...BUT NOW I SEE

I lifted my pudgy kid hands to Dad’s scruffy face before he could throw me up into the air, like he always did.  His eyes were squinty, full of smiling, and I was overjoyed at the scratch of his facial hair against my cheek as I gave him a kiss.

Neither of us knew that everything was going to change that day.  He was just another part of the construction team, about to demolish an abandoned building before another project.  I was his six year old daughter; I had found myself shunted into the world of big men and bright hardhats by a harried mother, who had picked me up after school and driven me there so that she could finish her errands.  She never forgave herself for that, no matter how many times I told her that it wasn’t her fault.

Like every hyperactive six year old, I couldn’t be trusted around a construction site, and my Dad knew it.  He locked me in his trailer office with pencil and paper, as if it could possibly keep me occupied for more than five minutes, then left me alone so he could finish preparing the site for demolition.

The small-time, completely controlled explosion inside the tiny equipment shed in the back of the lot had been my father’s idea.  He had wanted to experiment with a new brand of explosives, and the crew had been excited to make things blow up.  So the shed in the back of the lot had become the focal point of the demolition, and other minor distractions, like curious six year old daughters, were forgotten.

Dad would only be gone for a few minutes, I knew, so I had clambered onto the desk and pried open the sliding Plexiglas window, leaping through it like an acrobat.  I was so proud of myself that I didn’t even cry when I landed, the wind forced out of my lungs.  I was on my feet as soon as I could breathe again.  The big men in bright hardhats barely noticed me as they scrambled around to complete last-minute assignments, and those that did couldn’t get a grip on my slippery child arms as I flitted past. 
(cont'd...)

I saw a cute little house and ran for it.  It reminded me of my playhouse in my backyard, only bigger and better.  The front door was locked, so I ran around to the back, frustrated.  Every window was too high up for me to crawl in, even when I stood on my tip-toes and jumped up and down.  I didn’t notice how quiet the construction site had gotten as I circled back toward the front.

I couldn’t remember much after that so Dad had to fill in the rest, his voice faint and weighed down with guilt.  The nurse’s silence was sympathetic as her latex-covered hands prodded my face, medical instruments thudding against a tabletop. 

“I saw her come around the corner of the shed just after I had signaled the countdown.  I felt like everything was underwater after that.  I yelled at her, and in slow motion, she turned, smiled when she saw me.  It took her so long to understand what I was saying, and I was halfway across the field when it exploded.”  The nurse made a murmuring noise, and I imagined her head shaking slowly back and forth, her lipstick-covered mouth frowning a little in sympathy.

“They said that a brick flew out and hit her on the side of the head,” my mom finished, and I sighed.  I hated it when they talked about me like I wasn’t sitting there in front of them; like just because I was blind, I couldn’t hear what they were saying, either. 

It was always the same.  A monthly trip to the doctor to see if the steroids were working, another shot in both my eyes when they discovered that they hadn’t done anything.  Every few months, there would be a new nurse practitioner who didn’t know my story, and every few months my parents would be forced to relive the day that I became blind.

I concentrated on the plastic cover of the sterile bench they forced me to lay on while they gave me my useless steroid shots, the smooth, sterilized surface with a dewy friction that kept my palms from sliding.  The pain of the needle was shocking, but when you’re blind, you get used to being surprised. 

Dad took my hand under his arm as we walked back to the car, and I tried to remember the details of his face.  All I could remember was the prickly feeling of his five o’clock shadow.  He opened the car door and helped me onto the seat; we waited in silence for Mom.

I fiddled with a rip in the car seat, prodding the fluff that was leaking out as Mom started the car.  The ride was quiet and I knew that my parents were thinking about that day, ten years ago, regretting every decision they had made.  I just picked and pulled at the fluff protruding from the tear until Mom told me to stop.

When we got home, I made my way to the family room and sat down on the couch, listening intently to my father’s heavy tread on the stairs and Mom’s pattering steps that faded into the kitchen.  My right eye watered as it often did after my shots, and I ran my fingernails against the corduroy texture of the couch cushion, focusing on other things.

I wanted to go upstairs to my room and listen to music, but I knew that Mom would probably want to talk, like she always did after we told another stranger about my story.  The ceiling creaked above my head as Dad walked across his bedroom; I tried to imagine what the couch I was sitting on looked like.  I heard Mom rummaging around in the kitchen cabinets, probably getting ready to start dinner.

“Alice?  Come in here and help me, would you?” Mom called, and I obediently rose, expertly avoiding the end-table that I knew would be in my path.  My hand trailed along the back of the couch, then found the wall that connected to the kitchen.  Not for the first time, I slid on the slick linoleum stairs up into the kitchen, and Mom rushed to help me when she heard me fall to my knees.

