Blindsided Read online

  Natalie looked at her and saw that Bree was kind of hunched over on her bed, twisting strands of her long hair in her hands.

  “I wanted to be a dancer,” Bree said. “I took dancing lessons all my life. My mom was so proud of that. She’s the one who started me out with tap dance lessons. It’s like the one little dream I had: being a dancer. Then in one afternoon, one stupid thing and it’s over.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Natalie said quietly. “Sometimes I wonder which would be worse, losing vision slowly, like me—or all at once, like you.”

  “Yeah.” Bree nodded. “I guess I know where the term blindsided came from. It might have been nice to get ready for this. It’s been such a nightmare.”

  Natalie disagreed. “No,” she said, “having time to get ready doesn’t make it easier. No one can possibly be prepared to go blind.”

  Another moment passed when neither of them spoke.

  “Guess I’ll go ahead and wash up for bed and do my eyedrops,” Natalie said. But walking across the room, she tripped over the balloon Meredith had given her. The helium was practically gone and the balloon hovered, an eerie metallic ghost, about an inch above the floor. Natalie reached down and grabbed it, then went to her desk for a pair of scissors, cut off its end, and stuffed the deflated balloon in the wastebasket.

  No matter how bad off you are, there’s always somebody worse off than you. So be grateful. . . . It was probably good advice repeating in Natalie’s head. But right then, she wished she could have been one of those little butterflies flying to Mexico.

  INTERSECTIONS

  During the next few weeks at school, the weather shifted and the hot, humid days of summer were blown away by refreshing breezes that brought a stretch of pleasant fall days. Bright colors decked out the forest surrounding the campus, and while not even Natalie could fully appreciate the pretty foliage, all the kids enjoyed the crunchy sound their canes made sweeping aside leaves on the school’s sidewalks. Time was passing; many of the major challenges of six weeks ago were now merely part of daily routine.

  But time was running out, too. And Natalie knew it. Her tiny circle of vision had shrunk to the circumference of a drinking straw. Deep inside, she kept her fears at bay by living on hope and denial. Outwardly, Natalie was the star student, feverishly learning new skills, plunging forward, and keeping herself so busy there was never time for her to stop and examine reality, or poke at the fear that lay hidden beneath the surface. Busy. Keeping busy became her modus operandi.

  Natalie spent hours in the library or hunched over her desk in her room, completing her lessons with the magnifier and pounding on the Brailler for practice. She stopped counting steps and focused exclusively on cane technique and memorizing mental maps of the school. In her room, Natalie no longer threw her cane in the back of the closet. She carefully set it on the shelf above her clothes, beside her umbrella. A “Go Cougars!” key chain and a simple, silver whistle had been attached to the cane’s handle to identify it as hers.

  In her frenetic race against time, Natalie took to heart every new skill she was taught. On laundry day, she did her own wash, using grippers to hold socks of the same color together. She kept herself organized by using different-shaped containers for shampoo, conditioner, and bath gel. A rubber band around her tube of face cream prevented Natalie from getting it mixed up with her toothpaste.

  With others from the dorm, she used the George Foreman grill to turn out steak and chicken dinners. She shopped for groceries and discovered that there were employees available at some food stores who would assist with shopping. The girls then identified the food with premade Braille labels stuck on index cards that they rubber-banded around the boxes of food. A good idea, Natalie realized, since many food items—such as rice, cake mix, cornstarch, and brown sugar—came in similar-size boxes.

  The fighting lessons were yet to come, but eagerly awaited. Natalie and the others giggled in the hallway one night, wondering which was better: gym class with Mr. Lee or their new health class every other week with Miss La Verne. The girls made Braille calendars to track their periods the first week. Next time, each of them made a fist-size uterus out of clay to get a tactile idea of what they carried inside their own bodies. They also created clay ovaries the size of grapes and connected the ovaries to the clay uterus with pipe cleaners that represented Fallopian tubes. There was a rumor that in an upcoming class a rubber penis would be passed around. . . .

