Blindsided Read online

  The first week was over, but it had felt like a year. The kids were different, for sure, and yet, when you took away their special needs, she thought, they were pretty much like everyone else. Miss Karen had told her that the blind school didn’t used to have so many kids with multiple handicaps. When she was a student there, years ago, blindness was the only problem the students had. Now, she explained, many blind children are mainstreamed into public school with special help from vision teachers and don’t need the blind center. So the center became a place for children with other needs, in addition to a vision problem. Plus kids like Natalie, Arnab, and Sheldon—the kids in the parallel universe—who suddenly needed intensive instruction.

  About two hours into the trip, the bus pulled off the interstate.

  “Why are we stopping?” Arnab asked no one in particular.

  Serena turned around in her seat. “It’s Frederick,” she told him. “We pick up kids from the deaf school here.”

  Natalie could hear them climbing aboard, finding seats, talking among themselves in an odd way. When she finally got one in her circle of vision, she noticed the sign language—and could see Serena signing back to them. Suddenly, several of the deaf students burst out laughing. She wondered if they were laughing at something Serena had said—and if so, what it was!

  “Arnab!” the bus driver called out. “I think this is where you get off!”

  Serena tapped Arnab on the shoulder because he had his earphones in. “It’s Frederick, Arnab. The bus driver just announced it.”

  “Yes, sir! Yes, I will be getting off in Frederick. Right here,” he said. He seemed anxious as he scrambled to get all his things together.

  “Have a nice weekend, Arnab,” Natalie said.

  “Natalie? Is that you? Yes, yes. I didn’t know you were there. You have a nice weekend, too.”

  In Frederick, a huge traffic jam held up the bus, and another half hour crept by before they were back on the main highway. Outside, it grew dark. Natalie’s ears popped as they went over a mountain. In a place called Hagerstown, Serena got off. “See you Sunday,” she said to Natalie.

  The “see you” part didn’t bother Natalie. But the “Sunday” part did.

  “Have a nice weekend,” Natalie told her.

  A few miles later, the bus broke down. The driver cussed and stomped off the bus heavily. Hours passed and it grew cold, sitting, waiting for another bus to come. Natalie pulled a sweatshirt on and tried calling home, but her cell phone battery had run out. So had the battery in her iPod. For sure, she wouldn’t be home in time to go to the fair, and it filled Natalie with mixed feelings: she wouldn’t have to deal with darkness, but she’d miss out on being with her friends.

  A second bus finally brought Natalie to the small shopping center in Hawley. She was the last one off from a ride that had taken nearly seven hours. “Let’s get you home,” her mother said, after rushing forward to embrace Natalie in the dark parking lot.

  Natalie’s father waited in the kitchen at home with a sandwich. He hugged Natalie but was strangely quiet as she sat down to eat.

  “Did Meredith call?” Natalie asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” her mother replied as she hurriedly prepared a bag of ice for Natalie’s bruised shin. “Here, prop this leg up on the chair,” she said. “That’s it. And tell me about this roommate.”

  “You’re sure Meredith didn’t call?” Natalie asked again.

  “I’m sure,” her mother said. “Frank, did you take any calls?”

  “No,” he replied as he poured a glass of milk for Natalie. “None.”

  Natalie wondered why Meredith hadn’t tried to get in touch.

  “So—your roommate, Natalie. Who is she?” her mother persisted, kneeling on the floor and holding the bag of ice in place.

  “Her name is Gabriella,” Natalie said, still distracted. “All I know is that she is from Baltimore and that she’s blind from a recent accident.”

  Her mother winced. “Car accident?”

  “I don’t know,” Natalie said.

  “Is she nice?”

  “Hard to say,” Natalie answered, finally turning her attention to the question at hand. “She doesn’t talk to anyone. The first night we were alone in the room, she couldn’t find the door to the bathroom and stood there, facing the wall, with her pajamas in her hand. I got up and guided her over, but did she say anything, like a simple ‘thank you’? No.”

