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Taking Eden’s Eyes: Chapter 2

Touching the Past

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[For Chapter 1 of Taking Eden’s Eyes go to Finding Darkness.]

Taking Eden’s Eyes: Chapter 2- Touching the Past

The past clings to me though I scarce remember it. It doesn’t need to make sense, not anymore, at least, though it shadows me in life. But when I reach forward, grasping at the future, is what I find even real?

“No, Brian,” I yelled. “Don’t turn it off.” He laughed, I remember, and he turned off the lights anyway. We were children — I was six, he was 12 — but I remember the basement of our old house, in the dark. The stairs that rose to the sliver of light under the door seemed endless in the dark, asking of me to walk a gauntlet between unknown monsters who could see when I could not.

I feel like that now, lying on the floor of my apartment. And it seems as though I am in a different world, not in my home. I drift in the dark, feeling the weight of it, the heavy humidity, the fear wrapping around me like icy tendrils of some horrible monster. I reach into the darkness around me seeking the comfort of Angelic hands, because I have nothing else. Where are my Angels?

To console myself, I begin to sing quietly in my darkness, but the words are taken from me as I release them like I am smothered in layers of cold black wool. I stop. I cannot sing like this. I can only whisper and pray for my brother to come. He lives on the edge of town, no more than 15 minutes away. But we live further away inside of us, it seems, hardly having spoken to each other in the past five years. He always comes though. When I call, the rare times I’ve called, he comes to help me.

How long has it been? Minutes, hours.

“Eden, it’s me. Let me in,” Brian calls from the door, I think, but he sounds so far away. I hear the rattle of the doorknob, faintly, then louder and louder, and I hear my neighbor talking to him. “Eden,” he calls again, louder, as though he is truly at my door now, and I realize I never answered.

“I’m coming, Brian,” I call out. As I stand, I struggle to remember the room I thought I had memorized. I had relied so much on my vision, now gone black. I take a few tenuous steps, reaching out to the wall, and follow it to the doorway. A click, a creak, an influx of breeze, and my brother is with me, putting his arms around me.

“I’m sorry, Eden,” he says softly. “I didn’t know it was so bad for you.”

“I woke up and … I couldn’t see… just scary shapes … and I heard sounds, too,” I speak haltingly, through my shuddering sobs.

As Brian takes me from my apartment, guiding me down the hall slowly, I feel my neighbor watching me, saying nothing. I see his little boy, though, Joey, clear and bright, surrounded by the blackness. I turn my head to see him as we pass, and he looks to me, crying. How can this be?

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — ֎ — — — — — — — —— — — — — — — — — -

I need forgiveness, I think, for being different. Not for being blind, but rather for being different in all those other ways. Maybe being blind is my punishment… no, not punishment… for God is kind. He would not have taken everything from me so soon, my ability to see the beautiful world, to see the faces of friends, to see my words, my notes, my songs. But why?

“You’ll amount to nothing,” my mother had said, and my father nodded, both standing over me. I was eight years old then, I think. “Who will want you, head in your fantasyland, not seeing anything? You might as well be blind.” Maybe they thought they were helping me, but is this when it started? A curse? A prophecy? I look at my hands, and my arms, seeing the memory of them conjured from the shadows of my mind, and they are criss-crossed by bloody lines.

The ride with Brian is quiet for me. My brother talks, and asks questions, but I cannot speak through my tears, and my mind is far away, trying to make sense of things. I thought I was ready for this… Eden is always ready for everything, with a plan, not needing anyone. I thought I had more time.

“My guitar!” I say to Brian, momentarily panicked. My fingers already ache to hold it, to play so I can sing.

“You can use mine,” answers Brian. “I’ll go back for some of your things… and your medicines. You have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. Amy called your doctor.”

I feel the car turn, into a driveway and stop. “Did you move, Brian? It seems we’re at a house and not at your apartment complex.” I dry my face on my sleeve.

“I was going to tell you, Eden. When we sold Mom and Dad’s house, I was the buyer. I just paid you your half.” Brian paused. “Sorry, I didn’t tell you, Eden. I wasn’t sure what you would think. Wasn’t sure what I thought, either, but Amy loves the house.”

