Chapter 7: Learning

Derek asked me why he could see and I couldn’t. Was I cursed? Did something go wrong in the womb?

We were sitting next to the Christmas tree, and I felt a branch in my hand. A bit prickly, but comforting at the same time. It made me remember my first Christmas, when I was 5. Before that, I didn’t celebrate it.

“What color is this?” I asked, holding a branch in my hand, feeling it spike into my palm.

“Green,” Derek told me. “A lot of plants are green.”

“Is lettuce green?”

“Yeah.”

I thought of the empty, tasteless crunch of lettuce and tried to relate it to the nice-smelling pine tree. It didn’t seem to make sense. Why would something as gross as lettuce be the same ‘color’ as a tree? Why would poop be the same ‘color’ as chocolate? Sometimes I felt like a whole different species, studying the behavior of humans and thinking about things I would never understand. Just a bug sitting in the grass, from the outside looking in.

Daria was 5 now, but still could hardly say words. She couldn’t walk until she was 2 and a half, and still wore a diaper. It’s like she was developing in slow motion.

I heard her running down the stairs and laughing loudly, searching for a present that could be hers. She spoke in rapid gibberish, and somehow Derek could interpret what she said. It must have been a sibling thing.

“Webmudahcomousowecanohenpeseans?”

“What?” I said.

“She wants to know when our parents are coming down so we can open the presents,” Derek explained.

“Ohhhhh,” I said, feeling dumb.

People at our church acted like my parents were some type of saints. Adopting a blind kid with the knowledge that he was disabled and of a different ethnicity than them, then taking such good care of their youngest child who had Down’s Syndrome.

I was growing at a fast rate, and my voice had finally begun to get deeper. Did this mean I was on my way to adulthood? How would I even function as an adult? Would I ever get married, have kids?

Would I get married to the girl in The Visionaries Club?

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The club started up again in mid-January. We did arts and crafts and learned how to do things without having to see anything. We were making clay figures based on what we thought faces looked like. I remember wondering what my face would look like when I was younger, how I would feel the contours of my cheeks, my nose, my eyelids.

I was sculpting a nose when Ava spoke up. “My mom says you have handsome features,” she told me.

“Wow, that’s…. Uh, ok?” I was unsure of how to respond. “Thanks?”

“Sorry. My mom’s like my eyes. She tells me what things look like,” she said.

There was a silence. I decided that instead of sculpting eyes I’d just sculpt sockets. Empty eye sockets, to represent how blind I was. I shaped 2 lips near the bottom of the chunk of clay and then realized the clay was still in brick form and I hadn’t actually shaped it into an oval. Oh well, art is art.

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My parents took me in for a physical appointment at the doctor’s office since I hadn’t been there for years. I clung to the railing as I walked up the steps to the office. I hated the doctor.

“Hello there, David!” said the overly friendly nurse. “Last time you were here, you were just 11 years old and about a foot shorter! My, look at how you’ve grown!”

I chuckled good-naturedly but my head was screaming get out get out get out. The doctor, an elderly man, came in the room after about 10 minutes of waiting. The paper I was laying on rustled uncomfortably.

After doing all the regular check-ups and assuring my ‘Mom’ that I was a-ok, he said he had something to tell us. I itched to leave.

“There are a lot of advances in technology in this age, as you know,” he said. “Most importantly, medical technology.”

‘Mom’ shifted in her chair.

“There are new surgeries in trial that could fix your vision, David.”

I froze.

“What kind of cost are we looking at?” My mom’s voice of logic drifted in and I breathed out again. Of course I couldn’t get the surgery. We didn’t have enough money.

“Well,” said the doctor, “You’d be one of the trial patients, so if you get the surgery within the next 2 years, it’d be about ten thousand dollars.”

Mom sighed. “David, what do you think?”

Oh, someone’s asking my opinion? I thought I didn’t matter. I’m just an object after all.

“I really want to get it,” I said, my voice shaking a bit. This was an opportunity to be normal.

“Well,” said ‘Mom’, “We’ll discuss it and see what we can do. I understand how much you want this, David.”

I was euphoric.

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