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INVISIBLE
My Journey through Vision and Hearing Loss
By RUTH SILVER
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Ruth Silver
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-1947-9
Chapter One
We were going home—speeding, racing away from that terrible place. But why? The events of the past week, with their evil decree, would follow us all the days of our lives. There would be no escape.
We rode, the three of us, in a large, two-tone blue Oldsmobile. My father loved driving a big car, although it was only in the past four years that he could afford one. My mother sat beside him on the front seat, motionless. I was alone in the back—sixteen years old—yet wanting to be rocked like a baby. We rode in silence, except for an occasional screeching of brakes or honking horn. The people-silence was good. We needed it. Each of us needed the time to gather the floating fragments within and patch them into a whole, however splintered.
Alone in the back, I was able to retreat into the healing quiet. I was exhausted after days of questioning, probing, and poking. The ride was soothing. Motion was lulling me into sweet oblivion. There were neither clouds nor sun, landscape nor people, day nor time—only blessed emptiness.
"Beep, beep, beep," erupted from alongside of me, shattering the peace. "Beep, beep, beep, beep," continued the urgent warning.
"Who the hell do you think you are, Buster?" exploded from the open window of the car my father was passing on a narrow incline. Close, too close.
He was speeding again. My father loved to sit behind the wheel and put his foot down hard. "Hey, Dave," his friends would kid, "heard you were flying low again."
"So?" he would reply, his hand shooting upward to punctuate the rising inflection. His dark brown eyes bordered on defiance; his lips, however, betrayed a sheepish grin—big man with little boy hand caught in cookie jar.
I looked at the back of his head, with its neatly trimmed dark brown hair, and at the fleshy neck, barely protruding above his collar. Why does he speed? Does it make him feel important, taller than his five-feet-two inches, more powerful? Powerful? Not today! Shoulders sagging, body hunched and straining forward, hands clutching the wheel for support—these were not signs of power.
I closed my eyes, blotting out my father and the stony figure next to him. I rearranged myself on the seat, nestling into its comforting softness. I willed myself to recapture the delicious, lost emptiness. "Uh-ump, uh-ump," echoed the rhythmic pulsing of the tires. I descended slowly into their hypnotic throb. "Spin away," they chanted. "Spin away, spin away, cruel world." And it was so.
I woke once again to honking, swerving, screeching reality.
"Gyp," a voice was calling. I gulped air, struggling with re-entry into consciousness. Full awareness brought a shudder.
"Gyp," my father repeated my nickname. "I want you to know that I plan to look everywhere. I will leave no stone unturned."
My father had pulled over on the shoulder of the road. He sat behind the wheel, his head twisted back to face me. "If there is anything that can be done, Gyp," the words quickened, "it will be, I promise ..." His voice broke.
The motor roared; we were moving again. My father's hollow voice and my mother's still figure combined with dual force, crashing into my dormant memory. I struggled against the cruel awakening in vain. My mind, like a dropped ball of yarn, spun helplessly backward. Back, back it reeled, back to the crowded waiting room buzzing with anxious whispers. Pause. Then fast forward through the tension-filled examining rooms. Stop. Yes, there it was, the conference room, place of the final meeting—and of words never to be forgotten.
The conference room was one of several at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. It was a large room with windows along one side. My parents and I met with a doctor at the appointed time. The doctor was seated at a small desk near the windows. My parents sat across from him, my mother to his right and my father to his left, a little closer in. The three formed an irregular, pie-shaped wedge. I had been seated to the far right of the doctor, parallel to his desk, outside the circle—an onlooker.
My parents and I waited while the doctor leafed through the papers before him. After what felt like an eternity, the doctor smiled and uttered an abrupt, "Yes," obviously pleased that the papers were in order. He cleared his throat.
"Our examination," he began, "reveals that your daughter has retinitis pigmentosa." Silence. "Retinitis pigmentosa is a disease of the eye characterized by gradual deterioration of the retina." Pause. "First and most notably affected is peripheral vision, that is, side vision."
The doctor's voice sounded familiar, not his particular voice, but something about it—something, but what? It had more to do with his distinct enunciation than voice quality. Yes, I remembered now. It was the rabbi's voice! It was the rabbi, intoning that dreadful prayer that had always sent shivers through me, the one whose words struck fear into my heart every year for the ten days starting with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and ending with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I could hear the somber recitation now:
On New Year's Day the decree is signed and on the Day of Atonement it is sealed. How many shall pass away and how many shall be born; who shall live and who shall die; who shall attain the measure of man's days and who shall not attain it; who shall perish by fire and who by water; who by sword and who by beast; who by hunger and who by thirst; who by earthquake and who by plague; who by strangling and who by stoning; who shall have rest and who shall go wandering; who shall be tranquil and who shall be disturbed; who shall be at ease and who shall be afflicted ...
