Taking Eden’s Eyes: Chapter 1

Finding Darkness

As long as I can, I will keep writing… writing, writing, writing…until I have no questions left, until I identify everything for which there are no answers. - I once thought of truth as some grand thing outside me, floating around, all-encompassing, and waiting for us all just to notice. - But maybe truth is inexplicable and very small, hiding inside us in our interior lives all jumbled in with all our words and thoughts and nonsense.

“Maybe you think too much,” my mother told me. “You’re not good for anyone being like this.” See? Do you see how the words live in me and can draw blood, even long after my mother died?

Maybe when I write stuff down, things make more sense, because I’m a god in that way, a god of the words and worlds that I capture, I trap, on paper. Words can comfort, explain, they can calm a troubled soul. But words can also be dangerous, can stir things up in you, deep in that root cellar, the darkness and damp of the back of a beleaguered hippocampus. This part of our brain is shaped like a seahorse, maybe to remind us that we, and our reminiscences, first came from the sea. And the sea can be calm and smooth as glass, or it can be turbulent and deadly, or full of mysterious things in the deeps.

I think I write important things to save somebody’s life, maybe mine, or maybe the life of somebody a dozen years from now, who finds my manuscripts, tattered and buried in my bureau drawer. Many of them, I wrote as a child. Can a child be wise? I wonder.

I remember, just ten years ago I was a child. “You have no room for your clothes anymore,” my father always complained, because clothes were neatly stacked all around my room, but my writing shared space in my drawers. He didn’t understand how I need to share my life with my words.

Ironically, it was I who spoke the words at his funeral just a month ago, when my brother would not come.

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Today I sing when I wake, late in the summer morn. I am late, again. I overslept, but still I sing now, quietly, quietly, low. I feel empty sometimes when I sing and the words leave as if flying around me riding on the notes of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater or Mozart’s Ruhe Sanft that play in my mind. But I feel full, also, too full, when they leave.

I must be quiet, quiet, quiet.

The walls are thin here in this apartment building.

Tempers are short here, too, so they don’t like my singing, though it is beautiful, they say.

I sing when I’m unhappy. I sing when I’m happy. I sing in my head, sometimes, all day long when I’m worried or troubled. I sing the most harshly when I am in despair…those words gray and blue, and naked and sad, and able to draw blood when they hit your ears even though smooth and soft. But no matter the condition of my most fragile heart, the songs that come are all different.

“I love you, Eden. You’re gonna be fine,” I hear. And in my mind I see his face. “No, no, no, no,” please, no. I can’t think of this today. “No, no, no, no, no, no,” I repeat until the songs for David diminish, return him to God. So I know I won’t end up weeping in bed the rest of the day.

I have to go soon. I have to go.

But I must have a song today, and it must be a prayer, a calling to my Angels that may be around. I’m sure they are usually here with me, though I’ve never seen them. Maybe I feel them sometimes, holding my hands when I’m sad or lonely. Giving me words that come from a place I don’t understand. I can’t be sure, one of those things that can’t be answered. I sing deep in my register, as soft as I can sing.

I lightly strum my old guitar, and I start with my thanks to the Angels, then offer myself, in any way they need, to be their hands on this earth, and only after, do I ask them to help me to be less nervous… to give me the strength I need to make it through this frightening day.

It begins, “Dear beautiful Angels/who grace me with song/let there ever be a garden/within my heart for you….” I don’t remember the rest of the words, because I always get lost in the music and prayer.

I hear, and feel, the pounding on the wall. I am never quiet enough, it seems.

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I make my small breakfast in silence, with what little I have at home in my nearly bare cupboards and refrigerator. I could not go to the grocery store yesterday, because I was afraid. It was getting too dark, my eyes too tired to see. I toast my last bagel, and have a couple small pieces of cheese and a tomato. It is delicious and satisfies my morning hunger. I am thankful that I won’t have to go out, hungry, and brave the café for food. I don’t have much time.

In the bathroom, I put in my eyedrops, wincing at the cool and the sting. I am dim and dark in the mirror, until I realize I didn’t turn the lights on. A click of the switch, but I’m still just a little dim, and now it looks as though I am crying as the eyedrops run down my face.

I wash my face and brush my hair as best I can. My clothes are already on the bed, and I remove my tag labels that tell me their colors and patterns. From my apartment window on the second floor I can look down on the street, squinting to see how people are dressed. I remember my little binoculars, and they help me to see that the women are wearing only light jackets and have no umbrellas.

I grab my jacket, my sunglasses, hat, and cane, and I rush out my door, closing it softly and carefully. Still, the man, the one in the apartment next door to me, opens his door to glare at me. His expression, angry, amused, curious, my eyes cannot exactly tell, but my heart feels his hatred.

