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Chapter One

Call It Blindness

I tell the class, "I am legally blind." There is a pause, a collective intake of breath. I feel them look away uncertainly and then look back. After all, I just said I couldn't see. Or did I? I had managed to get in there all on my own--no cane, no dog, none of the usual trappings of blindness. Eyeing me askance now, they might detect that my gaze is not quite focused. My eyes are aimed in the right direction, but the gaze seems to stop short of touching anything. But other people do this, sighted people, normal people, especially in an awkward situation like the first day of class. An actress who delivers an aside to the audience, breaking the "fourth wall" of the proscenium, will aim her gaze somewhere above any particular pair of eyes. If I hadn't said anything, my audience might understand my gaze to be like that, a part of the performance. In these few seconds between sentences, their gaze becomes intent. They watch me glance down, or toward the door where someone's coming in late. I'm just like anyone else. Then what did I mean by "legally blind"? They wait. I go on, "Some people would call me `visually challenged.'" There is a ripple of laughter, an exhalation of relief. I'm making a joke about it. I'm poking fun at something they too find aggravating, the current mania to stick a verbal smiley face on any human condition that deviates from the perceived norm. Differently abled. Handicapable. If I ask, I'm sure some of them can tell jokes about it: "Don't say bald, say follicularly challenged." "He's not dead, he's metabolically stable." Knowing they are at least thinking of these things, I conclude, "These are just silly ways of saying I don't see very well."

    I probably shouldn't make these jokes. In fact, the term "legally blind" is not a new, politically correct euphemism. Nor is the adverb interchangeable with "half," "partially," or "nearly." Someone is legally blind whose visual acuity is 20/200 or less, or whose visual field is 20 degrees or less, in the better eye, with corrective lenses. The term seems to have been coined by the American Medical Association in 1934, then adopted by the federal government in the Social Security Act of 1935 as a standard measure to determine eligibility for new federal programs for the blind. The definition controversial since it was instituted, turns on only two aspects of sight and does not measure how well or poorly an individual uses residual sight. There are many who would like to abandon the definition, enlarge it, contract it, or create new categories. I could tell my students this, a tidbit of medical and social history. I could also explain that the legally blind often "see" something, and often use visual experience to understand the world, and thus "appear" sighted. I could hand out diagrams of the human eye, photographs simulating various types of legal blindness. But I do not.

    Instead, I detail how my condition will affect them. Someone will have to read me their papers and exams. Or else they will have to tape their written work, which can be time consuming. When I look at them I cannot tell if their eyes are focused with interest or glazed over with confusion, boredom, or fatigue. In other words, I cannot "read" the class as effectively as other teachers. I cannot ask for a show of hands, or if I do someone else must count them. If they want to make a comment they must break the cardinal rule of classroom decorum drummed in since the first grade and interrupt me. It may take the entire term for me to match each of them, whatever it is I see of them, to a name.

    Most of this may not matter to them at all. Perhaps they have other instructors with comparable foibles. Perhaps there's no need even to mention it. They can tell I don't see well just by watching me read, holding the page an inch from my eyes, squinting through Coke-bottle lenses. But I must talk about it to dispel possible confusion or discomfort. I bring it up so that the student in the back row with his hand in the air can drop it and say, "Excuse me, I have a question," and not, What s the matter? Can't you see?"

