Blindsided
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
A REAL NUISANCE
DAY ONE
A PARALLEL UNIVERSE
ARE THEY KIDDING?
THE WORST
WHAT DR. ROSE SAID
BLIND AS A BAT
A PREVIEW OF WHAT’S COMING
MEANINGLESS BUMPS
SHADES OF BLUE
SECRETS
A FLOATING HEART
“WHATEVER IT TAKES”
EVERYWHERE
CLUES AND LANDMARKS
A DEAL WITH GOD
PERSPECTIVE
INTERSECTIONS
AN ORDINARY MORNING
“DON’T STAY THERE”
SEEING IS BELIEVING
MIXED BLESSINGS
THE DYNAMICS OF FIGHTING
CROSSING OVER
WHY NOT?
THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND
BLINDSIDED
UNEXPECTED TURNS
SIGHT UNSEEN
LIVING SCARED
STARTING FROM THE EDGES
“DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO”
TEEN SHOOTS BEAR
FROM NOW ON
DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Priscilla Cummings
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cummings, Priscilla, date.
Blindsided / by Priscilla Cummings.
p. cm.
Summary: After years of failing eyesight, fourteen-year-old Natalie
reluctantly enters a school for the blind, where in spite of her initial
resistance she learns the skills that will help her survive in the
sighted world.
eISBN : 978-1-101-43714-8
1. Blind—Fiction. 2. People with disabilities—Fiction.
3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Maryland—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C9149B1 2010
[Fic]—dc22 2009025092
Published in the United States by Dutton Children’s Books,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
www.penguin.com/youngreaders
http://us.penguingroup.com
This book is dedicated to all the blind teenagers—and adults—who spoke with me over many months.
Whether it was a personal conversation, an e-mail exchange, or a telephone call, I will never forget how much you opened your hearts so that I could see. . . .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank the teachers, staff, and administrators at the Maryland School for the Blind in Baltimore, Maryland, for the generous access the school community provided me during an entire academic year. But I especially thank the students. Out of concerns for privacy, I am not going to thank each student individually. But I could not have written this story without their help in sharing with me their personal stories, their successes and fears—and their abundant humor. My gratitude to them, and my respect for them, is enormous.
I thank instructors, staff, and young people participating in programs at the National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore, and employees of Blind Industries, State of Maryland (BISM).
I am grateful to David Faucheux for his many e-mails from Louisiana; to Melissa Sheeder, a student at Catonsville Community College; and to Danielle Shives, a senior at Frostburg University.
Special thanks to Dr. William F. Bruther, my own ophthalmologist in Annapolis, who kindly provided many detailed explanations of issues related to vision and workings of the eye. Thanks also to Dr. Nicole Love, an ophthalmologist who provides care throughout Maryland to individuals with low vision, including to students at the Maryland School for the Blind; and Dr. Neil R. Miller, professor and chairman of the neuro-ophthalmology unit, Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
I appreciate the help given by friends John, Karen, and Sophie Bambacus. And I thank Andrea and Matt Cedro of Firefly Farms, Ron and Virginia Weimer, and Joy Eliassen for an education in goat farming.
Thanks go to my friend and nursing consultant, Carol Stewart, and her literary son, Charlie.
As always, I am grateful for the support of my family—my husband, John; my children, William and Hannah; as well as my insightful agent, Ann Tobias; and my patient editor, Rosanne Lauer.
I want to acknowledge the book Safe Without Sight by Wendy David, Ph.D., Kerry Kollmar, and Scott McCall. And I thank the National Braille Press, Boston, Massachusetts, for allowing me to quote from the book.
Last but not least, a special, heartfelt thanks to teacher Beth Ann Krug, who prompted this story, some years ago now, by encouraging Travis to show me the poem he had written about being blind.
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, or even touched—they must be felt with the heart.”
—HELEN KELLER
A REAL NUISANCE
Like so many of Natalie’s early memories, this one is full of color: the fresh yellow straw, the red blood that was pooling way too fast, the silver bucket kicked aside, the damp, quivering brown fur.
“Hurry, Natty, but don’t slip and fall!” her father ordered as he placed the towel-wrapped newborn in Natalie’s waiting arms. “I’m going to try to save the twin.”
Natalie’s moist and frightened eyes widened. “What about Daisy?”
“I’ll do what I can,” he said. Then he touched her arm and reminded her quickly, but calmly, “And I’ll do what I have to do.”
Natalie swallowed hard and nodded.
