Blindsided (10 page)

Suddenly, the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it, Mom!” Natalie called out. She’d been cleaning out her purse on the dining-room table, using her lighted magnifier to read and separate receipts. Scooping up the pile of trash, she chucked it into a wastebasket and whisked through the living room to answer the door.

She was surprised—and happy—to find Meredith standing on the front step in shorts and a tank top, her blond hair twisted up on her head.

“Hey!” Natalie greeted her.

Meredith held a tin and, perched on the tin, a brown teddy bear wearing a white turtleneck sweater embroidered with the words

(Natalie had to hold it close to see): HUGS FOR FREE. “For you, Nat,” she said.

“Wow,” Natalie said. She gave the bear a welcome squeeze. “He’s so soft!” Then she noticed something red tied to Meredith’s wrist and followed it upward to a heart-shaped balloon that floated over her friend’s head.

“I didn’t really get a chance to say good-bye last week,” Meredith said. “Remember? We were at that soccer scrimmage? And hey! We really missed you last night. I tried to get you, Nat, but no answer.”

Natalie hoped that was true. “Yeah,” she said. “The bus broke down.”

“Yikes. . . . Well, anyway, look, Coralee and Suzanne were going to come, too, but they forgot they had their first driver’s ed class.”

The news caught Natalie off guard. “Driver’s ed?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what the big rush is, but they are dying to drive.”

They had never mentioned it, Natalie thought. Were they being sensitive because they knew Natalie would never get a license? Or was she out of the loop already?

A slight pause. “Do you want to come in?” Natalie asked.

“Only for a minute,” Meredith said. She let Natalie close the door, then scrunched up her nose and indicated with her thumb how her dad was waiting outside in the car. “We have to go to my grandmother’s for dinner.”

The two girls walked into the living room and Meredith touched Natalie’s arm. “So, guess who was asking about you this week?”

“
Me
? Someone was asking about
me
?”

“Yeah,
you
! Jake Handelman! He asked if I’d heard from you.”

“He’s such a nice boy, isn’t he?” Natalie replied.

“
Really
nice—and cute, too. If only he’d lose about fifty pounds!”

Natalie grinned.

The two girls sat side by side on the sofa. Natalie took the bear and held it in her lap. The helium-filled balloon was still tied to Meredith’s wrist and undulated in the air, moving with her hand as she leaned forward to put the tin on the coffee table.

“You’re really sweet, Meres,” Natalie said. “But it’s not like I’m going away forever.” It was really bothering her, the good-bye stuff, the separation from her friends. She didn’t want to think of it as permanent. “I’ll be back every weekend.”

“I know,” Meredith said. “But it’s still not the same . . . ’cause you’re not in school with us.”

Natalie nodded. She couldn’t deny it was the beginning of a major change for both of them. They had been best friends for a long time, ever since second grade when Meredith moved to Hawley from West Virginia. Meredith had crooked teeth then, and on her first day of school, some boys blew spitballs at her through a straw and called her a hillbilly when she entered the cafeteria. Natalie told her they didn’t mean anything and offered Meredith a place to sit at the lunch table.

“I’d better go,” Meredith said. “I know you leave early tomorrow—”

“But maybe we can get together next weekend,” Natalie suggested.

“For sure!” Meredith agreed.

The girls walked back to the front door together, and Meredith turned and paused. Her eyes glistened and her lower lip quivered. “I’m going to miss you, Natty.”

Natalie blinked and tears suddenly bathed her eyes, too. She opened her arms to give Meredith a hug, and the two girls embraced. “I’m going to miss seeing you, too,” she said.

It wasn’t intentional, but Natalie realized the moment she said it that the words were heavy with meaning.

R
ape is not sex! Rape is an act of violence! A rapist needs to control and
humiliate
his victim.” The karate instructor’s loud voice echoed with authority in the small, old-fashioned gym at the Center for the Blind.

“It might make you uncomfortable to hear some things I talk about,” Mr. Lee continued. “But my job is to teach you the skills you need to protect yourself! The number one skill?” He held up his index finger. “Information!”

Natalie fixed her small circle of vision on the short, but lanky, ponytailed man. He stood with his hands on his narrow hips, while the girls in Natalie’s gym class sat before him in rapt attention, cross-legged on the polished wooden floor. They wore T-shirts, shorts, and sneakers and had just completed twenty minutes of exercises—stretches, sit-ups, modified push-ups, jumping jacks—before Mr. Lee sat them down to talk. Their skin glistened with sweat and the smell of perspiration hung in the air.

“This is the book we will use in class—
Safe Without Sight
.” Mr. Lee held up a copy and thumped a finger on its title. “Each of you will get a copy. I have it in Braille, large-print books, and tapes.

“You will read—or listen to—every word in this book. You will learn how to protect yourself through nonviolent ways first. That means using your brain! We’ll discuss three important skills: awareness, intuition, and how to set boundaries.

“But you’re also going to learn the tough stuff. How to use your hands, feet, canes, fingers—
whatever it takes
—to save your life.”

Whoa.
This was really going to be an interesting class, Natalie was thinking. To her left, she could hear Eve still quietly taking in gulps of air to recover from the exercise. To her right, Serena wiped sweat off her face with the bottom of her T-shirt.