    I started teaching in 1991, when I had already been blind for almost twenty-five years. But it was not until I started teaching that I felt a need to identify my blindness in public. For several years prior to my first teaching job I was a social worker in a women's crisis center. Part of my job involved giving educational and fund-raising talks about domestic violence, sexual assault, and other feminist issues. I spoke from memory, never using notes. I shifted my focus here and there in the way all the literature about public speaking advises. I learned to direct my eyes at any sound, to raise them to the ceiling or lower them to the floor, as if searching for the right words. Perhaps I came off as stagey, phony, or insincere--but certainly not blind. The only risky moments during any of these occasions came during the question-and-answer periods. But usually there was a host--the chair of the meeting, the teacher of the class--who pointed to the raised hands. Though I could not make eye contact (I do not really know what eye contact feels like or does), I doubt that my audiences ever really noticed. Often the subject matter made them drop their eyes and stare at their shoes. Or else they so identified with the topic that they became distracted by memories, blinded by tears. If I had introduced myself as blind it would have detracted from my topic. They might have felt compelled to watch out for my safety--I might be about to knock something over or fall off the stage. Or else they might have suspected me of fraud, a rather clumsy deception meant to milk their sympathy. As with my students, I could have taken the time to educate them, to explain that blindness does not equal ineptitude. It does not even necessarily mean an absolute lack of sight. But I had more important things to say. My blindness was an irrelevant fact that they did not need to know about me, like my religion or political affiliation.

    In social situations I seldom announced my blindness. And as long as I was not obliged to read anything, or to identify a person or a plate of food, people tended not to notice. I passed as sighted. I appeared to see more than I do. I rarely bumped into or tripped over objects or people. I aimed my eyes at the face speaking to me. I recognized friends from their voices, which looked to them like visual recognition. If someone buttonholed me I could not send out distress signals to friends with my eyes. But I could listen for familiar voices, excuse myself, and move away as if I had seen someone wave to me. Because I could do these things I had many acquaintances, people who knew me slightly or by sight, who would have been shocked to learn that my vision was not normal. The fact that I did not look people directly in the eye they may have chalked up to shyness, reserve, or boredom.

    Occasionally it was necessary to say something. If I had to explain why I don't drive, for instance, I never knew how the person would respond. Some people absorbed the information without comment. Others found it shocking. Tension would solidify around us. Their voices would become softer, even hushed with a pious solicitude. They became self-conscious about language, hesitant to say, "I see what you mean," or "See you later." I felt them glance around for whoever brought me, whoever was responsible for me. Sometimes there was a degree of desperation in this, an anxiety to turn me back over to the person in charge, as if this disaster had occurred only in the second it took to speak the word. I learned to speed-skate around it, to feign gaiety, to babble my way into another topic, but equilibrium was hard to recover.

    Once, at a party, a man I was speaking to was almost reduced to tears to learn that I am a blind writer. There was a tremor in his voice as he kept repeating something about "the word fading." As far as I could understand it, he was picturing a page of print disappearing before my eyes word by word, as if written in invisible ink. It was a vivid image but bore little resemblance to my reality. Sensing that he was most disturbed by the idea that my sight loss was still in progress, I tried to tell him that, unless some other visual condition develops, the word had already "faded" as much as it ever will. And as far as these things go, a writer is not a bad thing to be if you can't see. There are other ways to write, other ways to read. It is easier for a writer than for a visual artist, a race car driver, or an astronomer to compensate for sight loss. I might have even mentioned Homer, Milton, and Joyce, the sight-impaired literary luminaries most often invoked at such times. I wanted to say, "This is not a tragedy. This is merely a fact of my life. Get over it. I have." But he had already receded from me, become preoccupied with a new, reductive view of me and my restricted future.

    Of course, it's the word blind that causes all the problems. To most people blindness means total, absolute darkness, a complete absence of any visual experience. Though only about 10 percent of the legally blind have this degree of impairment, people think the word should be reserved to designate this minority. For the rest of us, with our varying degrees of sight, a modifier becomes necessary. We're encouraged to indicate that we're not quite "that bad." Better to speak of a visual impairment, a sight deficit, low vision. Better still to accentuate the positive and call it "partially sighted."

    Sometimes I use these other terms, but I find them no more precise or pleasing. The word "impairment" implies impermanence, an encumbrance that could disappear, but my condition has no cure or treatment. The term "low vision" reminds me too much of "short eyes," a prison term for child molesters. And anyway, I crave the simplicity of a single, unmodified adjective. Blind. Perhaps I could speak in relative terms, say I am blinder than some, less blind than others.

