Chapter 4 #2
That’s another thing. When you can’t see, you can’t storm off. You’ll end up with a cut-out of your body in a door or wall like in The Looney Tunes.
So, I slowly make my way to the door, wishing I had my cane handy. That’ll teach me for thinking I’d be better off learning my new environment without the cane. But I was told I should try to get on without it in the house.
“The sooner you get used to the broken bones from all the accidents, the better.”
Okay, no one actually said that, but they might as well have.
Damn, I’m salty.
When I reach the porch, the sunlight hits my face. It’s like this every time I come outside. Most days I relish it, but today is not one of those days.
“Hello! Is anyone there?”
This’ll teach me to ignore Meemaw’s advice about getting to know my neighbors. I didn’t want to know them. I just wanted to be left alone and not have anyone pity me.
“Hello!”
What if no one’s here? What if I bleed out? What if there are wolves out here that can smell the blood?
All right, my imagination is really starting to get out of control. Sight: Zero. Imagination: Ten.
“Hey, can I help you?”
The voice is young and energetic. Maybe my age, maybe younger. Energetic. My savior.
“I… I’ve had an accident.” My throat tightens as shame overtakes me with my admission.
I lift my arm to show the woman. Please don’t let her be blind. Please don’t let her be blind.
“Oh! You sure have. Let me get my goodie bag. I’ll be right over.”
My knees nearly buckle from relief, but I somehow manage to keep myself steady.
The wait feels like forever, and I can feel the blood soaking through the cloth. Not good.
Eventually, I hear the huffing of breath and footsteps. I know she’s taking the steps two at a time because there are eight steps and I count four footfalls.
“Let’s see what we can do. Come over here and sit down.”
I shuffle over to the chairs, waiting for her to comment on the fact that I’m blind or the scars on my face that I feel every morning when I shower, but she doesn’t. It feels…good. But the relief is short-lived, and I wonder when the judgment will come.
There’s a lot of sounds and fuss, but eventually she says. “I’m Hattie, by the way.”
“Oh, sorry, I should’ve introduced myself. Violet,” I say, holding out my good arm for her to shake.
“Nice to meet you, Violet. What in God’s name happened?”
The question isn’t unexpected, but the devastation, frustration, and shame increasing tenfold with the question hits me like a punch to the throat.
And that’s when the floodgates open. My chest tightens.
My lip wobbles. The sob builds like a symphony in my chest, up to my throat, where it lodges painfully before spilling out in a broken harmony that could only be described as a cat in heat.
“Oh, honey. Come here.”
She wraps an arm around me, and I cling to this person I have never met before as if we’re alone on this planet, and she’s the only one who can save me. My body sags into the comfort.
Eventually, she pulls away, and I go to give her arm a squeeze and find nothing there. Surprise has the words ripping from my throat. “You only have one arm?”
She laughs. “Very perceptive of you.”
The heat spreads up my face in a violent rush, and I slap my free hand over my useless eyes.
Oh my god, Violet. Really?
I cannot believe I just blurted that out. Here I am, being grateful she isn’t making a fuss over my eyes, and I go and vomit the obvious like I’m being tortured for the nuclear codes.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. That was terribly rude.”
“Pfft, I’m used to it.”
“How? How do you ever get used to it?” My words are a whisper, and yet she still hears them.
“I tell you what, let’s get your hand patched up, then you can make me some tea while I bore you with my journey to acceptance.”
She’s so refreshing that a laugh bursts out of me. “Deal.”
Meemaw is everything and more, but apart from that party she had for me, she’s been tiptoeing around my disability as if I’m a leper and not blind. It’s like she’s scared that speaking about it will jinx whatever nonexistent chance there is that I’ll get my sight back. Like blind is a dirty word.
Thanks to Hattie, for the first time today, I feel like I can finally breathe as warmth settles beneath my ribs.
“Okay, you’re going to need stitches.”
“Please, no hospitals.”
“Who said anything about going to a hospital?”
“You?” I draw out the word. “You said I needed stitches.”
“Yeah, and I’m a doctor. Technically, I’m a vet, but hey, same thing.”
I’m silent. What’s left of my eyebrows shoot right up to my hairline.
“Go on. Ask.” Her tone has a resigned smile to it.
“How in the name of Saint Christopher are you going to stitch me up with only one hand?”
“Easy peasy. With your help, of course.”
Hmmm, how exactly do I handle this?
“I can see your skepticism, you know. I’m not blind.”
The other thing about having damage to your eyes is that you lose the ability to be as expressive as you normally are. “But my eyes are…”
I’m hit with that familiar sting that always comes when I think of how things were versus how things are. And I know how things are because I made Meemaw tell me.
“You might be looking off into the distance, but your eyebrows nearly shot right off your forehead.”
Holy crap, I’m rude.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. If you offered to drive me somewhere, I think I might raise an eyebrow or two myself.”
I laugh again, and the tightness in my chest eases a smidge.
“Hattie, you know, I might just like you.”
“Good, cause I like you. Okay, now this might sting a little.”
I suck in a breath. “Holy fucking horseshoes, that hurts like a mofo. Sure it isn’t less painful just stitching it up live and all?”
“I tell you what, next time we’ll try it out.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time.”
“Glad to hear it.”
I’m surprised it takes Hattie no time at all to stitch me up. She asks me to pinch the skin together and tells me if I’m doing it too hard or too soft. All the while she’s stitching me up, she tells me she’s got a new job at Joe’s animal sanctuary.
