Blindsided (25 page)

Natalie held her face in her hands and tried to stop herself. What was happening? It wasn’t like her to yell like that—or to cuss at her mother. She knew she’d been unfair, once again blaming the person who had always been her biggest supporter—
her mother
—because it was so easy, and because her mother always pushed her to do the right thing. When the tears came, Natalie didn’t even try to stop them.

Crying, she squatted headfirst into the cobwebs of the corner and didn’t flinch when her mother came from behind and wrapped her arms around her. “It’s okay,” her mom assured her. “It’s okay.”

T
he main shaft of Natalie’s cane had a dent and some scratches from when it had fallen on the sidewalk during the attack in Baltimore. Natalie touched the sad reminders as her mother laid out the broken cane on the kitchen table like a wounded soldier and measured it. Afterward, her mother called the school and asked them to ship a replacement. When they finished, Natalie gathered the cane’s broken pieces, took them upstairs, and gently set the loose bundle on her bookshelf.

Christmas came and went. Natalie enjoyed opening the gifts she received, mostly clothes, new hats and gloves, a pair of fur-lined moccasins, a blank journal for writing poetry, although how could she now? Didn’t her parents think of that? She could write poetry in Braille, she supposed. But anyway, she hadn’t been writing poetry anymore.

Natalie didn’t have any gifts to give and regretted not finishing the blue scarf she had been knitting for her mother. So many things, she thought, remained undone.

With the holidays came another foot of new snow, and in the days that followed, Natalie stayed inside except for the daily morning walk (fifty-eight steps through the shoveled path) to the barn, where she sat on the step, huddled against the cold, and held out pieces of toast to the cat, who snatched the food and ran away. She had stopped working in the creamery. And her mother had stopped asking for help.

When school started again in January, Serena called Natalie. “It’s boring here without you,” she said. “Well, I take that back. It’s boring here even with you!” She laughed. “But you did spice things up, Nat. . . . You even got Eve excited about going to college. She doesn’t want anything to do with day care anymore. . . . Hey, you’re coming back, aren’t you? I mean, you’re not crapping out on us. We’ll come out and get you, you know. We’ll
haunt
you!”

The call made Natalie smile, even if she did evade the questions.

Then Arnab called. “Just wondering how you were doing,” he said so politely. Soon, Natalie found herself deep in a discussion of goat cheese production. “First, all the milk goes into a holding tank,” Natalie told him. “How much? It holds about a thousand gallons. . . . Yeah, it’s huge. From there, the milk goes into a pasteurizer, which heats up the milk. . . . Arnab! Of course I know. It’s heated to a hundred and fifty degrees and held there for thirty minutes. After it’s cooled down, we add bacteria. The kind and the amount of bacteria determine the kind of cheese we make. . . . That’s right. It’s basically controlled spoilage of milk.” They laughed.

“Yes,” Natalie assured him. “I’m looking forward to being with you again, too.” She didn’t tell him she wouldn’t be returning.

Finally the new cane arrived. Natalie opened the package herself and carefully lifted the cane out of its protective bubble wrap. She unfolded it and felt it from the grip on down. The segments were smooth and slick, the metal tip simple and straight. The new cane seemed lighter somehow. She tried it out in the backyard, and now that some of the snow had melted, she was able to follow the edge of the yard up to the barn and didn’t need to count steps. She could hear the drip of melting icicles and held her face up to the sun, it felt so good.

Opening the barn door, Natalie surprised her mother in the creamery. “Can I help you wrap cheese?” she asked.

 

Mrs. Russell was finally in touch late one afternoon by phone. She said she was glad to help Natalie, but she would not be able to make home visits. “Will you be enrolling at the high school?”

“No,” Natalie said quickly. “I’m going to work from home.”

“Well, dear. I’ll do what I can. Let’s meet one day after school. How about Thursday? I’ll meet you in the school library after classes.”

Natalie did not want to go to the high school, but what choice did she have? Thursday at the high school. Ugh. Something
more
to worry about, because she didn’t want to
go
anywhere, or be seen by anyone.

“Look, you’re the one who wanted to stay home, Natalie. If Mrs. Russell can only meet you at school, then that is where you’ll have to go.” They were in the creamery together, working. Natalie’s mother was sliding clean, empty trays onto the shelves of a tall, rolling cart. Natalie could tell the trays were empty from the rattling sound they made and the speed with which her mother worked. They would fill those trays with chunks of cheese now sitting in a tub of brine and push the cart into the aging room.

“I can’t teach you Braille, Nat. Never mind all the work that would be involved with homeschooling. I don’t know how we’d handle that.”

Natalie dropped her head. It wasn’t going to be so easy then.

“I wouldn’t worry about going over to the high school,” her mother tried to tell her. “It’s after school when everyone’s gone. It’ll be fine.” Natalie was silent. When they finished loading the trays, she slumped back in her chair while the cart was noisily rolled away.

When her mother returned, she sat down. Natalie heard the scrape of the chair, the intake of breath, and the sigh. She was either tired or getting ready to say something, Natalie figured.

“Do you remember that trip we took to Bethany Beach last year?” her mother asked.

Natalie’s head popped up. “How could I forget
that
?”

“Oh, come on. Was it that bad?”

“Mom! I mean, first of all, Dad never should have gone, because he worried about the farm the entire time. Plus, he hates just sitting around doing nothing. He doesn’t much like to read, so what was there for him to do on the beach? I felt bad for him.”

“He did it for
you,
though. He wanted you to have the experience of seeing the ocean, and he wanted us to make the trip as a family.”

“All of which I appreciated,” Natalie insisted. “But it was so
awful.
Not just the thing with Dad, but when you made me go in that water. It scared me to death. I still have nightmares, do you know that?”

