My face felt hot, and I didn’t want her to go on, especially in front of Logan, so I jumped in fast: “I have friends—and sisters—there’s no way I could survive without,” I said. “So I’m just, you know, trying to be like them, I guess.” I don’t know what Logan thought of this; she was quieter at their house than I’ve ever heard her anywhere. I squeezed Naomi’s hand and she squeezed mine back and I thought I could feel her smile. As for Annabelle, she didn’t hear any of it, because she was with Spark, sprinting for the yard.
• • •
The last day of school was a half day, and I told my sisters I would walk home from Lake Main alone. I wanted a minute to think, before Logan and Annabelle and Spark came over and we headed together to the Mayburg place for the afternoon.
On my way home, I listened to my neighborhood, wind coming through the green summer leaves. The concrete sidewalk was a chalky scratch under the heels of some short cowgirl boots Leah had just handed down to me, all like, “You can remember me by these when I’m away in the fall.” They were very different from my Converse, and made me feel weird, almost like Leah instead of me.
I thought of Sarah, working on her essay, hoping she can get in somewhere for next year. Leah will already be a sophomore then. Maybe it wasn’t that much fun always being in the same grade as Leah; maybe Sarah waited on purpose so she could have her own year, between Leah and me. I can’t even take credit for that idea, actually; it’s something I heard my mom say to my dad late at night. But unlike anyone else in my family, I managed to keep it to myself.
My white cane clicked out its efficient rhythm. I thought of what it showed me: cracks, leaves, a wrapper, small rocks—lots. When I got to our house, instead of going inside, I pushed open the gate to the backyard. It smelled like my entire life up until that moment: rustling red and gold leaves, wood smoke, Halloweens, new pencils, binders, notebooks, library books, cold nights when icicles hung from the roof of our house, summer dinners, listening to the hiss and pop of my parents’ grill. I thought of the bristly night I sneaked out alone, held it close like a proud secret, like flying blind down the hill on skis and finding Seb and Dee at the bottom, waiting.
Music was pouring from my mom’s studio, and the faint smell of cigarette smoke, and even though I felt it coming and tried to avoid it, I remembered the accident suddenly: the wet cut grass, paint on the buildings, hot bricks and barbecue and dogs and water; then the icy metal machines and plastic tubes of the hospital, even the moments, days, and months just after, full of terror. The burning dark of it, the way I felt, screaming, when I woke again and again and couldn’t open my eyes. I took a breath, let the memory play out, tried not to put it into my blood or bones, not to store the fear of it for later.
I thought, walking into the yard, how little there now was to trip over, how the riding toys and soccer balls and wading pools were put away each day. How it had taken my mom and me forever to organize our drawers, closets, house. How we were still at it, and how ongoing is a shiny word and done, over, and gone are grimy, sad ones. I remembered how my mom walked my fingers over spoons and forks, scissors, tape and paper, the night she retaught me to wrap a present, poured shampoo in a huge, round bottle and conditioner into a tube. How every time I had gotten a haircut the year I was at Briarly I cried because what difference did it make? So I stopped cutting my hair at all. I haven’t had it cut once this year. Because I couldn’t see, so what difference did it make what my hair looked like to everybody else? I thought how everyone in my family had stopped using the word see, as if it was synonymous with get or realize or understand. Can’t you see?
But now I’m going to start using that word again. Because why not? Because I can still see Seb’s mouth, even though he and Dee are in love and I’ll never touch him again. And I can see Baby Lily’s little sharp teeth, and her walking. I can see a lot about what’s true and what truth does—which, as Coltrane says, is to free us. If we’re careful with it. Logan’s mom is going to be out this Saturday night, though, so we’re thinking maybe a few of us can hang out there. Logan has already picked out my outfit, which consists entirely of her clothes.
I made my way to my mom’s studio, my white cane like a magic wand, sparkling and lighting up the way there, and knocked gently on the door, which I could feel was slightly open anyway.
