by Amy Casseaux
“How do I look?”, I asked as I stood nervously waiting for my cue.
“Randa, you look fabulous. Your hair
and makeup are perfect. The dress is so exquisite that I want to get married
just so I can have one made just like it for me. Are you sure you don’t want
your shades?”
“I’m certain. Hang on to them for
now.”, I replied. She hugged me and placed the bouquet in my hands.
“Strange. I seem to be having trouble
breathing.”, I said. Before Tricia could answer, refrains of “Here comes the
bride” began to echo throughout the church. It was time.
I felt/heard the door in front of me
open and Tricia’s hands on my shoulder suggested a minor course adjustment. It
had been Sam’s idea that I walk down the aisle alone rather than be led and
given away. With my parents gone and no other family, there was no one to do the
job anyway. I had practiced this with Tricia several times over the last two
days, so I walked with grace and confidence and managed not to bump into any of
the guests or the pews. I really hadn’t wanted to use my cane as I came down
the aisle, so Sam had agreed to meet me at the bottom step in front of the altar
and then guide up the two remaining steps.
The ceremony began and I began wondering
how I had gotten myself into this position. It wasn’t supposed to be like
this.
*
* * * * * *
I suppose a little explanation is
necessary. Okay... a lot of explanation is necessary. It began when I was nine
or ten and my next-door neighbor Miranda came to live with us. Randa’s parents
had died in a car crash and that same car crash had left Randa blind. With no
other relatives, my parents and I did our best to make her feel like one of the
family. It didn’t take long before she began to call my parents “Mom and
Dad”, and refer to me as her sister Pam.
Perhaps it was because Randa and I had
been friends before the accident, but watching her make the transition from a
sighted to a blind person had a profound effect on me. Her world changed and
mine did with it. Part of it was the attention she got. Her every effort was
praised. When she came into a room, all eyes went to her. Our classmates
alternately shunned her out of fear
or fawned all over her. Truly, I wasn’t jealous - envious maybe, but not
jealous.
One day - I think I was fifteen at the
time - my parents were gone and Randa was with them. I was alone in the house
and I happened upon her spare cane. With no Lighthouse nearby, the social worker
suggested that she keep a spare, rather than have to wait for a week for one to
be mailed if there was a mishap. I opened the cane and closed my eyes, then I
began to walk around the house as a blind person might.
Keeping my eyes closed, I made and ate a
bowl of cereal and toast. With tape on my eyes, I got undressed, showered, and
got redressed. Feeling in the closet for a dress, slipping pantyhose over my
legs, brushing my hair - it all excited me. The whole time I was experiencing a
major sexual rush. I didn’t understand it, but there it was. After that day,
when I would masturbate, I would do it with my eyes closed imagining myself to
be blind. When I was eighteen and becoming sexually active, I would always
introduce blindfolds to my lovers, all of whom found it exciting.
As Randa and I moved away and went to
college, I began to “public “ myself as a blind person. It helped that Randa
and I were roughly the same size and coloring for hair and complexion. We really
did resemble sisters and since our neighbors were mostly older people with
little use for college students, no one really noticed us that much. With a pair
of sunglasses and by putting my hair up in a french braid (I preferred mine to
be loose and flowing - I’m a girly girl.), I could impersonate Randa and walk
around the area. I picked up guys that way and spent wild nights with them. I
was scaring myself a little. I was just getting too weird.
One night, after some drinking, I confessed to Randa what I’d been
doing.
After the initial explosion and the
argument that followed, she forgave me, saying, “Okay. I understand it’s a
game for you. But please understands that it’s how I live. I can’t open my
eyes and see when I want to. That’s why I always have a few bruises or cuts on
my arms and legs. That’s why I always wear pants or leggings or jeans and
shirts with long sleeves. I don’t get to wear short skirts and halters and
heels. I don’t get to glam up the way you do - at least not without help.
“I don’t do a lot of dating. I have
to study because, even with your help, it takes me longer to learn the course
material. Add to that the fact that I get so tired of hearing that little gasp
from men when I take my sunglasses off.”
She took them off and the faced me.
Years of scar tissue covered the pupils and irises. “I can even hear you when
you do it.... not bad, just a little sharp inhale when you look at my eyes. You
still have pretty eyes, Pam. I somehow doubt that men gasp when they see your
eyes.”
