At home, Mike climbed out of his bed and into his new world. It did not look black to him—he remembered black. Rather, it looked like nothing, like the space directly behind one’s head. He climbed kitchen counters, squirmed out windows, ran down toy-littered hallways—a constant ballet of tripping and colliding he hardly noticed for his excitement to get to the next place. Mike felt no surprise at being unable to see; to his four-year-old brain he just was who he was.
The kindergarten wanted no part of Mike. What if he got hurt? What if he couldn’t keep up? What if everything? Ori Jean told them that she would accept responsibility, even for everything, so long as they let Mike try.
On the first day of school, she put a pair of dark glasses on her son and fixed him a brown-bag lunch. The glasses were the tenth pair Mike had owned; he had smashed the others by running into things. Ori Jean tied his shoes, kissed his face, and sent him and five-year-old Diane to the bus stop. They held hands and kicked stones along the way.
Mike climbed onto the bus, but when he went to sit down he faced the wrong way and fell onto the floor. For a moment he lay stunned. When he found the seat he thought, “I bet I would have known how to sit down if I could see.” It had been fifteen months since his accident. It was the first time he had ever thought about being blind.
At the start of the school day, the teacher asked the children to face the flag for the Pledge of Allegiance. Mike wanted to ask, “Which way is that?” but stayed quiet and tried to face where the voices were pointing. In the bathroom, he could not tell the sink from the trough-style urinal, so he held it in. In the schoolyard, Mike walked in front of a swing set full of flying children. A foot bashed him in the mouth and knocked him over backward. He didn’t cry. He just thought, “Where did that person come from?” At home, Ori Jean listened to Mike’s account of his first day in kindergarten. She told him that school sounded like fun.
And he ran. Every bit of the world thrilled him—the earth-worm’s texture, the bumps underneath the cardboard “roller coaster” he used for sledding down hills with Diane, the songs the wind made when he raced to first base during kickball. But in order to know it all, to get it all in before bedtime or classtime or all the other times imposed on a child’s life, he had to run; there was no way to know it all unless a kid could run.
There are a million obstacles when a blind person runs. Mike crashed into them all. As his kindergarten year progressed he appeared a walking painter’s palette of bruises and scabs. Ori Jean bought more dark glasses. Mike was just the color she wished him to be.
The May family churned along. Ori Jean gave birth to her fourth child, Patrick, an instant roommate for Mike. Bill continued to work as an engineer, designing railroads for the mines. No one had to tell Mike his father was six foot six and weighed 260 pounds. He could feel the bigness when Bill used a single hand to lift him by his shirt and swing him back and forth across the sky, and from the way his father’s deep voice bounced off walls. It was around this time that Ori Jean became concerned about her husband’s drinking, but Bill insisted he had no problem.
As Mike thrived in kindergarten, Ori Jean was at a crossroads. The Silver City public school, like nearly all public schools in the country, was closed to blind students. Next year, Mike would need to be shipped away to a school for the blind. That prospect was unthinkable to Ori Jean, who believed that immersion in the whole of the world was crucial to leading a full life. She began to ask questions. She began to make phone calls. The landscape of options was thinner than she had imagined.
According to Ori Jean’s research, only a very few public schools integrated blind and sighted students. Most were located in big cities like Chicago and Boston, but one was in Walnut Creek, California, which seemed small and close-knit, and was home to one of Bill’s friends. Ori Jean put their house up for sale and prepared for the thousand-mile journey west.
The May family arrived in Walnut Creek in the summer of 1959. Ori Jean enrolled Mike at Buena Vista Elementary. Of the school’s six hundred students, perhaps fifteen were blind. They were assigned a resource teacher who was to help with logistics. Other than that, they were to be treated like any other student—same classes, same activities, same rules. The first day was a revelation to Mike. He met other blind kids for the first time. And he met Nick Medina.