“I love Joe’s. I go there every Tuesday.”
“I used to work at Joe’s vet practice before he started the sanctuary.
He never took any of my bullshit after the accident.
He told me if the drummer of Def Leppard can drum with one arm, then I can still be a vet.
He wouldn’t accept my argument that Rick Allen adapted his drum kit, and I could hardly perform surgery with one arm.
“He told me there was no shame in getting help. So, yeah, there are things I can’t do.
And does that frustrate the holy crap out of me?
You betcha it does. But the only person who can hold me back is myself.
And yeah, I’m never going to take up beading in the future, but that’s okay.
I just leave that up to those who can. Because I bet there are people out there who can’t jack a horse off. ”
Well, that’s something to hear. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, I’m not some sort of animal perv or anything. Sometimes we needed to collect the sperm from the stallions. So I got the fun job of holding the doodah that he shoots his load into. Some people don’t have the stomach for that.”
“It’s me. I’m some people,” I say, wrinkling my nose.
“Well, there you go. You’re all good to go. You think you could make me that tea now? I’m parched. How did you get into this pickle anyway?”
I recount my little adventure.
“Good God, that sounds like something out of Final Destination.”
“Right?” I laugh and the sound shifts something in me. God, when was the last time I laughed like this? A deep ache settles just behind my solar plexus. How long has it been? Almost a year?
“So, I guess clean up in aisle three before you make the tea, then?” Hattie asks.
“Yeah.” I frown. It’s going to be tough making sure I’ve cleaned up all the glass. Dread slices through me like I know the glass will.
“I tell you what,” she says. “You sweep and I’ll hold the shovel and guide you. Teamwork.”
I can do teamwork. “You’re on.”
The mess takes way longer to clean up than it would usually take, but I don’t mind it so much because Hattie and I spend the time laughing away.
It feels good to laugh, to have someone other than Meemaw to talk to.
Someone who isn’t as devastated about everything as I am.
Someone I can just be myself with. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but am I making a friend here?
When we’re done, I pack the broom away. Before, when I could see, I wasn’t the tidiest person around, but now, I have to have a place for everything.
I grab two cups out of the cupboard and the teapot.
Not once does Hattie try to do it for me.
Meemaw means well, but all she does is take over.
As much as that makes my life easier, it also makes me feel useless.
Guilt twists at me for being ungrateful.
It melds with my feeling of not having much worth anymore.
And don’t forget the self-pity. I’m making a real shit sandwich.
But fuck it. It’s my dreams. My dreams of finding someone who loves me.
Who wants to spend their life with me. Of having what Meemaw and Papaw used to have.
Who is ever going to want to be with a burden?
Someone who can’t even see what they look like.
All right, pity party for one. I’ll bring the balloons.
I open the freezer and feel along the containers for the mini sausage rolls.
“Okay, I’ve gotta ask,” Hattie says. “How the hell do you know what’s in each container?”
“Well, fish sticks smell way better than cookies.”
“What? Did you lose your sense of smell in the accident too?”
“I’m just pulling your leg.”
“Good thing you aren’t pulling my left arm, or you’d get nowhere.”
I pause, not sure what to say. I bite my lip. Cancel the balloons. I’ll bring along a side of awkward.
A cackle rips from her throat. “C’mon, Vi, lighten up. You’ve got to see the humor in things or you’ll cry.”
I want to cry. Not because she said I have to see the humor in things, but because she called me Vi. Like an old friend would. God, I’m lame.
“I’m sorry, I just…” I sigh. “You know.”
“Okay, so explain. Aside from your terrible sense of smell, how do you tell?”
I giggle. “I use an app called Be My Eyes. It works on a volunteer basis. You point your phone to stuff and a volunteer tells you what you’re pointing at. Then I label it. Well, I did when I could find my braille label machine.”
“No way. No offense or anything, but I think some seeing people could use that app.”
I laugh, and the tightening behind my ribs loosens.
“Oh my god, have you ever considered going into a sex shop and asking for help with dildos?”
“What? No!” My cheeks flush.
Maybe Meemaw is right about me having an aversion to talking about sex.
“First thing Monday morning, we’re going to a sex shop. This I’ve got to see.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, we are definitely not putting some poor innocent helper through that. But you know, Hattie. I think I might need you in my life. And not just for stitching me up when I almost do myself in.” Oh my god, do I sound too needy?
“I think this is a case of divine timing, Vi. I could use a friend myself.”
Something in her voice hits my chest even though she is saying it with a laugh in her tone. Maybe this is the divine timing she is talking about. Maybe she needs a friend as much as I do right now.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Girl, we’re going to need something a lot stronger if I go into all that.”
“I have a bottle of champagne. We could have mimosas?” I say tentatively, an anxious flutter tickling my belly. I don’t want to come on too strong.
“I’ll grab the glasses. You grab the bubbly.”
I’m a little tipsy by the time Hattie goes home, so I settle on the couch to take a nap. This time, my daily bumps come from being tipsy and not my blindness, and that eases something inside me a little.
I’m sad Hattie had such a terrible time with her ex—he sure sounds like the biggest narcissist out there—but it was nice to have girl talk again. I felt like I really eased some of her troubles.
For the first time in almost a year, I don’t feel helpless. I don’t feel like a failure for asking for help. My heart lifts just a smidge.
And even better, for the first time since the accident, I feel a little flutter of something brewing in my belly. Could that be hope? Do I dare give into it?