the earth.” I’d never liked that first paragraph of Genesis, which says there was darkness before God summoned light. That’s how I knew, even as a kid, that the Bible wasn’t written by God. It was written by people with sight.
I was born with vision but lost it in an accident when I was five. After I was blinded, I still had visual memory as a child growing up, but by the time I arrived in Burbank, I could remember only a few broad sweeps: The flatness of a prairie. The expanse of a mountain dwarfed by sky. I could remember Grandpa’s barn looming above me, the huge span of the open barn door, which I always associated with the rich smell of manure. Picture what you can remember from age five without the benefit of someone having snapped a photo; the few wisps I can generate are hazed in the fog of a dream, in murky shades—no colors or stark whites.
I can’t remember faces, including my own. I can recognize with my fingers Mom’s high forehead and quick dimples, but my mind won’t connect the dots to construct a likeness. To this day, I can maneuver each turn from our street in Greeley to our front door, but I can’t picture the entryway. I can identify instantly the pattern of wood grain on my chair at Mom and Dad’s kitchen table, but I don’t try to sketch it in my mind. For me, chairness is nonvisual; it’s the feel of a seat connected to four legs and a backrest.
Many children who lose their eyesight have its memory fade in adulthood, as the brain no longer receives light sensation and begins to dedicate its functions to other senses. At least one fleeting image, how-ever, has come back to me since I got clean and sober, so maybe part of my loss came from the drugs. As I was getting out of bed one morning in Burbank, I recalled an indistinct image of Mom turning and pausing in her bedroom, looking away from me. I sat on my bed and thought about Mom a while, but my other memories were sightless: her heels tapping across the hard porch, her fingers gripping my hand, and the smell of peach cobbler in her apron.
When I was a teenager, I still had visual dreams, but not anymore. Now my dreams are multisensory except for sight: Voices call out, but I can’t scream. Or I’m naked in the commotion of a trolley that smells of Dad’s hair gel. Sometimes I recognize footsteps or the clutch of a hand on my shoulder. I caress a woman’s thigh as she laughs. I taste oysters. A man hits me as I reach. How do I know it’s a man? He smells rough. Or maybe I recognize a place—a fluency with the coarse fabric of a cushion beneath my fingers, the smell of leather, or the sound of my boots on Mexican pavers—but I don’t quite know where I am.
After we merged onto I-10, I reached over the backseat and felt for my backpack, pulling out my note-taker. The night before, when Devon had helped me test it, I’d talked to him about describing things on the trip for me: the visuals I thought I’d need. But after I told him I wasn’t bringing my laptop along, he got pissed at me and refused to help with anything. “Forget it,” he said. “I’m not describing a thing for you.” He loved roaming the Internet and posting comments about how fucked up the world was. And he blamed me for keeping him out of touch on the trip.
“Show us your new toy,” Isa said, twisting in the front seat.
After I showed them the keys for typing and the strip along the bottom for the Braille display, Ray and Devon ran their fingers along the display line.
“I haven’t typed anything yet,” I said.
“Ah,” Devon said. “No wonder I couldn’t read it.”
“You can’t read Braille,” Ray blurted.
“It has a voice reader too,” I said. “Let’s try one. Tell me what the dawn looked like.”
“That’s over,” Ray said. “It’s day already.”
“I know. Tell me what it did look like.”
“It was orange and yellow like cotton candy.”
“That’s good,” I said. “I like that.” I pressed the keys, and Ray and Devon felt the dots pop up along the display line:
“It tickles my fingers,” Ray said.
“Here,” I said, “push this button. You’ll hear what I typed.”
“Wait,” Devon said in a deep, authoritative tone. “I think I’ve got it.” He was still feeling the Braille display, trying to convince Ray he could read it. “Something about orange and yellow and cotton candy.”
Ray ignored him. He pushed the button, and the mechanical voice rushed through its monotone. “That was too fast,” Ray said. “What did it say?”
I slowed the speed; he pushed the button again, and the voice intoned, “The pre-donn smog glowed like cot-ton can-dee at the fayr.”
“That’s not what I said,” Ray complained.
“That’s what writers do,” Devon said. “He’s conning you into describing stuff for that article about us.”
“What article?” Patrick boomed. “What the hell are you writing in that thing?”
We sat silent for a moment, startled. I knew these clashes would come, but already? An hour from Burbank?
“It’s not anything real,” Isa said. “He’s just writing stories about himself. Aren’t you, Kevin?”
“Like those articles he got Devon to write?” Patrick sputtered. “About the teachers?”
For an assignment at school, Devon had wanted to write about teacher-student relations, so I’d let him borrow my digital recorder to record what teachers said in class. He got outrageous quotes: put-downs and name-callings to get kids to behave. Instead of just handing in a paper, he turned it into a newsletter for everybody to read. It caused an uproar and almost got him suspended. The teachers denied what they’d said, but then he produced the recordings. It made his newsletter a huge hit and made him want to be a reporter.
“If you put me in that thing,” Patrick said, “I’ll throw it in a river. I’m not kidding.”
I remembered my vow to myself not to get sucked into his squalls. I took a deep breath and spoke evenly, like none of it mattered to me. “It’s a journal,” I lied. “I’m just writing about myself.”
“That cost over four thousand dollars,” Isa said. “You better not throw it in a river. He’ll walk out. His parents will sue us.”
“Look how you got him in trouble,” Devon whispered across me to Ray.
“I did not,” Ray said. “You did.”
“Maybe he should walk out. He can take care of himself.”
“Of course he can,” Isa said. “But this setup is good for everybody.”
I felt like a kid, the way they were talking as if I weren’t there.
“Listen to me, Kevin,” Patrick said loudly and slowly. I figured he was looking at me, glancing over his shoulder or in the rearview mirror; I was sitting in the middle of the backseat. I took off my dark glasses and faced straight ahead so he could see where the sweeper wire had etched an S across my crumpled eyebrow, down through my eyelid, and into my cheek. I’d never excelled at pressing myself on others, but over the past year, as Patrick had become more
