I thought maybe I’d head to the bar, order a drink, and wait for Viv to pass by, but I couldn’t make out where the bar was. Then the door opened behind me, and a fresh group of hipsters, in full possession of their mojos it seemed, lurched in and pushed me deeper into the throng.
Panic percolated inside me. There was no way to stay put; people would keep walking in, pushing me forward little by little and soon I’d be lost inside the tiny bar, unable to find the door again. I’d be stranded there, without Viv, without a drink. This wasn’t just conjecture; it had happened plenty of times in the past, and I’d had to pretend I was shit-faced to explain why I couldn’t find the door that was right next to me. Covering up for my disease by pretending to be a drunk was bad enough when I was a twenty something in Hollywood; now that I was a mother of two, it has damn near disgraceful.
At the same time, I’d spent an hour getting ready and an hour on the train. I’d gotten Vivian a gift, my rack looked great, and I was so close—probably just a few feet away. It seemed insane to just turn around and go home.
I speed-dialed Viv’s cell phone, which went directly to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. What would I say?
“Hi Viv. I’m just calling because—well, you probably don’t remember but twelve years ago I mentioned in passing that I was going blind and I know I’ve never talked about it since but now, actually, I really am pretty blind, so I can’t find you in this godforsaken inferno. Please come find me before I will myself to stop breathing. It’s imminent. Hurry.”
I dialed her number again, hoping I’d at least hear a phone ring nearby and home in on the sound. No dice. And, to make matters worse, as I slipped the phone back in my pocket, my elbow hit the elbow of the woman next to me, who happened to be holding a full drink, which splashed all over her. Instantly, she exclaimed what I’ve discovered almost all people will say, when I’ve knocked their drink all over their dry-clean-only attire: “What the fuck?”
“Oh God, I’m sorry!” I wanted to offer a napkin or something but I couldn’t locate her face, much less the napkins.
As she muttered, “shit, shit, shit” I counter-muttered, “sorry, sorry, sorry.” My nervous system is set up in such a way that if I utter the word “sorry” more than three times in a ten-second interval, it activates my “abort mission” reflex and I instinctively begin to back away. In this case, backing away prompted a wave of drink-splashing, so that all around me other hipsters were muttering expletives, causing me to continue my incessant offer of apology to the bar at large.
When my back hit cold glass, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was over. I slipped out the door, and ran over to the street corner where a taxi was just pulling through the intersection. My getaway car. I jumped in and managed to tell the driver my address before I started bawling. I kept right on sobbing as I walked through the door to my apartment where David had only just put the kids to sleep.
“What are you doing back here?” he asked. I could see he was disappointed not to have the night to himself to watch zombie movies.
I blubbered out the story while he sat there getting sad, then angry, Maybe it’s all men, or maybe it’s just mine, but I find David’s sadness is always followed by anger, which is followed by a super-mobilized plan to attack the problem. I’m sure it has to do with rage at feeling powerless but whatever the reason, it has historically been a problem for us because when I’m truly sad, epically sad, I don’t want to solve anything; I just want him to watch me cry and feel really, really, really sorry for me.
“Next time, just tell Vivian that you can’t see in the dark and she’ll wait by the door.”
“I can’t,” I explained. “It’s humiliating,”
“Of course you can,” he pressed. “You’re making your situation worse.”
“You don’t understand.”
He sighed: “I know.”
“I tried so hard,” I sobbed.
David was quiet. I knew I was breaking his heart, but the need to unload my sadness onto someone else was too great. Someone had to know what was going on and he’d ensured that person would be him the day he signed on for better or worse.
“I tried so hard to stop it from happening but I can’t anymore,” I said in a rush. “I’ve been defeated. I am defeated.”
I didn’t just feel beaten in the figurative sense, but in the physical sense, too, like Fate had been dragging me around for the past twelve years by my hair and had now decided to really lay into me.
