Jennings, Brittany

WHAT I WOULD'VE GIVEN to have been a magician, to say, "Now you see me, now you don't." But Tilly says I would've made the most inept magician the world has never seen. As my sister, she's allowed to make that joke. I tell her that's okay: it's better to be an inept magician than an inept magician's caretaker. I say it expecting her to laugh or to respond, "I think you mean, lovely assistant," but I'm not allowed to joke about ingratitude.

I feel her disapproving gaze on my face. Whenever I know Tilly's looking at me with judgment, my nose twitches. She calls me her little rabbit.

Like me, Tilly has heightened senses. Like me, it took her years to develop them. She learned not to treat me the way our extended family does. She's the template I wish the rest of them would follow.

Cousin Amber: "I want to set you up with my neighbor. You two have so much in common--he's legally blind!"

Aunt Gail: "It's true. I've met him. He's just like you."

Tilly and I tag-team them. She starts. "Is that so? Well, what are we waiting for? Let's call him up. Quick--somebody dial, then hand Liz the phone."

"You know how I get with phones," I say. "I can't even read the numbers."

"Numbers," Tilly says, "make a woman dizzy. But come on. Let's call the neighbor."

"Can I call him that?" I ask. "The Neighbor?"

"Neighb for short."

I hold my hand to my ear."Yes, hello, Neighb. I've heard all about you. I know. I know. It must be fate. Let's meet somewhere public. Somewhere we'll be seen."

"They must be seen. The general public loves the handicapped."

"It's true. You should see me on buses."

Tilly grasps my hand. "You could take the bus to your inevitable meeting!"

"I could. I will. And you come too. Follow us with your phone. Record it so everyone can see."

"We want everyone to see. Everyone."

"Everyone. Everyone should see. And later, each of you can describe it to me. Tell me what we look like. Like grounded bats--"

"Like swollen toddlers-"

"Like crippled dancers-"

"Like shuttered houses--"

"Like marched blinds--"

"Oh!" Tilly laughs, death-gripping my bicep to communicate her hateful glee. "You made a blind joke!"

"I did!" I say too loudly. "I did! I'm allowed to say that! I'm allowed!"

 

TILLY HAS ALWAYS SUPPORTED ME. She supports me most by pushing me to do what she thinks I should want.

"I found you a job," she says.

"I already have a job." A running gag between me and me. Whenever someone says, Liz, what do you do? I respond, Oh, I'm disabled. It's like saying, Oh, I'm retired, only it signals the end of the conversation, instead of the beginning.

"I mean it," she says. "This is a real job."

''I'm through being your taste test poster child."

"How many times do I have to apologize for that."

"How many times do I have to binge eat for attention."

We never ask jokey questions. We always say them. That's how we know they're jokes.

"The job's with NASA," Tilly says.

I have no way to know if she's kidding. "NASA?"

"The National Aeronautics and Space Administration."

"Tilly. I know what NASA stands for." I hear her tap the fingers of her left hand against the table. I hear her thread the fingers of her right hand through her hair. These are the sounds nervous guilt makes.

"You're serious," I say. "About the job."

"Very."

"What is it?"

"A study," she says, "for space research."

I'm reminded of conversations we had growing up--Tilly wanted to be an astronaut, which our father said was perfect since she was such a space cadet. But Mom crushed Tilly's dreams early on, telling her I was the one suited to such a dangerous profession. "Liz would never panic," she said. "She'd remain calm, no matter what happened. Here. There. It's all the same to her."

In response, Tilly wept and I wondered how life tasted on Mars. Tilly later said I'd look great floating through space. "What would I look like?" I said.

"Like you were falling," she replied. "Only you'd never land." She knew I didn't get it. I needed an example. She took me to the kitchen and ran water into a bowl. Then she tore a fistful of hair from my head and put it in my hand.

"What'd you do that for?" I rubbed my scalp with my free hand. "Do you want to float or not?"

I wanted to float.

She put my empty hand in the water. "This water is outer space." Removing my hand from the water, she helped me drop the hair into the bowl, then gently placed my dry hand's fingertip s to the water's surface. "And the hair is you." Eventually, the hair submerged. But it never sank. It wouldn't. No matter how much I pushed, it refused to fall.

I never learned to swim. My parents thought I would get too used to the water, then get careless. Being that hair was the closest I ever got. But my mom was wrong. I knew how to panic. I grew up afraid that I'd become an astronaut and drown before I ever reached the moon.

"A study," I repeat, "for space research."

"You could be disabled and employed."

 

THE OFFICE TILLY LEADS ME TO smells like metal fillings. The office is the end of a tunnel of phone calls Tilly has made and emails she's sent and questionnaires she's filled out for me. Still, we go over them in person. They need to know I can answer the questions on my own.

"Age?"

"Thirty."

"Highest level of education?"

"High school. Homeschooled."

"Are you a smoker?"

"No."

"Do you use birth control?"

I hear Tilly's chest constrict. I laugh. "No."

"Any chance you might be pregnant?"

More laughter. Louder this time. "None at all."

"Any preexisting health conditions?"

"Besides the obvious?" Tilly kicks me under the table. My nose twitches.

"Any family history of heart disease, diabetes, or cancer?"

"My family members tend to die of old age."

''Any history of mental illness?" "Tha nkf ully, no."

"Do you have a routine sleeping schedule?"

"Yes and no. I'm not the soundest sleeper."

"Any allergies?"

"Just dogs."

Here the steady questions lull. "Dogs?"

"Yes."

Another pause. Longer. "Really?"

I hear the pain in her voice. Her pity might as well touch my face. "Really."

 

BEFORE WE LEAVE, I sign my name three times, agreeing that I'm available to stay in the hospital up to thirteen days in exchange for payment of no more than $2,500.

I have three preliminary visits before my inpatient stay, which go well enough, though the doctor says he has doubts about the study. "Regular patients are difficult enough as it is."

"Regular patients?" Tilly says.

"Well-quote-unquote. Sleep studies bring out the worst in people, so you find out that everyone has 'special needs.' It'll be even worse with impediments."

I find Tilly's hands as quick as I can and hold them. I'd worry about the doctor's safety if I hesitated. I thank him for his time. Tilly keeps quiet until we leave.