Randa took a ragged breath, trying not
to cry. Finally, she ended the topic, saying, “It may be fun being blind for a
day, but try living that way day in and day out, knowing that you’ll never,
ever see again. That will be the day it’s not fun anymore.”
We never spoke of the subject again, and
I don’t think we were ever quite as close after that night. We still got along
and could talk to each other about anything, but I always felt a little distance
after that night.
Time passed and near the end of my
junior year, a major tragedy occurred in my life. It might have had a lot to do
with what happened to me - or maybe it was just an opportunity. I really don’t
know.
Academically, I was a year behind Randa
because I had changed majors. I thought I was making it up well, but despite my
best efforts, I was flunking this one really important class and my senior year
couldn’t begin without this particular course credit. That was why I stayed at
school for the summer and my parents came to get Randa. She had graduated and
had a teaching career ahead of her. Wishing that I had stuck with my education
major, I waved good-bye. I would follow in a few weeks.
That night as I “watched” TV (I was
having one of my “blind” dates), the guy I was with said, “Oooh, man! What
a wreck that must have been.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, there was a big seventeen car
pileup on the highway this morning. Lots of dead bodies and body parts lying
around. I think I’ll change the channel.”
“Better yet, turn it off and come with
me.”
He did. The next morning he was getting
dressed when the knock came at the door. I was halfway in the shower, so I asked
him to get it. A minute later, he came to the bathroom and saying in a very flat
tone of voice, “Randa, you need to come out here.”
I remember getting dressed. I was
keeping my eyes closed and enjoying the sensation of dressing by touch. I
didn’t know what was happening in the living room, but I was still in pretend
blind mode and didn’t want it to end.
There was a man in a uniform in the
living room. My date had departed (the bum!) and the cop asked me to sit down.
My heart was in my ears as he told me that my parents had been involved in the
crash the day before. They were dead, as was my sister, Pam.
I was in such shock that I didn’t
correct the man. He took me down to the morgue and I had to sign for my parents
bodies and Randa’s. Their personal belongings were placed in a bag and given
to me. What with the tears and the shock and all, I was needing to be led
around. Pens were placed in my hand for signatures and I was driven home. It was
and to this day remains a great big fog of a memory.
I spent the next week crying, sorting
through Randa’s belongings (which was how I discovered that she had
accidentally picked my purse instead of her own the day she left), crying some
more, listing my parent’s house with a realtor, and crying some more. I
stopped going to the summer class. The professor advised me to try to switch
back to education because I really had trouble with the major I was in. I was
just barely passing, but I didn’t care right then.
By the time I went back to my home town,
two things had become obvious: I had no chance of graduating, and everyone back
home thought I was Randa. The family lawyer, who had handled the selling of the
house and had taken care of the contents for me, had contacted the insurance
agency and the checks were made out to Randa. I was believed dead.
It was just expedient to be Randa until
I could finalize everything and leave town. For the next two weeks, I was to be
Randa full time.
I was also to be completely blind.
The week before Randa had left, I’d
seen an ad on the Internet for theatrical contact lenses. When I looked, there
was a pair that looked just like Randa’s eyes. They were for actors who needed
to portray blind characters - they blocked all vision. On an impulse I ordered
them. Randa’s words about opening my eyes whenever I wanted had rung in my
ears over the last year or so. The contact lenses arrived the week that Randa
and my parents had died.
With Randa’s ID and her cane and all
of her special equipment it was easy to pass for her. I knew Braille quite well,
since I had helped convert almost all of her course work into Braille for her,
plus years of notes and such. I could even read it by touch. With no ability to
see anything beyond light or dark, they were perfect. Once the lenses went in, I
became Randa.
My first day of being blind bore almost
no resemblance to my public forays. Very quickly, I realized how much I cheated
with quick looks while pretending to be blind. My second day was even harder
inasmuch as I had to pack, catch a cab to the bus station, ride to my home town,
be met by the family lawyer and deal with everything. Once again, pens were
placed in my hand for signatures and my hand was guided to the spot on the
paper. The hardest part was remembering to sign it Miranda Welles and not Pamela
Carter. Dealing with being blind and dealing with grief at the same time was
almost too much.
