Blind Read online

  In case. In case. In case. Even though we were too late, because the worst thing ever had happened, in spite of whatever “in cases” I had tried my entire life leading up to it. Mr. Otis and I walked down the five porch steps, our minds humming a stupid chorus of “in case.” We moved, slid, tapped, stumbled onto the band of sidewalk over and over and over, and when Mr. Otis wasn’t there, my mom used Spark as an excuse to get me out of the house and make me practice. She told me what was going to happen before it happened, every second, like some kind of psychotic robot: “Now I’m going to turn the coffee grinder on.” Wherrrreww, grrrrrrrrr. “Now I’m going to start the car.” Griiiind. “Now I’m going to light the burner.” Foooshmp. Now I’m turning on the water now I’m closing the door now I’m walking behind you now I’m opening a drawer now blah blah now now now now, Emma, Emma, Emma? I was so sick of her voice, but so terrified each time a sound ignited without any warning that the terror made me furious, too.

  Mr. Otis programmed my phone to speak to me, but I couldn’t find the right spots to enter my password, couldn’t stand the speed of the voice-over voice, maniacally shouting, “Insert passcode, four digits required, one a b c, two d e f.” Mr. Otis’s voice was the opposite; his was human and patient: “Tap the number twice,” he said, “and then tap elsewhere on the screen twice.” I hate the word elsewhere; it’s where I used to be, where everything I used to be able to see still is. One, tap, tap, six, tap, tap, nine, tap, tap, three, tap, tap: Leah’s age last year, followed by Naomi’s and Benj’s. Every year I change my passwords for everything and learn a new finger tap dance.

  My life with Mr. Otis was another life, another surreal tutorial in how to relearn everything I’d known as a toddler. My dad, who believed rehearsing moves would make me feel happier and more confident, demanded progress reports. He reminded me between five and twenty times a morning to practice, and on the rare nights when I could be forced to sit and rock miserably at the dinner table, he asked what progress I’d made, even though for me practice and progress felt like opposites. The work was a choking, incessant reminder that I was back at a zero flatter than any baby starts at, learning to guess which sister was which. To use a fork and knife. To know where I was standing, whether I might get run over, what I might be eating. To survive. It was all a matter of survival, even though it was literally stuff like learning to walk down the sidewalk or across the street.

  My mom fed me grilled cheese sandwiches cut into tiny triangles, baby carrots, pizza, and fake-chicken tofu nuggets, all of which I could pick up and eat with my fingers. She stopped short of mashing my food up or cutting grapes in half, but just barely. And only because my dad, who made me eat tomato soup on Sundays, just because I couldn’t use my hands, told her I would never recover unless I “gained my independence.” Late at night, when they shouted and fought, she screamed about how and what chances and danger, and he said I had to learn braille, had to learn to walk around by myself, eventually to “take the bus.” My dad’s big goal for me was to take a bus, even though I had never taken the bus anywhere before my accident, so I didn’t really see why that would be such a major breakthrough. My mom argued that I should practice at own pace, figure the world out slowly if I wanted to, and see people only when I was ready, talk about school when I felt up to it. He said no; they had to help me, had to push me, or I might something—fall into something. Depression? Death? I can’t remember, because it was too terrible and because it was the same night that I heard my dad cry, the only time I ever have, and it was so sad that I shut the sound out of my mind so fast I can’t hear it now, even if I try to.

  I was pretty sure I did want to die, but as furious as I was, I didn’t want to tell my parents that. I tried to make progress, tried to be better. On his last day, I even tried to thank Mr. Otis, mainly so my dad would be happy. I said, so quietly I wasn’t sure Mr. Otis had even heard me, “Um, so, thanks. For everything.” He didn’t respond, so I worked up enough words to ask how he knew so much, whether he was blind. I meant to be nice, but he said, in an apologetic voice with broken glass in it, “No, I’m not blind. But I . . . well, you’re welcome, Emma.”

  And then he left, and I imagined him pirouetting into his light, sighted life, weightless with relief that he would never have to deal with me or my darkness again.