“Now you go on and do what you have to do. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she replied, her firm response hiding the anxiety that prickled up and down her spine. She was eight years old then. What if she messed up?
It was early January, a cold, black night softened only by
a slice of pale moonlight reflecting off the crusty snow. Natalie hurriedly picked her way across the frozen yard with the extraordinary bundle in her arms. It was not a good time of year to be born, but sometimes the goats didn’t listen to reason—or season.
In the house, Natalie held the kid tightly against her bulky parka with one hand while she drew warm water in the deep white porcelain set tub, the one her mother used to wash the milking equipment. Still holding the little goat—she bet it didn’t weigh more than six or seven pounds—she scooted to the bathroom and grabbed more clean towels.
If only her mother had known Daisy was close to delivering, she wouldn’t have gone to the town meeting. She’d be there, in the house, doing all these things with confident, experienced hands. Daisy was her mother’s favorite. She was the first dairy goat they ever owned, the reason they decided to buy more goats and start the farm. Her mother would be devastated if something happened to Daisy, or any of her babies.
Natalie rushed back into the kitchen, threw the towels on the table, and then swung open the freezer compartment to the refrigerator, plucking a plastic container of colostrum from the side shelf. Mother goat’s first milk. A good thing they kept some for emergencies. The kid would need it to survive. One-handed because she was still holding the baby, Natalie set the double boiler on the stove. She filled the bottom pot with water, set the colostrum in a second, smaller pan, and nestled it on top of the larger pot before turning on the heat. The gas flame rose with a whoosh. Natalie turned it way down; the precious liquid needed to warm slowly so it wouldn’t turn into pudding.
Next, she returned to the set tub and turned off the water. “Okay, here we go,” she murmured as she carefully unpeeled the soiled towel, letting it fall on the floor, and lowered the shivering kid with both hands into the warm water. Natalie still had her coat on because she couldn’t take the time to remove it, and the bottoms of her sleeves got soaked. “Easy, now. That’s it.” The goat was so small that, with Natalie’s support, it stood in the tub with water up to its neck. An exact miniature of its mother, the kid was solid brown except for a little white star on its forehead—and, of course, the long droopy ears. It was so new, so cold, and so weak, it didn’t protest at all, but let Natalie bathe and wipe it clean. She paid special attention to those big ears that distinguished Nubians. She even remembered to check its eyes, to be sure no eyelashes were turned under.
Wow. Could she see that well then, to have done that? To have actually seen the kid’s eyelashes?
Seated, finally, in a kitchen chair, with the tiny goat dry and wrapped in a fresh towel, Natalie offered the warmed colostrum in a baby bottle. Confused at first, the kid caught on quickly and eagerly sucked down the nourishment. Natalie took in a full breath, then let it out and smiled, feeling her body relax with relief. As she gazed upon the helpless creature in her lap, her heart filled with love while her mind raced ahead to what she needed to do next: dip the kid’s umbilical cord in iodine soon—real soon—and find a heat lamp for the stall so Daisy and her babies would be warm.
She had plowed through her anxieties and did what needed to be done. And yet, the peace that flowed from this proud moment was short-lived. Seconds later, a rifle shot rang out from the barn. Natalie stiffened and sat up. Tears sprang into her eyes as she hugged the now-orphaned goat and bent to kiss its head, imploring it not to worry, and promising that she would always be there to take care of it.
A long, hard winter followed and, much to Natalie’s delight, they had no choice but to let the kid stay inside with them. Natalie fixed its bottle and fed it in the morning before school, then again when she came home, and once more before bed. On the fifth day of its life, while it wriggled like crazy, Natalie held the little goat tight on her lap while her father used a hot debudding iron to burn out the two nubs on its head where horns had started to emerge. Natalie knew it was necessary; dairy goats with horns could seriously hurt one another. Still, a minute turned into eternity while the sizzling iron created tiny, terrible wisps of smoke. When it was over, relief once again. Natalie had a warm bottle waiting to comfort her baby.
The orphaned kid quickly outgrew the wooden crate Natalie’s father had hauled in, and soon it was moved into a newspaper-lined playpen by the woodstove. Natalie and her best friend, Meredith, took the goat upstairs to Natalie’s room where they dressed it in baby clothes. In her snapshot memory, Natalie could still see the bright yellow bonnet edged with white lace and a pink sweater with green turtle buttons. The girls laughed themselves silly watching the kid cavort happily with its bonnet brim flapping and its tiny hooves clicking like small tap shoes across the channels of wood floor in between rugs.