“I’m fine, Mom.”  She heard the anger and retreated back to the other end of the kitchen, where the stove was.  I hoisted myself up the stairs, leaning against the countertop.

“On your left is a pile of vegetables…”  She didn’t need to finish, because I had already grabbed them and walked over to the sink, counting every step.  I twisted the hot water handle and ripped open the plastic bag, quickly caressing the lean body of a carrot.  I put the carrots under the water and felt the dents and dips, the pealing of the phone biting through the soothing hiss of the water.

As Mom answered the phone I rubbed away dirt and bacteria that I couldn’t see, the hot water stinging my hands.  I scrubbed and scrubbed, the stress leaking from my shoulders like the water from the faucet.  There was only me, the sink, and the carrots.  The rest of the world was background noise, constantly running, waiting for me to tune in.  It was just the hiss of water, the gentle mutter of my mom on the phone in the other room, Dad’s creaking journey upstairs from one end of the room to the other.

After I washed all of the vegetables, I jumped at the chance to retreat to my room before Mom could come back from her conversation.  I walked up the stairs as quickly as I felt comfortable doing, fumbling for my doorknob for a few seconds before I could find it.  Once I had shut the door again, I kicked off my shoes and made my way to my bed.

The CD in my old CD player was outdated, but I still listened to it almost obsessively, never tiring of the way that the melodies picked up and twisted.  Music created something in my mind that nothing else could replicate; it was like music created a rebellion in my eyes, and they fought against everything in my brain that told them they had lost their vision.  The emotions I felt were amplified by every note, the textures and fabrics beneath my fingertips blossomed into jungles thick with colors and movement.  I poured every bit of concentration held in my body into these music worlds, listening to the color purple and the swish of a tail.  Listening to music was one of the only ways I could think of that almost brought my sight back to me.

Just as I was about to click my CD player on, I heard my Mom’s voice, slightly strained, waft past my bedroom on the way to Dad.  I couldn’t hear what she had said because my door was closed, but Dad’s quick shuffle down the stairs piqued my curiosity.  I moved to the door and cracked it open, leaning out of the doorway to hear them.

The words exchanged were low and mumbled, hard for me to pick out above the running of the water that Mom had forgotten to turn off.  Still, they both sounded excited, their exclamations clipped and growing louder by the minute.   It wasn’t long before I was picking up words like “miracle” and “experiment”, and then, my name. 

***

A new, experimental technology, they had told us, and my parents lovingly repeated those words as if they were a mantra.  The surgery was a new, experimental operation that included more steroids, lasers, replacement parts, and a large amount of finger-crossing.  Without consulting me, the blind girl, the recipient of the new, experimental operation, my parents had signed me up.  It was a fated phone call, my parents breathed out as they explained it to me, coming at exactly the time when they had completely given up hope.  I pointed my eyes at what I thought might be straight ahead, and let my ears fill with music instead of their voices.  It was the only way that I could cope.

I was beyond angry with my parents.  The more that I thought about them and the surgery they had signed me up for, the more uncontrollable I became.  The first night, I said nothing; the second, I screamed loud and long, muffled by my pillow.  By the end of the week, I had stopped holding back, and they had to clean up the mess of a lamp that I threw as we engaged in a shouting match.  My rage went past the fact that my parents hadn’t asked me about anything, even seeing how monumental a surgery like this could be.

I was going to lose myself.  Even if the surgery went right in every possible way, and I got my sight back, I was going to forget the way of seeing that had gotten me through ten years of existence.  I wouldn’t need the raised bumps of braille, wouldn’t feel the exciting confusion of being unable to remember, after waking up, whether I was still dreaming or not.  My friends from my school for the blind would shun me, because I wouldn’t be one of them anymore.  The way I had become accustomed to living my life would be obsolete, and that scared me.

I was consumed by a literal blind hatred.  I didn’t know my opponent, couldn’t size them up and didn’t know where the next punch was coming from, but I started swinging so furiously that I knew I would connect eventually.  My parents went from flabbergasted to offended, and if I hadn’t been a pathetically blind girl trying to throw furniture that she couldn’t see, then they might have even been angry with me.  I cursed incessantly, told my parents all of the things I would do if they made me go through with the surgery that could either give me my sight back or ruin my chances of ever seeing again.  I insulted their intelligence, their ability as parents, even went as far as to point out the responsibility they shared in my blindness.