“See if you can lose your voice, too, while you’re out,” he says to me, quietly, stepping toward me just half a step.

I reflexively move away, looking at him as a boy peers out from behind him, his son I suppose, no more than 5 or 6. I’ve talked to him before. The man is an impenetrable blackness to me, just for a moment. But his son….

“Hi, Miss Eden, can I come in your apartment for awhile?” the boy had asked me before, coming to my door. I had bent down close, to better see his face, tear-stained. Bruises on his arms. But his father came, striking me with his fist.

“Stay away from my boy,” he said to me.

I called Social Services, but he told them that I had been inappropriate with his child, so the police came to visit me, not him.

I move quickly down the hallway, to the stairs, and to the foyer, suppressing my tears, my fear. I almost leave then, distracted by my memories, but I need to go to my storage locker in the basement, to retrieve my little folding shopping cart.

I go past the elevator, and behind, to the door to the basement. It is dark, and the superintendent never replaces the lightbulbs there, so only one works… the one near the storage lockers. I go down the stairs by feel, closing my eyes. With them open, I see shapes and movements that aren’t there, can’t be there. But I can’t avoid the sounds deeper in the small basement, behind the locker area and away from the light.

I go to the lockers — more like cages, really — and my locker is right next to that of my angry neighbor. Mine is right under the light, mostly empty, just a couple boxes and my bicycle, and my cart. But his is dark and in the shadows full of old trunks, leather and wood, both types worn and weathered to look almost the same. I see shadows of figures moving behind the lockers, through the caging. I fumble for my key, squinting to find the keyhole on my rugged lock.

“Eden,” I hear, and then again, “Eden.” First my mother and then my father. Voices coming from the darkness.

I grab my cart and run back to the stairs.

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“It’s perfectly normal, Miss Marais,” the doctor says. His face is a blurry now, through my tears. He’s a shapeless creature in white, a marshmallow angel, to me.

“Nothing about me is normal, doctor. I’m 22, and I can barely see.” I cover my right eye. Frustrated. “And now I’m seeing weird things out of an eye that doesn’t normally see much of anything.”

“I know it’s frustrating, but 12% of people with rare Stargardt macular degeneration, like you, can see some sort of visual phenomena at times,” the doctor replies. “What exactly do you see?”

I pause, embarrassed, wiping the tears from my eyes. “Just … things. I don’t know.”

“Well, if you look around do they move with your eye movements or do they stay where they are?”

“They… stay. I think.” I suddenly regret coming there, instinctively reaching behind me for a hand to hold, any hand, hoping for my Angels. I want to sing, or write. I want to be alone, away from my doctor who looks like a monster now as he looms closer.

“I’m sure that’s not the case, unless there’s something in the room, like a coatrack looking like a person, or a rock that your mind tells you looks like a dog.” The doctor makes notes on his chart, and he hands me a slip of paper. “When you come back next week for your injections, we’ll follow up on this. In the meantime, if you’re seeing something strange, try paying attention to the lighting, and then either increase or decrease the light to see if that helps. OK?”

“OK, doctor.” I take the paper to the nurse to schedule a follow-up appointment, relieved that maybe there is an answer. But I fear there are never answers for me.

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I put on my jacket and leave the clinic, putting on my sunglasses to walk the short distance down the busy street in town to my class. It is Friday, and I am learning braille, preparing for the inevitable loss of vision in my other eye. With the treatment, it seems like it could be many, many years before the other eye completely loses vision, but the doctor cannot be certain.

“Hi, Eden,” Marcy says as I step into the classroom. She reaches out and takes my hand lightly, like she can see.

I smile and ask, “How do you do that?” How do you live this way, is what I really want to ask. I am frightened to become even more lost within myself than I am.

“Well, you’re very punctual, you walk lightly, you have a distinctive perfume, and you’re usually my only student on Friday morning.” Marcy laughs. “Plus, I have incredible powers of perception.”

“Teach me, oh Jedi Master,” I laugh.

“OK, but we must wait until the other two come. Not just you today. Sorry.” Marcy steps over to her desk at the front of the room, her hand reaching out to confirm its position as she nears her chair.

I sit down in the front center desk in the small classrom, always feeling like a child again in the small students’ chair/desk. I look up to see somebody standing behind Marcy, just a shadow. I close my left eye, and my right eye I look to the left, look to the right. The shadow figure stays behind Marcy. I close my right eye, and it is gone. I keep it closed.