"Did you hear him? Impediments--"

"I heard."

"I'll brand a fucking impediment in the side of his skull."

"Till." She knows how I feel when she raises her voice. Her anger at someone else sounds the same as her anger at me. It sounds exactly the same.

"I'm sorry, but that is blatant discrimination. Where does he fucking get off?"

"Tilly, I appreciate it and I understand. But I'd like you to lower your voice now."

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

"I am."

"I know."

"I mean it."

"I said I know."

 

TILLY CAN ROAR. She says it's self-defense. She says if anyone ever attacked her, she'd just scream the guy to death. I blame our childhood. It taught us both to yell when we got hurt.

Whenever I fell as a kid, I'd yell out, "I'm okay!" but our mom would always yell back, "Tilly?" which meant Tilly had to check for damage, then file her report. She'd yell, "Check!" or "Good!" or "She's fine!" Unless I wasn't, which was often. I knew impatience well. I'd dart around, then trip, then fall, then yell out, "I'm okay!" I wasn't even running--just walking with intent--but my feet were never ready, nor my hands. I could never figure out where to put them or how to fall down less. I only learned to laugh about it. How else could I respond to breaking falls with my face? So I yelled into the carpet, into the stairs, into the grass: "I'm okay!" That's when Tilly had to roll me. Once she saw my face, that's when she'd yell out, "Blood!" That's when, by necessity, she'd get specific. "Blood! Forehead!" or, "Blood! Eyebrow!" or, "Blood! Chin! Nose! Cheek!"

I eventually, resentfully, learned to slow down. I learned to take it "easy." Years later, I learned that Tilly had grown immune to seeing me bleed. At thirteen, she told me, "We're taking you to the gyno."

She's taken me every year since. "Are you bleeding on time?" she asks. "Are you regular?" And, "Is there pain ?" And, "Is the pain regular?" She strips me like we're still kids, like she's still checking me for damage, so she can help me fill out forms before someone else checks everything again.

The only bladder infection I've ever had, Tilly knew about before I did. "Your underwear's pink. Did you cut yourself?" The nurse practitioner confirmed it. Blood in my urine. "I knew it," Tilly said. Her shrewd little victory.

When I got my wisdom teeth removed, Tilly asked to see them. I gave her the bag from the dentist and in reverent, whispered tones, she cooed, "Gross."

"What?" I said, but it sounded nothing like what because my mouth was gauzy pain.

"The roots are still bloody."

She asked to see the sockets and I felt like saying no. I wanted to keep the wound, if not the blood, to myself. If I couldn't see it, neither could she. I told her I was tired, said I'd show her later. I drifted in and out of sleep, knowing I'd never see her bleed, but fairly certain I could pick the smell out of a lineup.

 

TILLY MAKES TEA when we get home. We sip it tentatively. It smells like a fight.

"Tilly," I say, "why did you set me up for this job?" The tea burns my mouth and throat.

"I think a job would help," she says.

"Help what?"

"Liz." She uses my name as punctuation. "Come on."

"You're tired of me."

"I'm tired in general. A job would give you a chance to get to know other people."

"Who would hire me?"

"Besides NASA?"

"Besides NASA."

"You could come work for the shelter."

"And be Tilly's Blind Sister in title and deed? No thanks."

"You'd have your responsibilities and I'd have mine. It couldn't hurt to try."

"We'd be stuck together day and night."

"Not necessarily." I knew what was coming. I swallowed my tea to block out her voice. Still, I heard her. "You could get your own apartment." I ran out of tea but kept swallowing. I gulped audibly. It sounded like I was force-feeding myself a case of hiccups. "You should see what it's like. A job. An apartment--"

It's always difficult to listen after hearing the phrase, You should see.

But Tilly talks me into it. It only takes one word: Try. That's hows he got me to do a hundred stupid things before she was old enough to know better. Eating something foul, touching something nasty, posing as the butt of some mean, elaborate sight gag.

"Here, try this."

"Try it. You'll like it."

"Try a little."

"Try some."

"Try?"

Tilly fed me grass, aloe, money, nail clippings, and once, a half-dead spider. It started crawling through my mouth, and, too afraid to scream, I fell over, shook and seized until I fainted. When I came to, Tilly was still laughing. She convinced me more than once to touch a series of different dogs, long after we'd discovered my allergy to all things canine. At school, she learned a joke that she never, ever tired of: "I heard if your hand is smaller than your face, you've got a chromosomal imbalance." Or, "There's a study that shows people who can cover their entire faces with one hand are certifiable geniuses." To prove that it was safe, she'd put my hand over her own, then raise it to her face, and say, "You try." So, I'd hold my hand to my face, and she'd punch the back of my hand, hitting me not once, but twice.

I always forgave Tilly, and always right away, because, in a way, I understood. She resented me for not being able to see, just like I resented her for not being blind. I assumed it was no worse than what a stranger would have done, or our parents if they'd ever really tried. At least Tilly bothered. At least she paid attention. At least she showed up to play, even if the game was used against me.

And it wasn't always single-sided. I got to use her too. A side effect of being together all the time--the result of having no one else to play with--was that she let me have my strange, unsightly way. She never corrected me when I called the TV, "the radio." She never minded when I made her pretend for the thousandth time that we weren't who we'd always been: that I was a magician and she was my assistant; that I could destroy her because she was mine; that I could turn her to stone, cut her in half, shove her into a hat or a glove; that reappearance was as easy as disappearance; that even after destruction, we could be sisters again: professional explorers sent to conquer outer space or the jungle or the Arctic, which was always our bedroom but also always somewhere else; that Tilly thought what I thought was true: that it was all those places at once.

She never refused when I needed her help writing on the moon or in the snow or on a tree, We were here. It seemed obvious enough, but I wanted everyone to know. Just because I can't see doesn't mean I'm not here. Blindness doesn't stop me from recognizing absence.

 

WE VISIT THE HOSPITAL where the study will take place. The head doctor is there to greet us. His last name is unpronounceable. He insists I call him by his first name. Hugh.

"Hue," I say and he's suddenly all the things I'm incapable of grasping.