At the hotel that night, I badly needed
a drink. I got the bellhop to come and get me and guide me to the bar down the
street. Once there, I began to hit the tequila pretty hard.
“That’s not the answer, Randa.”, I
heard. I almost recognized the voice. I asked, “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
I didn’t mean for it to be rude, but I
was hurting. I felt someone sit
down across from me and heard. “It’s Sam Brooks. We went to high school
together.”
Sam Brooks had been Randa’s boyfriend
for almost a year before she figured something out: Sam was a blind devotee.
While he genuinely liked Randa (which wasn’t hard - Randa had been a sweetie),
he was more attracted to her blindness. Typical Randa, she didn’t make a
scene, she just cooled out the relationship slowly. Nor could she bear a grudge
- she and Sam remained not-to-distant friends. At that moment, I needed a friend
- even one who thought I was someone else.
With further proof that my masquerade
was working, I said, “Hi, Sam.”
“I heard about your parents and Pam...
I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Sam, old buddy, “, I slurred,
“I’m drunk. I either need to get a whole lot drunker or I need someone to
talk to. Either way, you’re welcome to stay.”
Perhaps Sam had changed. Perhaps he was
a better man than I (or Randa) had given him credit for. He stayed with me, took
me back to my hotel room and held me while I cried. We did not sleep together.
Quite gentleman-like, he slept in the chair next to me with his clothes on.
Breakfast the next day turned into lunch and then into other things. The second
night, we did make love.
Quite frankly, I wouldn’t have gotten
through that summer without him.
Yes, summer. Between the grief and the
booze that I was drinking to much of, and the fact that I began falling in love
with him, I stayed in town, living with his sister, Tricia. On top of my alcohol
and grief induced psychosis, I had
a legal problem. For all intents and purposes, Pam Carter was dead. Her social
security number, driver’s license, and everything else listed her as dead.
There was no way I could go back to being myself without risking imprisonment
for insurance fraud.
Yes, that’s right - insurance fraud. I
signed all the papers as Miranda Welles. In addition to the insurance policies
that my parents had taken out to protect me and Randa, they had also arranged
for two policies for us. We had both listed each other as beneficiaries. So I
got the proceeds from the sale of the house, since Randa and I were joint heirs
to my parents estate. I got their insurance policies and the one from Pam to
Randa. I signed all kinds of paperwork with Randa’s name. I wasn’t rich, but
I had some pretty fair liquid assets - or to be more accurate, Randa did.
Confusing, isn’t it? Try it from my side.
As the drinking decreased, I realized
that I had to remain Miranda Welles for the rest of my life. There were
advantages: I now had a degree in education and a potential career. Having
helped Randa study, plus all the courses I had taken myself before switching, I
knew the subject as well as she. On the downside, Randa was right about one
thing: being blind everyday was not quite as fun as it had been at first.
It was still good in most ways - mostly
the attention and the sex - but there were also the cuts and bruises from
bumping into things, and the occasional moments of fear when something sudden
happened around me and I didn’t know how to react. Like when Sam talked me
into water skiing. Or like when we went hiking and I slipped and fell down a
hillside while peeing. With no cane, no idea where I was or what was around me,
I was a half second away from removing the contacts when I heard Sam coming down
the hill for me.
After that weekend, I resolved that
blind people - or at least this
blind person - needed to stay out of the woods. In the middle of the night,
I’d gotten up to go pee again and had gotten lost on the way back. Like Randa
had, I preferred to do things myself. Randa because she had no use for pity, and
me because of the thrill of doing “blind things” and “doing things while
blind”. That night had definitely been thrilling - like horror movie
thrilling. That night, I did remove the lenses and experienced a gut wrenching
fear that I had gone blind for real until I realized that there was no moon and
we were pretty deeply in the woods. I made my way back to the campsite and
reinserted my lenses. Sam never caught on. By the way, blind sex in the woods
after being scared is really good.
The idea finally came to me that, once I
moved away, I could become “sighted “again. All I had to do was live
someplace where no one knew either Randa or Pam and begin my life anew. There
was a problem with that, though: I was falling in love with Sam and he with me.
