Now I See You (24 page)

Though we were about the same age, there was something inarguably maternal about her, so I wasn’t surprised to find she had two young children at home, a son and a daughter two years his junior, just like my pair. We talked a lot about mothering, everything from weaning off the paci to how to get the boys to piss in the bowl.

She was full of tips, too, about parenting while partially sighted.

“Let’s talk about kids and clutter,” Esperanza suggested at our third or fourth meeting. I knew what would follow was essentially a public-service announcement for the blind, the kind I’d summarily dismiss were it delivered by anyone else. Esperanza’s mini-lectures were so well formulated, though, and so inarguably useful, that I could not help but heed them.

“For the visually impaired, less is really more,” she advised. “Keeping your belongings to a minimum helps you find things more easily and can prevent accidents.”

I thought immediately of the cookie cutter incident. Just a few months before, Rosa had unearthed my collection of seasonally festive cookie cutters—Easter eggs and snowmen and jack-o-lanterns, oh my! She’d used the metal cookie cutters to take her Play-Doh work to the next level, and when she was done, she’d abandoned them on the living room floor and moved on to a science experiment that involved emptying my sample-sized bottle of Chanel into the radiator.

As I’d run across the room to rescue the heating system, and the perfume, my bare foot encountered one of the cookie cutters—the bat-shaped one, with wings spread.

“Jesus, Mary, and JOOOOSEPH!” I howled. The pain was considerable enough that all three needed invocation. “What the hell? Mommy’s foot is not a COOKIE!”

At this, the children erupted into shrieks of laughter.

“Let’s see if your foot has a bat on it!” Lorenzo squealed.

The fact that it did delighted the kids and infuriated me.

“That’s IT!” I pronounced, “These cutters are going RIGHT in the garbage!”

I hadn’t done it, of course. But now Esperanza was telling me I should, with no compunction.

I don’t know where she came up with these tricks of the blind trade, since her vision seemed perfect, but she was full of them. The whole setup was odd but not unpleasant: we’d sip Earl Grey tea at my grimy kitchen table while she relayed life-saving kernels of wisdom or quizzed me on life skills.

“How can you ensure safety when cutting fruits and vegetables?”

“You mean blind people, right?”

“Yes,” Esperanza confirmed.

“How do blind people safely slice vegetables?” I repeated. “Is this a trick question?”

She smiled, but I wasn’t kidding.

“Ummm, I don’t know … buy presliced frozen vegetables?” I guessed.

“Well, that’s one option.” Unfailingly encouraging, Esperanza would never explicitly tell me I was wrong. “But my goal is to help you retain as much independence as possible. So if you wanted to slice the vegetables yourself—”

“I don’t,” I assured her. “Like, even now, when I can see, I never want to slice vegetables. I’m already looking for a reason not to do it, and I feel like blindness will serve as the perfect excuse.”

“I understand, but if you change your mind…” Despite her gentle demeanor, Esperanza was impossible to deter. She would equip me with tools to retain my independence whether I wanted them or not. “You’ll just be sure to hold the vegetables in place with your upper knuckles rather than your fingertips, and use a knife with a good grip to avoid slippage.”

I envisioned the future blind me, wearing sunglasses in the kitchen, preparing a magnificent roast for a dinner party—the kind I never threw now but for some reason imagined I would once I was an even less capable chef. I pictured myself taking a cleaver carefully in hand, securing a potato with my knuckles, and slicing off all four of those knuckles with one deft motion. Normal people who sliced off their knuckles could at least find them and bring them to the hospital to have them sewed back on, but I wouldn’t stand a chance of locating my severed digits, especially with only one hand to grope with. What’s worse, I’d then lack the fingers necessary to clean—by touch—the bloodbath in my kitchen.

Yes, slicing and dicing while blind seemed like a big risk with little payoff. But I didn’t want to insult Esperanza’s advice so I kept the observation to myself.

“So, are we ready to move on to cooking meats?” she asked. “Using the low-vision kitchen timer I brought?”

Because she was so genteel, she didn’t inquire about the whereabouts of that timer, which I’d stashed in a box I’d mentally labeled “Blind Shit” and shoved on the top shelf of my closet.

Esperanza brought me a dozen household items designed specifically for the partially sighted, most of which were normal things blown up to three or four times their usual size, like they’d been shot with what five-year-old Lorenzo would call a Big-a-nator Ray Gun. My tiny apartment was filled with supersized stuff, like a calculator with buttons so big it took two fingers to press them down.

