Her dad had come home one day and had told her a story about how one of his students had gone home on break and when she arrived back to classes, she could no longer see. This was not the result of bad decisions or wild behavior. It was much more up in the air. Given to fate. It had been a virus, he said, probably, likely, but a rare one. So rare, he said it this way, lowering his voice, as if to impact upon her the tremendous value of this story, as if to sound like God, the decider, the one with the power to take away anyone's senses as easily as she could snap her fingers; that you really never now what may happen to you.
In the moment, forking through another Thursday night casserole, this story had made contextual sense. She had been complaining subtly, once again, about how unfair it was that she had gotten sick as a child and now had an autoimmune disease. She was angry because she felt defective, thought that it reflected poorly on her genetic material to have her very own killer t-cells ravish the tissue that lay a few inches under her still fresh, smooth flesh. Her dad did not want her to feel this way, so he had told her about his now blind student to try and comfort her. It could have been worse. He should have said that instead.
Later, while she was lying in bed, noting how the street lights managed to make it through her blinds and cast barely perceptible shadows on her ceiling, she blinked a few times and considered what might happen if suddenly she could not see. This scared her. Of all the things she enjoyed, she enjoyed her sight the best. Sure, music pleased her; she liked to listen to bass vibrate the leather seats in her older sister's car whenever they went out driving to get noodles from Jewel of Siam; she giggled every time an orchestral piece reached its climax on PBS; at school dances in the oversized gymnasium set aside twice a semester for such things, she prided herself in finding the beats that no one else could and being able to move so much more perceptibly she almost looked like a professional.
But seeing was so much better! The way the moon glowed through clouds like a frost encased candle. Or the way the yellow of lemons and the verdant green of limes just match each other. Or the orange nail polish Rachel always wore to class. Or the way Andy looked through his greasy jet black hair with his glacial blue eyes, making him look in a transient instant like an old time movie star, circa the nineteen-fifties. She couldn't go without her eyes. What if she could never look at her face again? What if she never knew what she would look like when she was twenty-five? What if she never figured out how her face was going to grow into her nose? What if she missed another freckle miraculously appearing around her eyes? How would she comb her hair and make sure it didn't poof up the way it did on warm, rainy days? Would her clothes match? Could she ever really know what she was wearing? She would know the comfort--but clothing isn't for such a trifle. Would she ever be beautiful?
When she woke up the next morning and her room appeared to her very much a blur, she was stricken with fear. But once she blinked and the morning stickiness coating her eyelids had been broken down and mixed in with dew-like morning tears, she tried to forget her fears. Waiting for her little sister to make her bacon and making toast herself, she was struck by the red glow of the heating coils in the toaster oven and was immediately reminded of the poor Cyclops Polyphemos of Odyssey fame. She shuts the toaster off and eats her bread warm.
But by midday she is not fearful. Who knows when it might strike? But it will be imminent! So she stares at everything. Looking up at the sky she searches it and memorizes it, the color of the atmosphere, the texture of the clouds, the movement of the many planes that criss-crossed almost directly overhead.
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