blind girl

I coughed and spat a little ball of phlegm onto the loose gravel of the church parking lot. It was my daily ritual, to climb the hill to the top of my one-street neighborhood and walk to the sheltered seclusion of the church. The trees gave me cover and the place was almost always deserted.

The whole cigarette is just a prelude to the last puff, that deep inhalation of half-tobacco/half-filter that makes you feel that much more alive, if only for a second. It was the feeling I’d been waiting to acquire all day, after two finals and twenty minutes of simmering in my car trying to get past the lines of SUV’s and older brothers and sisters coming to pick up their non-driving siblings.

Like every day, I descended the stairs to the basement to find my mom painting and drinking. She loved to make these detailed Santa Clauses from scrap pieces of wood, carving them into jolly little gnomes with pointy hats and fluffy beards. The trick was to distract her long enough to swipe a few squares, and I was becoming more skilled at this every day.

It’s not that I think she would have cared that I was smoking, or drinking, or muff-diving on the girl next door, it’s just that those things seemed to be more fun if they were a secret.

I was just about to throw my butt down and stomp it out when the side door to the church opened. There weren’t any cars, so I was very surprised to see someone coming from the building.

She wasn’t a threat, though. Just a girl, and she looked to be maybe two years younger than me. Stringy blonde hair, kind of tall, and small breasts. She didn’t look at me, and I swear I’m not making fun of her when I say that she couldn’t have even if she tried. The clicky-stick and the tinted glasses gave her away in a second.

With a small, polite gesture, she turned to shut the door behind her and faced me. “You’re smoking,” she said. “I can smell it.”

I thought maybe if I didn’t move or say anything I might become invisible to her. I was wrong.

“I can hear you breathing. Why don’t you quit being stingy and give me one?”

I wanted to tell her that the cigarette behind my ear was the only one I had in the world and I was getting ready to light it up, but that would go against the first rule of smoker etiquette, which states: ‘If a cute girl asks you for a smoke or a light, you can never refuse.’

So I put it in her hand and lit it after she raised it to her lips. She took a deep puff and smiled. “Thanks.”

I shrugged, but the effort was wasted. “Isn’t it a little, you know, sacrilegious to smoke outside of God’s House?” I asked.

And the blind girl just laughed at me. “Doesn’t seem to bother you too much, does it?”

“Well, I’m only up here for the seclusion and the beautiful scenery. I’ve never been inside.” I wanted to smack myself for mentioning the scenery.

“You seem a little nervous,” she said. “Does my blindness make you uncomfortable?”

I kind of wished she hadn’t put it like that. I wondered if she had extra psychic powers as compensation, so I was hesitant to lie to her. “Maybe just a little?”

And she took another puff. With her free hand she felt my face carefully, pausing for a second on the little patch of hair on my chin. “What’s your name?”

I told her. “What’s yours?”

“Melanie.”

We just stood there for a second, and she blew a ring of smoke. I was impressed. “How’d you learn to do that, I mean, if you can’t see?”

She faced me, but her eyes seemed sixteen thousand miles away under those tinted glasses. “I haven’t always been blind. About a year ago, I had tumors forming in my eyes and there were…problems. I’m still trying to cope with it. It’s something you learn to live with.”

I gave a kind of grunt of acknowledgement. “So what are you doing here, anyway?”

“Bible study. I hate it, but my mom brings me here every week. All the other kids are still up there, but I couldn’t stand it anymore so I walked out. All that talk about ‘God’ and his mysterious ways just pisses me off.”

It made sense to me that she may have become a little cynical. At the end of the winding driveway, I saw a little red four-door come climbing towards us. “That sounds like my mom,” she said. “Is it a small red sedan?”

“Yeah.”

She just dropped her finished cigarette and popped a piece of gum she had in her pocket. I wanted to say something, to maybe ask for her number. I thought about how I might never have another opportunity to make out with a blind girl.

A few seconds before the car got to us, Melanie’s face kind of lit up a little. “Why don’t you come have dinner with us? My mom is always telling me I need to have more people over.”

Despite how inescapably awkward it was going to be, I saw this invitation as providence. “Alright, sounds good.” And with those three words my fate was sealed.