    "But," people object, "you are not really blind," attaching yet another adverb to separate me from the absolutely sightless. The modern, legal definition is arbitrary, a convention based on notions of what visual skills are necessary for an adult to be gainfully employed or a child traditionally educated. The definition has more to do with the ability to read print or drive a car than with the ability to perceive color, light, motion, or form. If I lived in a different culture or a different age, no one would define me as blind. I could transport myself on foot or horseback. I could grow or gather my own food, relying on my other senses to detect ripeness, pests, soil quality. I would have trouble hunting; the protective coloration of most animals and birds is always good enough to deceive me. But I might learn to devise cunning traps, and I could fish. I could become adept at crafts--certain kinds of weaving or pottery--that require as much manual dexterity and tactile sensitivity as visual acuity. If I looked at people strangely it might be accepted as a personality flaw. Or else this imagined culture might be one where a too-direct gaze is considered impolite. In any case, I could live independently, with enough sight to perform routine tasks without aid. If I had a sense that others' eyes were stronger or more discerning than mine, I still would not define myself as blind. Especially if the culture was the sort that put the blind to death.

    Though in the here and now execution is unlikely, a stigma exists. So why should I want to label myself in this way? Isn't the use of the word at all, even with one of the imprecise modifiers, a form of self-dramatization, a demand for attention and pity better bestowed elsewhere? Isn't it a dishonest claim of marginal status, now that marginality is fashionable?

    This is precisely why I avoided the word for so long. I was pronounced legally blind in 1967, when I was eleven, though my condition probably developed a year or two earlier. I have no memory of losing my sight. I imagine it took place so gradually that I was unaware of what I was not seeing. The only outward sign was that I began to read with the book very close to my eyes. Everyone assumed that I was simply nearsighted, but tests did not show this. My cornea and lenses refracted normally. Remarkably, my doctor did not pursue the matter, even though the early signs of retinal damage should have been revealed in a standard eye exam. Apparently such damage was not what he was looking for. Instead, he jumped to the conclusion that I was faking, even though I was not the sort of child who would do that. My parents and teachers were advised to nag me into holding the book away from my face. For a while I complied, keeping the book at the prescribed distance, turning pages at appropriate intervals. Then, when no one was looking, I would flip back and press my nose to the page. Eventually it became clear to everyone that this was not a phase that I was going to outgrow. Additional tests were performed. When it was all over, my doctor named my disorder "macular degeneration," defined my level of impairment as legally blind, and told me that there was no treatment or cure, and no chance of improvement. And that was all. Like many ophthalmologists then and perhaps now, he did not feel that it was his responsibility to recommend special education or training. He did not send me to an optometrist for whatever magnification devices might have been available then. In 1967 the boom in high-tech "low vision" aids had not yet begun. He said that as long as I continued to perform well at school, there was no point in burdening me with cumbersome gadgetry or segregating me from my classmates. He did not tell me that I was eligible to receive recorded materials for the blind. He did not even explain legal blindness, much less the specifics of my condition--I did not find out what my macula was for several years. He said nothing about adaptation, did not speculate about what my brain had already learned to do to compensate for the incomplete images my eyes were sending. This was not his job. Since then I have heard accounts of other doctors faced with the dilemma of telling patients that there is no cure for their condition. They admit they sometimes see these patients as embarrassments, things they'd rather sweep under the carpet, out of public view. But as a child of eleven I did not understand his dilemma, and I assumed that his failure to give me more information was a measure of the insignificance of my problem. I was confused and scared, but also disappointed not to receive the glasses I expected him to prescribe. I left with no glasses, no advice, no explanations--nothing but the words macular degeneration , which I did not understand, and, more significantly, the word blind , which I understood only too well.