Hugh invites me into his office, but asks Tilly to wait outside. She almost protests. I feel her rebuttal, already crafted, her worry sharp enough to cut out his eyes. I listen as she swallows saliva and nerves and low-grade panic. I listen as she quietly leaves.

Hugh asks if I understand what the study is for. I don't and I say so.

"You'll be staying with us, here in the lab--"

"Lab? I thought we were in a hospital."

"All hospitals are labs in one way or another." His laugh is the sound of humor dying, trying to exit his mouth. "Once you're settled in your room, we can discuss your schedule, which is an important part of the study. At least once a day, you will have a lesson and, afterward, you will rest. Later, we'll run through some exercises to see how alert you are, to test your response speed, and to run some memory trials."

"Can I ask a stupid question?"

"Sure."

"What does this have to do with NASA?"

"We're interested in the role short bursts of sleep play in memory preservation. Astronauts don't always get the most relaxing night's sleep. They sleep when they can, but up there, it's dark a lot of the time. Something you surely know a bit about."

Pride finds its way to my spine. I straighten my posture. My mouth curves up on both ends.

NASA wants my help because I'm blind.

 

HUGH ASKS if I have time for an informal interview.

I have time.

He says, "Tell me about yourself."

I tell him.

I'm completely blind. I don't use a cane. The travel radius I keep around my apartment rarely exceeds the block. My sister is my roommate. Our parents own the building. I often feel useless. I need help all the time.

He makes a mouth noise then, something wet near his teeth. It's the noise I associate with lip-synching. I realize he's talking to himself without actually speaking.

His next question seems written for a talk show.

"What is the most difficult thing about being blind?"

"Is that your way of asking what I hate most?"

"If you'd like to think of it that way."

"I hate small talk. I hate when people change their voices to talk to me. Like I'm a child or an invalid. They ask me what I do as if they're asking what I want to be when I grow up. They assume I couldn't get or keep a real job. They never assume that being blind is a job." I explain my disabled joke to him. "I say it the same way you say, I'm a doctor. They have to accept it."

"Accept it as what?"

"Reality."

The axle of his chair squeaks; he's sitting forward or way back. "Do you suppose the question is ever asked in earnest?" he says.

"Some blind people work."

"Considering the sources, no, I don't think the questions are earnest."

"The sources?"

"My family. Or friends of theirs."

"Mm-hmm." His chair moves in a way that means he's changed position. "Have you ever considered altering the joke?"

This is new.

"How?"

"You could name a different job. Tell them you're a professional sleepwalker."

"If only."

"Or a dog walker."

"For that, I would need a dog."

"No guide dog either?"

"I'm allergic."

"I see."

"You and everybody else."

"Tell me," he says, "what it's like to be blind."

I can't believe we're still talking. He's either really interested or really good at pretending.

"People talk about memory like they're all tongues and noses."

"I don't follow."

"Stop me if you've heard this one. It smells like snow. It smells like autumn. It smells like Christmas morning. It tastes like roses. It tastes like childhood. It tastes like pennies."

"I'm not really sure what that has to do with--"

"I want to join them. I try. But it always comes out wrong."

"Wrong how?"

"It smells like absence. It smells like temper. It smells like envy. It tastes like lying. It tastes like solace. It tastes like nerves."

Hugh asks if I know what synesthesia is. I tell him no, and hear him write something down. "Why doesn't anyone ever talk about what vision's really like?"

"There are all sorts of established facts about sight."

"Name one."

"Strobe lights give you seizures."

"Name another one."

"Looking at computers too long can give you migraines."

"More."

He looks up. I can hear it in his voice. "Fluorescent light is supposedly unflattering."

"But what does that mean?" I say. "What is visual flattery?"

"Imagine shopping malls and elevators."

"Malls are cloying."

"And elevators?"

"Crowded. Anxious."

"That's the opposite of visual flattery."

"Then what's the opposite of that?"

"Prisms."

"Prisms?"

"Rainbows. Colors." Hues. He says, "Your turn now."

"Shut your eyes," I say. "Forget everything you've ever seen." His silence underlines his skepticism. I use Tilly's method. "Try," I say. He tries. Or pretends to. "Are your eyes closed?"

"They are."

"What do you see? Whatever it is, forget it. Replace it with what you'll never see, with things no one will ever see."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Right now, you're sitting in a chair. There's a sensation that goes along with touch--the part of you that physically recognizes that you're in the chair. I always think of that sensation like an image. There's a different sense that goes along with smell. I think of that like reading."

"Like reading Braille?"

"Like reading a person. Like reading tone of voice. Like reading silence." As if on cue, a hush falls. I stifle it with sound. "Being blind is more than a lack of vision."

"Have you ever told anyone else this?"

"You opened your eyes," I say.

"Yes."

I'm suddenly aware of exposure. My nose twitches. "No," I tell him. "I haven't told anyone else."

He asks why we don't go find Tilly.

"I can go with you," I tell him, "but you'll be the one doing the finding."

He makes a thoughtful sound. "What do you do when you've lost something?" Our interview has ended. He's asking because he wants to know, not because he wants to record my answer.

"It depends on how I lost it," I say. "If I dropped it, I can sometimes find it right away. But only if it's big enough. Or, if I put something down and later realize I put it down, I can sometimes remember where I was, but that's rare. Usually, it's just gone. I can't look for it."

"You could ask for help."

"It seems rude to ask for a favor I can't return. Besides, I can't answer any of the normal questions--where did you last see it? Where have you already looked ? Even trying to remember where I was when I last had it is difficult. My memory doesn't work that way. It's like I've built up different means of recall."

"Different or additional?"

"Different. There are ways I have of remembering what places are like and I use them to figure out location."

"Like a map."

"Maybe. But based on touch alone--like a series of connected physical facts. Like it's true that the wall is connected to the ground in an exact way. In an expected way. I reach out and feel the wall and once it becomes a repeated place, it's part of this--system."

"You seem hesitant."

"That's because I don't call it a system. Not in my head. I don't really have a word for it because I never have to talk about it. It's just a thing that I use to get around that I'm calling a system so you won't call it a map. I know its unspoken name. I just can't describe or say it to another person. It doesn't need that sort of label."

