Haben Read online

  “Well?”

  I laugh, embarrassed. “I was just thinking I’d eat dinner and then read a book.” Is he going to suggest something? God, this is awkward. “You know, we’re like a block away from the tracks. Want to keep walking for a while?”

  “Okay.”

  We start walking, canes tapping in front of us.

  Luke speaks again.

  “What?” I step closer. My cane collides with his. Pulling my cane away, I move to the left. There, about four feet between us. We should be able to walk and talk without hitting our canes.

  Loud noise blocks out Luke’s voice again. Frustrated, I abandon proper cane technique. Holding my cane off to the left, I scoot over to Luke. Walking shoulder-to-shoulder, I tell him, “Sorry, I didn’t hear that.”

  “I asked”—Luke raises his voice—“where are you going to college?”

  “Lewis & Clark College. It’s a small liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon.”

  My cane covers just half the area in front of me, unable to sweep a full 180 degrees. Left, middle. Left, middle. I don’t want to trip over a street pole. Or Luke’s cane. Or an unpleasant surprise.

  Luke responds.

  “What?”

  Left, middle. Left, middle.

  I lean in, straining to hear as we walk.

  “I said,” Luke repeats himself, but I miss it again.

  My cane scans for obstacles. Left, middle. Left, middle.

  Looking left, I spot something huge heading toward us.

  “Stop!” I reach for Luke’s arm.

  Luke steps forward, then rocks back. “What?”

  The train blasts us with a powerful wind that shocks my skin. The ground shakes as the train roars by about two feet in front of us, creating an earthquake under our feet. The thunderous noise hurts my ears. Next to the towering machine, I feel fragile. Mortal.

  Gripping Luke’s arm, I pull us several steps back. My heart slams against my rib cage as I watch enormous car after enormous car zoom across the tracks in front of us.

  Luke stomps his cane and hurls profanities at the retreating train. “We almost got killed!”

  “I know,” I whisper. My fingers are locked around my cane. I pry them loose, shaking out my hand.

  “You saved my life.”

  My jaw drops. “I did not!”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I feel like an irresponsible child, not a hero. “You might have noticed the sound of the train, or the ground shaking, or your cane might have reminded you about the tracks.”

  “It would have been too late.”

  My breath catches in my throat, and the ground under my feet seems to tilt. Trying to steady my nerves, I revert to joking. “All right, you win. I saved your life.” I manage a weak smile. “You owe me—big. What’s it gonna be?”

  “Well, uhhh…I can make really good spaghetti.”

  I laugh with surprise. “You’re saying your life is worth a plate of spaghetti?”

  “And garlic bread.”

  Smiling, I shake my head. “Can you cook for Keisha, too?”

  “Of course.”

  “Great!” We’ll have a delicious dinner. Dinner at the apartments. Apartments on the other side of those tracks…I take a deep breath. The bells are silent. Our parallel traffic is moving. “Ready to go?”

  He raises his cane and swings it out in front of him. “Okay, yeah, let’s go.”

  Tapping my cane ahead of me, I begin walking. My heart hammers when the tip of my cane touches the metal rails. I feel an urge to turn back, but I force myself to keep going. Then the rails press against the soles of my shoes, daring me not to fall.

  When we reach the sidewalk on the other side, I stop. “Hey, Luke?”

  “Yeah?” He stops walking.

  “We almost got killed because we were distracted.” I take a steadying breath, trying to keep my voice calm. “We knew a train was coming. There were so many signs—the bell, the sound of the train, the parallel traffic stopping, the vibrations through the ground. Blindness wasn’t the problem. Sighted people get distracted, too. Many sighted people have been killed by trains. It’s about paying attention, not blindness. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I hope it was okay for me to say that. I don’t mean to lecture.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Okay. And thanks for offering to make dinner. That’s really nice of you.”

  “It’s a special recipe my dad taught me. It’s really good.”

  Luke, Keisha, and I thoroughly enjoy the dinner Luke prepares for us. I don’t mention the train, and neither does he.