Medina was the resource teacher for the blind students. He told the class that his vision was impaired and that he considered himself blind, though he walked without a cane and could even drive a car. He was just twenty-three years old and small of stature, but he laid down the law early. He expected the children to do their work and do it well. He would suffer no excuses, self-pity, or whining. He would go to bat for them—do whatever it took—but they would have to earn it. He wasn’t going to lay himself on the line for some kid just because that kid couldn’t see.
At home, Ori Jean set up the house for her four bustling children, hanging a dinner bell on the back porch and assigning chores. Mike was exempt from none of them. He was required to clean his room, fix his own lunches, help in the yard, and take out the garbage. When the jelly from his sandwich dripped onto the floor, he was expected to find a mop and clean it up. Diane thought he got off too easily—why didn’t Mike have to vacuum? Ori Jean told her, in a voice loud enough to carry, “He probably can’t do it. You need to be able to see in order to vacuum.”
That was enough for Mike. At first his lines were crazy crooked. Ori Jean said nothing—she could see Mike thinking while he vacuumed. Soon he was pushing the vacuum in a back-and-forth pattern and not missing a spot. “All I have to do is remember where I’ve gone and then I’m good at this,” he told his mother.
Mike was not as good at some other chores. His bedmaking appeared expressionist. The clashing clothes he picked for himself made noise. His recipes often contained surprise ingredients, even to him. Ori Jean saw beauty in his effort.
The neighborhood children had no idea what to make of a blind kid. Diane told them, “He’s really good at stuff,” but they still picked him last for their teams. He swung at baseballs and missed wildly. He ran into trees instead of second base. He fell down all the time. But he could also boot a kickball to the clouds and quickly find kids in games of hide-and-seek. He wasn’t afraid of blood. Before long, the children didn’t much notice when Mike crashed his skateboard or jumped into the bushes with his pogo stick. He was playing and they were playing. To them, that made everyone on Kevin Court look just alike.
Soon enough Mike decided to ride a bicycle. Just the idea of it—to be able to move so swiftly and independently—thrilled him. He borrowed Diane’s and began to pedal. The bike traced an ampersand on the street and then toppled onto him. Mike tried again. He fell again. He crashed for two more days, seasoning the street with bits of skin as Ori Jean told him, “You’re getting there.”
At school, things were just the same. Mike took tetherballs to the face and dodgeballs to the groin. He bloodied his nose, cracked toes, and broke fingers. While running to first base in kickball, he stepped on top of the ball, fell backward, and bashed his head on the pavement. He was unconscious for twenty minutes and rushed to the hospital. When he returned to school the next week, he played again.
School would have been a breeze for Mike were it not for resource instructor Medina. Some teachers were willing to excuse the blind students from assignments, but if Medina found out he would step in and force the kids to do the work anyway. He might ask, “Where the hell is your homework?” Some kids would bellyache or ask why he cared about their schoolwork if their own classroom teachers didn’t. “Because you should care,” Medina told them. “That’s what it’s all about.” Some parents objected to that kind of talk—they did not think a caretaker should confront a child already so challenged. Ori Jean told Mike that she and Medina connected.
Mike liked the other blind students. In ways, they were family, their resource room and teacher a common bond. But he didn’t necessarily understand them. Many chose to ea
t their lunches inside rather than go to the playground with the sighted kids—how could they not want to move? A lot of them walked tentatively, as if bumping into something was the worst thing in the world. Some of them had never even gotten lost.
One of them became Mike’s close friend. Mark Pighin was exceptionally bright and witty, and he liked the things Mike liked. Neither broke down when Medina got fed up with their excuses and told them, “Don’t give me that bull.” Soon Pighin’s family was inviting Mike to join them on their two-week summer vacations, a tradition that would last for years.
The match between the boys wasn’t obvious. In Mike’s view, Pighin was coddled by his parents. They would cut his meat, guide him by the arm even in familiar areas, lay out his clothes.
