I started with verbs. I mean, once I had the letters down, I tried simple verbs like “run” or “fly” or “get” or “hear.” Learning Braille is a lot like learning to read with your eyes, you have to practice words even after you can recognize each letter individually. The last two easy verbs I learned were “look” and “see,” because I was angry at those verbs.
After verbs came adjectives, and I was angry at a lot of those, too. A lot of adjectives are visual. Colors were okay though, because I can still remember those.
Nouns came last, even though they’re the most important. They were last in the book my parents bought, and I didn’t dare go out of order, because I couldn’t tell if I was on the right page. I realized later that there were Braille numbers on the bottom just in case. It made me glad I wasn’t the first blind person ever, because they had already figured out a lot of convenient stuff.
Like talking traffic lights. They installed those on the two busy streets near my house, which annoyed me, because everyone has to hear this stupid guy telling them how many seconds they have left to cross just because I can’t see the sign. It is pretty handy though. I hardly ever go into the city anymore. If I’m alone down there I’m screwed and it’s a lot less interesting when you can’t see the buildings anyway.
*
Before I got my lights knocked out I played baseball all the time. I wasn’t that good, I mean, I hadn’t gotten good yet. I’m fourteen now, so I’m bigger, and I bet I would be really good at pitching. I used to go in the backyard and throw at the fence, even though I couldn’t see if it was accurate, but my parents made me stop when I hit Trixie, the neighbor’s cat. She shouldn’t have been in our yard anyway, and even though I felt really bad, I was still a little proud that I could throw hard enough to kill a cat. I still count that in my sins though. Trixie is number eight in my top ten sins. After ten I figure they’re all about the same.
Back in fifth grade I was in little league, and I couldn’t throw hard enough to kill anything, so they stuck me at second base, which is closest to the first baseman. I batted eighth because I wasn’t good at hitting, either. The only person who batted after me was Jason, and he never swung. When the pitch came he would squinch up his eyes and turn his head towards the umpire, so he always struck out, except one time he got a walk, which really confused him. I only squinched up my eyes sometimes.
We made it to the playoffs even though Jason always struck out and I mostly struck out, and I was excited, because I thought I could be one of those players who’s really good all of a sudden when the pressure is on. I struck out both times in the quarterfinals, but we still won, and in the semifinals, I got hit with a pitch, which made me happy, because that was one of the best ways for me to get on base. Tommy was up next, and he hit a whopper, way out to left-center, which I could tell wasn’t going to be caught, so I took off right away. I scored, and Coach DeFranco commended me on my baserunning.
The next inning we got two outs really quick, but Dave Campbell, their best batter, was up, which made me nervous because he was a lefty and they tend to hit towards me. Sure enough, he whacked the first pitch right at me, and I squinched up my eyes and turned my head, just like Jason. It hit me right in the temple, and the next thing I remember is waking up to darkness.
*
I learned in English this year that that’s what irony is. I mean, it’s ironic that I can’t see now because I wasn’t looking then. I used that as an example on our literary devices quiz last week, and Ms. Ryans told me after the next class that we were supposed to use examples from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, not from real life. My quiz went like this:
Evan Saruci
September 21, 2007
Denouement
What happens after the climax, to wrap up the story. After Sam and Brendan got in a fight last week at lunch, the denouement was them getting detention in the superintendent’s office.
Flashback
When you go back in time, in your memory, to something that happened before. When I daydream about the time Sandy kissed me on the cheek in seventh grade, I’m having a flashback.
Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is when the author hints at what’s going to happen. Like when I got stung by a bee on the walk to school on 9/11, that was foreshadowing.
Irony
When something happens that is the opposite of what you meant to happen. For example, when I got my lights knocked out because I wasn’t looking.
Symbolism
Symbolism is when something stands for something else, normally something much bigger, like an intangible concept. For instance, my baseball bat is a symbol for how much I love baseball.
*
I used to use my baseball bat as a cane. Once I got to seventh grade though, my mom made me switch to a real cane, because I had to hunch over to keep the bat near the ground, and the end of it was getting destroyed from all the curbs and sidewalks I hit it against. I also hit some shins and strollers, but nobody ever got mad at me for it. People apologize a lot when you have to see with a baseball bat.
It was a hollow aluminum Omega-14, which is a pretty sweet bat, because it’s really light for how big it is. After awhile I learned how to figure out what was in front of me from the sound it made against my bat, which is part of the reason I didn’t want to use a regular cane. With a baseball bat, everything’s got a certain ring to it if you really listen.
Another thing I had to switch to was Daedalus, my new computer, which I named after Stephen from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Daedalus is pretty much the Omega-14 of computers for blind people.