“Come in, sweetie,” my mom said. I walked over to her voice and she put an arm around me. Pasta, talcum powder, and the metal tang of paint, lavender, smoke. Her skin was warm and damp, and I snuggled in close for a long minute. My mom kissed the top of my head and we stood there, listening. Baby Lily was in her swing; here was her milky, sleepy breathing, here was the mechanized rocking. I imagined the octopus, seal, clown fish, starfish turning a slow circle overhead.
“How was your last day?” my mom asked when I pulled away. I thought how if I hadn’t moved, she might have kept her arms around me for the rest of the day and night, even though—or maybe because—time doesn’t stop even if you stay still. I didn’t blame her. It must be weird to have the tiny people who were once your babies in swings grow up into huge strangers who don’t sit on your lap anymore. I hope Benj and Baby Lily never stop sitting on my lap or burying their faces in my neck.
“It was okay,” I said. “I missed Spark kind of terribly.”
“Of course. He’s coming with Annabelle, right?”
“Right.”
“You’re the best person I know, Emma Sasha.” She thought for a minute. “Did you and Ms. Mabel say good-bye?”
“Yeah. She cried,” I said. “But I reminded her I’d still need her next fall.”
“Not as much as she needs you, I bet,” my mom said. “How were your other teachers?”
“Ms. Spencer and Mr. Hawes didn’t seem that sad,” I said. “But Mrs. Fincter actually hugged me; it was like falling into a well of turpentine and mothballs.”
My mom laughed.
“She said if I burn another project, can I please tell her in advance so she can watch the installation. She totally knew I was bullshitting.” I sat down on the old corduroy couch against the wall. “But she loved Sarah’s pictures. And she gave me an A, so.”
I suddenly asked what my mom was making. She only smokes cigarettes when she’s actually working. As soon as I asked, I thought how it might be the first question I’ve asked her about herself since I lost my sight.
Her voice cracked a little bit over the surface of the words. “It’s a painting, actually.”
“Oh. Are you going back to painting?”
“Maybe,” she said. “At least for the moment.” Her words were sorrowful gray and black pebbles you’d see in a bowl of water, wavy and blurred maybe, but still hard stones.
“Would you like to see it, Emma, sweetie?” she asked. She was apologizing to me.
“Is it dry?”
“Dry enough.”
I stood again. My mom took my hands in hers and guided them to the surface of the canvas, where I felt around and started to make out the edges of a raised circle with other circles in its middle—buttons, maybe, something smooth and round. I felt the places where the paint stood up into stiff little mounds, marking a figure: arms, legs, and, at the bottom, a soft scrap of fabric, maybe velvet. I let my fingers pause over each edge, felt another small circle with smaller buttons on it. Eyes, maybe. And two long, soft pieces of something else.
“What do you think?” my mom asked.
“Is it me and Spark?”
“You’re a genius,” she said.
“If you glue cotton balls and buttons and a long, velvet tail to a canvas, then doesn’t that make it a sculpture?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s really a painting.”
I ran my hands up and down the shape of what I could feel was a body—legs bent, in motion—and, at the bottom, a fabric dog whose legs also felt like they were sticking out almost horizontal. My mo
m had outlined all the edges, maybe so I could get each shape.
“Are we running?”
“Yes. It’s the day you ran home.”
I thought maybe if I ignored the fact that she was crying, she might stop. “What am I wearing?”
“What do you want to be wearing?”
“Am I not filled in yet?”
“I’m willing to take requests, if they’re reasonable.” The weepy sound in her voice was gone.
“How about a red hoodie? A velvety one? Maybe like whatever you made Spark’s ears out of?”
“Velvet it is,” my mom said. Now she sounded almost cheerful, almost red again herself.
“And Converse,” I said. “Or maybe the cowgirl boots Leah gave me. Up to you.” I felt the face quietly for a minute, first the forehead and then the buttons where my eyes were. I lingered on the left one, felt a line, maybe made of wire, across it.
“Are these sunglasses?” I asked.
“No,” my mom said. “Would you like me to add them?”
“What’s there now?”
“Just your eyes,” she said.
“Like they are for real?” I asked.
