The Window (2 page)

I
LEARN QUICKLY
that this is a house of routine, with times for everything. If a time needs to be changed, nobody makes a big deal, but everyone knows. Something's changed.

Enter Mandy. They must hate how I'm making everything in their lives change.

Like Tuesday morning, my first morning in this house. Breakfast here is a sit-down, all-together affair that starts at 7:15. Tuesday I make the start but I'm late for the finish. One minute there's forks clinking against plates and talk about hay and pregnant cows and shopping lists, and the next minute I'm the only one left eating.

"Don't wait for me," I say, but they do, and I know they're all replanning their mornings because I'm making things slow, have made them change what they do.

A wave of longing for my mom, and for the easy way we lived, washes over me. Mom and I, we never had anything set enough
to
change.

"Hungry, babe?" she'd ask, whenever she thought about food. It might be five in the afternoon or nine at night. Or 3:00
A.M.
, when she'd been awake and I'd heard her prowling in the hall. She'd know I wasn't sleeping, either, and ask, "Hungry, babe?"

The memory is so strong I can hear her voice, and Gabriel's voice cutting through it is a jolt.

"If you're done, Mandy," he says, "let's give Emma a hand with the dishes."

"I don't think Mandy should...," Emma begins.

But Gabriel's saying, "The door's just behind you, Mandy."

He doesn't leave me any choice but to start toward it, even as I'm thinking, No, I can't help and I shouldn't be in a kitchen and please, how will I keep from breaking things and what if the stove's still on?

Emma must be thinking the same things, because as soon as I step from carpet to tile, she's by my side. "Mandy, I'll walk you to the sink," she says.

I let her guide me, and, reassured I won't get hurt, I move forward until I brush against something off to the right. "The kitchen table, Mandy," Emma says. "The refrigerator is along the wall to your left."

I reach out and find its smooth, cool front.

"Next there's more counter," Emma says, and I'm going to touch that, too, but before I can her voice sharpens into a warning. "Don't, there's the stove next."

I jerk my hand back and right away hope no one has seen me do it. I will not let on that this scares me; I will not.

And tumbling after that thought is the realization I'd jerked my hand away from warmth.

As we round a corner I say what I've just learned, say it as though it's something I've known all along: "You don't have to worry about me getting burned. I'd feel heat before I'd actually touch a burner."

But I'm thankful to hear Emma say, "That's enough exploring. Why don't you stand here?"

Then someone's handing me a towel and soon I'm drying pots and lids, laying them on the counter. For a bit there's the
whish
and soft clang of Aunt Emma working at the sink and the clatter of the uncles loading things into the dishwasher. Then Emma says, "Mandy, we need to talk about what's next for you."

One of the uncles takes a frying pan from my hand.

"We're asking, Mandy," says Gabriel. "What do you want to do?"

The question is school. Where. If I want to go away to this special one where there would be other blind kids or if I want to try the high school in town.

Already my child study team has met with my aunt and uncles to go over reports from the rehab center where I was before coming here. I guess they've all pretty much decided the final decision can be left up to me. "She has potential for success in either environment" was the way it was put.

The special school, which I'd have to board at, would have more equipment and a lot of specialists to. teach me all the things I suddenly need to know. And—get this bit—my "chances of social integration would be greatly enhanced."

The local high school has some stuff, too, mainly in a resource room, but I'd be expected to do most of my work in regular classes. I could count on some help from itinerant teachers, teachers who go from school to school to work with kids like me, but, for sure, I'd be a lot more on my own.

Now Uncle Gabriel breaks into my thoughts. "So, time for a command decision," he says. "Pros and cons either way."

He doesn't have to spell out the cons, and, besides, I doubt if he thinks of the same ones I do. A school of fifteen hundred normal kids—will they make room for me? Whisper and watch me? Will they laugh at me?

Don't be stupid, Mandy, I think. Of course they will, but since when haven't you been able to handle being the outsider?

