Relatively Strange

by Marilyn Messik

  Nobody spoke much at first but it was an easy silence. As we ate, I couldn’t help but notice Glory was wielding her knife and fork as easily as the rest of us, cutting her food unhesitatingly and precisely although Ed, seated next to her, kept glancing over at her plate as if to make sure she was managing well. I’d no experience with blindness and the problems it created and wondered just how she did that. I intended to ask her later but there she was again, jumping in, answering the thought as it was formulated, I needed to work on that shielding.

  “Ed’s letting me see through his eyes. And yes you do, don’t worry we’ll practise.”

  As we finished, Ed accepted thanks with solemnity waving away my offer to help with clearing up and in an instant crockery and cutlery were leaving the table to land in neat piles in the sink. Nobody batted an eyelid. I was rather enchanted with this openness, a complete contrast to the keep-it-under-wraps conditioning I’d grown used to. I could feel the grin on my face as I caught Ed’s eye, he nodded his head once in acknowledgement and it belatedly dawned on me – he wasn’t expressionless from choice.

  “Moebius Syndrome.” Said Ruth behind me,

  “Sorry?”

  “Ed has something called Moebius Syndrome.”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude.” Ruth smiled,

  “You weren’t. We’re so used to it, we tend to forget. It’s a neurological disorder that affects his cranial nerves, means he can’t move the muscles of his face. Life would have been tough enough for you as it was, eh Ed dear, without further complication?” She rubbed him affectionately on the back as she walked past to put the kettle on. She was short, only about my own five foot and she looked even more so as she passed him. He turned briefly from the sink to look down at her and expressionless though his face remained, there was no doubting the absolute devotion in his eyes. I wondered what his story was, immediately tried to suppress the thought and shield but not quick enough. I wasn’t sure whether he could read me but Ruth certainly could,

  “He came to us a very frightened little boy,” she was spooning coffee into cups and raised an eyebrow to see if I wanted one, I shook my head, “Couldn’t smile, couldn’t cry but could do oh so much more to get the attention he desperately needed. He was, as he often says, a proper pickle!” I looked up at the proper pickle, more in astonishment at the thought of him stringing two words together than at what she’d told me.

  “And he stayed?” I asked unnecessarily.

  “He stayed all right.” She looked across at him and laughed. “No matter how many more suitable places we found for him, he just kept turning up again and again like a good penny.”

  “It’s a bad penny.” A muttered aside from over at the sink. She laughed again,

  “I think Ed, dear I know the difference!”

  *

  When I finally went upstairs, a couple of hours later, eyelids drooping, the amazing, soft duvet – what a difference from my normal sheet and blankets – pulled me instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep, perhaps too deep because I awoke with a start, a jolting sense of dislocation and no idea at first where I was. My watch when I switched on the bedside light, showed 4.30 and after a bit of fruitless, not to mention fretful, tossing and turning I gave up and decided there was nothing for it, but to head downstairs and see if I could forage a warm drink, I didn’t think they’d mind.

  Donning my quilted pink dressing gown, needless to say there was nothing my mother had omitted to pack, I made my way down quietly, stepping on the side rather than the centre of each stair, aiming for a creakless descent. Opening the living room door cautiously, I recalled too late, I’d no idea where friend Hamlet slept. I wasn’t in suspense for long. As I shut the door quietly behind me, a solid body hit mine, knocking me back against the wood, whooshing the air right out of me. With a paw on each of my cringing shoulders he was attempting to lick my face off. My relief that he hadn’t barked the place down almost overcame my nerves at such close canine contact and I guiltily banished from my mind my mother’s horror at the hygiene aspect – a woman who made you wash your hands if you so much as looked at the cat.

  With some effort I persuaded him back to all fours, although he was clearly so delighted with the company that he wasn’t going to put any distance between us. With him padding at my somewhat apprehensive heels and occasionally batting into my side affectionately and almost overbalancing me, I made my way across the curtain-darkened room to the kitchen. I filled and put the kettle on to boil, unearthed the tea in a container helpfully marked and opened the fridge in search of milk.

  “Top shelf.” I jumped and turned, nearly falling headlong over the hound. She was sitting on the sofa, a fleece blanket over her lap for warmth. I hadn’t noticed her because she was so still.

  “Sorry,” she said, “Thought you’d seen me.” I made the tea, poured two cups and took them over placing hers on the table in front of her, she leaned forward feeling for it, the first time I’d seen any real sign of her disability and as I sat, I concentrated on maintaining my privacy of thought so she shouldn’t know.

  “Are you up late, or up early?” I asked.

  “I don’t sleep well, a few hours then I’m done. You?”

