Are you there? Something that was occupying space…
There was a girl in my high school. She was a blind girl, and she kept to herself. She didn’t study in the classrooms with us, but in a tiny room she co-shared with the special needs teacher. The teacher was practically her only friend. I often wondered what it felt like to live in the darkness and the silence. I grew up with a mind that couldn’t let me sleep with the lights out. Anyway, I started sneaking into the tiny room: I am not sure whether it was out of curiosity, or an overwhelming need to connect with the girl. I would do it after supper when all the other girls went to the dormitories. Once inside, I would go through her braille. Run my fingers through it, trying to picture how she did it. I would go through her papers, desperately trying to learn and understand her reality.
There was an old computer in that room, and I concluded it belonged to the teacher. There was a window too, and outside a beautiful view of trees standing next to the library. Amongst them was the copper beech. It stood out for its red leaves and was the only one of its kind: Just like the blind girl. She would never be able to appreciate the view: I would think, and my heart would bleed for her. I thought maybe someone would be kind to tell her about it. But how could anyone explain color to her? How could her mind paint pictures of things that had never existed to it? For her, there was only sound and no image. I would sit on her cold wooden chair and would get a weird sense of dread like I was intruding on a secret. I knew I had to stop, yet I always came back for that feeling again and again. When the other girls started streaming back into the classes, I would go out unnoticed.
One day the blind girl came back too soon: Her cane tapping the floor, and her form blocking the door. I had no escape. So, I stood there and looked at her closeup. She had these grey eyes with sticky eyelashes. What I saw in her eyes scared me: They were lifeless, hollow, an endless pit to nowhere. The girl spoke, ‘Are you there?’ People say blind people are psychic. They are like animals that read energy and respond to presence. I stayed silent, and she felt the ground before her with the cane and repeated, “Are you there?” like a defaulting robot.
That moment, I realized she wasn’t talking to me about the personality, but rather the being that was bigger than an identity. The being that we shared, or rather the presence. So, I said,
“I am,” like God to Moses…