It was the worst two months of my life.  I went to my special school for blind kids and thought of all the friends I might lose, if the operation went according to plan.  I thought of all the things I would have to learn, like how to read, how far behind I would be if I rejoined the ranks of the seeing.  Being blind made me special, and without it I wouldn’t be Alice anymore, just another average girl.  I was being forced to change into someone I didn’t want to be.

Without my permission, the day of the operation came.  They knocked me out almost as soon as I had changed into my hospital gown, and the next thing I remembered was waking up with a minor headache, a tube coming from the crook of my elbow, and familiar blackness all around me.  Then I felt the unfamiliar weight of bandages over my eyes, and remembered, groggily, where I was.

I was alone for a long time.  Eventually I heard the door open and three sets of footsteps clattered against the floor, stopping around my bed.

“Alice?  Are you awake?” My mom asked softly, and I was tempted to pretend to be asleep.  The doctor or nurse that had walked in with my parents mumbled something about me waking up under his breath, and so I stirred.  Familiar hands wrapped around my own, and I found that I couldn’t muster the energy to be angry with my parents.

Doctor Stephenson told us that it would be a few days until I could take off my bandages.  When I finally did, we were all convinced that it hadn't worked.  Slowly, the nurse had unraveled the bandages, and with baited breath my parents had sat before me, staring eagerly into my face.  I almost choked on their disappointment when I announced that I couldn’t see anything at all.  Then, very slowly, a glimmer of light danced across my line of sight.  Mom started to cry.

Two weeks later, I woke up to early morning quiet, my bedroom dark and cool.  I kept my eyes closed for a long time, still marveling at the way the light played across my eyelids.  Every day it had gotten easier to see, the murkiness clearing from my gaze.  The doctors crowed with accomplishment, and my parents, relieved of the weight of ten years of guilt, beamed like newlyweds at everyone and everything.  As soon as they possibly could, they extracted me from the hospital and took me home.

I opened my eyes and stared at the wall without focusing, dirty pink light splayed across my miraculously healed line of sight.  All I could see now was reality, my world of music and texture buried in the nuances of a normal, seeing world.  My emptiness at the thought felt like a betrayal to everything that my parents had just done for me.

At first, being able to see made me forget everything I had worried about.  I no longer had to rely on my sense of hearing and memorization to navigate a room.  I no longer had to wait for someone to escort me to the bathroom.  I no longer had to guess at the shape of my parents’ faces.  I was allowed to walk through the maternity ward and see the blissful smiles of sleeping infants, could finally the sharp movements of light reflected from the cars passing by my hospital room window.  I wanted to swallow the reproduction Degas hung across from my bed, because I was still afraid that, at any moment, I would be drowned in darkness.

The first time I looked in a mirror shattered my illusion of happiness.  I was marveling at the splash of water over my skin, when I looked up to be greeted by a horrendous, grisly, mangled Quasimodo grimace.  I staggered backwards, astonished by the masterful ugliness of the scarred and twisted human face.  Then I realized it was my own.  The color drained from the hideous face, stitched lines of scars all along it as if she were a Frankenstein monster.  I couldn’t believe that the thing before me, the product of hours of reconstructive surgery, belonged to me.

The looks that I received became unbearable.  Every new nurse that entered to check my IV drip did a double take when they saw my face.  I saw the initial reaction of fear, the same as my own, the exercise of practiced self-control that it took not to turn away or make a sound of protest.  They would drop their eyes, then, distracted by my sheer ugliness, lift them again.  The second glance was long and searching, an attempt to find humanity amongst the furrows and silvery welts.

Nobody had ever told me how my face had been nearly eaten by flames and the abrasive touch of brick and siding.  Nobody had bothered to let me know that, in fact, I would never be normal, even with my vision.  By gaining my sight, I had gained a monster.

I knew what I had to do after my parents started to discuss finding a school for me to attend.  I couldn’t unleash this disgusting visage; I needed to be ignorant again, blind to the stares, surrounded by people who couldn’t see me for what I was.

There was bleach under the kitchen sink.  Determined, I trudged down the stairs, seeing for the last time the stains on the carpet, the mahogany end-table, the slippery floor of the kitchen.  Mom was gone grocery shopping; she had tried to drag me along with her, but I locked myself in my room until she left in a huff. Dad was at work, overseeing his construction company.  I knelt down and pulled out the bottle of bleach, hefting it onto the island in the middle of the kitchen.  Unceremoniously, I lifted it up and tilted it over me, staring into the transparent wave of blindness as it spilled over me.  With the unbearable burning came a feeling of purging, and through the screams and tears and gasps for breath, I managed a smile.