  School week afternoons, Leah and Naomi and Jenna—and sometimes even Sarah—got home from school and sat with me. I could smell the world on their coats, the town outside, the music they had played and listened to, the friends they had seen, hugged, and gossiped with, kids who no longer tagged home to our house to eat or play, because I didn’t want them to. And until this fall, for a year basically, my family accommodated this wish. Naomi made clay figures and handed them to me silently. Once, I told Leah that I missed Mr. Otis and Sarah said, “Yeah, he was hot,” even though I hadn’t realized she was in the room and I wouldn’t have said it in front of her, and then we all sat stunned. I had the new brailler my parents were so excited about on my lap, and was feeling the ports on the side, the long, sleek display of braille dots I couldn’t yet read. But when Sarah spoke, I reached up to touch my sunglasses; thought, Hot? Mr. Otis? What did that even mean? Would I ever find anyone hot again? My sunglasses were in place. I reached for Spark. I was always reaching for Spark.

  “Can I see that thing for a minute?” Sarah asked. Maybe she was mad that I ignored her stupid, hideous comment about Mr. Otis. How dare she find him hot? I hated her, but I couldn’t have said why.

  “This?” I extended out the brailler, and she clucked her tongue and said, “It’s hard to believe that’s worth six laptops.”

  “Come on, Sarah, leave her alone,” Leah said. And I thought, Six laptops? What did that mean? How much had the brailler cost? And why was it so expensive? How did Sarah always know everything? And would we run out of money because of all my doctor bills and machines? Had Spark cost money, too? I thought about money, which I never had before. My parents had enough money; we weren’t rich, but they didn’t seem to worry about food or even raising a huge brood of kids. But now, would I both cost them everything and never be able to repay them? I would never get a job, never make enough money to support myself, never be okay. I would stay here, on the couch, for the rest of time, until my parents were gone and there was nobody to buy top-of-the-line braillers or tomato soup. What else could I do? School was an utter impossibility, as was walking or running or biking or eating complicated food that required a spoon or reading for real again or taking the bus. Who would fall in love with me? Was I unlovable? Would I always be unlovable?

  “Mom!” Sarah was shouting now. “Can I borrow the car to meet Chris or no?”

  I heard my mom saying blah, blah, she had to take someone somewhere and something and some o’clock and some errand, and then I heard Sarah slamming the front door and walking out into the bright light of her perfect life. Jenna was singing and Naomi was in the kitchen hammering something that turned out to be a bunk bed for her and Jenna’s dolls, and Benj was on the couch with me, watching a cartoon that sounded inflatable, rubber. I couldn’t hear Leah anywhere. Why had my parents bought such a fancy brailler? Couldn’t they have gotten the eighteen braille display? Or even gotten an old-school one? Did I actually need the one that’s really a computer, or was it another desperate gesture of guilt? Were they trying to make better something that couldn’t be made better? And if so, at what cost?

  Nights, I lay back and tried to block out all the noise, to sleep, to stop thinking, to vanish. Sometimes Naomi would whisper down to me in my bunk, “Emma, are you asleep?” I never was, so I’d say, “No,” and then she’d say, “Are you okay?” And I felt sad and swirly and sick, because I knew she was worried about me, even though she was littler than I was and I should be the one asking her if she was okay and now I’d never be her Leah. But I couldn’t take care of anyone else, so I just said, “Yeah, I’m fine. Goodnight, Nomi,” which was her nickname, becaus
e Benj couldn’t pronounce Naomi.

  My memories of that time are the opposite of a photo album. I can’t see the holidays, whether my sisters went trick-or-treating or to Halloween parties, whether we had turkey for Thanksgiving or lit candles at Hanukkah. I remember instead the tiny, unimportant parts of every day, maybe because they were so monumentally difficult. Or maybe because remembering what holds the days together is more truthful than remembering a few big-ticket, smile-for-the-camera events. Or maybe just because I can’t see.