“It’s OK, Brian. So I can stay here with you a little while?”

“As long as you like. Your room is still as you left it. We just moved in.” Brian grabs my hand gently and squeezes it. “Amy’s looking forward to seeing you… even under the circumstances. We’re going to help you, Eden, as much as you let us… so don’t get weird about it.”

“OK, Brian,” I answered quietly. “Thank you.”

Brian helps me out of the car, and Amy rushes out of the house to help as well. I hold Brian’s arm as we go up the stairs of the front porch, and I can already smell the familiar scents of the old house, oak and worn leather, smoke and iron. The porch creaks its warning to me, complaining of my visit.

— — —— — — — — — — — — — — ֎ — — — —— — — — — — — — — -

I don’t want any breakfast, even though my stomach is grumbling. I just want water and some quiet. I just want to cry a little while in a safe bed.

Amy makes me comfortable in my room, taking my arm and walking me around to remind me where the different objects are, the bed, the dresser, the bookshelves, the stacks of a dozen boxes with all my things. Only the boxes would have been a nasty surprise to find in my blindness. She shows me the door to my bathroom and where the hand soap, toothbrush, shampoo, and towels are.

“Are you OK, Eden? This must be so hard for you,” Amy said. I can hear the genuine concern in her voice, and it makes my eyes tear yet again. I try to remember what she looks like. Tall, slender, with dark hair and dark eyes?

“Not my favorite day in my life,” I answer. “I thought I had more time.”

“I know you don’t yet know me very well, just from our wedding, mostly. But I want you to know you’re welcome here as long as you want.” Amy touches my shoulder gently.

“Thanks, Amy,” I say. “I’m so grateful for you and Brian… and I’ll try not to be a bother. I’ll get out as soon as I can.”

“Don’t worry about that now. You just rest, and I’ll make some lunch for us in a couple of hours. Sure you don’t want anything now?”

I raise the water bottle in my hand. “This is fine for me, for now. I’m just going to rest.”

I hear Amy close the door, and I drop into the bed, lying atop the bedspread and kicking off my shoes. I can feel my pulse. I can feel my tears rising like a large wave that will soon crash along the shoreline.

I touch my face to make sure my eyes are closed. I immediately seem to start to dream, though I’m not sleeping. I see images of the darkness, passages dimly lit as though with bloody lanterns. The little boy, Joey, is lost there, frightened. I open my eyes, and sit up, and I see the same thing. I stand and walk around the room, but it’s as if I’m not moving. I’m in the dream but I’m not dreaming. I start panicking and hyperventilating, so I pray to Archangel Michael for protection, and it goes away.

I find myself standing, but I don’t know where I am. When I see the faintest outline of a door, I’m relieved, thinking my sight is coming back. I reach for the doorknob, turn it, and I pull open the door. I feel a blast of heat and hear a blood-curdling scream, so I slam the door shut again.

“Brian!” I scream out as I collapse to my knees in fear.

I hear Amy pounding up the stairs and rushing up to me, “Eden, what’s wrong? I heard you call out.”

“Th-this door,” I stammered. “I opened it and… and…,” I couldn’t finish.

“Eden, there’s no door here. You’re in the middle of the hallway.” Amy took my arm gently to raise me to my feet, and she guided me back to my room.

“Oh. Oh. Amy, I’m sorry…. I don’t….”

“It’s OK. Why don’t you just lie down and have a nap? You’re just stressed out. OK?”

I slept a blessedly dreamless sleep for about an hour before I woke and checked my braille watch. The dots told me it was 11:11 am. I felt more relaxed after resting. I tried not to think of what I saw and felt, so I moved to where the boxes of my old things were piled along the wall. They smelled musty but not badly so. It had only been four years since I moved out, but I had rarely been back. Forgiveness has never been easy for me, forgiving others or myself.

