Blindsided (24 page)

 

At home, Natalie went to her room right away and closed her door. She reached into her pocket to rub the pink stone, forgetting she had lost it, and sat on the edge of her bed. Belongings from school were in a heap on the small wooden desk against the wall. “Take the Brailler home with you,” Miss Karen had insisted. “Get some practice in over the holidays.” The vacation from school wasn’t for another two weeks, but Natalie’s parents said that, given what had happened, she needed the extra time at home.

“The break will be good for you,” Miss Audra said. “Please try to enjoy the holidays. We’ll look forward to starting over in the new year.”

Everyone was nice. They were giving her space—
time to grieve,
as Ms. Kravitz put it. Natalie appreciated all their efforts. She did. But nothing they said made any difference. Not really. Because why would she want to continue at a place where she had failed so miserably? The damage had been done. She had no intention of ever going back to the Baltimore Center for the Blind.

Not in January.

Not ever.

A
t home, Natalie’s parents tried to cheer her up. They cut an early Christmas tree, dragged it through the woods, and set it up in the front room, festooning it with colored lights, balls, and silver tinsel. The tree’s smell brought back good memories. But when Natalie touched its prickly branches and felt the familiar ornaments, it made her sad not to be able to see them.

Mostly, Natalie hung out in her room, sleeping, sometimes putting on music, sometimes not. Often, she simply lay on her bed, listening to the clank of the radiator and staring at nothing because there was nothing to stare at. She didn’t even want to go out to the barn to visit pregnant Nuisance, because she couldn’t tell the goats apart.

For two whole weeks she stayed in the house. No one called. No one left a message.
Out of sight, out of mind,
she figured. She felt abandoned by Meredith, and every time she thought about Bree, Natalie wondered if part of her own self had died, too.

When the mantel clock downstairs chimed eight o’clock one evening, Natalie was reminded of the bluebird on Eve’s clock. The bluebird sang at eight, followed by the red-winged blackbird at nine. . . . Paula would be recharging the battery to her wheelchair and laying out her clothes on the mat beside her bed. . . . The kids at school would be moving on without her.

Sometimes she heard Miss Audra’s voice:
Will you utilize the skills you are learning here to go out and embrace the world? Or will you go home to Mom and Dad and hide out, living scared?
The questions made her angry. The world had been cruel to her, hadn’t it? She didn’t want any part of it.

“I’m not going back to Baltimore, to school,” she declared one evening. Neither of her parents argued nor questioned her decision.

Her parents were busy, going about their daily chores. She heard them rise at the crack of dawn, her father out the door to start the milking. A big truck came and went, probably delivering goat milk from the Amish farm. Her father had had to reach out for more milk now that the cheese was finding a larger market. Every three days, a tanker brought several hundred gallons of milk, paid for by the pound, from local Amish farms.

A multitude of tasks kept her mother hopping: making meals, keeping house, packaging cheese, and working in the office, where she took orders and sent bills. But she made time for Natalie, too, and was always there, eager to cook an egg or make a sandwich whenever Natalie came downstairs.

Her father tried to get her out of the house. “Let’s take a walk,” he suggested one day after the three of them had eaten lunch together. “We’ve had a bear hanging out and I want to check the fence lines. Why don’t you come with me?”

“A bear?” Natalie asked. “Aren’t they supposed to be hibernating?”

“Not if they’re getting easy food. They don’t hibernate ’cause of the weather, you know. But because food gets scarce.”

Natalie didn’t know that. Still, her reply was sarcastic. “I’d be a terrific help, wouldn’t I? Stumbling around the fields with my cane.”

Her father didn’t even reply. She heard his heavy boots move across the kitchen tiles and out the back door. She could still hear them as he pounded down the steps and started across the yard.
He
was the one so eager to have her come home. She bet he was sorry now.

Natalie, still in her pajamas at noon, remained sitting at the kitchen table with her mother. Neither one of them said anything. Natalie’s cold fingers curled around a mug of hot tea. She knew that she cowered in a stew of self-pity, anger—and fear. But how could anyone expect her to go out into the world after what had happened? She didn’t want to be a victim again. Nothing was worth that. So what if she lived at home? So what if her parents helped her? They
wanted
to help!

Guilt was part of it, too: if she hadn’t made that walk to get Bree, if someone else had gone to pick her up in a car—they could have called Miss Audra! Or if they’d taken a taxi, then Bree would be alive. Doctors could have fixed the bulge in her artery before it burst. They could be friends, planning a future together.

What a mess. Sometimes, Natalie came close to feeling that she did not want to be around at all. It frightened her because she had never felt that way before. But now, immersed in darkness, she felt she had sunk to the lowest point of her life with nothing to offer, and nothing to work toward in the future.

“The cat’s back,” her mother said, out of the blue, out of nowhere as they sat opposite each other at the kitchen table.

Natalie frowned. “What cat?”

“The cat who waits for scraps! He was there this morning, at the milk room door.”

“Really?” Natalie replied, surprised because the cat had disappeared weeks ago.

Her mother got up and pushed her chair in. “He looks a little beat up if you ask me. I brought some egg and toast out and Dad poured a little warm milk over it.” She put her dish in the sink and ran the water a second. “When I checked later, the plate was licked clean. He was pretty hungry, I guess. Maybe you could take something out to him tomorrow.”

Ah. Another ploy to get her outside the house. Natalie turned her head slightly. “Yeah, maybe,” she said.

“Well, I’ll leave the old pie tin beside the dish drainer if you feel like it. I really don’t have time to be doing that.”

She bent to kiss Natalie on the head as she passed by. “Got to get back to work.”

