Blind (3 page)

People were shuffling in, some pausing to gasp over the sight of me, others stopping to say hi, maul Spark, or marvel over my HumanWare brailler, the one Sarah made sure I was aware cost almost six thousand dollars. Ms. Mabel read the board into my tired right ear: “Assignments, reading, writing, journal, two analytical papers. Books:
A Raisin in the Sun
,
Macbeth
,
To Kill a Mockingbird
,
The Stranger
,
The Inferno
,
Antigone
.” I jotted the titles down in my brailler, and Ms. Mabel stayed the entire time, telling me whenever Ms. Spencer wrote anything on the board, which was approximately seven hundred times a minute. Had teachers always written on the board this much? How had I not noticed, and how would I ever manage without help? Before my accident, I would have celebrated extra hours to write my in-class exams or finish assignments. But now that I need extra time and someone else to read the board to me, I feel furious and proud and want to show everyone that I don’t need anything “special,” even though I clearly do. I hate the word
special
.

I was considering this when someone started crying uncontrollably. I didn’t know who it was, except that it wasn’t me, thank god. No one was surprised; since Claire, crying is like clearing your throat in Sauberg. People walk the streets weeping. Ms. Spencer just clucked her mouth and said there were grief counselors downstairs to help us “deal with our feelings.” When class ended, Ms. Mabel stayed to talk to Ms. Spencer about getting me my assignments in advance so she and I could translate them into braille, and I tuned them out until they were done, when Spark and I felt our way toward the door and stood there groping around for Logan. But she wasn’t back yet.

“Hey, Emma,” someone else said, and I recognized Blythe Keene’s musical, twinkling voice.

I thought maybe I could feel her gloaty, working eyes bore a hole into my face, like she was trying to melt my sunglasses and get a glimpse of the damage. But then she put her hand on my arm and said, “Welcome back.”

I said, “Thanks,” and she left her hand on my arm, like she wanted me to know she was still there, or was going to lead me away or something. People are weirdly casual about touching me now. It’s like I have to see by feeling, so everyone gets to feel me. Or maybe they just don’t want to shock me; it’s like the animal way of warning some other animal that you’re nearby and aren’t going to pounce. The truth is, I was surprised Blythe had come up to me at all. She’s like a dream girl, beautiful and funny and, I don’t know, herself, I guess. She doesn’t try as hard as everyone else, and she never has. I don’t know why. She didn’t ask how I was, and I was glad.

But then I couldn’t think of anything to say and we were standing with her hand on my arm, so I asked how she was.

She said, “I’m managing,” which was very Blythe—honest, not insane or melodramatic or anything, just okay and true. Because Blythe and Claire were best friends like Logan and I are. Inseparable. So even though Blythe’s life is perfect in every way, it’s also ruined. Then she offered, super casually, to walk with me to art. She wasn’t like, “Can I medevac your basket-case ass to art class because you’re blind flying the halls”; she just said, “Wanna walk to Fister’s together?” like we were old friends. Which I guess we are, in a way. I mean, I’ve known Blythe my whole life, but it’s not like she’s ever really paid attention to me.

I tried to say, “Sure, thanks,” in a normal human voice, without crying or throwing myself into Blythe’s arms. I didn’t wait for Logan, just followed Blythe like a pitiful puppy.

When Blythe said, “Hey, Zach,” my heart catapulted up into my throat. Zach Haze. I tried not to rock, not to turn my head too wildly toward the sound of his voice when he said, “Hey, Blythe. Hey, Emma, nice dog,” as if nothing had happened, a year and a half hadn’t passed, I hadn’t been blinded, and I hadn’t brought my K9 buddy dog to Lake Main after missing ninth grade. As if I weren’t an invalid. I knew if I opened my mouth I would barf my heart straight into the hallway, so I stayed mute, as usual. I’ve never been able to talk to Zach Haze. Once, in sixth grade, right after Benj was born, Zach asked me if my family was Catholic, even though he must have known we’re not, since my family is famously the only Jewish one ever to live in Sauberg. I’ll never know why Zach asked, because I tried so desperately to think of a fascinating answer that would engage him forever that I stood there for ten minutes like an absolute salt statue. And then he assumed there was something profoundly wrong with me, and never spoke to me again. Which is a tragedy, because I love him desperately. I always have. And he’s one of the few people who has only been made better by my new ability to listen closely: his voice is amazing, deep and smooth and patient—not like he’s slow or searching for the right word, but like he has all the time in the world to talk to you, and wants to mean what he says, so he gets his words right. They always sound sweetly musical, and you can feel the vibration of his voice coming up from the floor, so it shakes you up a little, makes your bones rattle and chatter.