  “Well, I’m glad you reached out to her, Natty,” her mother said.

  Natalie finished the ham sandwich. “You okay, Dad?” she asked, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “Is something wrong? The goats?”

  “Goats are all fine, Natty Bean,” he said, using her childhood nickname. “I’m just thinking we cannot have this.”

  “Have what?”

  “This—this coming home late at night. Broken down by the side of the highway. I’d rather have you here—”

  “Don’t start, Frank!” her mother cut him off. “It’s the first week and the bus broke down. It’s not like it happens all the time.”

  “Jean, I am not going to have Natalie sitting on the highway at all hours of the night!”

  “Mom, Dad!” Natalie hated hearing her parents argue about her.

  They both fell silent. It was pretty late by then. Natalie didn’t have the energy to say any more. “I’m going to bed,” she said. She left, cutting through the living room quickly, and easily avoiding the coffee table and the wing chair that jutted into her path. She knew the house like the back of her hand; she would never need a cane to find her way at home.

  At night, Natalie kept her tinted eyeglasses in the same place: a shallow yarn basket by the sink in the upstairs bathroom. That way, in the mornings, she didn’t have to search for them. She picked up the basket she’d made almost four years ago during a sixth-grade camping trip and brought it close to her face. She had chosen shades of blue, her favorite color: dark, deepwater blue, high-sky blue—azure they called it—and a pale robin’s-egg blue. Sadly, she could barely tell those shades apart now.

  Natalie set the basket down. It was eleven o’clock. The numbers on the digital clock to her left glowed bright red and were so large that Natalie could still read them. She wondered if her friends were still at the fair. Turning out the light, she put her glasses in the basket and did her eyedrops. It was twelve steps to the rug by her bed where she pulled back the covers and jumped in. She was home. She savored the smell and feel of her smooth cotton sheets and the soothing ticktock sound from the mantel clock downstairs.

  But she could still feel the bump on her shin throbbing, and a Ferris wheel turned in her mind.

  SECRETS

  The clatter of a pickup truck woke Natalie early the next morning. It was a familiar sound coming through her open bedroom window along with the cool mountain air. Natalie knew it was her Uncle Jack arriving to help with the morning milking. The goats heard the truck, too, and, eager for breakfast and milking to be started, called out from their pens in the barn. That funny and frenetic waaaahhhh that Nubians made as they thrust their necks forward always made Natalie grin.

  The good smell of coffee and of bacon drifted into Natalie’s room as well. She lay in bed a bit longer, listening as the kitchen screen door slammed shut and her father and Uncle Jack greeted each other, their voices mixing, fading away as they walked across the yard toward the barn. No doubt, Natalie’s mother had already left in the family van with coolers full of cheese for the farmers’ market in Morgantown, West Virginia, just over the border, half an hour’s drive away. Natalie had been given the morning to sleep in, but she often went to the weekend markets, helping to bag cheese for customers and slipping in a brochure about Mountainside Farm.

  Soon, she would go downstairs for something to eat, then straightaway to the barn to see Nuisance. But first, there was the test.

  All along there had been a secret test. Natalie did the test once a week, and always when no one else was around. She wasn’t s
ure why it had to be done so secretly. It was just the way it had evolved over the years.

  In the bathroom, Natalie quickly did her eyedrops, then found her tinted glasses and put them on. She stood for a moment, using her small circle of vision to check out her reflection in the mirror: the shoulder-length hair mussed by sleep, the wispy bangs, the face with a light sprinkling of freckles she knew were there but could no longer see.

  Finally, she turned and walked over to the small bathroom window to her left. The window was framed by cheerful yellow-and-white-checked curtains. From there, Natalie had always been able to see the lawn bordered by her mother’s flower garden, the maple tree, and the neighbors’ back fence. The Stanleys were a nice family with three boys and a collie named Curlie. They had a small deck on the back of their house and a bright red back door. Odd, that a back door was red like that, but that’s what made it so great, because it was easy to see. It was her peripheral vision that was disappearing, not the ability to see long-distance, but Natalie somehow figured as long as she could see over the fence to that red back door she was doing okay.

