Paul HostovskyTWO STORIESStaring at the BlindI first noticed Delbert on the subway, sitting directly across from me, reading a braille book with it closed in his lap, his hand inside it, gliding back and forth, reading. He was in the seat nearest the door, the seat that had one of those signs above it—in print and in braille—that says Please offer this seat to an elderly or disabled person in need of it. I had often noticed those signs, especially when the subway was crowded and I was forced to stand by the door and hang onto a handrail or a pole, with nothing to read but the advertisements and the collective glum face of the ridership. Then my eyes would sometimes light on one of those signs with its official-looking plea for kindness, and I'd try to figure out how the braille dots lined up with the print letters, how those pithy round bumps, which didn't resemble letters in the least, added up to the words in that sentence. And I'd wonder whether any blind people ever read that sign, if their fingers ever found those braille dots or even knew they were there. And now, here was this blind guy, sitting in the seat opposite me, braille above his head, braille in his lap, the spilled white milk of his eyes staring upward and slightly to the left as his hand moved furtively back and forth inside the closed book. I wanted to ask him something, something about the braille, or the signage, or the public transit system, or the kindness of strangers. But before I had the chance, a rangy young man with a Van Dyke and Bible plopped himself down in the seat beside Delbert and said in a conspicuous voice to no one in particular: "Let us pray." Then he yanked Delbert's hand out of the braille book, and held it in his own hand, and raised it above Delbert's head in the manner of referees and prizefighters, and asked Delbert his name. When Delbert, visibly shaken, said "Delbert," the man continued in a loud, incantatory voice: "Dear Jesus, we pray, together, that you please heal our brother Delbert of his blindness right NOW." Then he closed his eyes tightly, presumably to pray harder, while Delbert opened his eyes wide, presumably to say he saw nothing remotely amusing or efficacious in what this man was doing. It did, in fact, look more like an assault than a prayer, and before I knew what I was doing I was up on my feet defending Delbert, whom I hadn't met yet but who impressed me as being someone worth defending, someone who didn't seem to need our prayers or Jesus' healing foisted upon him right at that particular moment by this born-again fool with his Bible and goatee and chutzpah. I stood above them, hanging on to the handrail, and I grabbed the man's Bible right out of his hand and held it menacingly over his head and yelled at him to give Delbert back his hand. The praying man opened his eyes and blinked up at me, cowered a little, then let go of Delbert's hand, which immediately burrowed back inside the closed braille book. I didn't say another word, but gestured with my thumb for the man to vacate his seat tout de suite. Then I gave him back his Bible and shooed him away, and I sat down next to Delbert. "Are you alright? I asked him, feeling a faint urge to slip my hand inside his braille book and feel the dots for myself, an urge that I was thankfully able to inhibit. "I think so, yes. Thank you. But I think this is my stop," he said, standing up and producing a folded white cane that suddenly clicked open with a sound like switchblades. It startled me a little. "Mine, too," I said, wanting to offer him a hand, or an elbow, but not wanting to insinuate myself, especially after having liberated him from that pious insinuator who was staring at both of us now from a safe distance at the other end of the subway car. So when the train stopped, I simply followed Delbert out, walking behind him as he skillfully found the door with his cane, then, switching hands, followed the railing with his right hand down the three steps, holding the cane in his left hand and tapping the riser beneath each tread as he descended. Once outside, he turned confidently to the left and started walking toward the intersection, his cane sweeping back and forth in front of him, alternating with whichever foot he put forward. Click, sweep, click, sweep, was the sound of his going as he made a beeline toward the crosswalk with me following a few paces behind. I felt self-conscious, following him like that, like some guy stalking a blind guy, so when he reached the curb, I pulled up beside him to ask if he wanted assistance crossing the street. But before I asked, I watched him silently for a few seconds as he stood there listening to the traffic. He held himself very erect, almost as rigid as the cane he was holding in his hands, completely vertical now, with the handle against his chest, his head swaying to the left and right as the other pedestrians crossed without stopping to offer assistance. He looked exposed, yet determined; vulnerable yet independent, fragile and at the same time, I don't know, girded. I stared at him like that for a long time. I stared at him for years. I helped him cross that street that day, and the next day and the next, and soon we became friends, and later, roommates. He worked at the National Braille Press as a proofreader, and he taught me a thing or two about braille, like how many dots it takes to say anything in the whole alphabet: six. And he taught me a thing or two about sighted guide technique, like how to walk with a blind person through doors, or through a turnstile, or up and down stairs, or with more than one blind