Afflicted, afflicted. I realized with a start that the doctor was still speaking. I must pay attention. I had missed something about "rods and cones," "already night blind," "narrow field." He was explaining tunnel vision.
"In other words, when your daughter looks at an object, it is as though she were viewing it through a straw. When she looks at the printed page, she sees at most only three or four letters of a word. Although her central vision is reduced, it is your daughter's narrow field, her tunnel vision, that classifies her as legally blind."
I looked at my mother. Her lips were sucked into her mouth. Maybe not. Maybe they had just turned white. Could that happen? I leaned forward to get a better look but couldn't tell.
"As already noted," the doctor was saying, "the central vision is reduced. It will continue to diminish. We cannot predict the rate since each case is different. However, the central vision will be the last to go."
He said that the way I would say, "The plate of pretzels will soon be empty."
The professorial presentation continued. "Retinitis pigmentosa is a progressive disease resulting in blindness. However, there are some known cases where light perception ..."
The air around me exploded, cramming my ears with inhuman sounds. My eyes darted to my mother. She had turned to stone. She stared beyond the doctor, beyond the very walls of the room, beyond ... I turned to the doctor. His gaze was fastened on my father. I looked at my father. His face was buried in his hands. The animal sounds were his futile attempt to stifle his sobs. Impossible. Unbelievable. Men did not cry, and, if any did, surely my father would never be among the weepers. He was a rock; he was strength; he was—my father. To say you had seen my father cry was the same as to say you had seen God fall from His throne and scrape His knee.
My father blew his nose. The doctor had placed his papers on the desk.
"Mr. Kesselman," he said to my father in a hushed, hospital-room voice, "do not worry. This is 1947. I assure you there are schools for the blind throughout America. Your daughter will not have to be homebound. She will be able to go to school and learn."
I stared at the doctor. What's wrong with you, I thought. You have sucked the blood out of my mother. You have made a rock weep. And you talk of school! Are you crazy?
My father was speaking. He had regained control. "Doctor," he asked, "when did this happen?"
"Well," came the thoughtful response, "judging from the advanced state, I would say the eye condition was evident before age six."
"But doctor!" protested my father, "that's impossible. We took her for a checkup and glasses every year for the past six years, since she was ten."
The doctor straightened and tensed. "I can only tell you, sir, that a blind man could have looked in and seen it."
My father asked more, but I had stopped listening. I was intent on the doctor. He was tapping the bottom edge of his papers against the desk to straighten them. He had reached for a folder and was sliding the papers inside. Oh, no. He couldn't be finished! The doctor started pushing his chair away from the desk. I panicked.
Wait, doctor, wait, I screamed inside my head. Look at me. My name is Ruth Kesselman. I'm sixteen years old. Talk to me. Doctor, talk to me, comfort me. Somebody, comfort me.
I started to throw up. I swallowed hard, in vain. Vomit spurted into my mouth; I forced it back down. My right hand shot out reflexively to grab something, anything to hang on to. It touched something hard. I looked. It was a handle, and the sight of it jarred my mind and hurled me from my vivid, painful flashback to the present.
My fingers were clutching the car door handle. I released my grip and fell back against the car seat—drenched, drained, and with the bitter taste of bile in my mouth.
Chapter Two
As we continued our long journey homewards to Milwaukee, I began to unwind and fell asleep. I dreamed I was in a hospital, lying in bed with a white sheet drawn up to my chin. The sheet felt stiff and starched against my neck, like the collars of my blouses after my mother had laundered them. I was alone in the room. A nurse stood at the partly open door, her profile visible to me. She was addressing someone in the corridor.
"Yes, I will, Doctor. Immediately." She hurried off.
I tried to call out but couldn't. Thin gauze had been placed securely over my mouth. I moved my tongue forward to touch the gauze and tasted slimy, bitter medicine. I withdrew my tongue quickly, swallowed, and gagged. I felt sick, feverish. My hand went to my forehead—bandages. Thick bandages were wrapped around the top of my head and covered my eyes. What had happened? Why was I here? Where were my parents?
Footsteps sounded in the hall. A cart squeaked. The sound became louder as the cart approached. It passed my door. Strangely, the sound grew even louder as the cart moved further away. The room was tilting, and I was being pulled forward. My face ached.
I woke. The car was screeching to a halt at a stop sign. I had slid forward; my face was tight up against the back of the front seat. I groaned. Weak and shaky, I still managed to push myself back on the car seat. The sun was strong; the summer heat, intense. I slipped my hand under my long hair and mopped the back of my neck, still unable to steady my breathing. What an awful nightmare—the bitter taste I had fallen asleep with, a doctor I could not talk to, and bandaged eyes that could see.