He has this big special pad that forms Braille and a keyboard too, so I use it for all my assignments, except ones that require coloring or something like that. I’m excused from those. Nathan, this kid with a deep voice that sits on my left in American History, once told me I was lucky because I didn’t have to shade the different regions of Native Americans with colored pencils.
“Wanna know the best part about being blind?”
“What?”
“I can’t see your face.” I get away with that kind of stuff because no one wants to punch a blind kid.
*
I imagine Daedalus’ screen looks like this toy I used to play with that was a thousand little pins in a grid. I would put my hand or face in it, and on the other side, there’d be my hand or face in a weird metal pin-sculpture. Sometimes I tried to make pin sculptures of other things, like my baseball, but none of that ever looked as cool as my hands and face. I imagine Daedalus’ face in the screen rearranging and forming language for me to feel.
My dad bought me that toy at the Museum of Science and Interesting, which is what I used to call the Museum of Science and Industry. He got me a lot of toys from the gift shop before I got my lights knocked out. I had gyroscopes, puzzles, yoyos that would sleep forever, and books with pictures of galaxies and supernovas that looked like orange clouds of smoke and pearls. I can’t remember the first time I thought about what a soul was, but I always figured whatever it was it looked like that, and maybe there were different colors for good and bad people.
We used to go to the museums all the time before I got my lights knocked out. Because I had loved those trips so much, my parents thought it might be a good idea to take me to this special museum for blind people that has all this stuff to hear and feel. Some things were kind of cool, but I was determined not to like it. It felt like when my mom buys generic cereal instead of the real kind. No matter what dad says, it doesn’t taste the same.
*
I’ve started getting along with Ms. Ryans better, even though I messed up my literary devices quiz. At first she felt awkward around me because I told her I didn’t read books. I don’t. I feel them, which is what you’re supposed to do anyway, I just get to do it before everybody else. The rest of the class has to wait until their brains find the meanings of the words, which are stored like a library catalogue with tiny drawers that have knowledge hidden in them. My brain isn’t a library catalogue, it’s one of those shoe cleaners that look like hedgehogs, the kind people keep outside their front doors so you don’t trudge mud all over their carpet. My hands are sneakers that walk all over Daedalus’ face, feeling stories and getting tons of stuff stuck in the treads.
But since I retook my quiz, using examples from the book, Ms. Ryans and I have been on better terms. She liked my most recent assignment, even though I messed up again, because I wrote in first person, not third person. Each student got a literary concept and had to compose a short story that incorporated that concept. I got personification and wrote this story about a tree:
My Worst Branch
I was so happy when you planted me. The earth was a great cozy blanket, but after awhile I was warm enough, so I decided to come out and poke around a little. I got pretty big, because you were careful to put me away from the other trees, where I had plenty of room to stretch and do photosynthesis, which is like jumping jacks for me. Sometimes I’d get scared when the lightning storms got really bad, but I never lost anything but a few leaves, which is okay, because I have plenty of those.
One summer you put a swing on me, which was a lot of fun, because your little children would laugh and shout, and I would make sure to focus on the branch they were swinging from so that it would keep them safe. I realized as I got older that my branches were too strong to break, and that I didn’t have to worry when the children swung, even though they were bigger too.
But I wish now that I could have let my branches break. I never could; they’re part of me. My worst branch, the one that should have broken, it always makes me think about the night they came for you. I thought those men were having fun. It was fall, which is my favorite time of year because I get to paint mosaics on the grass, and those men seemed silly, like they were celebrating that holiday of fall that has pumpkins and things that are scary but still funny.
Then I realized you weren’t playing with them, they were pulling you out of your house, and your children were crying on the porch, and your wife was somewhere, I don’t know where, but I heard her shouting.
They were shouting too, they were saying that they hated you because you were the same color as me, only not as rough and much purer. I always envied your smooth skin.
The men in hoods tore the swing off my arm, my strong arm that kept your children safe and happy, and they threw a rope over it. I thought maybe they would tear me down too, and wrestle with me, because I was almost the same color as you, except rougher and less pure, but they didn’t. They tied you to me, but it wasn’t a swing, it was something else, and you jerked against it, but they had tied your hands too.
I tried as hard as I could to break my arm, you have to know, I tried, I’m sorry, I couldn’t, it was a part of me, it wouldn’t break, I would have given my arm to save you, I would have given every arm for you, my father with skin like mine but purer, the one who planted me and broke because I couldn’t.
