Blinded in the Dark

As you wake up to the ringing of your alarm clock, you rub your eyes and turn the buzzer off. You figure it is seven-thirty in the morning. You swing your legs out of bed and then stand up. You walk three steps forward, raise your hand and reach for the window ledge, sliding your palm against it as a guide. When you sense the lock you unfasten it and push open the window. Your hands reach out to the space outside. Droplets of water fall on top of your hand – so you know it’s raining. Letting out a sigh, you reach for the window once more to lock it back. When you are done, you shift your body about a hundred degrees to your right and start walking.

You stop when you feel you are in the right spot. If you did it right, you should be standing in front of the door, but you still need to find the doorknob. You aim to grab it on your first attempt but you fail. Frustrating as it may be, you finally get it on your eighth attempt.

Yes! You never thought a day will come where grabbing a doorknob would feel so victorious. During the first week in the house since you lost your eyesight, you couldn’t even hit the noisy alarm clock after more or less fifteen trials. You would either miss hitting it or accidentally throw it off the bedside table. You would struggle even more before you could successfully turn it off. But you have made some improvements now. You are slowly getting used to it, except grabbing doorknobs – it’s your Achilles’ heel.

A month ago, you decided you did not have enough choice. You were once terrified you would not get to see your sibling grow or see her walk on stage during her graduation, but you knew you could not let things just happen that day. You had to give up your eyes. But while you lost your sight, you began to focus on what mattered to you the most – your sister.

When you get out of your room, you hear a voice coming from your left side.

“You came out late,” your sister says. She cackles a huge one before she adds, “had a hard time with the doorknob again, or did you mistook the wall for the door?”

As much as you want to laugh about your condition, you want to hit your sister’s head full of her foolishness. But you love her, so you just smile. Not like you would know where to accurately swing your arm in order to hit her head – you’re blind.

“What did you cook this time?” You ask her.

“Uhh… the usual.” You cannot see her but you would bet all your money that she is smirking.

Still, you do not mind the foods your sister buys in the convenient stores instead of those homemade dishes you used to cook for both. You know your sister is bad at cooking and you would rather save yourself from a terrible meal in one of her experiments.

You are both orphans since you were eighteen and she was fourteen. Now that you’re in college, you chose to travel five miles every day and stay with her in the house because you know she still needed you, even until now. You are both fine, except every time the landlady would come knocking at your door to get your rent payment. She is a common enemy, both of you and your sister would agree.

On the breakfast table, you eat your umpteenth instant noodle for this month. You notice your usually noisy sister is strangely quiet. “Something wrong?” You ask.

“When you go back to the university, you should get a room in the dorm. You can have roommates there, right?”

Feeling the seriousness of your sister’s voice, you put down your fork, hopefully on the plate where it should be. “Listen, I’m fine with travelling. I can manage.”

“It’s not about the travelling.”

You furrow your eyebrows because you cannot think of another reason why your sister would want to send you off to – oh. You laugh at your own realization and raise your voice at her. “Is this your way of saying, ‘I’m tired of feeding you, can you go and just have someone else do it for you? Like maybe your friends in college?’ I mean, if that’s the problem, that I am a burden, then I’ll go.”

You hear your sister sigh. “You’re not burdening me. I’m just worried,” she says. “I do want to take care of you but…I know that you will not stand long eating boiled eggs and instant noodles until a guy picks you up for marriage.”

You feel that she is bluffing but you play along. “Sure. And you’re telling me this because? What, you can’t stand me being like this and waiting for something like that to happen?”

Silence filled the room. It feels like a complete darkness to you whenever you hear nothing. You rely a lot to your sense of hearing now to picture out the things that are happening around since you can no longer see. Like if you hear a sound of flipping papers, you can tell that your sister is reading a book or a notebook. Like if you hear water gushing from the kitchen, you know your sister is washing the dishes. And right now, you really want to picture out what her facial expression looks like. What was she thinking? You thought.

“I just… thought that the marriage thing is what our dad would want to tell you,” she finally breaks the eerie silence.