Class is slower because the two new students, Jack and Elaine, are not yet as proficient as me. So, after the class exercises, I just practice reading one of the books from the shelf, David Copperfield, until class ends. Marcy gives me a worksheet and some homework assignments. I feel the braille, remembering that as a child, long before I knew that I would lose my vision, I spent hours with a dull nail and thick card-stock pretending to write in braille. Did I know, somehow?

“You can borrow the book if you want to,” Marcy smiles at me.

“That’s OK. I’ll just read it here.” I tentatively opened my right eye, and the shadow figure is still behind Marcy. I laugh to myself. Of course, it is just a visual artifact of her body shape, like a shadow copy of Marcy. That’s why it is always behind her.

“You still see, don’t you.”

I jump, startled at the voice behind me. It’s a quiet voice that only the blind use. I see Elaine, looking at me, or seeming to look at me.

“Hi, yes. Yes, I still can see but not too well. And you?” She looks at me, up and down.

“Haha, no, completely blind. But I see you for some reason,” she says and walks away.

“Wait, um, Elaine…,” I call after her quietly. I wonder what she meant. She can see me, but she can’t hear me. I chuckle to myself.

I stop at the small corner grocer on the way home, to buy some food for dinner and more eyedrops. I settle for a frozen meal, getting out my magnifying glass to check the ingredients. My left eye can see, but it is not very good for reading. Healthy Choice frozen Chinese meal with chicken. Perfect. I put it in the basket with my eyedrops, bagels, orange juice and fruits.

“Hi Eden. Let me help you with that,” Tom says to me. He is also there to shop. We both graduated High School together almost five years ago, but we were never friends, barely spoke. I know him only well enough to recognize him. Tom reaches to take my basket.

“No. I’m fine, um, Tom.” I pull the basket away. “But thank you.”

“Just trying to help,” Tom muttered. As he walked away, I hear him say “bitch” quietly. Happens all the time. People try to force their help on me to make themselves feel better, demanding my gratitude. But I always end up feeling badly about myself.

I take my basket to the checkout counter, dreading to see the shadow that is always behind Julie lately, but Julie isn’t there.

“Hi,” I say to the new girl behind the register. “Only a few things.” I feel in my pocket for money. Each bill denomination is folded differently so I can tell them apart by feel. I am always practicing. Don’t want to always rely on my credit card.

“That’s $34.89,” the cashier says, so I give her three tens and a five. I feel the dime and the penny returned to my hand. Easy to feel the difference.

“Is Julie not here today?” I ask.

“Oh, didn’t you hear? She was in a terrible accident on Wednesday. She died.” The girl seems to regret blurting it out so quickly. “I’m sorry. Was she a friend of yours.”

“Oh, no. She’s dead? That’s terrible. No, she wasn’t a friend really… just … I don’t know. , I, uh… liked her.” I feel tears starting to come, so I leave quickly. I liked her. I really liked her. We were becoming friends. Tears will make it even harder to see. I left the store, walking the remaining two blocks to my apartment.

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I stay up late, writing. I write about a young woman who can see, who is normal. Maybe she’s what I should have been, freed of my burdens and grief. She finds love, and success. But I feel her heart beating, and I feel it tremble, too. No matter what, fear and heartbreak find their way into my stories. I move to my bed to write, scratching words in the darkness into my notebook in my large, precise letters. I will need to visit them again tomorrow. I want to create a beautiful world, but my words choose themselves, and it becomes a story of darkness and frightening shadow figures. I fall asleep, and maybe, even then, I still write for some time.

In the morning, the room is dark when the alarm goes off, when I wake. I yawn and blink rapidly, looking frantically toward the window, sitting up quickly to look outside. Is it cloudy? Raining? I close my left eye, right eye.

“No, no, no, no, no,” I cry, running to the bathroom. I flick the switch, and there I can see some light. I feel in the cabinet for my eyedrops among the dim gray shapes and identify the medicated drops by the feel of the bottles. Two drops of coldness and sting go into each eye.

Blinking, blinking, blinking. The room is still dark. “No, no…..” I sit on the floor crying and singing quietly. I reach for hands, but there are none there. I’m alone and in the dim twilight of blindness. I know my way around my small apartment, but I weep and crawl, lost in the darkness. It seems I crawl for a very long time, perhaps 15 or 20 yards, and I cannot find a wall.

The sounds come first, and then my blind eyes see the shapes.

I can only think to sing, a weeping begging song for salvation. I curse my lack of understanding, my lack of courage. My own words are not kind to me in my head, but the words from my mouth, my heart, bring me back to myself. The wall is mere inches from me now, and the table where I have my cellphone designed for the visually impaired.

In desperation, I call my brother.

(to be continued)

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Originally published at https://vocal.media.

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