I opened the first box I found that didn’t seem like it was just full of all my writing. I was in no condition to read right now. In the box, I found my old braille slate and stylus from when I was young, as well as the nail and thick cards that I started on before I got the slate and stylus. It was long before I had any idea that I would go blind… just a curiosity for a young child at the time. I felt inside for the thick braille paper. I chuckled to myself. What did my little self have to say?

I passed my finger across the dots, puzzled. Seemed to be nonsense with some letters unreadable. Wig? af ?e ?e ?e?i?h! I read more of the papers, and some are correct and readable, “Eden Marais is the best,” “I love my brother Brian,” “Today Brian is a poopy-head.” I laughed. Many others were strange and incorrect braille, but I remember that I became good at writing in braille back then, and I threw away all my mistakes. I spend some time reading all the readable ones, a welcome distraction.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — ֎ — — — — — — — — —— — — — — — — -

I hear Amy at the bottom of the stairs call up to me that lunch is ready. “Do you need help coming down?”

“Thank you, Amy. I’m OK, I’ll be right down.” I put the papers, stylus, and slate back in the box gently. I need to write, I think. I need it desperately. Thankfully, my laptop allows me to type and to get text-to-voice read-back. I even have a special pen that reads words off pieces of paper. I won’t be needing the old stylus and slate.

I go to the bathroom to wash my face of a morning’s tracks of tears. I must look frightening I imagine, so I also brush my hair and use the toothbrush Amy left me to brush my teeth. I leave my room, finding the hallway wall with my right hand, and I slide my fingertips along it, lightly. I walk slowly, probing before me with my left foot before each step.

I am sure that Amy would have removed any obstacles that could be in my way, but it is my senses and memory I don’t trust. I eventually find the corner of the wall that tells me I am at the stairs, so I slide my right hand down to the banister. My feet find the stairs. There are thirteen steps, I remember from my childhood, so I count my way down to the first floor, where I feel the familiar rustic barnwood flooring.

I hear Amy in the kitchen, and I walk slowly past the house entryway and around the corner to the kitchen. I stop when I feel tile under my feet. “Is the table in the same place, Amy?”

“Oh,” Amy says. “You startled me. You are so quiet.” She comes over to place my hand on her arm, and she guides me several steps across the kitchen. “We had to get a new table, and it’s still pretty big. It will be filling up, we think. Starting soon.” She giggles.

“Oh, you’re pregnant, Amy?”

“Yes, I assumed Brian had told you. We’re so happy!” She takes my hand and places it on her belly, and I suddenly see a light under where I should see my hand, though I can see nothing else. I can understand the light, it seems.

“It’s a girl,” I say. I lift my hand.

“Yes, it is. Don’t tell Brian because he wants to be surprised.” She laughs. “I don’t know why. We’ve already had plenty of surprises with this pregnancy.”

I laugh, too. “He was always like that at Christmas… about gifts. Never sneaked a peak. Not like me. I always wanted to see.”

“OK, now sit, sit.” She guides me to the chair on the left side of the table, and I sit. “Your food is directly in front of you. Hope you like deli turkey and Swiss on a roll with lettuce and tomato and a little mayo. And there are chips, too, on the plate. Want some juice? We have cranberry.”

“Yes, that would be nice.” I pick up the sandwich as I hear her pouring juice into my glass. She sits across from me. The sandwich tastes delicious, mostly because of my hunger.

“So, what was that song you were singing… when I called up?” Amy asks.

“Was I singing?” I don’t remember singing.

“It was a pretty song, but quiet and sad…. something about backward. You sang the word backward many times.” Amy smiled. “You have a beautiful voice, Eden.

“Thank you,” I feel my face warm with a blush. “I don’t think I know any songs about backward, though,” I laugh. “But I’m not exactly myself lately. Maybe I never have been.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” says Amy. “Brian will be home soon, and he’ll take you to the doctor.”

“You’re not good for anyone being like this,” I hear my mother say.

After we eat, I return to my room.