On a Pighin family vacation, Mike got the idea to explore the shuttered upper floors of the old lodge at which they were staying. He and Pighin made it to the musty attic. Pighin refused to go in—he was afraid there were rats inside, an animal he believed to be three feet long. Mike knew Pighin couldn’t leave without him so he went inside, followed by his terrified friend. Pighin kept talking about the rats. Mike, unable to resist, bent down and pinched his friend’s ankle. Pighin let out a bloodcurdling scream. The adults came running. When he could speak, Pighin told them he’d been bitten by a rat. Mike couldn’t believe his good luck—he was scot-free! But a moment later, he admitted to the pinch and prepared to accept the consequences. It was worth it to Mike. The attic was like an unknown world to him. At least he had gone and looked.
Even as Ori Jean raised Mike to embrace his blindness, she continued to hope that he would see. She had researched eye surgeons since the family had arrived in California and found perhaps the best in the world, Dr. Max Fine, just twenty-five miles away in San Francisco. On three occasions when Mike was in grade school, Fine transplanted corneas into his right eye (his left eye had been too badly damaged to try). It never worked. When Fine told Ori Jean after the last operation that nothing more could be done—now or ever—she exhaled. No longer would she have to go through that cycle of hope and disappointment.
By 1962, when Mike was nine, things started to strain in the May house. His mother had given birth to a fifth child, a girl named Margie, amplifying the demands on her already hectic days. Bill’s drinking, a constant murmur in their lives, began to roar. He lost jobs and was unable to support the family. He fought with Ori Jean. One day, while climbing on the roof of his house, Mike found a bottle of bourbon hidden in a gutter. Bill had sworn that he hadn’t been drinking. Mike showed the bottle to his father and said, “You lied to me! Here’s your liquor!” then smashed the bottle on the ground. Bill exploded and went after his son. Mike ran into a nearby orchard and scrambled up a tree. Bill demanded that Mike come down, but Mike refused and stayed and stayed until Bill ran out of fuel and walked away.
Mike could feel his father drifting away. This was not the same man who had invented their secret system for walking: a distinct squeeze of Mike’s palm one way to indicate an up curb, another to indicate a down curb. The system allowed Mike to walk freely, but the best part was that it came from his father’s mighty hand. Even as Bill’s drinking worsened and plunged his family into near poverty, Mike knew he loved his father because he still loved to hold his hand when they walked.
Bill continued to come home drunk, sometimes at seven A.M. and with lipstick on his collar. Fearing that he might hit the kids with his car, Ori Jean called the police and had her husband committed to the Napa State Hospital, a psychiatric facility. It would be the first of several monthlong involuntary commitments. Ori Jean took her children to visit Bill every weekend he was there, bringing sandwiches for picnics on the hospital’s manicured grounds. Mike and Diane felt terrible for their father. There were weird people all over the hospital, and their father wasn’t weird at all.
The world was too interesting, however, to allow Mike time for such distractions. As he advanced through grade school almost everything fascinated him, and it all had to be investigated. In fourth grade, he signed up for the safety patrol class and showed up for training with the rest of the hopefuls. They were a half hour into the class before the instructor realized what was going on and pulled him aside and told him that a person had to be able to see in order to help children cross the street. The same news was delivered to Medina, Mike’s resource teacher.
Medina asked Mike what he thought they should do. Mike told Medina that he knew he could be a good crossing guard. And he said he couldn’t stand the idea of not getting a chance. Medina told Mike to go to the principal to make his case, and that he would back him the whole way.
The principal scarcely understood what Mike was asking—he wanted to do what? Mike outlined his plan: he would listen for cars the way he did when he crossed the street himself.
“You’re blind,” the principal said.
“I can do it,” Mike said.
“You have to be looking for cars, not just listening,” the principal said. “It won’t work. Sorry.”
Medina stepped forward. He argued that there were teachers already present during crossing time. And he talked about Mike.
