Now I See You (27 page)

“There I was, throwing up and pooping myself at the same time,” she recounted, her legs in lotus position, “and I actually felt relieved. Because I knew that now, I’d get a break. I’d been feeling really lousy for a day or two but not lousy enough to get out of making lunches and doing bedtime and stuff. But now with the vomiting and diarrhea, there was no way I could do it anymore. I just remember sitting there on the toilet with my face over the trash can and thinking, ‘Thank God.’”

I finally understood this story the day I relinquished my driver’s license. Figuratively, my ass was on the shitter and my head was in a barf bag but in reality, I was leaning over the counter at the DMV, sliding my license through the opening in the glass window.

I hadn’t driven since Lorenzo was born but I’d hung on to my license. As it turns out, those suckers at the New York Department of Motor Vehicles let you renew your license for ten years at a time, never suspecting, I guess, that a person can lose most of their usable vision in that period. So I’d waltzed around town, flashing my fully functional license whenever proof of identification was called for, and every time I handed it over, I felt reassured. I couldn’t be too far gone if I still had a driver’s license. The little laminated card was a critical support beam in the scaffolding of my self-confidence and I treasured it, even with the awful photo of me at twenty-three, sporting a jet-black bob and a tank top emblazoned with Chinese dragons.

But a few weeks after my thirty-third birthday, my ten-year grace period ran out. The license expired. And I was forced to confront the fact that it was the last license I’d have.

I could hardly even drive my body around anymore. Navigating around at nighttime had always been hard but over the last year or two, navigating crowds even in the day had become tough; regrettable, given that in New York, crowds were difficult to avoid.

Not a day passed without me colliding into strangers on the sidewalk or subway platform, on line at the bank or at the playground. I’d come to resent dogs, because they ended up getting me into so much trouble. The tiny, yippie ones were too short to enter my central vision; inevitably I’d stomp on their tails or kick them inadvertently in the ribs as I took a step, which always prompted their owners to sweep the yelping furballs into their arms while shooting me very shaming looks. Even the bigger dogs presented a problem when they were attached to ten-foot-long leashes stretched diagonally across the sidewalk with what seemed a lot like total disregard for other pedestrians. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve gotten tangled up in a dog’s leash like a dim-witted cartoon character, I’d be rich enough to ban dogs from Brooklyn.

It was bad enough assaulting people and domestic animals with my body, but worse was the damage I’d do with my stroller when I rolled it over the polished shoes of some businessman at rush hour or felled adorable toddlers with it. Summertime was the worst because everyone peeled off the protective armor of boots in favor of sandals, exposing the soft, unsuspecting flesh of their Achilles tendons. No matter how many times it happened, I couldn’t grow accustomed to the look on strangers’ faces when I rammed my stroller wheel into those tendons; the progression was usually shock, then confusion, then indignation. I always apologized profusely but that didn’t make the gimped-up denizens of Brooklyn feel any better.

If I could do that much damage behind the wheel of an eleven-pound stroller, I shuddered to think what I could do behind the wheel of a car. There was no way I could ever drive again, not even to move the car on alternate side parking days. No, once I had kids and realized the value of human life, I established a zero tolerance policy for my own driving. So when my license finally expired, I had no choice but to hand it over to the authorities and get a non-driver ID instead. I’d informed myself about this process on the DMV web page entitled “Resources for the Older Driver.” Already, off to a lousy start.

“I’m surrendering my license,” I told the man behind the counter, trying to keep my voice down but still be heard through the glass.

He glanced down at my license and then slid it back over, along with a blank form.

“It just expired, so you don’t have to give it up,” he explained. “Just fill this out to renew.”

I slid the license back to him decisively: “No thanks. I’m not renewing.”

“It’s not hard,” he assured me. “All you have to do is pay the fee. And take the vision test.”

It did sound simple, so simple that I was tempted to agree. But then I glanced over at the eye chart behind him and was reminded that I didn’t have a choice; I could hardly make out the top line.

“Thanks but no,” I persevered.

“You sure?” He raised his eyebrows. “Once you give it up, it’s not so easy to get back again.”