  Benj was everywhere, every day, un-ruined by my tragedy. He spent the days tearing through the house like a tropical storm, often jumping onto the couch with me. By November our traumatized mom was barfing every twenty-five seconds, even though her first trimester was done. Sometimes, she’d be taking care of me and Benj, making cheese sandwiches or talking to one of us, and she’d say, “Excuse me,” go to the bathroom and throw up, and then come back and start the conversation right where she’d left off. When she wasn’t throwing up, she and Benj cut out egg cartons and sewed sock puppets and did laundry while I listened to the dark and snuggled Spark.

  By December my mom had lost the battle over asking me to shower and so began pouring baths for me. It was one of the many ways in which I went back to being a baby. I brought Spark into the bathroom, and he sat next to the tub while I climbed in. Sometimes Spark leaned into the tub and drank the water or gobbled whatever bath bubbles my mom had added. The soap felt foamy and smelled like different colors to me, depending on the time of day and my mind’s mood. One ice-blue night in mid-December, Jenna, who had just turned five, got into the bath with me. She left her squeezy, noise-making, water-squirting toys in their plastic bucket, and sat quietly for my sake, a feat for her. I was tracing my fingers along the surface of the water, listening to Spark breathe, thinking, Come on, Emma. Dark is safe, dark is water, dark is safe, dark is water, water is safe, until I could almost believe it.

  Then Jenna asked in a tiny voice, “Emma? What are you thinking about if you’re so quiet?”

  I answered her honestly, maybe because I was failing with Naomi, or maybe because I’ve always had trouble determining how much truth is too much.

  “I’m thinking about the dark, J,” I said. I don’t think I meant to be mean.

  But her breathing stopped. She waited a little bit before she asked, “Is it really scary, Emma?” with so much fear that the words turned an internal organ mix of blue and purple. I backed away and made up a half-truth I now tell all the time, maybe because I’m still hoping to convince myself.

  “Being blind is okay—it, um, it makes the dark not scary, J. I’m used to it. It’s calm. Like water.”

  Jenna said, “Oh! Like the bath. With bubbles.” And her raspy, choppy, little-kid breathing started up again cheerfully. Knowing she felt better made me feel better, too, almost as if what I had said was true. Sometimes words matter, even when they’re not true. And other times, repeating lies can be the worst possible human crutch. It’s something I can’t work out. That night in the bath, I kissed Jenna’s wet face. She felt like a little soapy seal, my five-year-old sister, and all I knew was how glad I was that she was less scared for me. Or of me, if there’s any difference.

  Then Jenna said, “Um, Emma? Is it okay if I tell Nomi that being blind is okay, like a bath? Because, well, maybe she thinks it’s scary, too.”

  I tried not to cry.

  • • •

  Last winter made me realize that even if I stayed on the gold couch without moving for fifty years, we would all still get old and die. In case getting blinded hadn’t made it clear, recovering taught me that my small life didn’t matter to the world overall, which I don’t think is something you’re supposed to understand until you’re old. But I had to learn it early for some reason. My mom would say it made me smart, but actually it just made me desperate. When it snowed in December, I knew in this weird, sudden way that after winter it would be spring, which meant summer would come again. I’d have been blind for an entire year, the year itself another utter loss. I told Dr. Sassoman that I was scaring my little sisters and myself and losing my mind. It was snowing outside of her office window, and I was trying to feel the cold sound of it.

  “I can’t stop thinking really fast, so fast it’s scary. And I can’t sleep. And I can’t stop making up weird refrains—like ‘dark is cool, light is heat’—and repeating them to myself,” I admitted, scared, and suddenly embarrassed, too. But to my surprise, she clapped her hands together. The pop made me jump, and she touched my wrist with her cool, papery fingers. I thought of snowflakes cut from coffee filters, wanted to use scissors again.

  “I’m glad to hear about the sayings, Emma,” she said, squeezing my wrist a bit. “Those are coping strategies you’re creating for yourself.”

  She waited. Dr. Sassoman has a big appetite for awkward pauses.

  “No!” I said, my voice too loud and hard for the soft white room, the snow, the moment. “I’m not coping! I’m crazy. I’ve missed an entire half a year of school, and I’ll never catch up, and if I have to be in a different grade from Logan and all my friends for the rest of my life, I’m going to die. And I can never go back. How can I go back like this?”