person in tow. And he taught me a thing or two about miracles, and Christianity, and the treatment of blind people in literature, and in history, and on the subway. And before long, I decided to learn braille myself. And Delbert was able to get me a job at the National Braille Press as a transcriber. And now, we take the subway to work together. We sit next to each other on our morning commute, reading. His hands on the braille, my eyes on my book. But more often than not, my eyes wander from my book over to his braille. And then I watch his hands reading, which is a beautiful sight to behold. I stare at his fingers flying over the dots, breezing over them with such a light touch, a touch like the wind, like a breeze touching all the trees, bending them slightly, almost imperceptibly, then letting them go. * * * Deaf-Blind ConventionWhen I got home from the deaf-blind convention, I couldn't stop touching people. It was a week of haptics, tactile sign language and fingerspelling, touching and being touched, and it just naturally continued flowing out of me. I found myself patting the hand of the policeman as he leaned into my car window to give me the speeding violation: Thank you, officer. And I couldn't help stroking the arm of the bank representative when I stopped in to make a payment on my home equity loan: Principle only, please. And later, in line at the grocery store, I brushed a piece of lint off the sweater of the woman in front of me, pressing her shoulder reassuringly. When she turned around, startled by my touch, I touched her again, on the elbow, to apologize. Which only made it worse. People are touchy about being touched. They don't like it. They misconstrue it. They take it as an advance: a pass or a flirtation, an aggression or an invasion. But not so with deaf-blind people. For deaf-blind people touch is everything. It's communication and information. It's intonation. It's affirmation, feedback, backchanneling. It's connection and community. It's practically sacrament and yet it's as natural and necessary as breathing. All week I had brushed up against and been brushed up against, gently bumping, gingerly jostling, signing and spelling into hands, printing on palms, scratching and tapping, sketching and mapping on backs, shoulders, knees, interpreting and chit-chatting as my fingers and hands remained in almost constant contact with the fingers and hands and bodies of others. The deaf-blind world is a different world altogether. A world of physical contact. And already I found myself missing it terribly. In fact, I seemed to be going through a kind of withdrawal. I felt separated, isolated, untouchable in a world of untouchables. It felt like there was too much space between me and the world, too much space between people and things, too much space between people and people. I felt depressed. I began to self-medicate: I started touching myself. Not in a sexual way, but a platonic way, a deaf-blind way. My hands looked for each other; they touched each other and themselves, folding, tenting, twiddling, praying. And I touched my face—my temple, forehead, nose, cheeks, lips, philtrum, chin. My neck, head, crown, shoulders, arms, wrists, thighs, knees. I touched myself and I thought of my deaf-blind friends at the convention, whom I longed to see again, whom I longed to touch. But the next convention wasn't for another two years. Especially I missed Adriana. Her slender, beautiful hands, the weightlessness of them as they rested on mine, listening. It wasn't exactly romantic; it was more semantic: her nimble fingers, her fluent signing, the grammar of her face, her virtuosic receptive skills—it was all about language. I was seduced by the voluptuousness of tactile sign language. She was my deaf-blind delegate from NY, and I was her SSP (Support Service Provider). I guided her, assisted her, interpreted for her, clued her in and helped her out by touching her constantly, but only on her hands, occasionally on her back, or her arm, or the little atoll of her knee. "Those are the only permissible places," the Pro-Tactile instructor told us during the short training session on haptics for interpreters and SSPs the first day of the convention. "To tell the deaf-blind person that someone is laughing, for example, you can spell HA-HA in her hands, of course, but if her hands are occupied, for whatever reason, then you can indicate it like this on her arm, or her back, or if you're both seated, on her knee." Then he did a little sort of double flex-scratch with all five fingers in the air, by way of illustration. "Nothing above the knee, though; and never on the head, or stomach, or chest, or butt, or breasts. Unless, of course, invited to, in the privacy of your dorm rooms." There were some giggles. I have to say, those first few days at the convention, a part of me hoped I'd be invited to. And sometimes it seemed like I was on the verge of being invited to. But the invitation never came. And in a way, I'm glad it didn't. Because it wasn't about sex. It was so not about sex. And between you and me, some of us never grow wholly comfortable doing it, now do we? I mean doesn't it feel a little like the blind signing their names on the signature line? I mean don't we often need a hand to guide our hand to where they say the ultimate expression of who we are ought to be? And then when it's done, it's as though our lovers take back the pen, and the paper, eyeing the sad mark that is ours, and wondering what in the world the world should make of such a squirming, illegible thing.
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