I swallowed hard. Going to the downtown Brooklyn DMV was misery enough without having to confront the tragic fact of your incurable disease, too. It wasn’t this hard to
get
the license in the first place. Now it appeared that I would be forced to have a public unraveling, with sobbing and Kleenex getting passed and the whole nine yards, just to earn a shitty ID usually reserved for the ninety-and-older crowd.

I tried to keep my voice from cracking: “Yes, I’m sure. Not renewing. Surrendering.”

“Suit yourself.” The man shrugged, as if he’d learned after so many years not to attempt to talk sense to the wackadoos who passed by his window.

When I walked out of the DMV a half hour later, I’d lost the right to drive, and there was no way I’d get it back. It was gone. I felt a great sadness, like some precious possession I’d been clutching had just dropped from my palm into a sewer grating. But I felt relief, too, at the finality of it. Gone was the pressure of trying to hold on. And it occurred to me that when the day finally came that I couldn’t leave the house without my cane, I might feel liberated.

Ever since my visit to the Park Avenue doctor, I’ve been losing my foothold in the world of the sighted, getting pulled slowly but inexorably into the liminal space between vision and blindness. I have fought the pull ferociously, by denying, by pretending, even by getting help. With increasing desperation, I scramble to stay in the world of the sighted, even just a little bit, because the worst thing, I’ve always thought, would be to let go completely. But that day at the DMV, it dawned on me that maybe the worst thing was being trapped in the place in between.

In fact, giving up my license felt so great after the fact that I started experimenting with giving up other things. One day David came home to find I’d packed up all our glassware for the Salvation Army and purchased plastic cups from Ikea instead.

“No more broken glasses!” I pronounced.

I relocated the dome magnifier Esperanza had given me—a thick semicircle of glass just the shape and size of a souvenir snow globe—from the back of my closet to my purse, where it would actually come in handy. It still took me a few months to work up the courage to take it out in public and the first time I did, I burned with embarrassment, certain that everyone on the uptown 2 train was staring at me. Of course, the wonderful thing about riding the New York City subway is that nobody gives a crap what weird stuff you do. Whatever freaky shit you’re doing, they’ve seen or done freakier. Once I saw a morbidly obese women shaving her eyebrows with a disposable razor and I hardly even looked twice. I’d have to undress and stick the magnifier up my ass to get anyone to even glance in my direction. This became clear soon enough, and within a few minutes, my cheeks stopped burning and I could relax. The next time I pulled the magnifier out of my purse, I was less embarrassed and the time after that was easier still.

It reminded me of breastfeeding in public. The first time I bared my breast in a restaurant to nurse Lorenzo, I felt like I was using a public bathroom with the door open. I was sure that in the few seconds it took for me to cover up with a pashmina, I’d scandalized the whole place with my exposed nipple; I was just waiting for someone to shout, “This is a family establishment ma’am!” After a few weeks though, I’d dispensed with the pashmina entirely. I’d unbutton my shirt nearly down to the navel and yank out my massive, leaking breast in one swift gesture, flashing my goods like I was in a Girls Gone Wild video. Like I tell my kids, everything gets easier with practice.

Even after I became more comfortable with my magnifier, I tried to use it surreptitiously. This was difficult to do around children because kids, it turns out, can’t keep their big yappers shut. My own kids had gotten accustomed to the magnifier but other kids would notice and get all curious. Once I was using it very discreetly to sign up for parent-teacher conferences at Rosa’s nursery school and a little boy piped up.

“Hey, that’s cool! What is it? Can I have a turn? Are you a wizard?”

I looked around to check for witnesses. All clear.

“Yes,” I whispered, narrowing my eyes to slits, “I am.”

His lip started to tremble and he ran back to his rug spot.

Of course, I tried not to use the magnifier in front of people I knew because that would entail me explaining the whole story and the thing I was most loath to do, more than receive cane training or go to support groups, was explain the whole story, especially to people I’d known for years. I knew they’d think it was odd that I’d never told them something as big and important as this. Of course, the longer I waited, the more odd it got.