"But you find it reliable?"

"I do."

"That's wonderful."

"It feels like you're humoring me."

"I'm not," he says. His voice seems reliable. I wish it were a space. I'd like to touch it like a wall. "When I lose something," he says, "it's always in the worst possible way. I find out it's lost when I want it, then it becomes the thing I want most. It becomes a thing I need. And that moment, when I need it most, it's gone. I curse myself, hate myself, hate my absent-mindedness."

"You don't seem absent-minded."

"I am. Wait and see."

"Wait and see?"

"There you go. An absence of mind. I told you."

I forgive him without effort. But I want to prove my point. I want him to understand my difficulty. "But at least you can look for whatever it is you've lost."

"But I can't. I don't. It's a complete role reversal. Every time, without fail, I become the thing that's gotten lost."

 

WHEN HE FINALLY RETURNS ME to Tilly, Hugh takes my hand in both of his, then positions it in front of me and shakes it. I have no idea if this looks as awkward as it feels.

"I'm looking forward to our work," he tells me. "We'll get started next week."

Then he's gone and Tilly--all-knowing, all-powerful--asks, "Liz, did that good looking doctor make a pass at you?"

"He's good looking?" I say. " How good looking? Movie star or doctor?" This is a game we've played since childhood. The categories never change.

"He's already a doctor."

"So?"

"So nothing."

"But which is it?"

"Doctor Movie Star." I hear a snag in her voice.

"Except?"

"He's older."

"How much older?"

"Dad older."

"Really."

Our father is as tall and wide as an easy chair. Despite his cushion, he's got strength. When I was a kid and not yet used to standing still, he was always righting me after a fall. I'd run around, spilling bits of myself as I went, learning what air smelled like at top speed, tasting the pavement through my knees, through my forehead, through my eyes, which I had to learn to shut before landing. Dad lifted me several times a day, and bandaged my victims--swollen knuckles, bloodied knees, eyelids that Tilly says looked like bloated slugs. He'd set me right and set me rolling. And he told me every time, Be careful. But he never minded when I never minded.

During the drive home, I ask Tilly, "As old as Dad, or older?"

"At least that old," she says.

"Do you disapprove?"

"Liz. Honestly."

"What."

"You were in there for all of thirty minutes. I wasn't aware that anything serious had taken place."

"Define serious."

"Serious enough to warrant my approval."

I keep quiet because I can't deny anything. I can't deny how nice it was to talk about my blindness like a facet instead of a burden. I can't deny that I was relieved when he asked Tilly to wait outside. I can't deny that I liked hearing that Hugh was attractive.

Though, to be fair, Tilly's always had horrible taste in men.

 

TILLY DRAGGED ME OUT even though I told her it would rain. She was fifteen. I was thirteen.

"The skies are clear," she said.

"It's humid as hell," I told her.

"You've never been to hell," she said.

I swallowed my minuscule pride--I begged. "Tilly, please. It's going to rain. Please."

But she wanted out and she wanted me with her because that was our household rule. So we went, despite the way rain upends me. Despite the times I'd been the victim of someone else's poor umbrelling. We got on the bus, held hands the whole way. She talked me through the ride. "How much farther?" I asked at every stop because the driver told the stops to the windshield and the windshield kept each one a secret. I didn't bother trying to listen or asking him to speak up. It would be years before I could ask someone to act on my behalf.

"Four more stops," Tilly said.

Three.

Two.

One--

I knew from the smell, from the sound. The bus doors opened and the people who boarded were damp. Their shoes compressed the water they carried, squeaked it in thin trails that I knew would leave the floor slick. "Tilly--" The windshield wipers hushed me.

"We're here." She squeezed my hand, yanked me left, and we were on our feet. Until we weren't. I fell. I fell again. Fell against. Gravity pushed me into a wall. I groped and felt a hundred limbs. Hair, shoulders, faces, necks. Ears and eyes and elbows.

Watch it!

Look where you're going, wouldja?

"I want to leave," I said. "Right now. We need to leave right now." She tugged me off the bus, her grip tight with anxious misery, our arms an unyielding leash. She barked warnings at me. "Elevator. Three short steps. Rotating doors. Sharp right."

Inside the bus, she'd held me with both hands and guided my clumsy feet, but outside, she let go altogether. "It's just drizzling," she said. Thunder echoed her, laughed at us both. "But I guess it's probably going to get worse."

"Nothing could be worse than what just happened. What are we doing here, Tilly?"

"Getting lunch."

We went to a Burger King and ordered fries and shakes. Strawberry.

A bribe. As soon as we sat down, she said, "I'm sorry."

I started to say, "You should be," when a male voice answered. "No problem. It took me a while, too. I biked over."

I felt Tilly lean away from me, then heard a noise I recognized from movies and TV. A noise that requires two mouths and what our mom called atmosphere.

They did it like I wasn't even there. After I'd begged to stay home, after that bus ride, Tilly acted like she was alone.

"Tilly," I said, "is he in the seat across from me?"

She knew better than to lie. "Yes."

I dropped my hand to the table and felt across it to the edge. It was square. Each side was the length of my arm.

"Uh, Tilly?" the boy said.

Twitching my nose, I stood. I lifted the lid of my milkshake and, before she could stop me, threw it at his voice, at his question and his existence and what I hoped was his face. The shake splashed when it hit him. His chair scraped the floor when he kicked it out to stand. Tilly's arm cracked when she landed beneath me, where she'd thrown herself to break my fall when he knocked me over. I stupidly felt grateful. She'd done that much, at least.

I heard him laugh, but there was fear behind it. Still, he wanted to win. "Easier than tipping a cow."

"Said the kid covered in milk." I didn't get up.

"Stop it," Tilly hissed, either at him for shoving me or at me for smiling or at both of us just because. I kept smiling. I felt powerful. I shook from it.

The manager made us leave. Tilly led me outside where the rain had arrived in full force. She pulled me into it. I shrieked. It felt like I was drowning in slow motion.

"You're covered in milkshake," she said. "We have to get it off before we get home."