*
Ms. Ryans had asked me to feel my story out loud for the class, which I only agreed to because I thought we all would. I was wrong, it was just me. I finished right before the bell rang, and then I heard this from a soft slightly raspy voice behind me and to the left a little: “I wrote mine in first person too.”
“What concept did you have?” I asked her.
“Simile. Mine was longer than yours. I compared almost everything in my room to a different animal from the zoo.”
“Are you Sarah?”
“Yes. You’re Evan.” She picked up my hand and shook it. “How do I give you my email so you can send your story to me so I can read it again?”
“You can type it in here,” I prompted Daedalus and pushed him toward her, “but you have to walk with me to my next class before I’m late.” Sometimes I’ve got spunk.
“Deal,” I heard her type and then push him back to me, “but don’t you normally walk by yourself?”
“Kind of. I mean, I really need help getting around,” I lied, “so maybe you could walk me to our next class every day.” We left the classroom and I heard the buzz of the hallway approaching, so I cowered a little. Maybe I could have been an actor.
“Here,” she put my hand on her arm, “after American History, I can walk you to Biology too. I sit behind you in both of those classes - not like on purpose. My last name’s Seamus, so I’m after you. Alphabetically.”
I had never known.
*
I sent Sarah my story after school, and checked my email twice an hour afterwards. Her reply came two hours later, and I could tell it wasn’t too short, because Daedalus took a second to get his face right. I felt it as fast as I could, and then slowly, so I could notice each word
Evan,
So I really like your story. I read it twice. The second time I read it aloud, like you
did in class, because it seems like it was meant to be spoken. If you have time I think you
should read these books:
Franny and Zooey
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Slaughterhouse-Five
Our Town
The last one is a play, and there are a lot more, but I won’t list them all here because it
might be overwhelming. Maybe you’ve read them already but I thought I would make the
suggestion anyway. I work at the library next to school so if you like books on tape I can order
them for you but if you’d rather feel them on daedalus – that’s what you said today
– then you’ll have to buy them yourself from wherever daedalus gets his books, or I guess
if that was hard I could read them to you or something. I’ll walk you to class for the rest
of the year if you promise to read at least some of them, or maybe write another story?
Walk with you tomorrow,
Sarah
The best part, well, one really good part was that she didn’t say “see you tomorrow” like everyone else. I know I shouldn’t care, but sometimes it seems like they’re shouting about the fact that they’ll see me even though I won’t see them.
I got the first three books on Daedalus. I don’t know if they’re expensive, they come in little discs, but my parents never really mind getting me books. I haven’t done a lot of feeling outside what I’m assigned for school, so I think they were happy when I asked for these. The last one Sarah agreed to read to me when we talked about it the next day. Since it was a play, I told her she had to do different voices, and she said she’d think about it.
*
Sarah read Our Town to me in different voices, but not funny-different, just enough so I would know who was talking. Even though I didn’t use my hands, I still felt it.
We’d been feeling plays after school for a couple months, always at her house, because her parents are almost never home, and I didn’t want to deal with the questions my parents would have if they found out a girl with a soft and slightly raspy voice was reading plays to me. After Our Town came Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, then Death of A Salesman and The Real Thing, and halfway through Taming of the Shrew I asked her if she was my girlfriend.
“I don’t know. Do you want me to be?”
We were sitting on her bed, and I played with her blanket as I answered. “Well, we hang out everyday after school, and during school you walk me to classes, with my hand on your arm, which is pretty much holding hands, because I don’t need your arm to get around, but I hold it anyway.” I felt her hands on my cheeks and then something else, something like singing with no sound, which I realized after a second was kissing. She stopped for a moment and I couldn’t help myself.
“I wish I could see you. I’m sorry if I’m ugly, I don’t really know, because moms are supposed to lie about that. I know my hair is brown and my eyes are blue, but I don’t know what kind, because my dad says they’ve changed since fifth grade. I bet you’re pretty. I wish Daedalus knew how to make your face instead of mine, or something, maybe if you put your face in this toy I used to have, I could feel it, and-”
“Here,” she took my right hand at put it on her cheek, so that my thumb was on her nose and my pinky was near her ear. Her skin felt different than mine, like it would cost more and come in a nicer package with Easter colors if they sold it at the store. She moved my fingers all across her face and through her hair, and I felt bad, because my hand started sweating, which would probably mess up whatever her shampoo had done that morning to make it so perfect.
