Love and First Sight(8)

“Not bad.”

“Right on,” says Dad, a little too loudly.

My father is an uptight surgeon. He fools no one by using phrases he thinks are cool.

“Did your new friends like your sweater?” asks Mom. “It looks so perfect on you!”

“They failed to mention it,” I say.

“Was it tough getting around?” asks Mom. “So much new territory. I mean, after ten years at the school for the blind—”

“It was okay. Mrs. Chin trained me well.”

Mrs. Chin was the “orienteering and mobility” guide at the school for the blind, where I used to go. She taught us how to walk with an adult-size white cane, how to cross an intersection, how to orient in a new building using cardinal directions—almost everything we needed to know about living independently. I can’t say for sure since we didn’t talk about that kind of stuff, but I think Mrs. Chin was Chinese American. I assume so because I once heard a joke about a fat person having “more chins than a Chinese phone book.”

It’s amazing how jokes can teach you the things people think but are too polite to say aloud, prejudices I assume other kids absorb with the help of their eyes—racism, sexism, and the like. In the case of Mrs. Chin, I figured she was probably Chinese after I heard the phone book line. In fact, that very same joke also taught me that fat people have multiple chins. Why this is, I don’t know. I mean, why chins? Why not extra cheeks? Or foreheads?

“You didn’t meet any mean kids, did you?” Mom asks.

I know why she’s asking. It’s the same reason she and Dad sent me off to the school for the blind in the first place: the Incident.

It happened back when I was around five years old.

My best friend at the time was a boy from the neighborhood named Alexander. He always helped me when I couldn’t do something. He’d explain a playground or take my turn for me in a game. Like that day, when we were playing Candy Land at the kitchen table. Alexander offered to move my piece for me. I would flip a card, then he would say which color it was and move me down the rainbow road to that square. We played a few rounds, and he kept winning every single time. I was annoyed, but I didn’t complain, because Mom had said I had to be nice to him.

Then Mom came into the kitchen.

“Will, what color is your piece?” she asked.

“Red,” I answered, proud to be able to answer such a question.

“Why is your piece still at the starting area?”

“It’s not. Alexander moves it for me when it’s my turn.”

Her head swiveled to face Alexander so abruptly that I heard the rustle of her collar.

She didn’t speak, but something about her head swivel must have made Alexander know he should say something. “Who cares? He can’t see the pieces anyway!”

“How dare you—” blurted Mom.

“He doesn’t even know what red is. Do you, Will? Huh? What does red look like?”

He was right, of course. I didn’t know.

Mom snapped, “You’ve just been moving your own piece? On both your and Will’s turns?”

“Yeah. So? He can’t see the board!” Alexander said defiantly. “It doesn’t matter where his piece is.”

Mom sent him home. I never saw him again.

That day, two things happened: First, I learned it was dangerous to rely on anyone other than myself. And second, my parents decided it would be better for me to enroll in the school for the blind rather than the neighborhood elementary school. I didn’t particularly want to leave home. But Mom and Dad said I would have more fun at a place where everyone was more like me.

They were right, I guess. And yet…

Attending the school for the blind, day after day, year after year, it felt like I was trapped in the starting area of real life. Sure, I was safe there. But I was also bored. I wanted to break free and move forward on the winding rainbow road of life. I might not be able to experience those colors the way some people did, but I believed I could still make it. Make it, you know, to the Candy Castle. Or whatever. But for that to happen, I had to at least start playing the game.





CHAPTER 4


By my second day at my new school, I know all my routes. No more of Mr. Johnston moving me from class to class. I’m free to go as I please.

Before Honors English, Mrs. Everbrook asks me to come over to her desk. Usually, people assume it’s rude to make the blind kid walk across the room, but blindness is an eye problem, not a leg problem. Mrs. Everbrook clearly gets this, which I appreciate.

“Listen, Will, the librarians have everything on my syllabus ordered for you, but it will be about a week before the small forest of literature gets here.”

Braille books, I know, are pretty large. A single braille dictionary is composed of fifteen to twenty volumes.

Braille was a great invention for the world’s blind population, but not so great for its tree population.

“All right,” I say.

“In the meantime, I’ve arranged for you to have a digital audiobook of our first short story, ‘The Gift of the Magi.’”

“You paid for that out of your own pocket?”

She’s silent, which I take for a yes.

“You really didn’t have to do that, Mrs. Everbrook.”