Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

by Sanford D. Greenberg

  Since freshman year, Arthur had been my teacher. Now, once again, he was bringing light into my life. How could I not believe him this time? I moved so that I faced him directly and put my hands around his upper arms. “Arthur,” I said hesitantly, “I get it.” Three positive yet noncommittal words. But this is what was in my head: Now I have to go back to school.

  For a long time afterward, I wanted to think it was Arthur who made my return possible, and in a sense that is true—but the door swings both ways. I was going back because of him, yes, but also for him; the meaning of that took me years to fully grasp. In taking, the receiver offers an opportunity for the giver to give. The giver is a receiver, and the receiver a giver. I owe my life to that balance.

  We said a lot more on that walk down Saranac Avenue. Though it was quiet out, it was noisy inside my head. I started to think about everything I would have to do to return to Columbia. One thing I knew for certain: my decision would outrage just about everyone. I liked that—not outraging my family but shocking the people back at school.

  But the walk with Arthur was for me the beginning of the end of gray hopelessness. It lifted me out of the grave. I felt as if I had been reborn. I now had a clearly defined goal—a thrilling one. I knew there would be risks, but the possible reward was redemption. What I did not know then, of course, were the terrifying and amazing experiences ahead of me. How could I? But that was for later. For now, I could still move. I could go forth. And this time I had a clear direction. This was a gift to me that welled up from far deeper than mere friendship, and soared far beyond it.

  My mother sat with me at the kitchen table thumbing through a stack of mimeographed pages and a fat textbook titled Constitutional Law. Everyone at home seemed to accept that my days at Columbia were over, and I had yet to announce my decision. In the meantime, my mother accepted my stubbornness to continue with my coursework.

  “You’ll have to be patient with me, Sandy,” she said. “I really want to do this right for you.”

  “Take your time,” I told her. “This material is as hard for me as it is for you.”

  “For a girl who didn’t finish high school,” she replied, “this is quite a challenge. I remember studying the Constitution in school. It always had a special meaning for me. Your grandparents could not imagine it—they had all they could do to survive.” She began to cry and could not continue reading. There was complete silence in the house—my father was at work and my siblings were in school. I heard only the crickets and an occasional car passing by.

  “Marbury v. Madison …” she began.

  Not that old chestnut again. I interrupted her: “Can’t we pick another case?”

  “Will you excuse me? I have a headache. I need to lie down for a few minutes. Then we can start again.”

  Her gentle hands closed the book and the folder, and she left the room. I remained in the same kitchen chair on which I always sat during the dinners that had so often been filled with talk and laughter. As I lowered my head onto the table, I could not help but think that, until I returned to college, she would have to juggle her love and responsibilities for my father and my siblings with the need to read to her blind son for hours each day. It was an appalling agenda, but as she had done in the past, she was prepared to sacrifice her very existence to help her family. Constitutional law cases—arcane theory and Latin legal terms—and concepts of physics are heavy going for almost anyone. For my mother, it meant reading dense, unfamiliar material for hours on end; for me, it meant comprehending and sorting out words and phrases that seemed to float in the effluvium of my mind. They were equally exhausting tasks.

  Sue, facing her own college finals, had also been reading to me during those long days and evenings after my return to Buffalo. She knew about my decision to go back to Columbia, and her support gave me courage. But I needed my family to get behind this as well. The courage to tell them would have to come from me.

  It all came down to one inevitable, dramatic moment at the dinner table. The scene lives in my memory with exceptional clarity. I quietly informed my family that I had decided to make a full return to the university. There was a mind-shattering silence. I heard Carl’s fork fall to his plate. Joel, Ruth, and Brenda stirred nervously in their chairs.

  “You can’t go back,” my mother snapped.

  “Duvid [David, my middle name, in Yiddish],” Carl began as he pushed back his chair, its legs screeching on the floor. “No, no, no. You must stay here. I will not allow it. You will not go back. You’re blind, you’re blind.”

  “Carl, stop it,” my mother interjected. The more I remained calm, the more upset she became. But she knew that rationality would have to prevail if she wanted to prevent my return. She needed reasons. Anger was palpable in her voice as she said, “Sandy, it will be impossible for you to go back. Do you understand what it will mean?” She paused, then continued, “Why don’t you stay here in Buffalo? You could teach, you could get a good job, you could go to work for your father—he could train you.”

  I slowly lifted the mashed potatoes to my mouth and chewed them automatically, quivering silently, toes tapping the floor as I waited for the next volley from my father, who was now standing at the head of the table. Afraid of what might happen, I suddenly felt that I had to fill the air with words. But first I tried to deflect the tension by turning toward my siblings, hoping to obtain their sympathy and support.

  “I must go back, don’t you see? If I don’t graduate with my class, I’ll be set back for the rest of my life. I will never recover. And I can’t stay in Buffalo. There’s no future for me here.” They wisely remained mute.

  In the context of the moment, that last statement was a bad lapse of judgment, but not nearly as bad as what I then inexplicably shouted as I jumped up: “Look at what your God did to me!” I pounded the table with my fist, shattering a plate, and ran toward my bedroom. Carl managed to grab my arm, almost ripping it from my shoulder as he dragged me into the adjacent room. My mother followed.