— — — — — — — —— — — — — — -֎ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

I think of all the boxes near me, most containing my writing from my high school years. My words are the part of me nobody can see. That’s the part of me that is what I am, curious, eloquent, and full of questions that can’t be answered. So I come up with answers that can’t be questioned, realities that force you to accept them or the world falls apart like a house of cards. I yearn to read some of what is in my boxes, those old writings between the death of my childhood and the birth of whatever I am now. There were things there, I recall, that needed saying but frightened me away for a while.

I lay back on my bed and think of songs to sing. There are so many, and most are prayers of a kind, worried and seeking the divine. Others are to suit the moods of the moment. Backward, I don’t remember at all. It’s like I was of two minds while I was puzzling over my childish braille writing, one mind trying to decipher while another sang.

I sit up in bed, shifting down to the foot of it so I can reach that box I opened. I reach in and pull out the many papers, and I start with the ones on top. My finger glides along the braille bumps, reading slowly.

The seventh one is where I find “Wig? af ?e ?e ?e?i?h.”

Backwards. I consider that when one writes in braille with a stylus and slate, you write backward so when you flip it over you can read correctly from left to right. If, as a child, I wrote forward on the slate, it would need to be read backward, and each letter would also be backward. I read again, slowly, translating the letters. I would soon understand what silliness ran through my young mind.

“Joey is in danger.” I read further, “Help him.” It’s curious. I don’t think I knew a Joey. But maybe I was reading a book about a character named Joey. I almost laugh and throw the papers back in the box, but instead, I find the others that are backward.

“212 next door.” “The scary basement is where to go.” “Don’t be afraid.” “Sing and sing and sing.” And the rest are strings of numbers and letters. It is strange, and if I was crazy it would kind of make some sense. Joey is the boy next door in apartment 212. There is a scary basement in my building, and Joey’s father has creepy boxes there. Maybe I can find evidence that Joey was kidnapped or something. I laugh. I was a child playing with braille about 14 or 15 years ago. Did I see the future? Not likely. Yet I saw Joey this morning when I couldn’t see anything else.

I hear knocking at my door. “Eden, can I come in?” It’s Brian.

“Come in, Brian,” I say. “Is it time to go?”

“Yes, are you ready?”

“I am.” I stand, and Brian hands me my folded-up white walking cane.

“You may need to start using that. I brought a lot of your things, your laptop and other electronics, your toiletries and medicines, your shoes, and your purse.” I heard Brian bring a box in from the hallway and set it down near the other boxes. “We can stop by your place again after the doctor so you can get the clothes you need.”

“Thank you, Brian. Is my pen reader in the box?”

“Yes, I’m pretty sure.” Brian digs through the box. “Ahh, here it is.”

“Thank you, I want to take it to the doctor’s appointment in case I need to read something,” I lie.

— — — — — — —— — — — — — -֎ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

“It’s surprising, Miss Marais,” the doctor says from only inches away. He is shining a light into my eyes that I cannot see this time. It unnerves me that I can’t see his face. Somehow his voice feels sinister to me in the absence of my sight. Has he been poisoning my eyes?

“How do they look, doctor?” I ask. “Are they bad?”

“To be honest, your eyes don’t look much different than yesterday when you were here. That’s good news. What did you do last night?” the doctor asked.

“I stayed up a little late, writing. But that’s not unusual for me. And my eyes felt OK.”

“But you woke up this morning like this. Hmmm. If you don’t mind I’d like to take some pictures of your retinas. I have a colleague who may have seen something like this.” The doctor wheels a large piece of equipment near me and places eyepieces against my face. “Just stay still.”

“I’m going to have you come back on Tuesday for some intraocular injections, likely a different treatment. However, we need to consider that maybe you are experiencing hysterical blindness… maybe from the stress of expecting to go blind. In the meantime, we’ll continue to look for a medical cause. OK?”

The doctor takes pictures for almost 20 minutes before he tells me I can go. He guides me out to the waiting room where I’m sure Brian sits nervously. I hear the doctor talking to the receptionist as I step further into the waiting room.

“Over here, Eden,” Brian calls.

I feel a piece of paper pressed into my hand, and the doctor speaks. “Tuesday, OK? “Get some rest, Miss Marais.”

“I will, doctor,” I reply, as I hear him already walking away.