 

The next morning, after she heard both her parents leave the house to work in the barn, Natalie rose and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. She did her eyedrops and went downstairs, patting her hands across the kitchen counter until she found the pie tin beside the dish drainer. It was already loaded with toast scraps and what felt like an entire scrambled egg. Natalie shook off the egg that stuck to her fingertips and had to smile. So her mother liked the cat, too. Quickly, she found a jacket and some gloves, then took the food and, with her cane, made her way out the back door and down the two steps to the yard. The air was cold and prickled her nose. She thought she could smell the coming snow. Beneath her feet, the ground was frozen, a little icy in spots. Natalie’s footsteps crunched as she made her way slowly, carefully.

As she approached the barn, she could hear the cat meow, and the sound helped guide her to the right spot. “It’s okay,” she said softly, “I’ve got some breakfast for you.”

When her cane hit the cement stoop to the milking parlor, she turned around and sat down, carefully placing the pie tin beside her. “Come on,” she urged gently. “I won’t hurt you.”

But the wait became a long one and the cement steps grew hard. The cold was getting to her as well. A few flakes of snow landed on her face and melted, pooling and trickling down her warm cheeks. The cat meowed, but wouldn’t come any closer. It was, Natalie realized, living scared. Just like her.

 

That same afternoon, when Natalie was fixing another cup of tea, her mother came in from the creamery. “I’m kind of in a pinch,” she said, stomping new snow from her boots and rubbing her hands together to get warm. “Do you think you could help me wrap some cheese for a big order?”

Natalie squeezed the tea bag and set it on a dish. “I guess so. If you want.”

Immediately, her mother put her to work out in the creamery, setting up a small assembly line where Natalie could wrap small trapezoids of goat blue cheese in sheets of plastic, press a label on the package, and stack the cheese on a large tray beside her.

There was a flicker of good feeling about the work. Natalie was using her hands to get something done, and it was helping her parents make money. The work didn’t require much thinking and she didn’t have to deal with people. Maybe, she thought, this could be her job. She could live at home and wrap cheese. She might even be able to take orders over the phone. She knew her way around the house, the creamery, and the barn. She could even visit with Nuisance now that the mother-to-be with her bulging sides was protected in her own pen. Staying home and making cheese would be uncomplicated—and, best of all, it would be
safe.

“Great job, Nat,” her mother said, piling up the wrapped cheese in her arms.

“I should have offered earlier,” Natalie said.

Over the next few days, a routine developed. Natalie rose with her parents, had breakfast with them, and took some food out to the cat. On the third morning, she tried holding out a toast crust and was surprised to feel it suddenly disappear with a small, quick motion.

A full morning of work wrapping and labeling cheese in the creamery was followed by a visit to Nuisance and a new game called Find the Biscuit. Natalie would hide the treat in a different jacket pocket each time, and Nuisance would have to push her nose into each one until she found it. After lunch, Natalie would return to the creamery to help some more.

The radio was usually on while Natalie and her mother worked. They took turns choosing the station, switching from rock and country to her mother’s golden oldies. Sometimes they talked. And one afternoon, Natalie’s mother mentioned school. “If you’re not going back to Baltimore,” she said, “you need to be thinking of how you’ll continue your education.”

“I’ve already thought about it,” Natalie said. “We could talk to Mrs. Russell, my old vision teacher. Maybe she can come to the house so I can work from home.”

“I should put in a call to her then,” Natalie’s mother said.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Why not? Why wouldn’t that work? Natalie wondered. She placed another trapezoid of goat blue cheese on the tray and pressed a homemade Mountainside Farm label onto its top.

“Oh—I ran into Meredith and her father at the food store,” Natalie’s mother went on, taking an armful of wrapped cheese into the walk-in refrigerator for storage. She called back over her shoulder, “They didn’t know you were home. I suggested Meredith come over sometime and you two could watch a movie or something.”

Natalie stopped wrapping. “You’re kidding, right?”

The heavy door to the refrigerator clicked shut. “No,” her mother replied.

Natalie lifted her chin. “Why did you do that? I don’t want to see Meredith. I don’t want to see anyone. Oh, I forgot. I can’t
see
anyone anyway. But you know, Mom, maybe I just want to be left alone.”

Her mother’s voice was calm. She returned and stood close to Natalie. “You’ve been home more than two weeks now, Natalie. Even your father says it’s time to get out more, or have a friend over. You’re totally isolating yourself—”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s what I want!”

“I was just thinking—”

“Well, stop thinking!” Natalie slammed her hand on the table. “I’m blind, Mom. Can’t you frickin’ see that? I’m not like everybody else anymore. Why would they want to spend time with me? I can’t
do
the things they do!”

Her mother did not back off. “Come on. Get over it, Natalie. Lots of people lose their sight. It doesn’t mean they go hide and drop out of life! Look at your Braille teacher. You told me she takes two buses and walks the last mile to school. She took a plane to New Mexico for Thanksgiving. You do what you have to do, and you move on.”

“Easy for you to say!” Natalie shot back angrily.

“The school was
preparing
you, Natalie.”

“For what? So I wouldn’t be
blindsided by blindness
?”

The smallest hesitation. “Well—yes,” her mother affirmed quietly.

“Yeah, well, let me tell you something, Mom. No one can ever be prepared to go blind. No one! Not ever!” And with that, Natalie got up from the table, grabbed her cane, and yanked it open so hard she broke off the bottom segment. “Shit! Now look what you made me do!”

“Natalie!”

“Just leave me alone! I hate you!” She threw the rest of the cane on the floor and stormed out of the creamery. With her arms flailing, she knocked a bag of curds onto the floor and heard them hit the cement floor with a sickening splat. There was probably fifteen pounds worth of cheese in that bag. Natalie fled the creamery and groped for the door, eager to get out. It was somewhere on her left, but where? Running her hands along the wall, she kept moving until she was in a corner. A corner? What corner was that?!