My trouble was, I didn’t know where to start. It was a harder conversation to have than you’d think, mainly because there was never a natural segue. I kept waiting to be in the middle of a conversation that offered a smooth transition. Like, maybe someone would one day bring up Stevie Wonder, and then I’d say, “Hey, speaking of blind people, did I ever tell you I am? Blind, that is?” Or maybe, if I waited long enough, my friends would confess a secret of their own to me, like they’d had gender reassignment surgery or had worked for the CIA or something, and then I’d say, “I’m glad you brought that up because there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, too.”

When neither of these opportunities presented themselves, I had no choice but to create my own lead-in. The one I used most frequently was: “Okay, so here’s something crazy…” Admittedly not the smoothest transition but it didn’t matter much because I blurted it out so quickly my conversation partner hardly had a chance to process the words before I was moving on to: “I sort of have this secret incurable disease where I’m going blind.” Then, I’d break into a manic, nervous laugher, which did not increase anyone’s comfort level.

When I told one of my closest mommy friends, Grace, she was genuinely confused.

“Wait, are you kidding?” she asked.

The realization that I was bungling things miserably only made me more nervous. And when the going gets tough, I laugh harder.

“No!” I guffawed.

“‘No’ you don’t have a secret disease or ‘no’ you’re not kidding?” Grace looked perplexed.

“No—not kidding.” I managed through my peals of laugher. “Yes—am—going—blind.”

She tilted her head and looked at me quizzically.

“Also,” I panted, catching my breath, “I have emotional problems. Obviously. So can we never discuss this again?”

“Of course we have to discuss this again,” she replied, furrowing her brow. “But first, back up and tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

After I’d shared all the pertinent details, she told me that it was actually a relief. Over the years she’d noticed strange things I did that just didn’t add up, didn’t jive with the kind of person she knew me to be. How I didn’t shake the hand of someone she introduced me to. How I sometimes didn’t see my kids, or hers, when they were standing right in front of me. Why I didn’t take Lorenzo’s splinter out that one time, and asked her to do it. They were just these little moments that seemed off, and it was unsettling because she knew there must be some perfectly reasonable explanation. Lo and behold, there was one. And now that she had it, all those moments made sense.

I was surprised when she thanked me for telling her, like I’d given her something she valued but of course, I had. I’d given her the truth.

Tip #20: On crossing the street

Jaywalking is one of those little luxuries you don’t realize you’ll miss until it’s gone. Make no mistake, you will miss it, not so much the thirty seconds saved by crossing against the light, but the confidence of knowing the coast is clear after a cursory glance. The certainty of safety.

That, and not looking like a goody-goody. Because everyone jaywalks, and I mean everyone. Hunchback, arthritic old men. Groups of day care kids on an outing. Cops. But you will wait, lonely on the curb, ten seconds, twenty, thirty, looking like a bozo, because the big difference between you and these people is, they can see a car speeding their way and you cannot, not reliably at least. Your kids will want to know why,
why
they have to wait when everyone else is crossing and you will explain, as sanctimoniously as you want, that jaywalking is against the law and that you, for one, take the law seriously.

“One day you’ll thank me,” you’ll tell them, knowing they won’t, knowing they shouldn’t have to. The assurance that you won’t kill them accidentally is just one of those things you want your kids to take for granted.

20. MIRACLE

I’ve prayed for a lot of things over the years but never for a miracle. I’ve always felt it was better not to micromanage the divine and not to get too greedy. So when I prayed about my eyes, I mainly offered thanks for preserving my vision so far and asked for fortitude in the face of what would come.

Soon after I turned thirty-four, though, I found myself hoping, if not outright praying, for a miracle. Nothing lavish. I didn’t need an old-school Let-the-Blind-Man-See cure. Just a minimiracle would suffice, or even a hint of one en route, like maybe the shrinking of my cataracts or something. It wasn’t because my eyesight had gotten worse, which it had. It was because I wanted something very badly that I didn’t think I could have without at least a pinky swear from someone in charge that things would hold steady for a while. I wanted another baby.