Mandy the new girl, I think. Mandy the new blind girl. So what's the difference?

I don't fool myself. The difference is huge and lies, cold and sick-feeling, in the pit of my stomach. I swallow back welling saliva.

"The town school, I guess," I say.

It's not a guess, though. More a gamble, or a chance I have to take. I'm afraid
not
to try, afraid to disappear into that special school for blind kids. I'm not ready to give up, to disappear from my life. I don't ever want to be.

"The regular high school," I repeat.

There's a trick to first days, days when you're the new girl and you've got to let everyone know where you'll fit into things. Blow it, and you might as well quit trying, because nobody's going to give you another chance.

I'd had it down, always wore my good-luck T-shirt and amber skirt, my hair in a single braid pinned up like I took ballet or ran track. I'd pause at the classroom doorway, flash a confident smile, make eye contact with the kids who looked like they ran things. I wanted them to know I was there.

Of course, I'd had a lot of practice with first days. Mom and I were forever moving ahead of a rent check coming due. Or behind Mom losing her job. Or with some story Mom had read about how life's better in West Virginia, or cheaper in Arizona because you don't have heating bills, or healthier in the mountains or on the desert or by the ocean.

Over the years Mom and I moved south to get religion, north to get away from it, west to escape from some creep who stalked Mom the time we tried Philadelphia.

Yeah, I've had a lot of practice with first days.

Except I've never done one blind before. And I don't have my amber skirt. It's gone, along with all the other clothes the child services woman didn't approve of.

That evening I ask, "Aunt Emma?"

"Yes, Mandy?"

"Do I have any money?"

"Money!"

"Well, left from my mother. Insurance...?"

"Don't worry about it. We've got enough."

"I mean, my own money. That I can spend how I want."

I guess the answer's no, although Emma doesn't exactly say that, but later on Uncle Gabriel gives me some folded bills. "I hear you need an allowance," he says. "Why don't you plan on fifteen dollars a week?"

"You're just giving it to me?" I ask. "What do you expect me to do with it?"

I don't mean to be rude, but I know from Gabriel's answer that's how I've sounded.

"I expect, Mandy, that you'll use it to buy what you need, that you'll save some, that you'll pay your way when you do things with friends." His voice lightens up. "Pitch in gas money, maybe, if you go somewhere."

Is this man for real? What friends does he imagine?

I want to tell Uncle Gabriel I don't need his allowance, but I keep my mouth shut. A person doesn't turn down money.

Two days later we all drive to town so I can get some clothes to start school in.

The uncles drop Aunt Emma and me off at the department store end of a mall, saying they're going to check on some motor repairs and will pick us up when we're done. "What do you want?" Gabriel asks. "Half an hour or so?"

"A couple of hours at least," Aunt Emma says. "And bring the checkbook back. Why don't you meet us about noon in the coat department?"

She's laughing as we go in. "Half an hour! Isn't that just like a man, Mandy?"

She steers me across an echoing, perfume-smelling place and into an elevator, where a woman greets her by name.

"Anne, this is my grandniece, Mandy," Emma says.

I don't have any idea if I'm being introduced to a clerk or a friend or what. I say hi and someplace inside hear the voices of a dozen teachers saying, "Speak up, Mandy."

I expect Emma to say, "Speak up, Mandy," but she doesn't. Instead, she tells how we're going to the junior department. She makes it sound like the most exciting thing she's ever done.

Then we're getting out of the elevator, which hasn't stopped quite flush with the floor. I stumble, and this woman, Anne, grabs my arm. She says, "Let me help," and she's pulling me forward before I can get my bearings again. When I try to shake off her hand, she grips me harder.

"I don't need your help," I say. "Let me go." I can hear that I'm too loud.

There's a moment of embarrassed silence, a tiny "Well..." from the woman, not angry exactly but uncertain. Then she's saying good-bye, and good shopping, and telling Emma she'll talk to her later. I bet.