I had felt Romeo and Juliet two nights before, and it seemed like all my body parts were making their own decisions, so my mouth said, “You feel like Shakespeare.” Then we were kissing again, and she moved my hand to her neck, which also felt more expensive than mine, and I thought for a second that blind museums would be much better if they had something like this for you to feel, but I was glad that Sarah was my own museum, so I started exploring her, and she started exploring me, until we were running around each other’s museums so fast I couldn’t tell which was which, singing without sound the whole time, and then we were pulling clothes off, because they were like the glass in front of exhibits that keep you out but we wanted in and then Daedalus fell off the bed and I was inside her cloud with pearls which felt like it was purple and it was all around mine like we were the same galaxy and then everything went still for a second and the picture in my head was from this time in third grade when I watched my mom put milk in her tea and it bloomed like a mushroom cloud.
*
We lay still for awhile afterwards, but then I had to put my clothes back on, because I’ve never seen myself naked since after a lot got different about my body, and I couldn’t stop thinking that it looked strange and stupid. Sarah put her clothes on too, and then we lay back down for awhile, and I couldn’t decide if I was asleep or not, and then it was late, so I had to go, and we kissed outside the front door. I think we were both smiling, but it was strange, like when you hear a joke at a funeral.
When I got home I couldn’t feel anything, because I realized I’d left Daedalus at Sarah’s, so I sat on my bed without moving for an hour. Sometimes when I don’t know what emotion to have I try to make up a new one, like flaxic – which is how I feel after we eat dinner at Grandma’s house – or shimblous – which is how you feel when you pet a puppy. But I couldn’t come up with one, so I felt indefinite for a long time before falling asleep.
*
The next day Sarah gave me Daedalus at the beginning of class, and I realized afterwards that I should have been more worried about him. After class, when she walked me from English to American History, she was very quiet, and on the way to Chemistry she said she had to work at the library after school, but that she wanted to talk to me, so I should meet her by the bench in front, which was weird, because that’s what we did every Thursday anyway.
I waited for her on the bench feeling a little bit flaxic, and when she sat down next to me it got worse.
“Okay, I have to say things and you can’t interrupt, because I’ll never finish.
“So my parents came home and thought I seemed a little bit weird, and I don’t know how you felt after yesterday but I was strange, I mean, it wasn’t - bad, but I don’t know how-” I heard tears between her words, “they saw your comp-I mean Daedalus, and my dad asked whose it was, and I said it was yours, and then they were mad that I had you over when they weren’t there, but I couldn’t lie, I was so drained, and then my dad asked me if we…” She got very quiet. “He asked if we had sex and he was looking me in the eyes and I knew he knew so I told him.”
We sat for a few seconds. “I’m sorry Evan. They said I can’t see you again. Or any boys. I’m late for work, I have-”
“Why didn’t you lie? Couldn’t you have lied, just a little?”
“You don’t understand, he was staring at-”
“Why wouldn’t I understand, I-”
“Because you don’t have to look anyone in the face, Evan!” And then she was gone inside the library.
I walked home really fast, crossing the streets against the lights. I would wave my cane in the air and just head across, and a couple people honked, but I didn’t get hit. I took my Omega-14 from my room and kept Daedalus in my backpack. My mom was home but I didn’t say anything, just left and walked to the El stop four blocks away.
I paid with an old transit card from when my dad and I went to a baseball game, and I sat on the train without crying, feeling something with no name, but not trying to make one up. I got off at Randolph, near Millennium Park, but my direction was off, so I had to stop and feel the wind coming through the buildings. I went towards what I thought was Michigan Avenue and I was right, so I crossed with a crowd, like I was in a school of fish. I didn’t know what I was doing but I ran through the park, there was a bridge they built right after I got my lights knocked out, and my dad said it looked like a silver ribbon, and I figured I might as well find it, so I slowed down and felt along the planters. After a couple minutes I found it, and I was sure, because it felt smooth, like Sarah, but cold instead of warm.
I could hear people whispering as they walked by, like they always do, because everyone’s afraid for a blind kid, but no one is scared of him, not even if he has a bat. I was so angry I thought about jumping over the railing, because I could hear traffic below, but then I took my backpack off and put Daedalus on the ground. I opened him up and turned him on so his face was my story about the tree, and I picked up my bat. My Omega-14 broke his eyes and his nose and his teeth, and then his eyes again, because even he had them, and I kept pounding until someone grabbed me by the shoulders and someone else took my bat.
*
The police drove me home. I sat in the backseat next to what remained of Daedalus. They kept my bat up front and asked me questions that I didn’t want to answer, even the ones that were about baseball. All I could think about was having a new number one and two on my top ten sins list, and how I might not ever get to feel anything again, because my dad and mom wouldn’t want to buy me another Daedalus after I killed the first.
I decided that I’d rather feel nothing than something without a name.