David could see that I needed some quality time alone with my self-pity so he went into the bedroom while I melted into a piping hot mess. I moaned, I wailed, I doubled over. I raised my fist to the heavens and I tried tearing at my hair like a character from Shakespeare but that actually hurts a lot.
I’d been refusing to go gently into my good night since the Park Avenue doc had told me not to shoot the messenger, but it wasn’t until just then that I raged against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas would have been proud. Anyone else would have called a mental health professional.
It wasn’t about the party. The party was just the proverbial straw.
My blindness had come. Despite praying and protesting and pretending, it had come. And though the idea of it had scared me at nineteen years old, back then all I had to lose was what I didn’t have yet. At thirty-two, I had everything to lose. I had been given two children who brought joy and meaning into my life with two radiant futures before them, futures I wanted to see, damnit.
I wanted to take my daughter shopping for a prom dress and keep her from buying something too short or too low-cut and I wanted to check out the shady character who was her date and shoot him a cold, crazy look that said, “If you hurt my baby, I’ll slice your ’nads off.” I wanted to see if my son’s eyes would change from that bright cerulean shade and if he’d get acne or an Adam’s apple. I wanted to check his math homework. I wanted to watch the kids from the bleachers when they played basketball or chess or did synchronized fucking swimming and I wanted to be able to cheer embarrassing things like, “That’s how you get ’er done, son!” at the right moments. I wanted to straighten my son’s bow tie while he waited at the altar and I wanted to see my daughter when she became a mother herself, and tell her that the baby looked just like her.
I’m not going to see those things. And it’s not fair. And there’s nothing I can do to change it.
So I sat on the couch and choked on my bitter pill for a long time, just like little Helen Keller throwing a colossal fit. I wept until my face ached and my eyes were swollen and there was no rancor left. Then, at long last, I cried uncle.
There was nothing I could do about the dying of the light but there was something I could do about the shame and self-flagellation and anxiety I felt every day over the secret I was keeping. I had to go blind but I didn’t have to lie about it.
I was raising two children but still acting like a child myself, vain and obstinate. What kind of an example was I setting for them? Did I want them to hide essential parts of themselves that were less than perfect or even just different, because of what other people might think? I imagined Rosa and Lorenzo, all grown up, crying on their couches, ashamed of who they were, and it was like a bucket of cold water thrown in my face. I could not pass this legacy down. It would be worse than passing on my disease. It would be the wrong regret.
The time to grab life by the balls was over; it was time, instead, for me to grow a pair. I needed to redirect the strength and resourcefulness I’d devoted to covering up my disease to learning how to cope with it. I needed to learn how to keep track of my kids at the playground. I needed to learn how to go to parties in bars, how to check homework, how to shop for a prom dress—without my eyes. I needed help. And the aggravating thing about help is, you usually don’t get it unless you ask.
So I sat down at the computer and wrote Vivian an email saying I’d come to the party but I couldn’t find her because it was dark and my eyes aren’t good in the dark anymore. David helped
me edit out all the maudlin, pathetic stuff so that it was short and to the point. It was important that I get it right, not so much for the message itself, but because it signaled a shift in my policy. Within a half hour, she’d written back, saying she hadn’t forgotten the news I’d shared with her twelve years ago, had often wanted to ask about it but was nervous about broaching the subject because it had seemed like I didn’t want to talk about it. She was sorry I’d had to go home; next time, she said, she’d wait for me outside the bar.
The next week I made an appointment with a low-vision ophthalmologist who worked with the New York State Commission for the Blind.
“I think I’m legally blind,” I said to the receptionist, “and I need to know where to go from here.”
Tip #17: On cleaning house
The wonderful thing about going blind is that along with the beautiful sights, you miss unattractive ones, too. You won’t see your crow’s feet or the thinning of your husband’s hair. You will walk blithely by a trio of rats feasting on dogshit. And you will not notice the state of extreme filth into which your home has sunk.
Unfortunately, everyone else will.