  Later, alone in my room, memories from the terrifying scene play through my mind. If my parents hear about this incident, they’ll probably blame my disability. They might try to ban me from crossing tracks. Or crossing streets. Or going outside without them, period. Every time my mind wanders back to the tracks, a fiery bolt of guilt flashes through me. It feels like my single moment of distractedness has set back blind-kind by several decades. Many people will blame blindness, but those with disability literacy will recognize that carelessness created the danger.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Play Like No One’s Watching

  Ruston, Louisiana. Summer 2006.

  I’m eating dinner with three older LCB students, hoping to absorb some of their wisdom. Tom is a fifty-year-old who works at a transportation company in Pennsylvania. He cooked dinner and invited a few students to his apartment. Mason, from Alabama, is learning blindness skills so he can enjoy retirement with dignity—he’s in his seventies. The fourth person with us is Rosa, a woman in her forties who works as a teacher in Arizona. My age, seventeen, makes me the youngest person at the table.

  “You, yeez people!” Rosa yells at Tom.

  My eyebrows furrow in confusion. Admitting I don’t know what she means would draw attention to my status at the table: the least experienced one, the naïve one, the kid. Accepting the risk, I voice my question, “Yeez people?”

  “Y-E-A-S-T. Yeast,” Tom clarifies. He’s the easiest to hear of the three. Mason is the hardest to hear. I don’t think I’ve ever caught a single word from him.

  “Oh, yeast people…” My voice expresses my bewilderment. “What does it mean?”

  “She’s been calling me that ever since the cooking class,” Tom says. “Rosa asked how yeast makes bread rise, and I told her that it’s because of the Yeast People.”

  “Tom!” I burst into incredulous laughter.

  “That’s why I call him Yeast People! He is the Yeast People!” Rosa says. Tom is the opposite of yeast-sized. He’s around six and a half feet tall, walking with the longest cane at LCB.

  I lean over to Rosa. “He lied about the Yeast People.”

  Tom pounds the table. “Haben, don’t say that! There are Yeast People.”

  Rosa pushes her chair back. “Are you lying to me?”

  Tom mumbles a response.

  “You liar! I’m going to teach you a lesson.” She stands up and starts walking around the table, making her way to Tom.

  The table starts shaking as a large person crawls underneath. Tom!

  The room dissolves into hysterics. Mason clambers out of his chair and starts hollering with Rosa. I stay in my seat, laughing so hard my sides hurt. A blind man dove under a table to hide from a blind woman!

  Rosa and Mason have a heated conversation. Then Rosa yells, “Haben!”

  “Yes, Rosa?”

  “Get up! You have to help us find Yeast People.”

  I clap my hands. “Okay!”

  “Yeast People! Where are you?” Rosa picks up her cane. Mason gets his cane, too. “Yeast People! You can’t hide! We’re coming for you!” She sweeps her cane under the table. No Tom. She walks through the kitchen, searching. Searching.

  “Hmm, where oh where is Tom?” I muse. He crawled in the direction of the living room. All the student apartments have the same basic layout, with an open
kitchen adjacent to a living room, so I know what to expect. Stepping into the living room, I look around. The rectangular outline of a couch stands against one wall. No Tom. I approach an armchair in the middle of the room. No Tom. Next I peek behind the armchair. Nothing.

  “Tom! We know you’re here!” Scanning the room, I spy something in the far corner. I walk over and touch it—it’s a chest of drawers. I probe behind it. Nothing.

  I don’t see any more furniture in the living room. Maybe he’s hiding in the bedroom or bathroom? Retracing my steps, I walk through the living room again. Walking past the couch, I notice a large dark painting above the couch. Curious, I step closer. That’s not a painting! That’s Tom leaning against the corner, standing on the arm of the couch!

  Covering my mouth, I dash over to the armchair and fall in laughing.

  “Did you find him?” Rosa calls from the kitchen.

  “Yes!”

  Rosa and Mason bustle into the living room. “Where is he?” Rosa demands.

  “Umm…” My first thought is: if I don’t tell her, she’ll chase me. My second thought is: if I help her, Tom will chase me. My third thought is: if I move quietly enough, I can hide on top of that chest of drawers.