The rain was warm. I heard it hit the pavement. I heard it hit my skull. I heard it infiltrate my clothes and drain into my ears and slither its way into my mouth. Under that, I still heard Tilly sniffle. "What's wrong?"

"If you don't know," her breath staggered, "then you really are blind."

"Is that a joke?"

"Of course it's a fucking joke."

"Was he really that cute?"

"Shut up."

"Doctor or movie star?"

"What does that even mean to you? You've never seen a doctor. You've never seen a movie star. You're just blind and you'll always be just blind and I'll always be your idiotic sister."

She stood there and cried, and I stood there and listened. Two kinds of falling water.

"Are you blaming me for being blind?"

"Liz," she grabbed my shoulders, "can there," squeezed them hard, "for once," shook me, "be something that is not about you and your stupid fucking handicap?" Her voice cracked just before the thunder. "Please." She'd said it like a sentence, but really it was a plea. Tilly was asking me for something. She maybe even needed me.

"We have to get dry," I said. She put my hand over her face so I could feel her head shaking. "Stop being stubborn."

"I want to stay," she said. "Just let me stay here."

"No." I yanked her the way I remember my father scooping me up, and nearly fell over. "I want to help you," I said, "but you have to get me to a place where I can help."

She let out a low laugh--a miserable, disjointed sob--then said there was an overhang behind me. I pulled her like a wagon, and she strained to keep up.

Tilly says I gallop instead of run. I can't help it. Running feels strange to me. What do I do with my arms? How can I run when I don't know where to go?

She yelled directions to get us to the overhang. Slight rights and hard lefts. We made it, drenched and panting. Thunder shouted down at us. The roads hissed at our feet. The hems of my clothe s collected the rain, then emptied it into my shoes. Tilly's palm still suctioned mine.

"I'm sorry," she whispered when the rain finally stopped, the apology maybe not just for me.

 

THE NIGHT BEFORE my hospital stay, I sneak into Tilly's room. When one of us can't sleep, has been unsettled, has heard a strange noise, it's expected that she will consult the other and give all the details, no lead-in necessary. I think I heard a burglar or a rapist or an alien. The other reassures the frightened sister and then we curl up together, both sleeping more soundly for it.

So I go to Tilly's room and climb in bed beside her. "I need to ask you something."

"Shoot."

"It's serious."

"Okay."

"You're not allowed to laugh."

"I won't."

"You have to promise." "I promise."

"Seriously. You have to seriously promise."

"Fuck's sake, Liz. Just ask already."

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

"I want to hit you with a pillow right now," she says.

"Would it kill me?"

"You're a hundred percent humorless, you know that?" Her pillow hits my face. I ask her to stop being such a cunt. "What vulgarity," she says, "from such a pretty mouth!"

"Go fuck yourself."

"Liz, you're beautiful. You've got Mom's platinum hair and no worry lines. You'll look seventeen forever."

"Don't you have the same hair?"

"I have Dad's hair," she says.

"So, not platinum?"

"Ashy. And getting wiry by the day."

I reach to touch her head, but Tilly moves out of my grasp. She apologizes and I apologize and she says that it's fine. Her words empty the room. She's making space for her response. Her serious response to my serious question.

"Is this about Dr. Movie Star?"

I don't want to tell her. I want her to already know.

I was lying in bed, nearly asleep, when I realized I have no way of knowing if Hugh finds me physically attractive.

"What if l meet someone and he only stays with me out of pity?"

"Able-bodied people do it all the time."

"I mean it."

"So do I."

"But I'll never know what he really thinks of how I look."

"And what if you meet someone insecure who's afraid the only reason you're with him is because you can't see him?"

"Till. Don't give me more shit to worry about."

"At this point, I think I owe you some shit."

I know what this means.

Tilly's no stranger to stress.

There's very little I can offer her, very little I can do. But I do what I can with the little I have.

"An entire family came in today," she tells me. "A mother and three girls. The youngest was a baby. Yellow and red. Bruised and cut. And swollen, right here." She puts my hand on her forehead, floats it up to her hairline. "There was a lump the size of a robin's egg--" she grabs my fingertips "--the size of a fingerprint." I imagine a man touching my forehead with just a finger, how hard he'd need to press to make an egg. Tilly says the father broke his oldest daughter's wrist, pulled his middle daughter's shoulders from their sockets. Tilly touches my limbs when she tells me these things. Examples. She remembers how I need them. Then her hand is in my hair: "Third degree burns," she says about the mother. "He peeled her scalp away."

The few times I've gone to the shelter with Tilly, it's always been the same. "You're so lucky," her co-workers tell me. Lucky to have Tilly, of course, as a friend and a sister and a caretaker. And I believe them.

 

ONE OF THE LAST THINGS TILLY SAYS before leaving me at the hospital the next morning is that she envies me and my little assignment.

"Thirteen days doesn't feel like an assignment. It feels more like--"

"A job?"

"A sentence."

"You'll be fine," she says, and her footsteps recede. When I think she's gone, I hear her steps returning, fast. I turn and we collide into a hug. She says, "Don't run off with Dr. Movie Star."

"Don't change anything while I'm gone."

"Like you'd even notice."

"Don't go," I tell her. "What if I screw up the study?"

"Like I could stop you."

I say, "Don't forget me," and realize, starkly, that I mean it.

Her voice is already far away by the time I hear it. "Like that's even possible."

 

I CHECK IN and a nurse helps me change into a paper dress.

"Be honest," I say to her. "Does this make me look like deli meat?" She laughs only slightly. I feel alone. I ask what's first.

"First, we get you in your room and give you headphones. Then you'll listen to a series of lists." I must make a face that tells her I'm at sea because she immediately says, "Don't worry. After that, we'll bring you lunch, and after lunch, you'll take a nap."

She fits the headphones to my ears and head. From beneath them, I hear her muffled voice ask, "Ready?"

I am ready to vault.

Or bolt.

Or faint.

I'm ready to be fired. I'm ready to be let go. To go home.

The lists start right away. Words, long strings of them, narrated in a woman's monotone.

Puddle, armoire, sphinx, tumult, igloo.

The voice goes on for fifty-six words,  a slight pause after every fourteenth. The recording ends and repeats and ends.