  Having removed me from the presence of the other children, he bent my arm behind my back and flung me onto a sofa. Pouncing upon me, he unwittingly pushed my face into the coarse fabric. My mother, shocked, did not speak. Although I was strong, I was so startled by Carl’s swiftness that for a moment I did not resist. But the pain grew in my arm, neck, and head, and I started to struggle. As I began to suffocate, my head buried into the sofa, Carl screamed, “You will not go! You will not go! You will not go!”

  My mother pleaded. “Sanford, you can’t go back alone. You can’t cross the streets of New York. You’ll get killed.”

  Despite my own strength, I could not escape. Then I felt Carl’s ambivalence as he released his grip. Uncomfortable about what he had done, he was nevertheless still angry at me. I had never encountered such intensity from my mother or so much ferocity from my father. Concern for me had moved him to this violent act. There could be no other reason; he had always been gentle. My parents were united in their determination to keep me from returning to New York City. But they were also terrified because they realized that the eventual outcome might not be to anyone’s liking.

  The taxi took my mother and me on the familiar route from La Guardia Airport through Harlem and then on to Columbia. It was a warm day in the early fall of 1961. As we approached the campus, my mother described the crowded streets and those old, stolid buildings. The day I had hoped and fought for had arrived—and I no longer wanted it. The decaying odors and heavy air of the neighborhood screamed at me, telling me that the day was all too real. I slouched down, my heart sinking. I thought of the unsettled nights since that scene at the dinner table.

  My mother came with me only as far as my old dormitory hallway, where I knew my way around. There was no one else in the hall. The pale concrete blocks were all there was—them and me. We said a quick goodbye. A kiss on the cheek, and she was gone. I didn’t want to picture what was in her heart just then; I had my own immediate problems.

  I f
elt my way down the hall. Then I was standing at an old wooden doorframe that I could feel was gouged and dented from the comings and goings of generations of students. A threshold. There was nothing behind the door except my old room. The doorway’s lintel seemed small—I could feel the top as I reached up, hesitating to enter. All I had to do was open the door and walk through.

  I could still turn around, I thought, make it down the hall and outside to the street with my old green suitcase, hail a cab, pick up my mother at her hotel, and return to the airport. We’d be in Buffalo by nightfall. A known life was waiting for me there—its jaws wide open, dripping safety. Although it was not the life I had imagined for myself, it was still a life, and I could try to make it a good life.

  Before me, on the other hand, there was only the possibility of a life, a possibility so tenuous it seemed improbable. If I opened that door, I would have to go into the room. If I walked into the room, I would have to put my suitcase down. I would stand there alone. The room would smell musty, from the dust burning off the old heaters. I would have to unpack, feel my way around to the dresser, open the drawers, and put away my clothing. I would painstakingly struggle to separate my underwear from my socks, from the T-shirts, and from the slacks so I could get dressed with a minimum of fumbling. I would immediately begin to cut my fingers along the edges of the fraying wood drawers.

  I thought about my old Buffalo neighborhood and how I knew it by heart. I knew the neighbors’ faces and the positions of the trees, the lawns, the stores, and the junkyard. Everything was in its proper place. What did I know of New York City after two years? Proportionally very little. The city was of gargantuan scale and ever changing. If I stayed, I would have to conjure an image of everything I would ever confront: every building, everything I touched, every book I read (correction: that was read to me), every face, every hand I shook. I would have to marry voices with my own constructs of images of people I had never seen. Was my imagination capable of that? Would my mind be able to retain and process it all?

  And Sue would probably not wait for me, I thought. Things would simply intervene for her, the way life intervenes. She might get an opportunity to pursue her education elsewhere, far from Buffalo. There might be a boy she would meet who, she would decide in her practical way, was a better choice. What woman would want to wait for me to take her elbow so that she could open doors for me, lead me around rooms, lead me to tables at dinner, make sure I did not eat the garnish, make sure my clothing matched? The list of difficulties rolled on and on in my thoughts. My stomach hurt, as did my head.

  If I stayed, my downfall would just be a matter of time. I would be doomed. Not in some metaphoric sense but literally: walking out into traffic at the wrong time; stumbling down stairs; slipping in the shower; getting out of a chair and falling, hitting my head on the desk next to mine. To live this new life of mine outside the safety of home would be to thread the needle.

  There was still no one else in the hallway. The other students were not back from vacation, and the campus had a hollow, desolate feel. The boys from good families would still be in their large stone houses in fine neighborhoods. Drivers would bring them back when classes resumed, or they would travel into the city on their own, not a care in the world, just eager to get back into the swing of things. Maybe not eager for the academic work but certainly for hanging out with the guys, goofing around, going to the football games or basketball games or crew meets. Going to fraternity parties and exploring the city and getting into trouble.

  That part of my life was over, and I knew it. There would be no free time. I would have to work on my studies during all my waking hours—and almost all of my hours would be waking ones. If there was any time left over, say at two or three in the morning, I would use that time to write to my family and Sue.