  What should I do?

  Rosa’s question forces me to grapple with my role in this game. I have more usable vision than the other three, and Rosa knows this. Playing blind hide-and-seek with my eyes open gives me an unfair advantage. Providing Rosa with information I gained through sight would disrupt the structure of the game. It would let her skip finding Tom herself and skip using her nonvisual searching skills. In a word: cheating.

  LCB instructors have warned us about the hierarchy of sight, a system where society privileges those who have more sight. Blind people sometimes internalize the hierarchy of sight, with those who are totally blind deferring to the partially sighted, and the partially sighted deferring to the fully sighted. Such classifications divide the blind community and contribute to our oppression. The training program has been teaching us to recognize and resist the oppressive system.

  I don’t want a blind world where the one-eyed man is automatically king.

  Even though Rosa asked for my help, I decide to sit out the rest of the game. “He’s here, somewhere.” I blush, aware of how unhelpful that sounded. “Check every table, every chair, every corner!”

  Rosa talks to Mason, then they spread out, exploring different parts of the living room. “Yeast People!” Rosa calls out. “Where are you, Yeast People?”

  Mason approaches the couch.

  I lean forward in my chair, holding my breath.

  He bends over to touch the couch, scanning with one hand while the other holds his cane. He moves down the couch, touches another cushion, takes two steps, touches another cushion, then shuffles away.

  I breathe out. He missed Tom. The game is still on!

  Rosa, tapping her cane, approaches the couch. She tosses her cane on the floor and swipes both hands across the couch. She finds the couch seats empty.

  I glance over at the tall figure standing on the couch and burst into delighted laughter. Convulsive, full body laughs. His hiding spot is creative, clever, brilliant! Blind hide-and-seek beats sighted hide-and-seek. It’s more challenging, more exciting, more fun. We could give sighted people sleepshades and teach it to them.

  Tom is educated, responsible, has a job, and still finds time in his life to play. When I’m fifty years old, I hope to be lighthearted enough to leap into a game of hide-and-seek.

  “Haben, come here,” Rosa orders.

  I walk over to the front door where she and Mason are standing. “Here.”

  “It’s time to go. We’re leaving now. Bye, Yeast People!” She opens the front door, stomps her cane several times, then listens.

  I bite my lip, determined to keep quiet.

  We wait about three minutes, until Rosa closes the door. “He’s not here,” she tells Mason.

  “He is here! He’s being very sneaky. Check every chair, every table, every corner.” I blush, feeling guilty for getting involved.

  Mason and Rosa search through the apartment again. I sink back into the armchair. Rosa notices the chair and starts patting it down.

  “It’s me! It’s Haben!”

  She pats my knee. “Sorry, baby.” She turns away from the armchair and heads to the couch. “Yeast People! Oh, Yeast People!” She runs her hands over the first couch cushion, then picks it up and checks underneath. She inspects the corresponding back cushion, too. She methodically scrutinizes each cushion, all the way down the couch.

  Rosa screams.

  Tom jumps off the couch. Rosa smacks his legs with her cane. “Yeast People! I found you!” She whacks him again.

  “It took you forever to find me.” Tom sits down on the couch.

  “You’re not supposed to stand on furniture!” Rosa smacks him again.

  Mason joins them on the couch, and all three talk over one another.

  “Hey, I can’t hear you guys.” I pull my chair closer.

  Tom raises his voice. “Quiet, Rosa! Haben can’t hear me.”

  “Good!” she retorts. “All you say is lies.”

  “As I was saying,” Tom clears his throat. “The best place to hide is in unexpected places. People always check the couch seats, but no one ever checks the arms. You have to go where people least expect.”

  “That was awesome,” I tell him. “And hilarious. But what’s the point? It’s not like we can do anything with that information.”

  “My point…if you need to hide from your blind instructors tomorrow, now you know what to do.”

  I gasp, then break into giggles.

  “Haben, there doesn’t have to be a point to everything. We’re just having fun. If you want to be serious, the skills we use in games can be transferred to work. Hide-and-seek develops searching skills, orientation skills, listening skills. Rosa, you could have listened more.”