As soon as Blythe and I got to the art room, Mrs. Fincter, alternately called by everyone Fister, Sphincter, or Spinster, pulled me aside to say, “I heard you were going to be in this section. Do you think you can handle a regular art class?”

As opposed to what? Not handling it? Dying? Taking an irregular art class? I waited as long as I could. Mrs. Fincter knows my family because my mom is an artist, and even if she weren’t, she’d still be famous, just for rocking her Old Mother Hubbard vibe so hard. But I didn’t know if Mrs. Fincter liked my mom or not, or how she thought of us.

“Um, yeah,” I finally said. “I hope so. I have—”

I was going to tell her that Ms. Mabel could help me, but she interrupted. “I guess we’ll have to come up with an individual plan of study for you.”

Blythe was probably still nearby. I wondered if she was listening to me and Mrs. Fincter, hoped not.

“Okay,” I said, wanting the conversation over. I wasn’t able to tell whether my individual plan of study was a happy challenge for her as an artist, teacher, and person, or a horrible inconvenience. But since I had actual problems to deal with, I put Mrs. Fincter’s feelings about me where they belonged: under
who has time to give a shit about this?
I just let Ms. Mabel help me get my supplies ready so I could participate absently in our first free-drawing session. I felt the waxy ridges of the crayon create raised lines on my paper. I ran my fingers over the page, felt my drawing take shape while Fincter talked about how we heal through art and blah blah we could work out our grief through projects blah. I was thinking it would be nice to heal through someone actually telling the truth once in a while, when a girl’s voice asked, “Is that your dog?” and I jumped.

I didn’t know who had said it, or whether she meant Spark or my picture, because I was drawing a dog. Or even for sure if she was talking to me, although the voice was so close to my right ear that I assumed she must be. I nodded silently.
Don’t rock.

“It’s pretty good,” the voice said, so she must have meant the crayon work. “That’s amazing that you can do that.”

“Thanks,” I said, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask who I was speaking to. Ms. Mabel didn’t say anything. Maybe she thinks I have to get my social life together on my own. Or maybe they only pay her to help me with my academic struggles.

Last year at Briarly, a blind girl named Dee said I should just ask who had come up to me, or who was talking, or whatever I couldn’t figure out myself. She said no one would mind, not even sighted people. We had just had this nauseating conversation because I asked where she’d gotten these delicious Korean pastries she was sharing with me and Sebastian, and she said, “My mom brought them back from Korea.” I asked what she’d been doing in Korea, even though I didn’t really care. And she was like, “Well, she was visiting my grandma, who lives there, because she’s Korean.”

My mind reeled backward and forward at the same time. I asked, “So your mom is Korean, too?”

Dee laughed. “That’s generally how it works, Emma,” she said.

“Are you Korean?”

“I’m half,” she said. “My dad is black.”

“Wow. I guess I’ve never seen you,” I said, and she laughed again, like we were bonding, but my throat started to burn, because I hadn’t meant it as a joke. In fact, it set alight a new dread in me, one that was hard to name. I knew nothing. How would I ever find out anything about anyone again? Without having to ask questions no one is supposed to ask?

Dee was someone I wouldn’t have been friends with at Lake Main, and I can’t even explain why this is, or what point there is in it, but since my accident, I can’t stop dividing the world up into things I do “because of it,” and things I “would have done anyway,” like there’s some ethical reason for me to do only things the “other Emma” would have done. But everything I’ve done since was something the new blind me had to do. So I can’t win.

Asking people who they are is obviously something I would
never
have done. And I don’t want to start now. So I said nothing to the mystery girl in art. I just ran my fingers along the lines I’d drawn again and again, unsure what color my sad crayon dog was, wanting to ask Ms. Mabel but not asking, dying to rock but not rocking. Maybe people make too much of having to know everything all the time. Maybe I can do fine without knowing who’s talking to me or crying in what class, who’s here and who’s gone.

