, “Especially robots.”

  At that, she sat up a little straighter.

  “There are robots to help kids like us,” I said. “Computers that read to you, sticks that feel the ground in front of you, music players that put on whatever song you ask for. Sometimes,” I said, “I even feel magical.”

  She was so still I thought she might be holding her breath.

  “I pay really super-close attention to stuff, like this.” I squeezed my face into its tightest focus position. I had never even considered doing my focus-in thing in front of anyone else, but I knew she needed it, and besides, just like I couldn’t see her crying, she couldn’t see me struggling, wishing, hoping so hard it made my head explode.

  “When I focus as hard as I can now, I can understand—or kind of see—almost anything,” I told her. “I couldn’t really understand as much before I was blind. Maybe because I didn’t have to.”

&
nbsp; She swallowed. I was thinking how shy I would have been if she hadn’t been shyer than me. How scared I would have been if she hadn’t been more scared than me. How everything we feel depends on who we’re feeling it next to. I felt grateful suddenly for my sisters and Benj.

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” I asked her. She nodded.

  “One?” She shook her head.

  “Two?” She nodded.

  “Brothers?” She nodded.

  “Both of them?” She nodded again.

  “Are they older?”

  At this, she took my hand and put it on hers, so that I could feel she was holding up one finger.

  “One is older?” I guessed.

  She nodded, vigorously this time, and I had the thought that she might be smiling. I smiled, and put her hand on my mouth so she could tell.

  “What about the other?” I asked. “Younger?” She nodded, and put my hand on her mouth. She was smiling, too.

  “They’ll be able to help you figure out fun ways to set up your house so you can get around. And maybe read you stories. My sisters did that for a long time, before I learned to read braille. But now I read to them, late at night, when we’re supposed to have the lights out, because I can read in the dark, under my covers, and nobody knows.”

  I could hear Annabelle’s breathing. It had picked up, and had a smooth rhythm.

  “Do you want to know the best thing, though?” I asked. And before she could even respond, I said, “You might get a dog like Spark.”

  At the sound of his name, Spark perked up. “Stand up, boy,” I told him, and he stood up on his hind legs, putting his face up to where Annabelle and I were. “You can pet him,” I told her, and she reached over with both her hands and felt the sides of Spark’s face. He wagged his tail happily, and she leaned her face in close to his. He was so overcome with delight that his tongue came flying out of his mouth and he slobbered all over her face.