  “You were too quiet!” she counters.

  “The more you practice, the more sounds you can pick up. Like breathing. I think all blind kids should play hide-and-seek,” he says.

  “And blind adults,” I add.

  Tom chuckles. “Oh, yes!”

  A few minutes later we exchange goodbyes. Rosa, Mason, and I head to our separate apartments.

  I’m so glad I decided to step back and let Rosa find Tom on her own. She deserved to experience the thrill of discovery. Growing up as a blind person in a sighted world, there have been many instances where well-meaning sighted people denied me that thrill. We all need to get better at knowing when to help and when to back off and say, “Check every corner.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Positive Blindness Philosophy

  Ruston, Louisiana. Summer 2006.

  Pam, the director of LCB, leads consciousness-raising seminars that examine the state of blindness in society. The dominant culture promotes ableism, the idea that people with disabilities are inferior to the nondisabled. Assumptions like: disability is a tragedy; disabled people are unteachable; it’s better to be dead than disabled. LCB teaches students to resist these ableist assumptions. After identifying and removing them, people can begin to lay the groundwork for a positive philosophy based on the idea that blindness is nothing more than a lack of sight.

  A group of us students form a circle in the library, facing Pam. She has a microphone clipped to her shirt that is wirelessly transmitting to my receiver and headphones, part of an assistive listening system I plan to use in college.

  “I’m going to read a story,” Pam tells us. “It’s called A Man Who Had No Eyes, by MacKinlay Kantor.”

  Pam begins reading from a braille page on her lap. In the story, a blind beggar approaches a gentleman. The beggar presses a cigarette lighter in the gentleman’s hand, asking for a dollar. The gentleman says he doesn’t smoke, but the beggar just wheedles until he gets a dollar. The beggar senses that the gentleman has more money, so he tells the tale of how he lo
st his sight at a factory explosion, dramatizing and embellishing details. Then the gentleman reveals that he worked at that factory, too, and was there with the beggar during the explosion.

  “The blind man stood for a long time, swallowing hoarsely. He gulped: ‘Parsons. By God. By God! I thought you—’ and then he screamed fiendishly: ‘YES. MAYBE SO. MAYBE SO. BUT I’M BLIND! I’M BLIND, AND YOU’VE BEEN STANDING HERE LETTING ME SPOUT TO YOU, AND LAUGHING AT ME EVERY MINUTE! I’M BLIND.’

  “People in the street turned to stare at him.

  “‘YOU GOT AWAY, BUT I’M BLIND! DO YOU HEAR?’

  “‘Well,’ said Mr. Parsons, ‘don’t make such a row about it, Markwardt…So am I.’”

  The room falls quiet.

  “Haben.” Pam turns her attention to me. “I’d like you to share your thoughts on the story with us.”

  “I love it! Imagine the shock and surprise of the beggar when he discovers Parsons is blind, too. The beggar assumed that if someone has money, then they’re sighted.”

  “Thanks, Haben. The image of the blind beggar is so ingrained in our culture that people can barely imagine a successful blind person. Right? The story has a punch to it because most people can understand the shock of discovering a successful person is blind. Hopefully, sometime in the future we’ll have so many stories of successful blind people that society will no longer be surprised by our success. Our culture will change, and society will get rid of the old assumptions. We need all of you to keep changing what it means to be blind.”

  Here at LCB, I’m surrounded by people who understand that blindness is just limited eyesight. With the right tools and training, blind people can compete as equals with sighted peers. Places like LCB exist to help blind people gain the tools and training to succeed. Sadly, our views on blindness are a minority view outside of these walls. There’s a good chance a lot of the people I will meet in college next week will hold the same views as that blind beggar in the story. Part of me wishes I could stay here, but then I remember the mandatory cooking classes.

  Somehow, someway, I’m going to create a community of people who believe that disability itself is not a barrier; the biggest barriers are social, physical, and digital. I hope I have the strength and skills to teach LCB’s lessons to the world.