The car ride to her house was pretty standard. I just sat in the backseat with my hands folded and answered her brown-haired soccer-mom’s string of standard questions about school and if I liked it and what my parents did for a living.

Their house was pretty normal, aside from the lack of pointy furniture and the little bumpers on all the corners and doorways. When we got into her house, Melanie set her clicky-stick by the front door and took my hand to lead me to her room. On the way down the hallway, I stole a glance into what must have been her older-brother’s room. Metal band posters plastered the walls, and I saw some swords and knives in a glass case in the corner. The occupant wasn’t there, though, and this gave me a small dose of comfort.

Melanie’s room was kind of plain. There was a big desk with a computer on it, and her bed was unmade. I could see the corners of posters stuck to the wall with thumbtacks, as if someone ripped down the rest of them. Better not to ask questions, I decided.

I sat down on her bed and heard the echo of the lock clicking into place. She was standing by the door grinning like I was her new altar boy. I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

She took off her glasses and set them on the desk. She walked over to her bed and sat next to me, feeling my face again. This time she wanted to know what the rest of me looked like too, I guess, because her hands went up the back and front of my shirt and through my hair. And she kissed me.

Melanie was an amazing kisser. She licked the roof of my mouth and used her tongue in ways you will never think to. She even licked my forehead, which I thought was weird, but I was willing to let it go.

She started kissing my neck, then my chest, and then there was a knock on the door. Her head sprang up. “Yes?”

“Dinner time.” It was her mom’s voice.

We rose to go eat, and she whispered in my ear, “Watch out for my brother. He’s a little…protective of me.”

Protective must have been a synonym for 'completely freakin’ nuts', but I wasn’t to find that out until later. In the hallway I almost walked right into that tall, imposing figure Melanie called her brother. He had a long goatee and was wearing a sleeveless Misfits t-shirt. His arms were huge. He might have been twenty-two or twenty three. He grabbed my hand and gave a snakelike smile. “My name’s Damien. Nice to meet’cha.” Damien squeezed my hand so hard I thought my fingers might pop off and shoot blood everywhere.

The actual meal was nothing special. The pork chops were a little dry, and so was the conversation. Damien didn’t say much, and I think Melanie’s mom was running out of stupid questions to ask me. For me and Melanie, the act of eating was just one more thing standing in the way of romping.

I’d barely swallowed the last forkful of peas before Melanie grabbed my hand and led me away from the table. I managed to force out a “Thanks for dinner,” to her mom as I was being dragged back to the little girl’s lair. Damien glared at me the whole way.

I think a part of me will always be in that little room on that fateful afternoon, in almost complete darkness with passing cars making squares of light zip across the wall. We were kissing each other all over, being sloppy and immature. It was the nicest damn thing ever, I think.

After we were both a little out of breath, we just laid there. I had my arm around her. I was sorting out the figures in the dimness, trying to imagine what it would be like to not be able to see ever again. “Do you ever use that? The computer, I mean.”

She looked kind of sleepy and content. “Mmm hmm. I used to be a great typist, and I still love to write. I just have my mom set me up a blank document and I make her save it for me when I’m done.”

“What about mistakes?” I asked.

“Of course there are some, but I make other people go back and edit little things like that for me after I’m done.”

Again, we were interrupted by a rapping on the door. Maybe it was more like a pounding fist. Melanie rose to open it, and this time it was Damien. He seemed impatient. “Mom says I have to take him home, and I’ve got things to do tonight, so it’s time to go.”

He left us alone, and I made Melanie tell me her phone number so I could call her later. We kissed goodbye and I found Damien waiting in the hallway, eager to leave. I followed him to his car, parked on the grass. It was this crappy, early-90’s model Ford Escort hatchback that was beginning to rust a little. I got in, and prayed that I was going to live through the night.

We were on the road for a few minutes when Damien reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded picture. He handed it to me and didn’t say anything at first. The picture was him, wearing a wife-beater with sweat stains on it. He was holding a shotgun in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other. After I’d had a minute to absorb the image, he explained. “If you ever hurt my sister, that’s the last thing you’re going to see.”

I swallowed hard. We were in my driveway, and I went to hand the picture back.

“Keep it,” he said. “consider it a present.”
 

(c) Jordan R Baugher, 2004