  “Too much going on in my head.” We sipped in silence, Hamlet having planted himself companionably on the floor between us. After a few moments I said,

  “I wondered …”

  “I know,” said Glory, cupping her hands round the cup’s warmth, “I’ll tell you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “I was abandoned when I was few days old. Someone – my mother presumably – left me on a convenient doorstep. The owners of the house found me when they went to take in the milk. Luckily it wasn’t too cold a night – she hadn’t bothered to wrap me particularly well – and equally luckily there wasn’t a bombing raid. Still, when they found me I was suffering from hypothermia.

  The nurses at the hospital called me Glory because that’s all the woman who brought me in could say, over and over, she was so upset – ‘Glory be, who on this earth’d leave a baby like that?’ Isaacs was the name of the ward they put me in. My earliest memories are of the childrens’ home, I suppose I’d be about four or five then, not sure. How far back can you remember?” she looked up at me.

  “About the same I suppose.” She nodded and continued.

  “Nobody knew I was blind for ages, I didn’t either of course, had no idea I was different from anyone else in any way other than the name-calling my skin colour earned. They knew I was clumsy and fumbled and bumped into things, but they just assumed I was slightly backwards. As for me, well I simply managed my daily life by utilising whoever’s eyes were nearest. The people in charge weren’t unkind or uncaring, simply overwhelmed by numbers, responsibility and damaged kids – orphaned, injured, traumatised in the blitz, so many worse off than me.

  They found, quite by accident I think, that if they put me to sleep in a room with some of the most disturbed children, it seemed to soothe them. Truth was, I couldn’t bear the noise, the screaming and crying hurt my ears and their nightmares ripped my mind. I learnt, in order to protect myself, I had to create a sort of soft blanket around and inside their heads. It smothered very successfully what was going on in there, both for them and for me and we all got to sleep well.” She paused to sip tea. “Eventually it got so I was spending all my nights and the majority of my days with the most seriously disturbed children, the ones most difficult to handle. Even though many of them were sedated a lot during the day, they were still much less restless when I was near and after a while I became as indispensable a part of the nursing team’s armoury as any of the medication they had available.”

  “What about you though, what was it doing to you?”

  “Well, obviously nothing too drastic because here I am today.” She was matter of fact. “Of course it wasn’t good for me, but they were so hard-pushed they had to use what they could and they had no idea what was really going on. Of course, neither did I rea
lly. From time to time I suffered shocking headaches, migraine attacks I suppose you’d call them. I’d be violently sick for hours on end and the pain in my head made me cry and scream as badly as some of the worst cases I was supposed to be helping. When I was really bad they’d sedate me too – the relief of being pushed down into unconsciousness was so wonderful, well worth the pain of the headache. The headaches were probably just a result of sensory overload. They don’t happen very often now but in those days, even when I slept, a part of me had to stay alert to maintain that blanket cover for the other children – it was tiring.”

  She shifted slightly, made herself more comfortable on the sofa. Hamlet stirred too, whining gently and rolling heavily over on to his side. Her memories were all the more evocative for their un-dramatic recounting and the serenity of the woman sought no sympathy for the torment of the child – completely unaware she was gifted and disabled in equal measure.

  “When I was about seven I had a particularly agonising attack which lasted longer than previous ones. There was a new doctor at the home then. When it was over, he insisted on giving me a more thorough examination than those previously carried out and he made the assumption that it was the latest ferocious attack that had damaged my eyesight. But he and colleagues he called in were completely baffled by the level of optic impairment. My eyes reacted like those of a completely blind person, yet when they tested me with picture cards I could describe them perfectly accurately.

  Naturally, they were completely at sea, as was I. I’d learnt in my short life the benefits of fitting in, doing what everyone else did, reading what the people in charge wanted me to do and acting on it. But in their total bafflement they baffled me and I no longer knew how to react, how to please. I understood from them that I wasn’t fitting normal parameters and was desperate to do so, but how could I when I so totally hadn’t grasped what normal was?” Her voice rose a little, an echo of the puzzled and frightened small girl. “I’m really not sure what would have happened to me if Rachael Peacock hadn’t turned up. She was still a trainee in those days and part of an assessment team that travelled to schools and institutions, working with children with special needs.” She chuckled, “And there was no doubt my needs were pretty special, not to mention desperate at that point.

  Because each answer to every question put to me by the medics seemed to make matters worse, I had by that time simply stopped answering any questions at all – it seemed safest. I was withdrawing more and more to where they couldn’t reach me, wrapping myself in the blanket I used for the children but this time making sure it was just tight round me. By the time I was brought in to see the assessment team I wasn’t talking at all, hadn’t spoken for weeks and had become quite used to it, found it rather restful actually.

  Mrs Mokovsky, a heavy-set lady with a drooping face – like a bloodhound with depression – was in charge. I remember she had a hectic dab of rouge on each cheek, perhaps to cheer herself up. Outside she wasn’t at all reassuring but inside she was kindly, well intentioned, extremely knowledgeable and instinctively understanding of the disturbed children who trooped in and out of her examination rooms each day. Her colleague was an elderly man, Mr Smuss. He’d been brought out of retirement by the post war effort and was inclined to be a little sceptical of Mrs Mokovsky and some of her methods which he considered ‘new-fangled and alarming.’