I looked straight ahead at the wisps of my mother's brown hair, barely visible above the seat. She was sleeping. Her head had fallen to one side. Short, rhythmic snorts indicated that her mouth had dropped open. My father was sitting back, one hand on the steering wheel, the other next to him on the seat. I shifted my gaze from my parents to the partly opened window and looked at the endless stretch of farmland. We passed grazing cows, barns and houses set back, and fields of corn in need of rain.
Too bad my mother was sleeping. She had always enjoyed our occasional family drives in the country with their shmek of hay. We teased her for using the Yiddish word shmek instead of smell. She would smile her gentle smile, happy that her children were happy. Maybe it was a blessing she was sleeping. She didn't have to think about my eyes. I recalled her frozen form when the doctor delivered the harsh diagnosis.
My mind strayed from her and the picture-postcard landscape to a comment of the doctor's, "The eye condition was evident before age six." That meant by first grade. I could picture Miss Rekowskin, my first grade teacher at Hopkins Street School, standing tall and straight in front of the class. She was bony thin with dark hair pulled back in a tight bun. She wore long-sleeved blouses that buttoned at the neck. She never smiled.
I moaned as I thought about the day we worked on printing our names. Miss Rekowskin called us to the blackboard, one row at a time. We were to print our names and return to our seats. Miss Rekowskin walked slowly from left to right looking at each name. She stopped.
"Ruth Kesselman," she said, moving the tip of her pointer under my last name. "The letter S"—she spun around to face the class—"is not made like that; it is made like this." She had printed in the air with her finger what she called my reversal, and then the correction. With that same finger, she pointed at me and then stabbed the air with each word she said, "Return to the blackboard and print correctly." I couldn't move or let out my breath. "Well!" she barked. I stood up slowly. My stomach hurt. What had the flying finger done? Why did I have to have two "S's" in my name? Please God, let me print them right.
They were wrong. Miss Rekowskin snapped, "I said like this, not like that."
While I was finishing at the blackboard, she had moved across the room. By the time I spotted her hand, she was on, "Not like that." If only she would print on the blackboard so I could look at it. I tried again—wrong. The pupils laughed. Miss Rekowskin did not stop them. She scrunched up her face and shouted over their laughter. "Sit down and remain seated until you can learn to pay attention." I wanted to die.
The sound of children laughing sometimes slammed at my ears before falling asleep and in the morning before school. I did not want to go to school, but I went. The only days I could stand were the ones when I was invisible, when I was not picked on for being bad.
The worst was a dark, rainy day in spring. Miss Rekowskin had clapped her hands, our signal to line up single file to walk to the bathroom. She started with the row closest to the door, the other side of the room. This meant I would be one of the last to use the toilet. I was just finishing when Miss Rekowskin clapped. I started shaking. The side of my head pounded, getting me all mixed up. It was dark in my stall. I felt around for the flusher but couldn't find it. When the clap sounded again, I rushed out of the stall into the waiting line without smoothing my skirt. Miss Rekowskin's mean eyes dug into me and made me look down. She clapped again. I looked up. Miss Rekowskin was standing next to the toilet I had used. "Children, come here," she motioned. They obeyed. Five or six squeezed into the stall while others stood on tiptoe behind them stretching their necks. "Look," Miss Rekowskin said, pointing first to the pee and paper in the toilet, then to me, "You are looking at a pig." Nobody said anything. I couldn't breathe. Please, God, let me die.
The semester ended. Maybe Miss Flanner's second grade class would be better. Sometimes she smiled at children in the hall. It wasn't better, and she never smiled at me. Miss Schultz's class, the next year, was even worse.
In Miss Schultz's room, alphabetically seated, I ended up near the back of the second row to the far left. I was the smallest in the class and had to stretch to see over the heads in front of me. If only I could sit in a front seat. The blackboard was so far away; the numbers Miss Schultz was writing in columns were too small and close together to make out. After finishing her examples, she turned to face the class and asked, "Any questions?" I hoped so. I seemed to understand better after the teacher answered a question. This time there were none. Everyone understood except me. They were smart.
I shivered as Miss Schultz passed out papers with columns of numbers. I knew how to add. The first answer was 73. The numbers in the column were 17, 44, and 12. I rounded off 17 to 20 and 44 to 40, which made 60, plus 4, minus 3 equaled 1 more or 61. I added 10 of the 12 to make 71 plus 2 equaled 73. I knew how to add, but could not figure out how to get those little numbers Miss Schultz wanted at the top of the columns—some kind of "carry" numbers. I filled in only the answers. Miss Schultz walked up and down the aisles, making corrections. She stopped at my desk. I held my breath and looked away. "You cheated!" she snapped.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from INVISIBLE by RUTH SILVER Copyright © 2012 by Ruth Silver. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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