It was very thoughtful of her to bring over the stuff, but there was no way I could leave it out in the open. It was humiliating, tantamount to forgetting your vibrator on the coffee table. Plus, if my grandmother or mother stumbled upon the talking thermometer, they’d probably commit a double suicide.

It was bad enough explaining who Esperanza was to my grandmother. I hadn’t planned on sharing any of my training odyssey with Nonny but one day Esperanza showed up a few minutes early while Nonny was still at my place, getting Rosa’s stuff together so she could take her to the playground.

“Who was dat lady?” Nonny interrogated me when she returned with Rosa a few hours later.

“Esperanza?” I asked. “She’s … she’s a kind of teacher.”

It’s what I had told Rosa when I introduced Esperanza: “This is a teacher who helps people with bad eyes like Mommy.” But though this vague explanation satisfied Rosa, it didn’t satisfy my grandmother.

“Whose teacher? Lorenzo’s?” Nonny persisted.

“No,” I replied, starting to wish I’d just introduced her as a mommy friend. Now it was too late to back out.

“She’s a—a teacher for me,” I stammered.

“What kinda teacher you need?” Nonny was getting suspicious. I knew that if I didn’t clear things up right away, she’d be left to her own wild speculations and would probably be calling my mother in an hour, panicking about how I had a secret lesbian Latina lover.

“She helps people who can’t see so well,” I explained. “The State sent her.”

I thought if I could avoid the use of the word “blind” or “disease” maybe she’d swallow my casual delivery. But Nonny is no dummy and as soon as I made reference to the State she was able to read between the lines. Her expression morphed from surprised to stricken, like she’d found out the awful memory she’d dismissed as a nightmare wasn’t a dream at all. Then she reached out and touched my face, saying, “Don’t worry Nicole, God’s gonna help you.”

“Ok, okay.” I pulled away and busied myself slicing Rosa an apple using my fingertips instead of my knuckles. As usual, I hadn’t been worrying, but as soon as she told me not to, I started in a hurry.

The next day, Nonny showed up with a vial of holy water from St. Peter’s. She was calling in the big guns.

“Put it on you eyes,” Nonny urged, her own gray-blue eyes full of anguish.

I knew she was just trying to raise my spirits but being reminded that my only shot at healing was a Bible-sized miracle did not, in fact, cheer me. So, from then on, I made sure not to schedule Esperanza’s visits on a day Nonny would be around. The poor woman didn’t have a big enough reserve of holy water.

After Esperanza had outfitted my house with blind-person gear, it was time to take the teaching out of the classroom. On our first foray outside, Esperanza just tagged along as I conducted business as usual, bringing Lorenzo to school, taking Rosa on errands.

“The first thing I’d like to suggest, if I might,” started Esperanza, and it was a testament to how much I liked her that her politeness didn’t drive me crazy, “I think you’d benefit a lot by slowing down.”

“Maybe,” I replied, “it’s just, you know, places to go, people to see.” I didn’t want to tell her that I was walking at an even brisker pace than normal because I was panicked we’d run into someone I knew. I’d already decided that I would introduce Esperanza as a college friend but who knew if she’d go along with the story? Better to get back home before my cover was compromised.

“One thing you can do to compensate for your vision loss is to scan your environment,” she went on. “That’s where you sweep your gaze methodically from left to right and back again, a little higher each time, so you make the most of the vision you have. It’s extremely helpful but it does mean you have to slow down.”

“You’re right.” I sighed. You had to admit, the lady knew what she was talking about. “But now I think we should head back so I can give Rosa a nap.”

A few minutes later, Rosa was settled in her toddler bed, and Esperanza was getting ready to wrap our session up. Before she did, though, she wanted to show me something. She reached into the small rolling suitcase she always brought and pulled out a tight white bundle, which she then placed on the kitchen table between us.

“I brought you a cane,” she explained.

I looked up at her, surprised. She knew how I felt about this.

“Listen, I really appreciate it,” I told her. “But I think I’ll pass. I just don’t need it yet.”

Gently, Esperanza explained that I didn’t have a choice.

“If you don’t accept mobility training, we can’t move any further with your case.”

“Well, what’s left? I mean, I feel like I know everything there is to know about being blind, A to Z. What more could anyone possibly teach me?”