“I know this kid,” Medina said. “He can do it.”
The principal said he would take the case under advisement.
The school called Ori Jean and informed her of Mike’s crazy idea. She told them it didn’t sound crazy to her. A few days and many meetings later, the principal gave Mike a vest with a bright triangle shape on the front. The next Monday he was holding up a stop sign and escorting children across the street.
Near the end of grade school, Mike asked his mother to let him ride a bike by himself to downtown Walnut Creek. It was a three-mile trip in traffic. Her stomach twisted with visions of rushing ambulances and bleeding heads. Her mind flashed back to the emergency room in New Mexico. Every maternal instinct she had screamed against the idea.
“It’s important to stay on the right-hand side of the road,” she found herself saying as tears rolled down her face. “If you hear a car or truck, just stop and pull over. If it gets to be too hard, don’t be afraid to turn around and come back. And don’t be afraid to be afraid—it’s important to know when you’re afraid.”
Ori Jean knew that Mike wouldn’t turn back. Standing at the mailbox, she watched him pedal down the driveway, around the culde-sac, and over the top of Kevin Court. And then she couldn’t see him anymore.
An hour passed. Two hours. Something had to be wrong. Ori Jean got into her car, but when she went to leave she thought about how it might hurt Mike’s feelings if she were to come upon the scene, how it would seem that she hadn’t believed in him. She stayed home and vacuumed the living room, then vacuumed it again. After three hours Mike walked in the door. “Hi, Mom,” he said, then went to wash up for dinner. She never asked him about the trip—she didn’t want it to seem like a big deal.
At home, Bill’s drinking worsened. To support the family Ori Jean took a full-time job teaching Spanish at a suburban Oakland school. Her annual salary was less than $5,000. Still, when she brought her children to the grocery store or to the park, she wore earrings and jewelry and made herself as pretty as she’d looked in Chile, when she’d been the daughter of wealth and had servants to brush her hair. She dressed her kids smartly for school and in their Sunday best for Catholic church. In public, there was no sign that the St. Vincent de Paul charity had brought groceries to her house for Christmas that year.
For fifty weeks of every year since Mike had been seven, Ori Jean had immersed him in the sighted world. For the remaining two she sent him to the land of the blind.
Set in the Napa foothills, Enchanted Hills was a summer camp for the visually impaired. It urged independence in its campers. Kids could hike, row, camp out in tents, explore, even get lost, all according to their appetites. Ori Jean had discovered the place in 1961 and enrolled Mike straightaway, sometimes soliciting churches and kind souls for funds. It had felt like home to him ever since.
At summer’s end, Mike and the other blind students from Buena Vista Elementary matriculated to Park Mead Intermediate. Nick Medina went with them. That meant no whining for another two years. Mike felt lucky. Medina seemed sure and constant, the way Mike tried to feel when the world got too big. It felt good when Medina said, “If I hadn’t kicked your butt you wouldn’t have gotten that A.” It felt great when he said, “I like you, Mike.”
Math and science spoke most directly to Mike, though he made A’s and B’s in all his courses. He remained mostly shy and quiet in class, as he had been since kindergarten. Though he spent much of his day among sighted students, no one teased or bothered him—he wasn’t a tattler or dorky, just blind. He continued to take notes and write papers with a braillewriter, a clackety-clacking cousin to the typewriter that used pins to push braille letters into paper. When Mike walked down the halls the ten-pound steel machine swung wildly from his noodly arm. The sighted kids learned to scatter fast when they saw him coming.
The playground remained the epicenter of Mike’s schooltime passion. He continued to crash into poles, fences, and classmates, even losing consciousness in a head-on collision with a football goalpost. Kids wondered how he could charge so fearlessly knowing it was just a matter of time before he bashed into something else, but to Mike that was just the point—he already knew the worst that could happen, and it didn’t seem bad at all compared to the feeling he got from running.
Crashing Through Page 3