  Natalie also threw herself into doing things for others as well. (She hadn’t forgotten her deal with God.) She talked about starting a student council for the kids at school and perhaps asking for Braille labels on the salad bar so everyone could make their own salad. She tried to think of ways in which the girls on her floor could have fun together in the evenings, too.

  “Come on,” Natalie begged Eve. “I know it sounds dumb but give it a chance. Bree said she’d watch the movie if everyone else did. Anything to get her off the cell phone with her boyfriend!”

  “A descriptive movie. Ugh. Where some guy describes everything? I hate those. If it’s stupid, Natalie, I’m leaving,” Eve warned.

  The girls put on their pajamas and slowly gathered in the living room, some bringing their pillows. Natalie popped popcorn in the microwave. When they were ready, Natalie pushed in the tape (amazingly, the school still had a VCR) and started the bowl of popcorn around.

  “This better be R-rated,” Serena said, still combing out wet hair from a shower.

  The television screen flickered and a voice came on: An animated logo appears in three-dimensional letters: FOX VIDEO . . . And now the screen glows an eerie blue, then fills with swirling white mist. We fly through the misty clouds. . . . The snow-covered Alps give way to a sunny Alpine meadow where a young woman with short blond hair strolls in the grass swinging her arms in a carefree stride. She wears black shoes and stockings and a gray striped apron over a black dress. She spreads her arms and twirls in a joyous spin as she bursts into song: “The hills are alive—”

  “With the SOUND OF MUSIC!” the girls all chimed in at the same time.

  “Oh, come on, give me a break!” Serena moaned. “I am not watching The Sound of Music ! It’s for little kids.”

  “It is not! I love this movie!” Murph cried.

  “Yeah, it’s nice, Serena. Relax and enjoy it,” Natalie said.

  Which is exactly what they did. All of them. They stayed for the entire movie. And for two days following, sweet strains of “Edelweiss” could be heard, hummed and sung out loud in the hallways of that dorm.

  Underneath it all, of course, the truth of what was happening stalked Natalie, like a beast in the bushes. When Natalie allowed herself to even think about the possibilities, even momentarily, the result was not just scary, it was crippling. Outwardly, she seemed to be doing well. Inwardly, she was still scared to death.

  “I want to be a biker chick or a gangster’s moll,” Serena said casually at lunch one day.

  “A mall ?” Murph asked. “I thought that’s where you went shopping.”

  “Wrong moll,” Serena retorted. “This moll is like a gangster’s mistress. You know, a prostitute? Do you need me to define that?”

  “Noooo. Duh. I know what a prostitute is.”

  For the past few days, conversation at mealtime had pretty much centered around costumes for the school’s annual Halloween party.

  “I am going to be a pirate,” Arnab told them. “With a patch over one eye.”

  “Better not put a patch over the other eye, too, or you won’t be able to see,” Sheldon joked.

  “How about you, Natalie?” JJ asked. “What are you going to be?”

  “Earth to Natalie,” Serena said. “Are you coming?”

  “Of course,” Natalie forced herself to say as she went to work prying the top off a carton of yogurt. “Do you think I’d miss it? I was a cat last year.” Her hands stopped moving as she recalled last year’s Halloween sleepover at Meredith’s. Coralee and Suzanne were there, t
oo. Meredith had polished Natalie’s nails while they watched a scary movie—the girls didn’t mind filling Natalie in on what she couldn’t see—and they didn’t go to sleep until three o’clock in the morning.

  “A cat?” Eve was asking. “Did you say a cat?”

  “Yes, a cat,” Natalie said. “If I can find my tail and my ears.”

  “Don’t you hate that? I am always misplacing my tail and ears,” Serena quipped.

  “Don’t you mean your tail and your horns?” Sheldon deadpanned.

  The kids laughed, glad that Sheldon had gotten in the last word for once. But Natalie sat quietly with the yogurt container still unopened in front of her.

  Miss Audra knew something was bothering Natalie. “Are things at home okay?” she asked. “That good friend of yours—Meredith?”