“Pretty much.”
“With the scar? Is that what this is?” I ran my fingers over the extra diagonal line again.
“I can add sunglasses if you’d like me to.”
I kept my hands on the painting, imagining peach and pink, the way I thought of the skin on Jenna’s and Naomi’s cheeks, or my mom’s or Babiest Baby Lily’s, even my own. I ran my fingers again and again over the ridge and wire of the closed left eye button. My mom had used something soft for the eyelashes, maybe embroidery thread. The paint on the sky and grass and background felt dry and flaky, and I was gentle so I wouldn’t ruin any surfaces.
My mom named the colors as my fingers moved over their surfaces: purple, black, red, gray, white. When she was done, I moved my hands from the painting to my mom, touched the cotton of her T-shirt, her upper arm, her face. She wasn’t crying. Baby Lily was starting to stir in her swing; I could hear her smacking her lips and babbling.
I said, “It’s lunchtime, big girl!” toward her, and she said, “Mema,” which is definitely Emma, because she only uses one syllable for “Ma.” “Right. Emma!” I told her. Then I touched my own face; slid my sunglasses off my nose and pushed them up into my hair. I was thinking as I did it that maybe the gesture would become a habit. Sunglasses make cute headbands. And it felt good to get the hair out of my eyes—I hadn’t realized how hot it had gotten until I moved it.
I felt the scar on my eye, as familiar as my mom’s skin or the sound of her voice, speaking colors to me. When the doorbell rang, I stayed still for a minute, facing my mom before I went to let in Logan and Annabelle and Spark.
“Don’t bother with sunglasses,” I told her. “I like it how it is.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my daughters, Dalin Alexi and Light Ayli, for inspiring me to write Blind, for introducing me to the inimitably beautiful children’s book The Black Book of Colors, and for believing that Emma Sasha Silver is a real person. Thank you for blind millipedes, military Braille, hours of practice on the Perkins Brailler, and for drawing the most stylish and beautiful Emmas ever. Thank you for understanding—in your profound way—the inextricable link between fiction and nonfiction, between what’s dreamy and what’s real. Thank you to your sweet friends, Pilot and Ever, Solange and Deji, Jessie and Zachary, Penny Lou, Lola, and Lillie, who keep our house and life lit up with childhood friendships. I love you two “more than the world,” as you’ve taught me to imagine and say.
Thank you, Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind, for being such a generous and gracious organization and resource. James Kesteloot, your driver’s education test and first job anecdotes shaped Sebastian’s life, bravery, and heart. Thank you for your wisdom and warmth, for letting me try on your glasses, for showing me so much about sight and insight, and for being a dream reader. Thank you Dominic Calabrese for the tour, for encouragement, and for so many introductions. Katie Howe, thank you for the months of wildly inspiring braille lessons. I loved them. Mary Zabelski, thank you for the beautiful writing by and about your daughter, Cara Dunn-Yates. Wilma McCallister, thank you for welcoming me into your home and sharing your talking computer, slate and stylus, guide dog, and math tools; for jump-starting my braille; and for Rick’s and your fabulous gallon milk-carton clothing label idea. Thank you, Salmaan See, for Beep Ball, for meeting me for ice cream, for the tutorial in white canes, for explaining what the world feels and looks like to you. Charli Saltzman and Johanna Brooke, thank you for being so forthcoming and generally awesome, and for your thoughts about blind adolescence, prettiness, nude bras and rubber-banded eyeliners.
Thank you, Jill Grinberg, my friend, agent, and ally in all, for reading this book and all my books at every stage, for being honest, compassionate, ferocious and everywhere all the time for me.
Regina Hayes, I will keep your elegant editorial letters forever with Emma’s polished rocks, plastic grapes, and valentines. You are a treasure and I am enormously grateful for your wise, gentle, and essential input. Ken Wright, your constant support and engagement made this book a pleasure to work on and publish. Thank you Joy Peskin and Jen Hunt for your belief in and help with early drafts of Blind.