  “You are not going to die,” she said, as usual. “And you are coping. That’s what those ‘sayings’ you’re making up are—that’s you coping. Human beings are capable of curing our own miseries if we are courageous enough,” she said.

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’m not courageous enough.”

  “I think you are,” she said, and then she repeated it, like I was deaf, too. “We have to figure out a way to help you sleep better, though.”

  That night, right before bed, I asked my mom if my brailler had cost six thousand dollars.

  “I don’t remember the exact price, sweetie,” she said, “but we got a good one, so you’ll have it for a long time and it can be both your laptop and your brailler. And we wanted to . . .”

  “To what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know—make braille more fun?”

  We both waited, me because I wanted to punish her—for trying to bribe or comfort me, for pretending there could be anything fun about this. She was quiet because she wanted to get this right, but couldn’t. Finally she just said, “Please, don’t worry about it, Emma, okay?”

  I wanted to rat Sarah out, to tell my mom that she had made sure I knew how much that stupid thing cost. But I didn’t, not because I’m kind—or even because I’d rather be nice than right—but because I knew my mom already knew. She bent to kiss me and left, and like so many nights that have followed it, I lay with my arms around Spark, thinking, Okay, dark is safe, dark is water, light is terror, light is fire, focus in, focus in, until I thought my mind would snap with the effort. Then I used, Dark is cool, light is heat, and then, Relax and close your eyes, close your eyes, relax. And, Feel it, Emma, feel it, Emma, read it to feel it, feel it to read it. Finally I fell asleep.

  The next time Dr. Sassoman came for one of her home visits, she talked with my parents for a while and then asked me privately where I was “keeping my anger.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Is it in your stomach?” she proposed. “Your heart?”

  I shrugged.

  She handed me something it took me a minute to recognize. Eggs. A carton of eggs.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “A dozen eggs,” she said. “Do you want to throw them?”

  This suggestion made sense to me, and I nodded.

  “Where? At the walls inside? Or outside? Anywhere you want.”

  We went outside first, even though it was brutally cold: step one, step two, step three, four, five, end of porch, here’s the grass, the walkway, sidewalk, maple, crosswalk, traffic, oak tree. I listened hard for the engines, and then, instead of sticking my cane into the street, I threw some eggs, hard, at the side
walk, at trees I couldn’t see, into the crosswalk I hadn’t realized I hated. Here’s a shoreline where the shell meets the pavement, shatters, yolk, white, blood. Your light, my light, red light, egg light. I listened for the cars to come and smash what was left of the eggs into nothingness. Then I felt around in the carton. I still had four eggs.

  “I want to throw these inside,” I told Dr. Sassoman, and she said that was fine; that she would clean them up afterward and I didn’t have to worry about whatever mess we made.

  Hearing the eggs crack into the walls—of our living room, Naomi’s and my bedroom, the kitchen, and the upstairs bathroom, I thought, This is a sound I never realized I’d hear, an experience I wouldn’t be having if my accident hadn’t happened. But that was it. I didn’t feel anything about it one way or another, and I didn’t stay to listen to Dr. Sassoman or my mom—or whoever did it—clean the egg off the glass cabinets in the living room, the bathroom mirror, or the wall above my desk.

  When Dr. Sassoman asked later whether it had helped, whether I was feeling any better, I said nothing. Because I had no idea. How can you know the truth about anything you’re still inside of?

  -3-

  It’s mid-October again—surprise. We all made it through September and two weeks of October, even me. Before they left for fresh death elsewhere, the carrion reporters wrote lists of the drugs in Claire’s blood and stomach: Oxycontin, Percocet, Vicodin. Those are names I remember from after my eyes; they make me feel newly burned. Now we’ve all agreed—without even saying so out loud—to call Claire’s death a tragic accident. No one really wants to talk about it, even at school, where people are pretending to talk about it by listing the same hows over and over. How tragic, how surprised, how, how. But what I want to know is, how did Claire gobble a giant fistful of drugs and fall in the water “by accident”? What the hell was she doing picnicking on painkillers alone at the lake? Did she throw herself in on purpose? And if so, what does “accident” even mean?