I’d called the Commission because I needed, and genuinely wanted, help. But now that the process was under way and getting a bit uncomfortable, I was feeling like maybe I didn’t need help so much anymore. I had tried to impart this to Esperanza a few times but she wouldn’t take “Thanks for the memories and please never call me again” for an answer.

“I’m not positive about this,” Esperanza answered, “but I think that after me, you’re meeting with the Adaptive Technology Center.” She looked at me expectantly, waiting for my reaction. I had none, seeing as I had no idea what the Adaptive Technology Center was. Sounded pretty boring.

Esperanza could tell she needed to work on her soft sell. “It’s where experts help you adapt your devices—computers, phones, things like that—so you can maximize your use of them.”

Ahhh, now this was interesting. “Can they teach me how to text?” I inquired casually. This was a negotiation and I didn’t want to lose any leverage by letting on how desperately I wanted what was on offer.

At some point in the past five years, while I was busy having babies and going blind, the face of telecommunication had changed. Phones were no longer devices you talked on but devices you typed on instead. This presented a problem for me because no matter how much I futzed with the settings on my phone, I couldn’t figure out how to make the font of the texts big enough for me to read. My phone would
ding!
and
bing!
and I’d realize that someone was trying to tell me something but I had no earthly idea who it was or what the hell they were trying to say.

The story I used to explain my aversion for texting—that I was a luddite who preferred verbal communication—was wearing thin. I felt like someone who couldn’t pay the Con Ed bill but insisted a fire in the trash can was superior to central heat. Even my mother texted and my mother couldn’t figure out how to microwave popcorn. I needed to get in the texting game.

Plus, if they could teach me how to text, maybe they could teach me how to use the contact list in my phone so I didn’t have to memorize everyone’s phone number like a person from medieval times. Maybe I could use the calendar and the email function, too. The Adaptive Technology Center had the potential to introduce me to the twenty-first century.

“I’m sure they can teach you to text.” Esperanza smiled. “In fact, I’m pretty sure that if you qualify, they can set you up with a new computer and adaptive software, too.”

Those sly bastards,
I thought.
They’ve got me by the balls.

My laptop, ten years old, was literally held together by duct tape and spontaneously shut down at least once a day. The “n” and “g” keys stuck and the delete button no longer worked. As a writer, this was not ideal. I found myself avoiding the use of certain words just because I knew they’d be a pain in the ass to type; I’d basically rid my writing of the word “noggin” (probably a good thing) and the entire gerund tense.

I desperately needed a new computer but didn’t have the money for one. And now it was being offered to me, with all the fixings. It was almost worth having a degenerative eye disease. All I had to do was get trained on the cane.

So I told Esperanza I’d do it. But when she informed me that we couldn’t conduct the training in the privacy of my apartment but would have to venture outside, in public, even the promise of a new computer and learning how to text could not persuade me to agree.

“I’m sorry. You know I really want to be compliant and everything but that’s totally freaking impossible,” I burst out. “People will see me. Lorenzo’s school is just a few blocks away. I could run into teachers or other parents or shit, my neighbors, friends from college who live nearby. They’d want to know why I’m holding a blind person cane and I’d have to make up an excuse. No—no way. It’s insane. I’m not doing it.”

Esperanza recognized a nervous breakdown when she saw one approaching so she agreed to pause the training. She left the cane with me and told me to call her in a few days, when I felt up to it.

Picking the cane up with two fingers like it was a soiled diaper, I brought it into my bedroom and tossed it into the back of my closet, next to the red patent leather heels I hadn’t worn in seven years and a broken suitcase I’d never get around to fixing.

Intellectually, I knew the cane was a tool that I could use as much or as little as I liked, to my advantage, not my detriment. My intellect, though, was heavily overpowered by emotion. And emotionally, the cane signaled doom. Not just defeat or failure but total, irrevocable, Greek-tragedy-style doom. As soon as I unfolded that cursed thing, I’d be a blind person, and there was no turning back. As soon as I took the handle in my hand and tapped it to the ground, the rest of my vision would fade to black and I’d live in a world without colors or shapes or patterns or faces. I’d never read again. I’d never see Moscow. I’d forget what my kids looked like. Before you could say “adaptive technology” David would divorce me, I’d go on food stamps, lose custody of the children, and end up shooting heroin in a cardboard box under the Brooklyn Bridge. I’d sooner pick up a loaded gun than that cane.