The odd part was that he had pretty much gotten over his blind devotee thing,
and matured. He was very much in love with me and if he got a little aroused by
making love to a blind woman, so be it.
Near the end of September, two things
happened. First, I missed my second period in a row and the gynecologist
confirmed the cause: I was pregnant. The second thing was that Sam proposed -
before I told him about the baby!
Now my dilemma was getting larger. I no
longer wanted to be blind. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life like
this. I didn’t want to raise a child and never see her or him. I no longer
enjoyed groping from object to object, blindly. I missed using makeup. I missed
glamming up in a killer dress, tights and heels and then seeing myself in the
mirror. I was tired of asking,
“how do I look?”. I wanted to see for myself. I wanted to see again, period.
My impetus to end the charade was made
stronger on those nights when I slept alone at Tricia’s apartment. When I took
my contacts out for the night, I began to be aware that my vision wasn’t 20/20
any more. Wearing them for days in a row was causing damage. I began to use
moisturizing drops several times a day. I told Sam that I was prone to eye
infections that might cause me to have my eyes removed. “No empty sockets,
Sam. No empty sockets. I couldn’t deal with that. My eyes may not be pretty,
but I want to keep ‘em.”
That ended any further discussion of the
drops. Neither Sam nor Tricia mentioned them, but Sam was often quite nice about
offering to put them in for me.
The solution came one night on TV. We
were watching The Discovery Channel and there was a story on this place in
Mexico where people were being cured of both diseases and disabilities.
Scientists were conducting research and had verified the results if not the
means by which those results were achieved. My hand on Sam’s got tighter as I
heard the stories. If I could go there and remove my lenses while no one was
looking, it would all be over!
Sam was leery of the idea, saying,
“Just because it worked for them, it doesn’t mean that it will work
for you.” and “I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
Parroting something I had heard Randa
say and building upon it, I began an Oscar-worthy performance, “Listen to me.
After the accident, I was taken to eye doctor after eye doctor and they all said
the same thing: blind for life. I accepted that and I moved on. That doesn’t
mean that I lost all hope of seeing and it doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t give
anything to see again. Sam, I need this. I want to see my baby. I want to see
you.”
Sam held me tight, stroking my hair and
tearfully whispered, “Okay, we’ll leave tomorrow.”
My first - and I hoped only - blind
airplane trip was exciting. I resolved to get it all out of my system and enjoy
being blind one last time, because I never planned on being blind again! I was
using my cane a little less and being led a little more. I was touching
everything as if newly blind.
When we got to the village where the
magic healing cavern was located, we checked into an Inn of sorts. It was one of
those arrangements where everyone shares the bathroom at the end of the hall.
The morning of the healing, I was taking a shower when Sam knocked and said that
he really needed to pee. I told him to come on in. He could have anyway. The
hotel’s owners didn’t believe in locks. As I bathed, I heard him at the
counter where my night case was. I asked what he needed and he said never mind,
that he’d found it. Then he left.
I knew I was risking a lot, but I had to
take one of my lenses out. They were hurting and I needed a few minutes without
them. I found what Sam had needed and grumbled as I closed the bag where I kept
q-tips. He never closed it. I got dressed and took a deep breath as I took a
look in the mirror. Soon it would be over. I wet my eyes with the drops and put
the lenses in for the last time.
Sam and I walked up the hill to the
cavern. It took a while because using a cane in rough terrain is not like using
it on a city street.
There we stood as the pagan priest
selected people for the trip inside. We waited and we talked of the upcoming
wedding, our baby, my plans to teach school.
The high mountain air was making my lenses very dry and irritated. I
removed my dark glasses and began to put drops in when Sam asked to do it for
me. The drops went in and it was soothing.
At length, the ancient-sounding priest
came for me. He explained that I had to go in alone, that Sam could not come.
That was fine with me. The old man had guided blind people before; he placed my
hand on his elbow and led me into the cave. We walked a long way and I could
hear water falling. We finally stopped and he began to pray in a language I
didn’t know and then he removed my sunglasses and touched my eyelids, then he
prayed some more. At length he said, “Kneel and bathe your eyes in the water
before you. I will step away for a few minutes. It will happen or it won’t.
Blessed be.”
As he stepped away, I knelt and groped
around until I found a pool of water in front of me, I splashed some water on my
face and then tried to remove the lenses.