Lunch is quiche and salad. Everything is cold. Gelatinous egg pie, icy iceberg lettuce, water so cold it's practically a Boe. I force it all down anyway. It might help me sleep.

 

WHEN I SLEEP, I almost always dream--in sounds, in flavors, in scents and temperatures. Good dreams are whispery warm. They smell and taste clean. Bad dreams are rot and mold. I taste them long after, not in my mouth, but in my mind. Nightmares smell charred. Burnt popcorn. Burnt wood. Burnt hair. Nightmares are fire alarms and dial tones. Murderous claps and echoey heartbeats. Horror noises, amplified. The sounds of bodies emptying fast, then slow. Parades of screaming. Shrieks unending. Breathing through sheets of sloughed skin.

Nightmares are unceasingly cold.

But there are dreams worse than freezing and tastes worse than rot. The dreams when I fly are worst of all. Asleep, flying is seeing. What I associate with fight--the feeling of being impervious to gravity--injects me with an unsinkable confidence. When I fly, a part of me understands that that's what it means to see. I'm doing the impossible. I'm lighter than air. I'm a magician. Watch me magic my eyes into seeing. Watch me fly. Watch me see. Watch me look. Watch me watch.

The stratosphere tastes like aerated hope.

But when it's over--when I land--I always wake stultified. I wake and my eyes hurt. I wake in blinding pain.

 

I' M DREAMING OF BURNT STARS when they wake me the first time. I'm dreaming of the thing I'm told is light.

"This is your first test," the nurse says. "Are you ready?" The stars were so close I could smell them.

"We're going to ask you to repeat the words you heard."

"All of them?"

 

"As many as you can."

"In order?"

"If you can remember."

The words fall from my mouth like an avalanche. "Puddle. Armoire. Sphinx . Tumult. Igloo. Asteroid. Detergent. Offbrand. Pliers. Mutton. Drawstring. Uncut. License. Fracture." I pause. "Billfold. Kitten. Jostle. Oxen. Righteous. Venture. Counterpoint." I go on like that. The last word I recall is Doormat. The one before that: Visualize. Visual eyes.

The nurse asks me to do it again. She says please.

I repeat the words, this time slower, and just to see what happens, I invert two words. Her pen is down, like a foot on a brake. She's grading me.

Her handwriting sounds like someone whispering failure.

 

I DREAM ABOUT TILLY on loop.

I smell her scalp. "Your head smells like wax," I tell her.

"Like beeswax?"

"Like candles."

"Like honey?"

"Like crayons."

"Like earwax? Nose wax?"

"Like skin."

"Skin doesn't smell like wax."

"Yours does."

She smells like something warm, a thing about to melt, a thing that will leave an invisible stain.

"All stains are invisible to you," Tilly says.

 

THE NURSE IS IN MY ROOM. She explains the second test-- "lt's tactile"--then lays my hands over a grid of switches. Six columns, three rows.

She walks me through a pattern, says, "Follow me."

With each switch I touch, there comes a click.

Eleven steps. Eleven clicks. She shows me twice.

I count . I count again. She stops. I eat. I sleep.

 

TILLY IS A STAR. A fiery evening star. I tell her she's burning. She tells me I'm floating. Tilly holds a pair of scissors--I hear their metal blades. She clips the air between us. She clips the air apart. She clips the air and clips the air until we fall in two.

 

I WAKE WITH SWITCHES at my fingertips. "Ready?"

I press what I remember. I count to eleven. "Again."

I do it over.

Faster.

Careless.

I count to eleven. Fumble.

Fuck up.

It doesn't matter--no one will ever see.

 

TILLY CUTS MY HAIR the first Sunday of every month. We wake, listen to music, dance a little--she always leads. Then I sit and she cuts.

"You're my favorite doll," she says. "Your hair always grows back."

Our dolls were bald when we were kids. They never started that way, but that was how they ended up. There were paper dolls that wound up headless and plastic dolls whose heads mostly stayed put. But paper or plastic, they all became punk rock babies, chemo babies, Rogaine babies, wigless babies, broken-hearted babies, liberated babies, military babies, babies with cause.

We cut our dolls' hair because of Tilly and her left-handedness.

Her grade school teacher encouraged our parents to get a pair of scissors so she could practice cutting things at home.

Inches of construction paper. Plastic safety scissors.

"Safe from what?" I said.

"Bad haircuts."

I reached for her hand, said, "Let me see!"

"You can't", Tilly laughed. "But if you hold still, we can play with them together."

We played with her scissors only once. She said I'd be so pretty. I bounced around the whole time. She held me still by putting her free hand on my neck. I woke the next morning with bruises on my throat, and hair in my sheets, my nightgown, my eyes. My hair felt like a punch line; my face, a lonely jigsaw.

Our mother screamed.

"Tilly, honestly. There's nothing wrong with your eyes."

Tilly kicked me later that night for telling. "You could've said you did it to yourself. She would've believed you."

I thought about that for years. Not the idea that I could've lied, but the fact that I could do something on my own, something to or for myself.

When Tilly curs my hair now, she uses special left-handed shears.

They snap so cleanly. Even. Sharp. My head feels lighter when she's finished. She never cuts more than an inch. Just the dead ends. It turns out dead ends are pretty weighty.

The first Sunday of the month, I learn a third lesson: arranging pegs in certain slots to create a specific pattern. As my fingers graze the model--as I learn what I'll eventually ruin--I become aware of my hair's unhurried growth.

I hear it unraveling from my skin.

 

HUGH VISITS AT the end of the first week. I expect him to break it to me gently.

This isn't working out. You understand, of course. Don't take it personally.

Or not so gently.

It's not you. We should've known it couldn't have worked. I mean, you're handicapped. You understand, of course.

Or, really, not gently at all.

We're through. Your scores are abysmal. We've garnished your wages to pay for your cab fare home. You understand, of course.

He asks how it's going.

I'm thrown off. I babble half-truths.

"I'm spending a lot of time talking to myself and making a list of reliable things in the room."

"Reliable things?"

"Things that make the room mine." Familiarity allays fear. "The pillowcase's tag. I fidget with it after tests. One side's coarse; the other, smooth."