You scoff. “As if you know. And what you said doesn’t really make sense.” Your head is aching; you do not want to continue this conversation. So you stand, push back your chair and carefully walk to your right, then turn slightly to your left. You’re thinking you are about to approach the door entrancing your apartment room.

“You’re going to hit the shoe racks,” she warns you.

Despite the embarrassment, you ignore her and correct your direction yourself. After what seemed to be wasting two minutes for finding the door and grabbing the doorknob to open it, you successfully slam the rectangular piece of wood behind you. You then wipe away your sweat from all that effort, not noticing that there is another person near you.

“Excuse me.” Startle to hear an older woman’s voice, you flinch. The voice is rather familiar and as you remember to whom it belonged, you shrug your shoulders. Today is that day. “I was about to knock on your door five minutes ago when I heard some yelling. Then when I thought you’d be out of the door, I just waited,” your landlady says. “Do you have a visitor inside?”

You smile a dry smile. “No, it’s just my sister. I don’t know how much you’ve heard but we had a fight. I’ll pay the rent later when I go back inside.”

“What are you talking about? Don’t be absurd!”

Confuse, you wonder if her coming there was not for the payment. “Aren’t you here to collect?”

“Of course not! I didn’t mean the rent. I’m not even here for that.”

You face her [or you could be mistaking her for another wall, you won’t know]. You plant a confused expression on your face and ask, “Do you need something else from us?”

“Us? Stop trying to scare me please. After what happened, I couldn’t just bravely waltz to your door and ask for the month’s rent. I came here to see if you are alright.”

Although it seems unbelievable that your strict, hot-tempered landlady sounds full of concern, you can sense she is truthful with her words. You chuckle politely. “I’m sorry for worrying you. I’m slowly getting used to my eyes. Plus, my sister helps, so –”

“Dear, stop saying that. Are you really doing okay?”

It was annoying now. She is too concerned, enough that she is unnecessarily overdoing it. “What do you mean? I’m really fine. See? I’m on my way to somewhere on my own. And so far, I did not hit any post.” You try to joke.

Suddenly without any warning, you feel an embrace coming from someone who you’re thinking is the landlady. But it felt too skinny and strong for it to be the stout, old hag. Then you hear a whisper to your right ear. “I’m sorry.” It was your sister’s voice. Something about her warmth is bugging you, you’re not sure why.

Other than not understanding how your sister is suddenly right there hugging you and apologizing, you don’t think it is the right time for her to butt in the conversation with the landlady, even though her intentions are well. You are about to say something when the landlady speaks before you could.

“I know it’s only been almost a month. It might have left you a huge trauma, but your sister would have wanted for you to move on. You remember how she is. She’s always the jumpy and optimistic type. The accident was not your fault. Despite you trying to save her, you cannot blame yourself for when she got her head bumped out of the car window and that lamppost falling down on her causing the hemorrhage.”

You freeze. Your heart may even have frozen too. You don’t know. The words you heard from the landlady is truly hard to believe. It was nonsense. None of that happened, not in your memories at the very least. The story was too horrible to be accepted true. But you feel numb, paralyzed, a completely blank state. It was blanker than having lost your sight. You feel more blinded in the darkness you have never been, never seen.

Your sister is still embracing you. She’s right beside me, you wanted to tell the landlady.

“I’m sorry,” you hear your sister’s voice again. This time it was hoarse, you can also hear her silent crying. You do not know what to feel for yourself, or for her words, or for anything. She’s alive, this keeps chanting on your mind. You feel the hug slowly loosening. Now, you notice why her embrace felt weird. It was because she felt empty, not warm, and not even cold. It just seemed like another soft material, that didn’t have… life.

You realize everything since the day the accident happened. How you do not hear her footsteps in the house. How she said she’s done eating every time you just started having your meal. How the instant noodles and boiled eggs you had been eating were really not newly bought but are just the ones you’ve been storing. How the TV was never turned on when you thought she was around. How she once told you something about being thankful that you could not see her. How she kept telling you things of what she and your parents would want you to do or have. And how she wanted you to stay in the dormitory in the university… because…

“My sister is…” your words trail.

[Photography and paint portait by Janus Miralles]