“Nightmares about the ocean?”

“Yes!”

“You said you wanted to know what it was like!” her mother reminded her.

“Yeah, but I changed my mind and you wouldn’t let me go back!”

“Gosh, Natalie. You know how to swim—and we weren’t out that far.”

“But then that wave hit and you let go of my hand!”

“It was not a very big wave—”

“It knocked me down, Mom! I couldn’t see! I was under that water and it was dark. It scared me!”

“Yes,” her mother said calmly, “and then what happened?”

“What do you mean ‘what happened’ ?”

“What happened next? Did you drown?”

Natalie paused. “
Nooo
. I didn’t drown. Obviously.”

“So what happened?”

Natalie frowned. She was irritated by the question even as she reflected on the brief, but intense, panic, the struggle to get herself upright after she was rolled around by the wave, the water in her ears and eyes, the sand in her hair, the hard pebbles beneath her feet, the coughing . . .

“What happened?” her mother pressed.

Natalie shrugged. “I got my footing and walked out.”

“Yes,” her mother said.
“You got your footing and you walked out.”

 

The first thing Natalie heard when she returned to Western Allegany High School Thursday afternoon were the sounds of basketball practice, the whistle and the squeak of sneakers against the wooden floor in the gym as they echoed down the empty hallways. Natalie found it odd and unsettling to be using her cane in such familiar territory. She tried to limit the arc of her swing so she wouldn’t whack the cane into the wall or the metal lockers as she and her mother made their way to the library.

Mrs. Russell greeted her with an enormous hug. Natalie filled her in on what she had learned at the Center for the Blind, and then they outlined some of the techniques they would work on together, starting with Braille.

“If it’s possible,” Natalie said, “I’d like to learn how to use the JAWS program on the computer so I can do research—and so I can e-mail my friends back in Baltimore. Some of them don’t have cell phones.”

Mrs. Russell hesitated before replying. “I’m sorry, Natalie. I don’t have that program here.”

“Couldn’t the school get it?” Natalie asked.

“Probably not,” Mrs. Russell said. “At least not this year. It would be a big item for the budget. It would have to be approved by the county’s Board of Education and, with all the budget cuts, I’m not optimistic.”

Natalie was stunned, although she should have known.

“That’s where you’re going to miss out, Natalie,” Mrs. Russell noted. “I can’t give you the technology training you could have gotten at the school in Baltimore.”

Although disappointed, Natalie and her mother thanked Mrs. Russell and, after putting their coats back on, set out down the hall.

“Oh! I forgot!” Her mother stopped. “I needed Mrs. Russell to sign these papers. Wait here, Nat, I’ll be right back.”

“But—”

“I’ll be right back!”

Natalie held the cane in front of her and stood stiffly, taking in and letting out a deep breath.
Hurry up,
she mouthed silently to her mother.

But her mother wasn’t fast enough. Voices were coming up the hall from the other direction. Kids’ voices. Natalie tensed up.

One voice said, “Thanks for coming.” Two voices chimed together: “Sure. See you tomorrow.” Then one set of footsteps came closer.

“Nat! Hey! I thought that was you! It’s Jake!”

Unbelievable. Jake was always popping up! Natalie turned toward his voice with a tentative smile, and before she knew it, she was swallowed up in Jake’s warm embrace—with the cane sandwiched between them. What a surprise! She couldn’t be sure, but it felt as though he was taller. And was it possible he’d lost that big stomach he had?

“It is so great to see you back in school!” he exclaimed, releasing her.

“Jake! Yes! Thank you. My goodness,” Natalie replied, a little flustered. “Have you lost weight? I’m sorry. That’s a rude thing to ask—”

“No! No! I’m so glad you noticed. I’ve lost thirty pounds since the end of summer.”

“Thirty pounds! Wow, that’s fantastic! I’m sure that was hard.”

“Yeah. A lot of salads—and a lot of treadmill.”

Natalie laughed.

“So! Are you coming back to school here?” Jake asked.

And Natalie forgot for a moment that she was blind and holding a cane in her hands and trying to live scared at home. She wanted to say “Yes!” but what she mumbled weakly was “I—I don’t know. I was just talking about it with Mrs. Russell.”

Jake’s voice became serious. “Yeah. Meredith told me a couple weeks ago. About your eyes, I mean.”

“It’s okay to say the word ‘blind,’” Natalie blurted. God, she hoped it didn’t sound hostile. She certainly didn’t want to drive him away.

“Oh,” he responded. “Okay. I’m sorry, Natalie . . . that you’re blind. I really am sorry.”

She smiled slightly. “But
don’t be
, okay?” she coaxed gently. “I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.”

A pause. What Natalie would have given then to be able to see Jake’s face.

“Well, if you ask me, it looks like you’re doing great,” Jake said. He touched her hand, then squeezed it and held it for a few seconds before letting go. “And I do hope you come back, Nat. I need to tell you all about the national convention in Omaha. It was so awesome. And do you know we never even had a special election to pick your replacement? So you could still be on the student council! And, hey, look, can I talk to you about that panel we were going to do? The one with the special needs kids? I think I’ve talked them into doing it again, but it would be great if you could be there, too.”

Jake plunged forward like a high-speed train. Once he got going there was no stopping him. “We could talk to you, too, Natalie. You know, like what were the hurdles? What did you have to overcome? And then maybe—what can we do to help you? Now that you might be coming back.”

What did you have to overcome?
Despite Jake’s warm and encouraging words, Natalie knew she was not ready to return to Western Allegany High School and talk to the students about what it was like to be blind. She wasn’t ready because she hadn’t overcome the hurdles! What’s more, she wasn’t sure she could ever overcome them.