''Show me what you mean by fidget."

I pinch the tag, loosely, between the edge of my index finger and my thumb, then rub. "It helps me relax. Gives me something physical to do." I stroke the tag until my fingertips feel warm. "I might be developing a callus."

I hear his smile. "What else?"

"The smell of my sheets. More than one smell, actually. Really clean plastic weds really clean metal. It's surprisingly unmedicinal. Under that--just barely noticeable--the smell of sweat. Mine, definitely, but other patients' too." Sweat is deeply personal, but easy to recognize. Compelling and repellent, anonymous and warm. When I wake with the sheets below my nose, it's as if everyone who's ever slept here is shaking me awake, saying, Don't forget me.

I cry to ignore how much I miss Tilly.

"And the machine," I point to my left, "the one that plays the word lists. It makes reliable sounds." Sounds that spell out my existence during the study, sounds that remind me, under the recording, to remember. Its steady words remind me, or warn me, that I'm still here. "It's very dependable, this machine."

"It must be. You remembered seventy-five percent of the words on checklist."

"Maybe I'm just good with lists."

"Or maybe that can be your job: listmaker."

Hugh pats my hand and holds it and I add him to the list.

Maybe it's compulsive, what I'm doing. I memorize the lists they give me, then make up other lists. But I do other things--I sleep and dream and sometimes fly and sometimes even see. That muse count for something.

I don't tell Hugh that I keep trying to pretend I'm home. Or that I need to force myself to remember and believe I really am helping NASA, or maybe even helping him, because when I forget or doubt, I don't know what I'm doing here other than resting my mother's theory about blind astronauts.

I need to try to find all the ways that here is the same as there.

 

THE FOURTH TEST involves typing. An alarm will sound. I will wake up. I will type three sentences.

The guide reconciles the grip. The sign categorizes the war.

The building quotes the architect.

 

I SLEEP AND I DREAM, but not of Tilly.

I dream of dinner with Hugh.

He shows up with four kinds of bread. Two wheels of cheese. He brings fish. He brings fruit. He brings cider.

We sit. He cuts everything that needs cutting, then loads each cut onto a fork. I tell him, between bites, that I can feed myself. He says yes, he knows, but sets the fork again in my mouth. His words don't smell or taste of condescension. My would-be anger, much like the food, dissolves against my tongue.

"Tell me what this tastes like," Hugh says.

It tastes like attention, like success. "Sale."

"Have another." The second cut.

It tastes like flirting and foreplay. "Citrus."

He plops a grape in my mouth.

Grapes taste like the sun. They taste like something overcome.

After the grape, there's a thing that might be muenster, a thing that could be tuna, a thing that's more than very likely bread.

"It tastes like esteem," I tell him.

"And respect," I say. "And honesty. And relief." And fear.

I slip my foot under my thigh, massage it as a means of distraction.

It's distracting enough for the both of us.

"Give it here," he takes my foot and does things to my arches, things that feel like the thaw. I am won over. I am taken over. I am wooed and unwoven and remade. I am asleep.

 

THE ALARM IS A BELL. Its ring is loud and long. I wake and type.

The guide reconciles the grip. The sign categorizes the war.

The building quotes the architect. The subject conjures the doctor.

 

"WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE," Hugh says, "what did you want to be?"

"Why?"

"You said your sister wanted to be an astronaut. What did you want to be?"

I wanted to be a rabbit. I wanted to live in a hat and disappear until I was desperately needed or wanted. I wanted to go away until my presence would cause nothing short of delight.

"I wanted to be a magician."

"And what do you want to be now?"

Hugh's voice is sturdy. He knows what to ask and how to ask it, but it's the sound of his voice that does it. Like a firm mattress. I want to sleep against his voice.

"Right now, I just want to be able to sleep." I say this instead of asking him to sit by my bed while I nap. Instead of asking if he'll stay and talk and let me collapse into his questions. I tell him, "I'm dreaming." An understatement. "Having bad dreams."

"Do you want to talk about them?"

Yes, I do. No, I don't.

"Most of them seem harmless. They're like my regular dreams. But you're in some of them. And Tilly's in some of them. The one I had yesterday--Tilly wants me to find my own apartment. I had a dream where I tried to talk to her about it."

"What happened?"

"It didn't go well."

 

WE FLOATED SIDE BY SIDE, two fearsome, burning stars. "You need me," I told her. "We need each other."

"Liz, what do you call a contortionist who can't see?" Tilly's voice got younger when she responded--she spoke with a child's voice and said, "A blindfold."

She laughed. I laughed. I laughed and felt afraid. I'd never been afraid of Tilly. It made my eyes burn.

Revolving toward me, she started again, "What do you call an alcoholic who wears sunglasses and walks with a cane?" Her voice barreled past me. Heat singed my face. I stopped laughing. She shouted, "Blind drunk!"

I heard my blood burning. I smelled Tilly's. Perennial, dueling scents: overripe fruit and burning impatience, smoking match heads and unanswered questions, blazing faults and vinegary pain sweat, metal and unshakable blame. She kept spinning toward me, and the faster she spun, the harder she burned; the harder she burned, the smaller she got; the smaller she got, the stronger she smelled. And then there was next to nothing at all. Tilly fumed until a fume was all there was.

I inhaled the little that was left of her. She tasted like she smelled.

And when she spoke, she used the tip of my tongue. "How do you make a Venetian blind?"

I tried to spit or swallow. "Cut out his eyes."

Her fingers on my eyebrows, she said, "I love blind jokes." Her nails under my eyelids.

"You never see them coming." She unscrewed both my eyes.

"I robbed you. I robbed you blind."

I blinked and the world remained dark. I told her, "I'm still here."

"Are you? Really?"

I wake with wet eyes.

 

NOTHING WEARS ME OUT like crying. I sleep for a day and a half, waking only for lessons, meals, and exams.

Hugh doesn't visit again until the last day of the study.

He holds my elbow and steers me through the hospital. "I have some people I want you to meet." I lock up and he senses it. "It's all right. The exams are over now."

The corridors smell of visiting hours. The air is cold but familiar. We go through a set of doors and the space ahead hollows out. There are voices that stop when we arrive.