  The third member of the team was a severe looking young woman in a black suit who didn’t join the other two behind their table, but sat on a chair a little distance back as befitted her student status. Rachael Peacock.” Glory paused to take another sip of tea and finding the cup empty, held it out in my direction, I organised refills.

  “I really don’t know,” continued Glory reflectively “Which of the two of us was more electrified when I was brought in. She recognised me instantly for what I was and tried to calm me. I knew only that there was somebody in my head and I started to scream.” I nodded wryly, I could well identify with that and I’d been quite a bit older when Glory had introduced herself.

  “Everything went wild for a while. I tried to get out of the room, Rachael and the assistant, Mandy who’d brought me in, struggled to grab my arms and legs, holding me still to stop me hurting myself or them. Mr Smuss said a good slap never did a hysterical child any harm and Mrs Mokovsky, bless her, sat there calmly waiting for the storm to pass. Wise woman, she knew it would. And sure enough, after a little while when I had no voice left with which to scream she suggested that Miss Peacock keep Mandy and me company while we went to get a glass of water, then perhaps we’d all talk some more.

  The three of us went into the room next door and Rachael suggested to Mandy that perhaps rather than a glass of water, a hot cup of tea might do us all good. Mandy wasn’t going to be gone for long. Rachael looked at me and I looked through her eyes too at a small, fearful, snotty-nosed, six year old with sweat-matted hair and wide unseeing eyes, too shocked and scared now to even cry out again. I felt her sweep straight through me and she read and instantly assessed all that had gone on and with her comprehension came mine. In those few moments I learned the answers to so many of the questions that until then had baffled me completely. And she did the only thing she could in the time we had. She opened her arms to me and I went into them unhesitatingly.”

  I sniffed and she looked up sharply,

  “Nothing to cry about for Pete’s sake, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. By the time Mandy came back with the tea, we were sitting on chairs on either side of the table and nobody would have known that anything out of the ordinary had taken place.”

  “But wasn’t it awful to finally realise you were blind?”

  “God no. After the initial shock, it was like having a dislocated shoulder put back – everything suddenly clicked into place. I could make sense of it all, understand the way things were. And in truth I was no blinder than before.”

  “And then?”

  “In due course Rachael took me back in to Mrs Mokovsky and Mr Smuss and they asked me all the questions they needed to ask and were delighted, not only that I answered, but that I spoke up coherently and intelligently and whenever I got stuck, she was there, in my head, helping me.

  The report they put in concluded my emotional problems and withdrawal in recent months had been due to understandable distress and shock over the sudden loss of my sight. They recommended I be given practical help in dealing with my disability that a place be secured for me at a school for the blind. Other than that they found me to be normal and, considering the circumstances, reasonably well adjusted. And at the end of the day and after assessing about a dozen other children, they packed up and left.”

  “Left?”

  “Well, they were never going to stay, this was just one of the many homes they dealt with.”

  “But what about Rachael? Weren’t you scared you’d never see her again?”

  “She told me I would.”

  “Was it awful when she left?”

  “Awful? No. What had gone before had been awful, but afterwards … well, I wasn’t alone any more was I?”

  “So what happened?” I leaned forward, I could see her elegantly chiselled features more clearly now. It was getting light outside and the first bird call was joined soon by a chorus. Hamlet pricked his ears momentarily, decided it was nothing to do with him and carried on sleeping.

  “Rachael had to complete a thesis to pass her final exams and get her qualifications. She chose me as her case study, gained approval from the authorities and came to visit me every week for a year. Ostensibly she was following and charting my progress, in reality she was shaping it. She showed me how to shield and protect myself and also, over the period of time, how to work more effectively with the damaged children. She taught me that sometimes, in some cases, although there are things you can do, the end result does more harm than good and wisdom lies in knowing when not to interfere. She made me appreciate the strength and weaknesses of what we are and become aware that
it should never be underestimated nor misused.” She paused thoughtfully then added, “Well, only under exceptional circumstances! As the year drew on, she was allowed to take me out of the home on outings and I came here and met Ruth.” She smiled slightly and I saw how the two young women who’d come through the war and lost everyone but each other, and the child who’d never had anyone in the first place, had formed their own family.

  “By the time Rachael had finished her case study and passed her exams she was such a regular visitor and everyone was so used to seeing her, she just kept on coming. Meanwhile, I’d not only learnt Braille, but more importantly, how to meet people’s expectations of what a blind person can and can’t do. And that’s all for now.” She rose abruptly, pushing off the blanket, stifling a yawn and stretching her elegant frame. “I’m going for a hot bath.”