    But I did not use the word. I was not blind. Blind people saw nothing, only darkness. Blind meant the man in the subway station, standing for hours near the token booth, tin cup in hand, a mangy German shepherd lying on a bit of blanket at his feet. That was not how I saw myself. Surely there was some sort of mistake. Or else it was a lie, and as long as I did not repeat it, refrained from speaking the hateful word and claiming identity with the beggar in the subway, I could keep the lie from becoming a reality. Because if I were blind, or going blind, surely someone would do something about it. I'd read about Helen Keller. I knew what went on. Shouldn't someone be teaching me braille? At school they didn't use the word either. They moved me to the front row, stopped telling me to hold the book away from my face, and kept an eye on me. From this I understood not only that the word should not be spoken, but also that I shouldn't ask for special favors, shouldn't draw attention to my disability (a word I didn't use either), shouldn't make a spectacle of myself. I learned to read the blackboard from the motion of the teacher's hand while writing. If I suspected that I would have to read aloud in class, I'd memorize pages of text, predicting with reasonable accuracy which paragraph would fall to me. The routines of my teachers saved me. Also, by the sixth grade, reading aloud was usually required only in French class, and then only a few sentences at a time. Outside of school, if other kids said, "Look at that!" I determined from the tone of voice whether they saw something ugly, strange, or cute and would adjust my response accordingly. On the bus I counted streets to know my stop. In elevators I counted buttons.

    The most I would admit to was a "problem with my eyes," sometimes adding, "and they won't give me glasses," indicating that it was not me but the willfully obstructionist medical establishment which was to blame for my failure to see as I should.

    Many years later, in Paris, I met a banker who announced to me, as he shook my hand, that he had un probleme with his eyes. He explained that this was why he couldn't look me straight in the eye. I understood that a person in his profession had to say something. For him, as for a used-car dealer or clergyman, failure to maintain a direct gaze would affect his business. I noted, too, that he did not use the words aveugle, malvoyant , nor any medical term, nor any other phrase I could translate into one of the current American ones to designate impaired sight. The imprecision of his phrase allowed for the possibility that the problem might be temporary, a side-effect of medication, an adjustment to new glasses. But the tension in his tone gave him away. He was a French banker of the old school. His suit was that particular shade of navy, and his repertoire of elegant pleasantries was extensive. Everything about him was calculated to affirm, in the most reassuring way, that he could dispatch even the most distasteful or compromising financial matter with discretion so deft that it would seem effortless. But his own phrase, "un probleme avec mes yeux," tripped him up. In his rehearsed delivery, his haste to move the conversation along, I recognized the uncomfortable anticipation of the usual responses, the hushed surprise, the "So sorry for your loss."

    Reluctance to use the word blind , even in modified form, is as common as the desire to keep one's visual problems a secret. Many people conceal their sight loss for years, even from people close to them and certainly from strangers. They compose their faces in expressions of preoccupation. They walk fast, purposefully; they do not ask directions. Forced to read something, they pat their pockets for reading glasses they do not own. When they make mistakes, they feign absentmindedness, slapping their foreheads and blinking--it feels safer to pretend they're addled and forgetful than to admit they are blind. And looking sighted is so easy. For one thing, the sighted are not all that observant. And most blind people are better at appearing sighted than the sighted are at appearing blind. Compare the bug-eyed zombie stares that most actors use to represent blindness with the facial expressions of real blind people, and you'll see what I mean.

    An astonishing amount of the literature on the "training" and "rehabilitation" of the blind deals with appearance, the visible manifestations of blindness. Eliminate "blindisms," the experts say, the physical traits to which the blind are allegedly prone--the wobbly neck, uneven posture, shuffling gait, unblinking gaze. Discolored or bulging eyes should be covered with patches or dark glasses, empty sockets filled with prostheses. But the books and pamphlets go further, urging that the blind, or their sighted keepers, be extra attentive to personal grooming and choose clothes that are stylish and color-coordinated. Having nice clothes and clean fingernails may contribute to a person's self-esteem whether or not she can see these things. And certainly hints about labeling socks or applying makeup can be useful. But the advice of the experts has another message: Blindness is unsightly, a real eyesore. No one wants to look at that.