  Natalie parted the yellow curtains and looked out. For months, it had been impossible for her to actually see anybody in the Stanleys’ backyard when she heard voices, or the occasional basketball hitting the rim. About a year ago, she had lost sight of the dog, even though she could still hear it barking. But now Natalie could not even see the fence that separated the yards. Nor could she see the red door.

  Had they had painted it?

  Not likely, Natalie thought, realizing that the house itself had become a vague, dark block framed with an eerie gray haze.

  Suddenly, a harsh cry pierced the air. Natalie put a hand to her heart and let the curtains fall back. When the sound repeated, there was no question: it was Winston, their “guard dog” llama, issuing his shrill warning. Natalie rushed downstairs. Winston’s call meant that something threatened the pasture.

  “Natalie, stay inside!” her father called out as he burst through the back door and rushed past her.

  “What is it, Dad? A coyote?”

  “Don’t know!” he called back breathlessly.

  Natalie stayed out of the way. “A bear?”

  Her father didn’t answer. But maybe he didn’t hear in his rush to the gun safe. Natalie knew every move her father was making in the office. He was finding the key, hidden in an old library book about goat farming, far right, bottom shelf, behind his desk. After unlocking the safe, he’d see the guns arranged with the rifles to the left—the .270 caliber deer rifle next to the .22, which her father used for varmints like groundhogs. To the right were the 12- and 20-gauge shotguns. Bullets and shells were in packages neatly stacked on a shelf above them. Natalie had learned years ago how to load and fire each of those guns.

  As he came back through the room, her father carried two weapons. Natalie didn’t need to ask why. If he thought he could get a good aim, he’d use the rifle. If not, he’d fire the shotgun.

  “Get down, Nat!” he told her before he rushed back out the door.

  Natalie sank to the floor, hugging her knees. She heard and felt her father’s feet pound across the yard. Winston called out again, and the goats bleated excitedly from inside the barn.

  A few minutes later, a gunshot echoed. A second shot followed. Natalie waited on the kitchen floor until her father returned.

  “Nothing but a coyote prowling around,” her father said, not sounding too concerned. “I think I scared him off. But it reminds me. Nat, I want to show you something out in the barn.”

  Natalie stood and slid her hands down the kitchen counter, looking for her baseball cap, which she put on while her father locked up the guns.

  “Coyotes are gettin’ to be a problem around here,” her father said, coming back through the kitchen. Natalie heard the screen door open and assumed he was holding the door open for her even though she couldn’t quite get it in her circle of vision.

  “Come on, let’s go,” he urged. Natalie moved quickly toward his voice. Down the steps and out in the yard, however, she hesitated, not knowing what lay ahead. A wheelbarrow, a bucket, a rake, any number of things could be in the yard. Her father touched her elbow to guide her, but then walked so fast Natalie practically had to jog to keep up. It wasn’t exactly “sighted guide,” and Natalie was nervous not knowing what was directly in front of her. Her father didn’t seem to notice her anxiety.

  “I’ve had black bears sniffin’ around the past month, too,” he complained. “What I’m thinkin’ is that I want to keep a shotgun tucked away in the barn somewhere. Takes too much time running back to the house.”

  Her father guided Natalie through the barn until they stood by the grain bin. Natalie felt the edge of the cold iron container and could smell the molasses-soaked feed.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m going to put a shotgun up here.”

  He let go of her elbow and Natalie heard him pushing things around. Metallic cans clinked and glass bottles rattled. “Right here.”

  “You’d better describe it, Dad,” Natalie said, “because I can’t see what you’re doing.”

  There was a pause. Natalie heard her father sigh. He just was not able to accept the fact that she couldn’t see so well anymore.

  “The long cupboard—up over the grain bin, Natty.” He sounded impatient and it hurt. “You know, where I keep the salve and the medication?”