So how do you clean what you can’t see? If the filth becomes significant enough, you’ll feel it, hear it, or worse, smell it. As a rule, surfaces in homes are not meant to feel sticky or oozing, not meant to make crunchy sounds when encountered or emit odors that cause you to gag. If this happens, you know it’s time to clean. Attack the revolting areas with a sponge until all offensive smells, sounds, and textures are eradicated.
Alternatively, you could invite your obsessive clean freak of a mother over, hand her a bucket and bleach, and let nature take its course.
17. SKELETON IN THE CLOSET
I knew I’d have to grapple with the cane, right from the get-go. The low-vision specialist confirmed that I was, legally, blind, and as such would qualify for services with the New York State Commission for the Blind. I’d have to agree to being trained on the cane, of course. And I’d have to stop driving.
“That’s no problem,” I assured him. “I’m not homicidal. I haven’t driven in years.”
“Great,” he’d replied. “And yes to the cane too, right?”
I uncrossed and recrossed my legs, shifting in the vinyl examination chair.
“Yes to the cane,” I confirmed.
I didn’t mean it, not even at the time. I just figured I’d deal with that problem when it arose. It was probably a moot point; as soon as I showed up at the Cane Training Correctional Facility or wherever the hell that awful business took place, the people in charge would see immediately that I didn’t need a cane.
“This is obviously a mistake,” the Cane Master would apologize. I pictured a chubby middle-aged gentleman with coke-bottles glasses and sweat stains under his armpits.
“You don’t need a cane; you’re not blind like that.” He’d smile, waving me away. “Go right on home. We’ll take care of this misunderstanding.”
As it turned out, both the Cane Master and the Cane Training were nothing like what I’d expected.
The first time Esperanza called, David hung up on her. He thought she was a telemarketer, raising money for a blindness charity, the kind that always sent us envelopes with fake coins glued in the address window, or depressing text printed on the envelope, things like, “Just $1 from you will help four-year-old Lukey see his first sunset!”
“No thanks, we don’t want to donate,” David had asserted.
A minute later the phone rang again. This time, I picked up.
“This is Esperanza Espinoza and I am not asking for donations,” she’d informed me, quiet but firm. “I am your vocational therapist and mobility instructor.”
I liked her immediately. The more I got to know her, the more I found to like. It was divine intervention, I think, that the Commission sent me my ideal-match Blind Guru; had they sent over the chubby gentleman of my imagination, I think I’d still be dodging his calls.
Esperanza was young and pretty, a small woman with a heart-shaped face and animated eyes. She had a consummately gentle way about her, never raised her voice or spoke a word she didn’t consider first—in all ways the very opposite of me.
Esperanza was my Annie Sullivan, only a real softie. She exuded warmth, from her soft Spanish accent to her wavy, black bob. She was so gentle and easygoing, in fact, that it took me a few sessions to figure out exactly what she was supposed to be teaching me.
She’d introduced herself as a vocational therapist and mobility instructor, a vague title that was more or less meaningless to me, but after a while, I came to understand that she was teaching me how to be blind without accidentally killing myself. Our first few sessions were pretty painless; she’d come over, play with three-year-old Rosa for a bit, and then pass along casual tips about how to clean your kitchen effectively (frequency makes up for lack of accuracy) and how to cook pasta without burning the house down (adhere raised dots around the stove dial to mark Low, Hi, and Simmer).
Though we were about the same age, there was something inarguably maternal about her, so I wasn’t surprised to find she had two young children at home, a son and a daughter two years his junior, just like my pair. We talked a lot about mothering, everything from weaning off the paci to how to get the boys to piss in the bowl.
She was full of tips, too, about parenting while partially sighted.
“Let’s talk about kids and clutter,” Esperanza suggested at our third or fourth meeting. I knew what would follow was essentially a public-service announcement for the blind, the kind I’d summarily dismiss were it delivered by anyone else. Esperanza’s mini-lectures were so well formulated, though, and so inarguably useful, that I could not help but heed them.