I knew immediately that something was
wrong. I couldn’t make my eyelids
open. As I gently probed with my
fingers, I could feel little ridges of what felt like scar tissue beneath my
lashes. My eyes were sealed shut! I couldn’t open them!
I was reeling. Had the magical spirits
of the cave been so offended that they sealed my eyes shut? Had Randa’s ghost
laid a post-mortem curse on me? Was it God?
Then it hit me: I WAS BLIND!!! I
screamed at the top of my lungs.
The priest came and helped me to my
feet. He half carried, half dragged me out of the cavern and back to Sam.
He held me as I kept sobbing and saying, “It’s forever. I’m always
going to be blind. I’m always going to be blind. I don’t want this.”
He held me tightly and I kept saying,
“You don’t understand. You can’t understand. I’m blind. I don’t want
to be blind.”
I collapsed in a pile and passed out.
When I woke up I was back at the little Inn. I put my hands to my face and felt
my eyes. It was true. The little ridges were as hard as rock. It was as if years
old scar tissue had formed in the space of seconds. I was blind. Blind forever.
I would never see again. Not Sam, not my baby... my baby!
In my mind, I could hear her saying, “It
may be fun being blind for a day, but try living that way day in and day out,
knowing that you’ll never see again. That will be the day it’s not fun
anymore.”
Randa had been right. It wasn’t fun.
Oh my God, what had I done? God, no! God, why? I wasn’t harming anyone! It was
just a game. Don’t make me blind forever! Please, God! No!!
I began to scream and Sam held me while
I cried.
The next days were a mental blur. The
trip back, the grieving for what I had lost, Sam’s sister holding me and
shooing Sam away when I couldn’t stand being around him and had to be alone.
After a while, I came to acceptance. We
planned our wedding and I began pre-natal care for the baby that I would never
see. I finally got to the point where I could say that and not cry.
Life went on. Sam begged me to marry
him, telling me that he couldn’t live without me. I gave in. I was permanently
blind now. I couldn’t make it on my own. Not with a baby on the way.
Randa had been right. It wasn’t fun
any more.
*
* * * * * *
“You may now kiss the bride.” I felt
my veil being lifted and Sam’s lips kissed mine as his arms embraced me. We
turned around as the minister said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I now have the
great privilege of introducing you all to Sam and Miranda Brooks.”
There was applause, but even over it I
heard several little gasps. With my veil up, everyone could see my empty eye
sockets. A month after getting back
from Mexico, I’d been rushed to the hospital with a high fever. My eyes had
become severely infected from the lenses and had turned into a soupy mess that
began to leak through my sealed eyelids. The doctors rushed me into surgery to
save my life. I was later told that it would be some time before my sockets
healed enough for prosthetic eyes to be put in. That had knocked me for yet
another emotional loop all over again. Being able to place one’s finger
in one’s skull where one’s eyes used to be is an experience that no one
wants to repeat. I did it just once and then covered them up with dark glasses.
I placed my right hand on Sam’s elbow
and my other hand on my seven months pregnant belly and walked back up the aisle
into married life.
At the exit to the church, Tricia
brought my shades and placed them on me. The golden colored opaque sunglasses
wrapped around my eyes and my cane was unfolded and placed in my hand. How did I
know they were golden? Sam told me. Sam had to describe everything now. There
would be no more peeking - ever.
“How do I look?”, I asked. That
phrase was never far from my lips these days. Sam and Tricia both said,
“beautiful” at the same moment.
I
was led carefully down the front steps and to the limo. Sam helped me in and
then walked around to the other side. As he was getting in, I heard Tricia say,
“Sam , wait.... Here you go, you dropped something. Hey, why are you carrying
a used tube of superglue around?”
Sam closed the door and the limo pulled
away, I felt him face me and he said, “Some things are just too precious to
let slip away.”
That was when I realized what he had
done. Outside the mountain cavern in Mexico, he’d squirted superglue into my
eyes instead of optic lubricant. It hadn’t been scar tissue, it had been the
glue I had felt!
Sam had done this to me! In horror, I
began to cry. He held me and whispered, “You’re mine now, Randa. I’ll
never let you slip away again.”
see part 2