  “Right, right. Okay.” Natalie nodded vigorously. “I know it.”

  “I’ll put the shotgun up here and stack some extra shells beside it. The safety will be on. I’ll show Uncle Jack, and your mother, and you where it is. But you don’t mention it to anyone else, you hear?”

  “Yes. I promise,” Natalie replied, amazed—astounded—that her father would include her in this knowledge, and loving him all the more for it. But how could she possibly find, load, and fire a gun at this point?

  She felt her father’s arm around her shoulder. He gave it a squeeze. “Just in case,” he said softly. “I hope you never have to use it.”

  A FLOATING HEART

  Tomorrow. She has to catch the bus back right after lunch,” Natalie’s mother said into the cordless phone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she took clean coffee mugs from the dishwasher and stacked them one at a time in the cabinet above the counter. “When Natalie saw Dr. Rose last month, her IOP was twenty-four—twenty-four, can you believe it? It’s never been that high. . . .”

  It struck Natalie then, listening to her mother in the next room, how they had learned a whole different language over the years and foisted it on their friends and relatives. Like CD ratio and IOP. Most people wouldn’t have a clue what those initials meant—and probably couldn’t care less. But Natalie’s sight depended on them. She could still remember how Dr. Rose had tried to explain it to her years ago.

  “Everyone’s eyes are filled with fluid,” Dr. Rose had told her, doing his best to simplify things so Natalie, who was eight, could understand. “Fluid constantly enters the eye and then leaves through a tiny drain. The balance of that fluid inside the eye is called the intraocular pressure—the IOP. Now, if there is a problem in this natural drainage system, then the fluid builds up, creating pressure—think of a water balloon expanding—and, with nowhere else to go, presses against the retina.”

  He paused. “Do you remember what the retina is, Natalie?”

  Natalie knew the retina was like a little movie screen in the back of the eye, but she still looked puzzled, so Dr. Rose pulled out a marshmallow from a little zipped Baggie in his top drawer. “Imagine the surface of the marshmallow is the back of your eye, Natalie.” He pressed his index finger into the marshmallow. “That’s what the cupped area of your retina would look like, where the optic nerve gathers and sends its all-important messages to the brain. If fluid in the eye builds up, it can press against this cupped area and make it wider and deeper.” Dr. Rose then took his thumb and pressed a larger indentation into the marshmallow. “The bigger that
indentation, the more likely there is vision loss.”

  An eye. A marshmallow. It was finally beginning to make sense. Years ago, Natalie had even tried to explain it to Meredith while they strolled around the playground at recess kicking stones. They were only in third grade, but Meredith said she really wanted to understand why Natalie was going to miss a whole week of school. “I’m serious, how come?”

  So Natalie tried to explain about the upcoming operation that would give her eye a new drain. “They need to relieve the pressure, see, so they’re going to make a little slot in my eye—”

  “They’re going to cut your eye?” Meredith’s own eyes grew large. “With a knife?”

  “Well, yeah, they have to. But it’s not the kind of knife—”

  “Eeeewwwwww!” Meredith put her hands over her face.

  And Natalie took off running. Meredith chased her and, when she finally caught up, grabbed the sleeve of Natalie’s sweater. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. But they never talked about Natalie’s surgeries again. Just as well, Natalie figured, because it was pretty complicated. Back then, Natalie realized, it was a lot easier not knowing everything.

  Suddenly, the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it, Mom!” Natalie called out. She’d been cleaning out her purse on the dining-room table, using her lighted magnifier to read and separate receipts. Scooping up the pile of trash, she chucked it into a wastebasket and whisked through the living room to answer the door.

  She was surprised—and happy—to find Meredith standing on the front step in shorts and a tank top, her blond hair twisted up on her head.

  “Hey!” Natalie greeted her.

  Meredith held a tin and, perched on the tin, a brown teddy bear wearing a white turtleneck sweater embroidered with the words