  Standing alone in that hallway, I was scared. I doubt that I had been that scared before, or had really known what it meant to be scared—to have an acrid taste in your mouth, to feel your bowels loosen, your gut turning over on itself. My hands and legs were shaking. I was thinking, “I cannot do this. I…can…not…do…this.” My fingers ached in anticipation of all the hurt they would encounter, which would be extensive. I could hardly breathe. I opened the door.

  I stood for a while in the open doorway, my arms resting on the doorposts, my face turned toward the room. I was deluged by the memories of those dark, sleepless nights during the past school year, with pain in my eyes so sharp I thought they would burst from their sockets. The cold packs on my eyes, the pacing of bare feet on the cold floor, the futile squeezing of the temples. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I had known I was going blind, but I refused to accept the fact, choosing instead to prolong my denial and—foolishly, arrogantly—trying to force myself to live a normal life in the face of impending crisis. A tour de force of my will, my determination—and one hundred percent misplaced, leading inexorably to this day, this door.

  Yet something embedded somewhere within my skull told me that the possibility for success was still there. Not just ordinary success, either, such as safety. But material success, which would involve being able to take care of myself and my family, to read and enjoy all the things one never has the time to enjoy fully—art, literature, music, whatever. The possibility of that greater safety—which I can assure you is of very special importance to blind people—was there. I could feel it, and it was an affirmation of my decision to return to Columbia. But it was hardly a guarantee.

  I walked in, my heart pumping with fear and excitement, and set my suitcase down. The room smelled musty. I touched each thing in the room, slowly, carefully, deliberately. Oddly, everything seemed to be exactly as it had been when I had left in a panic. How could that be? I sank into the large, soft leather chair, which was just where it had been before. I sighed, the burden of the world on my shoulders. There was no relief in that sigh; I had no idea whether I’d made the right decision.

  10

  The Blind Senior

  The first weeks of classes as a senior were nerve-racking. I was so intent on concentrating during the lectures that, in a sort of reverse Zen exercise, absorbing what was said became ever more difficult. I walked away from classes each day with my mind tied in confusing knots of sound and in mounting dread that I wouldn’t be up to the challenges in front of me. The senior year at Columbia was generally considered to be easier than the junior year. But I was already many credits behind, and it was going to take enormous amounts of concentrated effort just to keep up with a normal workload.

  Gradually, though, I began to open up my brain the way a fish opens its gills—it does this or it dies. I memorized virtually every sentence read to me that year, something of which I did not know I was capable. Instead of cramming before an exam and then dumping the information and forgetting about it, I had to absorb material in a way I never had before. I still remember much of what I learned then. And I discovered that acquiring knowledge at such an insane pace would be a continuous wonder and joy for my life within the mind.

  In order not to waste a single moment preparing for classes, I saddled myself with anything and everything I thought might be useful. I purchased all the required books and then some, as well as dozens of blank recording tapes. I prospected for readers among my friends and acquaintances. Professors selected students they thought would be able to help me. I called up all the institutions for the blind to request volunteer readers. (I will forever be deeply grateful to those readers at Columbia and in my later studies. They made possible the life I was trying to build back for myself. Many became dear friends for life as well.)

  Through all these people, I was able to set up a most intricate and complex web of meetings. My planned schedule of readers began at eight o’clock in the morning and, except for classes, would end at midnight. I set aside no time for breakfast but reserved ten minutes for lunch and a half hour for dinner. Weekdays from midnight until 2:00 a.m. as well as Saturday nights were reserved for listening to tapes. I wante
d to feel secure, so I clutched at everything.

  My elaborate scheduling did not work quite as planned. Many of my readers, with the best of intent, were nonetheless human and did not show up as promised. Others came late. Some came at the right time but on the wrong day. Still others came on the right day but at the wrong time. There could be four-hour stretches with no readers, and then several would show up for the same one-hour period. To make matters worse, some of the friends with whom I made arrangements to travel around campus to difficult locations would fail to appear, leaving me stranded somewhere. To the last, however, and in spite of his own demanding schedule, Arthur remained my strongest and most reliable source of support. Staying true to our pact, he always came to my rescue. Sue helped as well, regularly sending me readings on tape.

  My volunteer readers recited The Aeneid to me that first semester. They read to me about Renaissance art and abstract expressionism, the Schrödinger equation, quantum mechanics, the Battle of Stalingrad, Shantideva, Gregorian chant and twelve-tone music, Thermopylae, and cultural variations. The voices of the readers became one voice.

  Aside from the need for readers and some study notes I could make in very large, thick black letters using the shred of sight left to me (which would be lost all too soon), I began to rely on my tape recorder—one of my new survival tools. Since the time my mother and Sue began reading books aloud to me, I had had only their voices as sources of information. By the beginning of summer, that process frustrated me. It was an enormous imposition on them and served as well to make my dependence virtually complete. Those feelings gnawed at me. I had resisted asking for a tape recorder because of the financial burden it would place on my parents, but I finally summoned up the courage to ask, and they responded by purchasing a reel-to-reel machine.