Mr. Lee lowered his voice a notch. “I’m not going to pussyfoot around in here. If you don’t want to take this on, go ahead and leave. No hard feelings. But if you stay, you are part of this class. We will work hard. And we will work together!”

Suddenly, Murph pushed herself up and stood, her two sneakers slapping the wood floor. “I’m leaving then,” she announced. “My mother would throw a fit if she heard you talking about these things.”

Natalie quickly focused back on Mr. Lee to catch his reaction. He seemed surprised. “Okay!” he replied crisply. “But you talk to your mother, young lady, and ask her: Does she want you to have knowledge? To be prepared? Or does she want you to be an ignorant victim on the street?”

Murph faced away from the teacher, which seemed strange, and she paused, as though expecting the others to stand up, too. But no one else made a move. Finally, Murph began walking out of the gym. Her cane, tapping on the floor and growing fainter as she moved farther away, was the only sound as everyone absorbed her departure. For some reason—Natalie couldn’t quite pin it down—she felt sorry for Murph.

“True or false?” Mr. Lee called out sharply, steering the girls’ attention back to the lesson. “Nice-looking people are more likely to be raped.”

Serena’s hand shot up. “True!” she called out.

“False!” Mr. Lee fired back. “The book says ninety percent of rapists think about their attack first. It has nothing to do with sexy, nice-looking people. Rapists are looking for an easy target. They are looking for a woman who appears weak. So! You’re blind. Does that make you an easy target?”

No one attempted to reply this time.

“Ah. Mr. Lee is thinking you girls say, ‘Yes. Blind people are an easy target.’ If you think this way, you probably are!” He threw open his hands and raised his voice. “But you don’t have to be an easy target!

“Walk with a sense of confidence and purpose!” he told them. Natalie was able to see his ponytail swing as he turned around and strode across the gym floor in front of the girls. His chest and chin were up, and one arm moved side to side in front of him as though maneuvering an invisible cane.

He stopped and faced them again. “Blind people can’t drive cars. They must use public transportation. Subways, buses, taxis—all these things put you at more risk. But there are many things you can do to protect yourself. It’s easy! We will start learning tonight!”

He clapped his hands a single time. “Now. Once a criminal decides to commit a violent crime, he needs two things. He needs a victim and he needs an opportunity.” Mr. Lee tapped his head. “So! Use your brain first!”

He picked up the book and read from it. “Listen to the sounds around you. Footsteps, voices, vehicles, water draining in the gutter, windows opening and closing. Pay attention to your relative proximity to the sources of these sounds and how it changes, getting closer or farther away. As you pass other people who may be talking, notice their tone of voice and what they are saying.

“Your sense of smell can give you important information, too,” he continued. “Things like
cologne
. Ah, he smells nice!”

The girls giggled.

“But what about those other smells: cigarette smoke, mothballs on clothing, alcohol on the breath, personal body odor—”

When the girls laughed at the body odor reference, Mr. Lee shook his head and waggled his finger at them. “No, no, no!”

The girls stopped laughing.

“An important clue!” Mr. Lee emphasized.

And
then
he began talking about a special skill some blind people could develop called acute spatial awareness. “Some blind people can
feel
the presence of a tall building, a tree, or another person.”

Natalie was fascinated—but skeptical. Because how could anyone
feel
the presence of a building?

“Eve is good at it,” one of the girls offered. Natalie didn’t catch who had spoken.

“Eve? Would you like to tell us more about it?” Mr. Lee asked.

There was a pause, and Natalie wondered if Eve would even reply because she was so shy.

“Well, it’s not just a thing that’s there,” she began quietly. “But also when it’s
not
there, like a space.”

“Can you explain that?” Mr. Lee asked.

“I’ll try. I’m not sure. But I can
feel
an open space,” Eve said. “Like in a building? I can tell when I get to a place where the halls meet, where the hall gets bigger. I can tell where there’s a doorway. Sometimes even a window.”

“But how?” Natalie asked from her seat on the floor beside Eve.

“It’s kind of like a difference in the air,” Eve said. “You can feel it. That and the sound of your footsteps and the tapping of your cane—the sound is louder if you’re in an enclosed space because the sound is bouncing back to you. It’s like echolocation, what the bats use.”

“Mr. Lee, I did the same program as Eve,” Serena suddenly piped up. “It was at the National Federation of the Blind place downtown. They taught us that stuff about echolocation, but I didn’t hear anything different.”

“Because you never tried!” Eve accused.

“Bunch of patooty,” Serena retorted.

“You needed to have confidence in it for it to work,” Eve countered. “You needed to use the straight cane all the time—and you needed to wear the sleep shades, which you refused. Remember?”

“Yeah. So if that program did so much for you, Eve, then why are you here?” Serena shot back. “Why aren’t you in public school? Down in Caesar Salad, Maryland, or wherever—”

“Waldorf,” Eve murmured.

“Waldorf! Waldorf salad! That’s it!” Serena chortled.

“Stop!” Mr. Lee clapped his hands. “We won’t have that here!”

The room fell silent again. Natalie wished Serena hadn’t interrupted. She was really insensitive sometimes.

“Enough for today,” Mr. Lee said. “I’ll see you girls next week!”

Natalie stood with the others to leave. Interesting class, she thought, although she sure didn’t want to think she’d ever need what Mr. Lee was teaching them.

“Don’t forget to pick up a copy of the book!” Mr. Lee was calling after them. “What you learn here may save your life one day!”