  Natalie picked up her folded cane from the floor. “Meredith has a boyfriend now, so I don’t see much of her,” she said. “Between Richie and driver’s ed and getting ready for Homecoming, she’s pretty busy.” She turned toward her cane instructor and smiled ever so slightly. “Miss Audra, isn’t it Ms. Kravitz’s job to pry into my personal life?”

  “I’m sorry, Nat. I didn’t mean to pry,” she said, “but I need your full attention today, because you’re going all the way to the traffic light.”

  Down the hallway, Natalie focused as she swept her cane side to side in a perfect arc. Outside, Natalie moved her cane against the grass that grew along the sidewalk—shorelining, they called it—and made her way to the big bush, where she turned right and shorelined her way to Nader Lane.

  “Are you listening?” Miss Audra asked. “Tell me what you hear.”

  Natalie stopped. “A lawn mower,” she said. “Off to the right, on the hillside. Children playing.” She pointed with her left hand. “There, at the nursery school.” Natalie lifted her chin. “And traffic moving.”

  “Is it close?” Miss Audra asked.

  Natalie shook her head. “No. It’s up ahead.”

  “Excellent.”

  When Natalie’s cane detected the beginning of a sidewalk to her left, she turned, knowing the walk ran west along Dunbar Avenue. Traffic on Dunbar was steady and brisk. Soon Natalie’s cane hit a metal pole. Vehicles converged from all sides. “We’re at the traffic light,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” Miss Audra asked. “Maybe it’s just a stop sign.”

  “No. Because if it was a stop sign the pole would feel different—skinnier—and cars would be stopping briefly, before moving on.”

  “Good. This is the traffic light,” Miss Audra confirmed. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do here?”

  “Listen,” Natalie replied. “When traffic directly in front of me has stopped, and when the traffic to my right moves, it’s my signal to cross.”

  “Right.”

  But there was no way Natalie was going to cross that street. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not ever. “Is it okay if we go back now?”

  “Absolutely, Natalie. You did a great job coming this far. But next time, Natalie, I do expect you to cross.”

  “Yes, I’ll try,” Natalie assured her. But only to please Miss Audra.

  “You can do it,” her instructor insisted. “You’re going to come to a lot of intersections in your life, Natalie, roads and otherwise, and you can’t always just turn around. You have to summon the courage to go forward.”

  Natalie nodded again. “I understand.” She was a good student after all. And an excellent faker.

  A couple days later, Teen Group piled into three different vans and took a field trip to BISM, which stood for Blind Industries and Services of Maryland. At BISM, blind people worked in a huge warehouse mixing chemicals for cleaning supplies. Other blind workers operated machines that cut out thousands of pieces of camouflage material, which were stacked, wrapped, and sent to federal prisons for inmates to sew into U.S. military uniforms. Blind people there also put together office materials for state government employees, and taught classes in cooking, wood shop, and computer technology for other blind people.

  When the kids returned to school, Natalie found herself walking up the hill toward the dorms beside Arnab.

  “I found that a bit depressing,” he confided as they trailed slightly behind the rest of the group. He paused, waiting for Natalie, and they walked slowly, careful not to let their canes get tangled up.

  “Me too,” Natalie agreed. “I wouldn’t want to be working one of those jobs. I mean I know they’re important jobs for a lot of people, but—”

  “So boring,” Arnab said.

  “Totally.”

  “Have you thought—what you will do in your life?” Arnab asked her.

  “I always thought I’d go to college, but I’m not so sure now. If I do, though—well, I’ve always been interested in government. I volunteered for a professor running for the state senate and I admired what he did. He knocked on people’s doors and talked to them about issues.”

  “Ah. A politician!” Arnab said with a lilt in his voice.

  “Well, there are some good politicians,” Natalie insisted. “I mean they can help people.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Anyway,” Natalie said, “it’s just a silly dream.”

  “No, no, not silly,” Arnab said. “Our dreams, they keep us going.”

  When they reached the top of the hill, the sidewalk split, with one pathway leading downhill to the boys’ dorm, the other to the girls’ residence. There was a bench and Arnab suggested they sit for a moment.