Robert Pinsky, Rosanna Warren, and Derek Walcott, thank you for being my teachers first when I was really young and then forever. You are still and always the first row of readers in my mind.
Anne Carson, thank you for the idea, expressed magnificently in your writing, that loneliness has an opposite. And thank you to the writers, readers, and friends who make my work and life that opposite: Emily Rapp, Cheryl Strayed, Nicholas Montemarano, Gina Frangello, Dika Lam, Thea Goodman, Molly Smith-Metzler, Emily Tedrowe, Zoe Zolbrod, Beth Hopson, Kristen Garrison, Bess Miller, Raisa Tolchinksy, Daming Chen, Anke Schrader, Cui Jian, Alex Jie, Yan Ping, Dallas Roberts, Olivier Sylvain, Alex Federman, Teri Boyd, Sasha Hemon, Gabe Lyon, Vojislav and Ivanka Pejovic, Yvette Charbaneau, and Brendan O’Connell (Lara Manalli, thank you for the best-ever line about puberty!), Bear Korngold, Logan and Stephanie Hart-LaVail, Malik Dohrn, Lisa Frecerro, Jacai Dohrn, Chesa Boudin, Harriet Beinfield, Efrem Korngold, Kathy Boudin, BJ and Dandara Richards, the Ayers-Minters, and David Gilbert. Jamie Klassel and Danielle Slavick, thank you for giving me eggs to throw at the walls. Yuan Qing, thank you for the imagination-shaping music—in my life and this book. Ann Thomas, Dan and Hannah Rubenstein, you are amazing models of graciousness and courage, and the inspiration for Emma’s name, after your brave, beloved Emma Rubenstein.
Thank you to the community of generous, smart, compassionate, and hard-working teachers, staff, and parents at Nettelhorst Elementary School in Chicago, and Huron and Community High Schools in Ann Arbor Michigan.
Christine Jones, Donna Eis, Erika Helms, Julia Hollinger, Lara Phillips, Olati Johnson, Heidi Schumacher, Shanying Chen, Tamar Kotz, and Willow Schrager, thank you not only for reading my endless drafts, but also for understanding and loving me all my life.
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, thank you for an endless supply of support and energy—for so many who need you. You defy every stereotype I’ve heard about in-laws (and outlaws). You are the village it takes to raise us and our girls, and the activists we need to help countless people work toward a more just world, particularly for children and teenagers.
Thank you to my utterly unique family, Kenneth, Judith, Jake, Aaron, Melissa, Adam, McKenna, Gail and Isaac, and the Mazurs, Silvermintzs and Kaufmanns, particularly my beloved great aunt Naomi and uncle Saul, who have shown us all how to live big, thoughtful lives, and how to be fabulously married.
Mom and Dad, thank you for being so loving that I’m unable to write a bad family, for our surreal, fantastic (ongoing) childhoods all over the world, for buying me a new book for every book I read, for all the tea
ching and reading and talking, for summers in China, for editing and thinking and grand-parenting with such adventurousness and thoughtfulness, and for celebrating us and all the small people, projects, buildings, books, (and even mistakes) we make with your fierce, loyal, absolute love.
My final thank you’s will forever be for Zayd: you are my co-pilot, closest writer, reader, thinker, editor, world and word explorer, imaginer, analyzer, understander, father of my dream-real girls, day and night light, unequivocal love of my lives.
Rachel DeWoskin spent her twenties in China as the unlikely star of a nighttime soap opera, an experience that inspired her memoir, Foreign Babes in Beijing. She has written two novels, Repeat After Me, about a young Chinese dissident who marries his English language teacher in New York City; and Big Girl Small, the coming-of-age story of a sixteen-year-old with dwarfism. Big Girl Small received the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and Rachel’s conversations with young readers made her want to write her first YA novel. Blind is that book; while writing it, Rachel learned braille at the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind and was dazzled by the grit and generosity of the visually impaired and blind friends who shared their stories. Rachel lives in Chicago and Beijing with her husband, playwright Zayd Dohrn, and their two little girls.
Visit her at racheldewoskin.com.
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