One thing I know, maybe the only thing, is that I’m here. Claire is actually
gone
, in the permanent dark. Which is not the same as my dark. My dark is complicated and sometimes lovely. I have to keep reminding myself. I can hear and smell and feel the people I love, which is the opposite of absolute nothingness. I’m still alive. I’m still me—just this other me. It’s going to be fine. Right?

I said nothing in any of my classes, or the hallways, or the lunchroom, where I ate my clammy sandwich in a whirl of activity that felt dangerous. Logan translated the entire time, even told me who was eating what, but eventually I had to tune her voice out. All day I felt twisty and dready and alternately so hot I thought I might be feverish and so cold I was immobilized. I listened and tried not to listen, waited and tried not to be waiting, since what was I waiting for?

The final horrific event of the afternoon was a mind- and butt-numbing mandatory assembly. Logan and I sat together, and in a miracle coincidence, Zach Haze sat with us. As I parked Spark and my white cane at my feet, I couldn’t help thinking,
If only
. If only I was the old me, Emma of the working green eyes, sitting with Zach and Logan, I could endure anything, even this performance about how shocked we all were, how a loss like this, how a scholar athlete, how as a community, how healing. How grief counselors. How “available to us.” How the hows made Principal Cates’s voice into the lowing of cattle in a field I was driving by. How none of it told us anything real about Claire, about who she had been or what had actually happened. We knew that our parents and teachers were calling Claire’s death an accident, but Principal Cates didn’t come near any words with actual information in them. What kind of accident? Had Claire killed herself? Slipped into the lake alone? What could she have been doing there by herself?

I sat as still as I could, focusing in and, for some reason, imagining reds: Twizzlers, lipstick, traffic lights, blood. Logan passed me a sticky, already unwrapped Jolly Rancher, whispered, “Not a germ on it!” and I tasted the joke and the pink bloom of fake watermelon in my mouth at the same time. Logan and Zach whisper-bantered about the bullshit assembly, school, the bright world they were still part of. While I listened. While I felt terrified, like Claire’s and my tragedies—even though they’re not related and hers is worse—melted together into one dark.

Then it was three fifteen. Leah swept me up from Logan at my locker, and carried me home on a wave of my sisters. Leah asked me a million questions about my day, her voice full of awe and joy. I complained about the assembly and Mrs. Fincter. Leah grabbed me into such a violent hug that I thought Spark might attack her. “You made it through your first day, though! I knew you could do it! What did people say? Did they stare? How was Logan? How was Ms. Mabel? Did you see
him
?” She dropped her voice to a whisper, even though she didn’t even say Zach’s name out loud.

“I didn’t see anything,” I said, and she laughed her howling belly laugh, which made me laugh until I almost felt like it had been kind of funny, even though nothing had seemed at all funny while I was still at school. Leah always puts me somewhere other than where I’ve been. On the roof of my life. I wish I could do that for Naomi, but I don’t know how. Especially now.

Leah darted into Jenna’s kindergarten room and came out with Jenna, both of them singing “Down by the Bay,” Leah terribly, ear-wreckingly out of tune, and Jenna with her shocking, little-kid glass voice, her own verse, all the notes lining up just right: “Have you ever seen a fish stick wearing ketchup lipstick?” She and I are the musical ones; she has perfect pitch and I can hear it. I used to love piano, singing, any music, really. And now Jenna does.

Naomi came out of her fourth-grade homeroom with a drawing she’d been working on all day. She kept holding the open notebook, coloring as she walked out of the school and down the eleven front steps. Leah said she should wait until we got home to keep working on her picture. Naomi said, “Emma gets to walk without looking. And it’s a comic.”

“My bad,” Leah said, “but please stop working on your comic while we’re walking.” I don’t know if Naomi obeyed or not. At the bus stop, Benji bounced off the preschool bus like a Super Ball, terrifying Spark. I could feel us rolling home like a force, a five-star Silver parade, missing only Sarah and Baby Lily. Naomi was now busy directing Benj and Jenna to stomp on all the cracks, and to guess how many steps we were from home, while she counted to see who was closest. I wasn’t allowed to participate, because I had the advantage of having figured out how many steps there are between most places in our house, so I was “too good at it.” Naomi is a busy person, always making crafts, rules, or games; she never slows down. She’s the leader of the little kids, but lately she’d rather be one of the big kids. I get that, since there are so many things I can’t do that I sometimes don’t know if I count as an actual big kid anymore.