“For the visually impaired, less is really more,” she advised. “Keeping your belongings to a minimum helps you find things more easily and can prevent accidents.”
I thought immediately of the cookie cutter incident. Just a few months before, Rosa had unearthed my collection of seasonally festive cookie cutters—Easter eggs and snowmen and jack-o-lanterns, oh my! She’d used the metal cookie cutters to take her Play-Doh work to the next level, and when she was done, she’d abandoned them on the living room floor and moved on to a science experiment that involved emptying my sample-sized bottle of Chanel into the radiator.
As I’d run across the room to rescue the heating system, and the perfume, my bare foot encountered one of the cookie cutters—the bat-shaped one, with wings spread.
“Jesus, Mary, and JOOOOSEPH!” I howled. The pain was considerable enough that all three needed invocation. “What the hell? Mommy’s foot is not a COOKIE!”
At this, the children erupted into shrieks of laughter.
“Let’s see if your foot has a bat on it!” Lorenzo squealed.
The fact that it did delighted the kids and infuriated me.
“That’s IT!” I pronounced, “These cutters are going RIGHT in the garbage!”
I hadn’t done it, of course. But now Esperanza was telling me I should, with no compunction.
I don’t know where she came up with these tricks of the blind trade, since her vision seemed perfect, but she was full of them. The whole setup was odd but not unpleasant: we’d sip Earl Grey tea at my grimy kitchen table while she relayed life-saving kernels of wisdom or quizzed me on life skills.
“How can you ensure safety when cutting fruits and vegetables?”
“You mean blind people, right?”
“Yes,” Esperanza confirmed.
“How do blind people safely slice vegetables?” I repeated. “Is this a trick question?”
She smiled, but I wasn’t kidding.
“Ummm, I don’t know … buy presliced frozen vegetables?” I guessed.
“Well, that’s one option.” Unfailingly encouraging, Esperanza would never explicitly tell me I was wrong. “But my goal is to help you retain as much independence as possible. So if you wanted to slice the vegetables yourself—”
“I don’t,” I assured her. “Like, even now, when I can see, I never want to slice vegetables. I’m already looking for a reason not to do it, and I feel like blindness will serve as the perfect excuse.”
“I understand, but if you change your mind…” Despite her gentle demeanor, Esperanza was impossible to deter. She would equip me with tools to retain my independence whether I wanted them or not. “You’ll just be sure to hold the vegetables in place with your upper knuckles rather than your fingertips, and use a knife with a good grip to avoid slippage.”
I envisioned the future blind me, wearing sunglasses in the kitchen, preparing a magnificent roast for a dinner party—the kind I never threw now but for some reason imagined I would once I was an even less capable chef. I pictured myself taking a cleaver carefully in hand, securing a potato with my knuckles, and slicing off all four of those knuckles with one deft motion. Normal people who sliced off their knuckles could at least find them and bring them to the hospital to have them sewed back on, but I wouldn’t stand a chance of locating my severed digits, especially with only one hand to grope with. What’s worse, I’d then lack the fingers necessary to clean—by touch—the bloodbath in my kitchen.
Yes, slicing and dicing while blind seemed like a big risk with little payoff. But I didn’t want to insult Esperanza’s advice so I kept the observation to myself.
“So, are we ready to move on to cooking meats?” she asked. “Using the low-vision kitchen timer I brought?”
Because she was so genteel, she didn’t inquire about the whereabouts of that timer, which I’d stashed in a box I’d mentally labeled “Blind Shit” and shoved on the top shelf of my closet.
Esperanza brought me a dozen household items designed specifically for the partially sighted, most of which were normal things blown up to three or four times their usual size, like they’d been shot with what five-year-old Lorenzo would call a Big-a-nator Ray Gun. My tiny apartment was filled with supersized stuff, like a calculator with buttons so big it took two fingers to press them down.
Now I See You Page 18