The goat, of course, thought Natalie was its mother and followed her everywhere, an endearing but sometimes problematic situation. Hence, the name: Nuisance. In some ways, Nuisance was the little brother or sister Natalie never had. Everyone in the family developed an enormous soft spot for the little goat and forgave it some awfully bad habits, such as munching on the houseplants and sampling everything it found in the wastebasket. The kid was so spoiled, it even rode, buckled into a seat, with the O’Reillys in their van. Natalie told the goat her deepest secrets, combed its short brown hair with a doll’s brush, and lovingly stroked its Roman nose and long ears hundreds of times. If her parents had let her, Natalie would have allowed the goat to sleep in her bed, or to stand, with a bib tied on, atop a chair beside her at the dinner table.
As winter turned to spring, Nuisance grew and the little goat’s world expanded—to the yard, to the barn, and finally, the wide green pastures filled with other goats. But Natalie’s world started to shrink, and fade.
The color is gone from these memories. They are all in black and white: Natalie, colliding with a beam in the hayloft and nearly knocking herself out; tripping, falling, and splitting open her lip in the grocery store parking lot; tumbling down the basement stairs and winding up with a dozen bruises and a huge, sore egg on her forehead.
It’s not that Natalie suddenly couldn’t see anything; she just couldn’t see as much. The outer edges of her field of vision—the periphery—were suddenly blurry. So she missed seeing important parts of her world, such as the white-painted asphalt curb in the parking lot and the edge of the top stair to the basement. As she explained it to her younger cousin: “Pretend your hands are binoculars, Florie. Roll your fingers. Now. Can you see me?” The little girl had nodded. “Yeah, I can see—but only parts of you. It’s like the world got shrinked.” And that was it exactly, Natalie had thought: It’s like the world got shrinked. She didn’t always have the complete picture right off, but with a little time she could piece things together.
Please don’t take any more away. Please. I already have to wear a hat all the time—I’m keeping the bright light out. And I do those eyedrops twice a day. Isn’t that enough?
Reading became a struggle, too. Natalie was given special equipment that she had to push from the library to her classroom on a rolling cart. She had always been a little small for her age and it was a lot of work maneuvering that big cart around, but it enabled her to enlarge and darken the letters in her textbooks so that she could see them more easily.
Her confidential talks with Nuisance began to sound like prayers: I’m scared, but I don’t want anyone to know, not Mom and Dad, and not even Meredith, ’cause I don’t want them to worry and look at me like I’m different. That’s why I have to work so hard at school to be perfect, to make up for some of the dumb things I do. I just can’t help it. Like bumping into people when I’m pushing the cart, or tripping over Stephen Handley, who was sitting in the hall yesterday. I broke his pencil and ripped my favorite black pants. It was so embarrassing. . . .
When she started middle school, the cart simply stayed in the library and with classes in several different locations every day, life became far more complicated. Meredith, and sometimes Coralee and Suzanne, knew Natalie was having trouble and helped guide her. But while Natalie could always coun
t on Meredith, the other girls were hit and miss, which sometimes left Natalie stranded, and embarrassingly late to class. Twice—and this was especially humiliating—she even walked into the wrong room and had to be directed out by the teacher, while the students stifled chuckles in the background.
Never was that going to happen again, Natalie swore to herself. That’s when she started counting. Forty-two steps between Mr. Hewitt’s ancient history class and the doors to downstairs . . . six steps to the water fountain . . . fourteen steps to the girls’ room . . .
“We have to do something,” Natalie’s mother insisted after dinner one evening when Natalie was nearing the end of eighth grade. She stacked the dinner dishes on the counter and sat down again at the table. “Dr. Rose says her eyesight is getting worse, not better.”
“What do you suggest?” Natalie’s father asked. He had pliers and was trying to fix the buckle on a goat halter.
“Well, I had a note from school, from this woman who helps Natalie prepare homework and take notes.”
Her father looked up. “What woman?”
“What’s her name, Natalie?”
Natalie picked at a hangnail on her thumb. “Mrs. Russell,” she replied glumly. “She’s the vision teacher. She travels around to all the schools.”
“Yes. Mrs. Russell. A nice woman,” Natalie’s mother noted. “She’s been very helpful. She’s suggesting that Natalie learn Braille.”
“Braille?!” That certainly got her father’s full attention. Natalie heard the clink of the buckle as he set the halter on the table. “What are you talking about, Jean? Natalie doesn’t need to learn Braille! She’s getting straight A’s in school! She’s writing beautiful poetry about the mountains. She babysits. She helps me in the barn—”