  “Sure,” Natalie replied, taking a seat and folding her cane. “What about you? What do you think you’ll do, Arnab?”

  “I have always wanted to be a land use planner,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Natalie asked.

  “Someone who plans how and where we will build our houses and our cities in the future. My father does this. He is a research scientist at the National Center for Smart Growth, at the University.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  A breeze came through, knocking ropes against the flagpole nearby and sending dried leaves tumbling down the sidewalk and against their legs and feet. The air smelled moist, like rain, Natalie noticed.

  “What do you miss most?” Natalie asked Arnab.

  “Color,” Arnab answered without hesitation. “Seeing colors. . . .”

  “Yeah. That’s a big one all right,” Natalie agreed. “You have no sight at all then?”

  He shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

  A short moment passed.

  “I wonder sometimes,” Arnab said, breaking the silence, “what color are your eyes, Natalie?”

  She grinned. “My eyes? Well, I don’t have an iris, so I guess the answer is no color at all. Although I do have a pupil that’s large and black. So maybe you’d say I have two black eyes.”

  Arnab didn’t laugh. “You don’t have an iris?”

  “No. I was born without them. You know what the iris does, right?”

  “Yes, yes. The iris controls the amount of light that enters the eye.”

  “Since I don’t have an iris, bright light really bothers me, which is why I always have a hat on, and my tinted glasses.”

  Arnab reached over to touch her head. “Ah! I forgot!”

  “It gets complicated,” she said, “but basically that’s how I developed juvenile glaucoma.”

  “I see. Well . . . I don’t see.” He laughed nervously. “But I do understand.”

  Another brief moment passed when neither one of them spoke. Then Arnab cleared his voice. “Natalie,” he began, his voice slightly different, “I wondered if I could ask you something.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “I wondered, do you think it might be okay—if I touched your face?”

  Natalie turned to him. She couldn’t see him very clearly, but she thought he was looking down, with his good hand gripping one knee. And she knew it had taken a lot of courage to ask.

  “My hands are clean,”
Arnab said. “Mr. Joe said it’s important that your hands are clean.”

  Natalie’s heart dipped. She smiled. “Yes,” she said. “It would be okay.”

  Arnab sat up. Turning slightly toward her, he lifted his right hand and put it on Natalie’s arm.

  Natalie helped guide his hand to her face, then took her own hand away and remained still—so still she didn’t even breathe.

  Gently, very gently, Arnab’s fingers moved across her forehead. He felt the bill of her cap and chuckled softly.

  “I told you,” Natalie said.

  His fingertips, light as feathers, traced her brows, then brushed one cheek and, crossing her nose, moved up and down slowly to explore the other cheek. He took his hand off her face momentarily, but returned with slightly trembling fingers to trace the outline of her chin, and finally, her lips.

  He brought his hand away and sighed.

  Natalie wondered what he was thinking, what he expected and what he had found.

  “I was right,” Arnab said.

  “You were right?”

  “Yes, yes. I knew that you were very beautiful.”

  “But how can you tell?” Natalie asked in a nervous, joking way. No boy had ever told her she was beautiful. Not ever. Nor had anyone ever touched her this way.

  “I can tell,” he said.

  A lump rose in Natalie’s throat. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then, summoning her own courage, she reached over and gently squeezed his hand.

  AN ORDINARY MORNING

  For two evenings in a row, Natalie took the framed photographs from her bureau and sat, cross-legged on her bed, with the pictures spread out before her. With her lighted magnifier, she memorized every feature in the images by staring, with what minuscule amount of vision remained, until each line, each shadow, each nuance of color was etched in her mind. Not just the proud, happy faces of her parents, but the way her father’s long fingers grasped the narrow shoulders of both her and her mother the night of the Honor Society induction. Gazing at the picture of Nuisance, Natalie thought of how many times she had stroked the long, luxurious white ears on that silky brown goat. Ears, she once thought, that resembled enormous tongues. Ears so long that Natalie had actually seen them blow in the wind.