I expect Emma to scold me for being rude, but she just says, "This way."

We seem to be the only ones shopping in juniors, I suppose because it's a school morning. Aunt Emma asks what kind of things I like, but I've hardly started to tell her when a clerk comes up and takes over.

"This is my niece," Aunt Emma says, "my grandniece," like it matters who I am. "We're here for school clothes."

"What size is she?" asks the clerk.

"I'm an eight," I say.

"Does she like pants or skirts?"

"Ask me," I say. "I'm the one who will wear them."

And then, to my horror, tears well up.

"Want to get a cola and try this later?" Aunt Emma asks.

"No," I say, "now."

"Look," says the clerk, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean..." and then Aunt Emma's smoothing things over and pretty soon I'm in a dressing room.

I stand there while the clerk brings in things and holds them up to me. She says, "See how this fits," or "Navy's not your color."

There's so much I want to know.... I mean, clothes matter. I feel the tops of collars, try to picture how a neckline is. Where a hem is hitting my legs. Everything seems long, and I say so.

"I can call in the seamstress, but of course that's an extra charge," says the clerk.

"We can take them up at home," Aunt Emma says.

I'm happiest with the jeans—jeans fit or they don't, and you don't need eyes to tell. And with one blouse, the material feels like air between my fingers and I hear Aunt Emma catch her breath when she sees it on me. Or maybe she's gasping at the price tag. Nobody talks about what anything costs, but the blouse feels expensive.

Shopping does take until noon, between the junior department and shoes. I'm picking out a jacket when my uncles arrive.

Uncle Gabriel pays for it all, and I wonder if I should offer to give back the money he gave me, but I can't find a moment when it feels right to ask. This is the first time in my life I have bought more than one thing at a time.

Emma and the uncles are ready to go out to lunch, but suddenly I'm so tired I can hardly stand up. "Please," I say, "can we go home?"

The next thing I know, Emma is shaking my shoulder and Abe is saying, "We're here, Mandy."

It takes all of us to carry everything up to my room. We pile it on my bed, and Aunt Emma says she'll help me take off tags and hang stuff up.

"No," I say, "I'll do it, if you'll tell me where to find scissors."

I can feel Emma's disappointment. A twinge of guilt shoots through me, but I can't take more help, not today.

Alone, I empty a sack, find underwear. I start with a pair of underpants, spread them flat, and run my hand all over one side, all over the other, inside the waistband. Only one tag, pinned in, and I take that off.

Emma comes back up and puts something metal in my hand. She's gone again before I identify the nail clippers she's given me instead of scissors.

The skirt and jeans and tops, they're harder to deal with than the pants were. The price tags are all attached by those stiff plastic strings, the kind that end in Ts. The clippers work on most, but there's one tag that's caught in a seam and I finally give it a yank that makes something tear.

I'm doing the last pair of jeans when I stab my finger on a pin. I suck a bit of blood and wait and wait, lick my finger clean and wait some more. What if I get blood on my new clothes and don't know?

And then I put it all away, the underwear folded in a dresser drawer, the other things on hangers. The clothes feel right, but I wish I could see them, could be sure they're OK.

I wish I knew what sort of Mandy the lads are going to see.

I've got the window open because the attic was stuffy when we got back from shopping. Now cold wind hits me and I go over to close it.

The curtains billow up, and I duck under.

I reach for the window, again hear a child's thin voice calling.

I lean out.

"Gwen, Gwen, GWEN."

"Who's down there?" I call.

"Gwen, where are you?"

The boy sounds closer now, and I lean out farther.

Wind gusts and the next instant a curtain panel blows around me. For an instant I imagine I'm in the hospital again, waking up inside bandages. Then the house smells bring me back, bleach and dust from the windowsill.

My fingers scrabble with the curtain, searching for the edges.

And then I hear my own voice but not mine, my voice with somebody else's accent....

"Abe, go away," the voice says.