“Well?” asked Brian.

“I’m either crazy or blind or both. I come back here Tuesday for a different kind of injection, I guess, but he took pictures to get input from colleagues.” I am impatient to leave, standing in a strange place in the dark with no idea how many people are in the room. “Can we go, Brian?”

“Yes, of course, Eden.”

— — — — — — — — —— — — — — -֎ — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

I convince Brian to wait in the car while I pack after I have him retrieve my two small suitcases from the top of the hall closet. I don’t want him fussing over me and helping me pack. And I certainly don’t want him to see me go to the basement.

“I promise I’ll call if I need you, and I’ll call when I’m done. I don’t need a man helping me pack my underwear,” I tell him.

“Alright, alright,” he laughs. I’ll be right downstairs in the car. He leaves.

Immediately, I move quickly, packing my clothes in stacks directly from my dresser. It takes me only 5 minutes. And I grab a few things he forgot, like my guitar and my little Bluetooth speaker. And of course, I can’t forget my stuffed bear.

Now I look for a hammer, a screwdriver, some picks, and paper clips. I also grab my reading pen, so I can read any documents I find. One way or another, I’m going to open my neighbor’s storage locker. Doing it blind will be the challenge, but I feel like I must help Joey.

I throw the tools into a small backpack, and I quietly exit my apartment. I use my hand against the wall to guide me, as I know how many steps to get to the stairs. I make little or no sound, but I can’t help feeling I’m being watched… maybe by my neighbor. I find the door to the stairs and I feel my way down to the first floor and then to the basement. I keep track of the time on my Braille watch.

I’m momentarily frightened when I hear the door to the second floor, my floor, open and shut loudly. Unlikely to be somebody following me, I think, making so much noise. The basement was always frightening when I could see, but it’s terrifying now. I struggle to remember exactly where the lockers are, and how many steps. It is the smell of my neighbor’s wooden and leather trunks that helps me orient, and I quickly find my locker. I know it by the feel of the lock. Right next to my locker is my neighbor’s locker. Mr. Dasco’s locker. I feel the lock, and it’s old and not very sturdy. I could break it with a hammer if I need to, but I’d rather pick the lock if I can.

I hear a click of a switch, and suddenly the hum of the overhead lights begins. I stifle a yelp.

“What are you doing, Miss, down here in the dark?” I hear the man’s voice from over by the stairs.

“Oh, um, I cannot see well…. I’m, um, blind, you see. I’m just trying to get into my locker, but I lost my key.”

“Well, the problem is, that seems to be my locker.” He sounds like he’s a little closer.

“Oh, um, I’m so sorry. Then it must be this one over here. I’m, um, so embarrassed . . . . It sounds like, um, are you Mr. Dasco?”

“Why yes, I am, Miss Marais. And this doesn’t look very good for you after harassing my boy and all.” He’s a little closer still, and I hold my screwdriver behind my back.

“Th-that was just a mistake, Mr. Dasco. I’m so sorry.”

“Well, if you want to look in my locker, Miss Marais, I’ll let you in. No problem.”

“Oh, no, no, um Mr. Dasco. I’ll just go get my brother.”

“Yes. You should do that,” he says right next to me.

Without thinking, I run out of the locker area and into the wide empty area in the back. I expect to hear him chasing me, but he doesn’t.

“You be careful back there, Miss Marais. You might just run into a wall or something.” He laughs loud and long, and I hear him walk away and turn the lights off.

I stop, crouch low on the floor, waiting to hear if he’s still standing there in the dark. I fear surrendering to the moment, for the next is uncertain. I feel my watch, and I know that time is passing quickly, slippery and impossible to hold. If he has a flashlight, he’ll be able to walk right up to me and take me, kill me, or hurt me. I decide to move quietly, further back into the basement, my hands stretched out in front of me, my feet quietly tapping forward to test the path before I commit a step. I pray, in just the quietest whispers.

I see a door, pale and glowing before me in my perpetual darkness. “Don’t be afraid,” I remember. I open it, and I step inside.

Originally published at https://vocal.media.

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