"Everyone, meet Liz. Liz, meet your fellow subjects."

I hear them introduce themselves. They say their names. They speak toward me or toward where they think I am.

"Hugh."

"Yes?"

"You're the only person here who can see."

"Yes."

"And they all know that everyone else is blind."

"Yes."

I listen to them talk and gesture. I listen to them feel useful and among. I hear them but I don't know how to find them. I wonder if they do this all the time.

There's a person at my side. A blind person next to a blind person next to a blind person. A solid echo.

"So, Liz," one of them says, "what do you do?" Part of me falls off. I don't know how to answer.

"Liz?" Hugh's voice now.

"Yes?"

"Are you all right?"

"Yes."

"You're crying."

"Yes."

"What's wrong?"

My nose twitches.

"It's nothing. Just my eyes."

"Your eyes?"

"They hurt."

 

*

 

TILLY MAKES DINNER to celebrate my homecoming. She fills the apartment with scents she knows will linger. Garlic. Butter. Rosemary.

She asks about the study. "Did you get to fly a rocket ship? Did you drink the Milky Way?"

"I slept a lot."

"You slept a lot? Wait. Are you being coy? Did you and Dr. Movie Star--?"

"No."

I let her cooking scents fill my mouth. It stops me from talking too soon. I ask her if she missed me.

"Of course I did." She holds a wooden spoon to my mouth, says, "Taste this."

I tell her, "More garlic."

We sit across from each other and I smell every object in the room. The dinner and my sister and every thing we own. I lift my plate to my face and the food steams my cheeks. I close my eyes and inhale.

I want to smell only this. I want to dismantle this memory. Tilly says, "They starved you at that hospital, didn't they."

"Cold quiche. Spare lettuce."

"Senseless."

"Scentless."

"Look at you with the sharp wit."

"How did you find the study?"

"What?"

"What did the ad say? What were they looking for?"

"There wasn't any ad. They called me."

"Who did?"

"Your doctor called first, said she'd gotten a notice, that they were looking for blind subjects for a study. Once I said okay, the other doctors contacted me directly."

My plate is still in my hands, but my cheeks are chilled and damp.

"You didn't tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"That everyone was blind."

"I knew you wouldn't have gone."

"You didn't give me the chance to say no."

Tilly pauses long enough for my nose to twitch. "Well. Now you know how it feels."

I put my plate down and hold the table's edge. I'm reminded of Hugh. At some point since arriving home, I've become the thing that's gotten lost.

"They asked me what I did."

"Who?"

"The other subjects."

"You met them?"

"At the end."

"What did you say?"

"I said I was a living statue."

"You didn't say that."

"I said I was Lady Justice."

"Liz."

"I know why you left me there."

"Really."

"Yes."

"So tell me."

"You want me to leave."

"I want you to have your own life."

"Which means I have to leave."

Tilly's barefoot, so I don't hear her walk toward me. But I feel the air make room for her. She reaches for my face. I pull away. I leave the table. Her voice follows me.

"Come work at the shelter. Answer phones. Play with the kids. At least give it a try. If you hate it, you can leave."

"Do I have to get my own apartment?"

"No." A part of me that had fallen comes floating back my way. "But I do."

"Why?"

"Because you already know this place. It's familiar and it's yours. And it's time."

"You decided while I was away."

"I decided before that."

"Did you actually miss me while I was gone?"

"I told you I did."

"But you didn't even think about it."

"I didn't have to. I missed talking to you--really talking, without all the bullshit that goes along with talking to sighted people. Things like eye contact and respect."

I collapse into an armchair. Tilly stays near the table. I tell her I'm sorry. I don't say that I'm lost.

She apologizes, her voice thrown against the wall.

"You sound far away," I tell her. I don't ask where she went. "It's snowing," she says. "I'm looking at the snow."

We share a silence I don't know how to translate.

"Tell me what it looks like." The silence carries on. I ask again. "Say it like I might know what you mean."

l wait for her refusal. l wait for her judgment. l wait, but my nose moves not at all.

She says, "It's falling like ticker tape. The ground has thick white fur. Soft but jagged." She knows I'm confused. l need an example. "Come on. I'll show you."

I hear her grab her keys. She leads me through the living room. She opens the front door and we go out.

The air outside tastes smooth as a marble. The snow is pliable against my feet, but stings my skin.

"You're right," l say. "lt is soft. But also kind of--"

"Jagged."

"Yeah."

Tilly asks me what it feels like.

"The snow?" l say.

"Being blind in the snow. What is that like?"

Snow and words collect at the corners of my mouth.

"lt feels like gravity."

"I have no idea what that means."

She needs an example. I ask for her hands. She gives them to me. "Follow my lead."

l tighten my grip, fall to my right. We're down in the snow. We stay there.

"See?" l ask.

She's shaking. From laughter or shivering or shaking her head. "The snow burns my face," she says.

"But the fall didn't hurt."

"No. It didn't hurt at all."

"And it doesn't feel solid--the ground."

"No. It almost feels like air. Like when you're under a blanket with someone in winter, and they roll over, and the cold comes in like the wind."

"What'll I do in the middle of the night when I can't sleep after you're gone?"

"You could take out an ad. Woman Seeks Companion to Ward off Aliens and Rapists."

"Sisters Need Not Apply."

"You could call me."

I could. But I won't.

I sit up and pat around to find the surface of the snow. I push it down to test its depth.

"If you're thinking about pelting me with a snowball," Tilly says, "you should know I'm not above retaliation." I tell her I'm testing something. "Testing what?"

"You'll see."

"Very funny."

I feel for a flat patch. Finding it, I say, "Give me your hand."

I hold my left hand over Tilly's and pull out her index finger. I make a wand. I'm a magician. I poke her wand-finger through the snow and make a series of formulaic holes.

We're finished, but she doesn't know it. I say to her: "We're done."

"What is it?"

"We left a note."

"What does it say?"

In actual Braille, the cells would be embossed. I'd feel them rise to meet my fingertips. The ones I made are depressed, technically illegible. Still, I pull Tilly's finger across it, simultaneously reading and destroying the message.

"It says, were here."