    So the blind, of all levels of impairment and all stages of sight loss, find themselves encouraged to sham sight. And even if there is no overt encouragement from well-meaning family members or social workers, we know, or sense instinctively, that our charade of sight is easier than the consequences of speaking the single word blind . Because the word bears such a burden of negative connotations and dreaded associations, it can hardly be said to have any neutral, merely descriptive meaning. Blind means darkness, dependence, destitution, despair. Blind means the beggar in the subway station. Look at him slouching there, unkempt, head bowed, stationary among the rushing crowd. Intermittently, an involuntary twitch jerks his arm upward, making the coin or two in his cup clink. Otherwise he is silent, apparently speechless. A sign around his neck reads: "I'm blind. Please help." Because blind means "needs help," and also "needs charity." But the people rushing by barely oblige. They barely see him. They don't stop to stare, and they certainly do not expand their vision to allow for any other image of blindness. Told that there are blind people in all walks of life--medicine, law, social work, education, the arts--they are not impressed. They see those successes as flukes, exceptions, the beggar in the subway as the rule. Those people went blind late in life, after the habits of their professions were formed, and probably, if you looked closely, after their major accomplishments were already achieved. Or else they're not "really" blind. They have just enough sight to get by. Besides, they probably had special help. If, behind every great man there is a woman, in front of every accomplished blind person there is a sighted helper, spouse, child, or parent leading the way. Helen Keller had Annie Sullivan. Milton had his daughters.

    The blind beggar stands alone. As long as we can manage, we keep our distance, both because he makes such a displeasing spectacle and because we know the consequences of claiming identity with him. Note how few coins there are in his cup--he might be faking. If he greets the token clerk changing shifts, his take will plummet. Every visually impaired, partially sighted, hard-of-seeing person knows the suspicion. And we know the story of the cop beating the man with his nightstick for the crime of carrying both a white cane and a newspaper. "My mother is really blind," the cop shouts. The blind man says nothing. No chance to explain how his particular condition leaves him enough sight to read but not the right kind to get around. Too late for him to say he was bringing the paper home for someone to read aloud to him. The cop's mother sits in the dark, wishing someone would read the paper to her. The rest of us compose our faces, fake it the best we can, and scuttle toward the exit. We bite our tongues, dare not speak the word aloud, like the true name of God.

    The word blind has always meant more than merely the inability to see. The Anglo-Saxon translators of the Gospels made the metaphoric leap from literal sightlessness to spiritual or cognitive incapacity. Of course they were only following an ancient lead. Throughout the history of the language and in common usage today, the word connotes a lack of understanding or discernment, a willful disregard or obliviousness, a thing meant to conceal or deceive. In fact, when you stop to listen, the word is far more commonly used in its figurative than its literal sense. And it comes up so often: blind faith, blind devotion, blind luck, blind lust, blind trust, blind chance, blind rage, blind alley, blind curve, blind-nail flooring, blind date (more dangerous than you think), duck blind, window blind, micro-mini blind (when open, they're hard to see), blind taste test, double-blind study, flying blind, following blind, blind leading the blind, blind landing, color blind (in the racial sense, a good thing), blind submission, blind side, blind spot, blindfold, blindman's bluff, three blind mice (have you ever seen such a sight in your life?). Pick up any book or magazine and you will find dozens of similes and metaphors connecting blindness and blind people with ignorance, confusion, 'indifference, ineptitude. An image of a blind man stumbling around an unfamiliar and presumably overfurnished room is used to depict someone grappling with a difficult moral problem. A woman flails blindly (not only sightless but feeble) at an assailant, blinded by hatred and rage. Other disabilities are used similarly, but not as often. A politician may be deaf to the concerns of his constituents and lame in his responses, but first and foremost he is blind to their needs. Writers and speakers seem so attached to these meanings for blind they don't even find them cliched. Deny them the use of the word and they feel gagged, stymied. If you want to talk about stupidity, prejudice, weakness, or narrow-mindedness, no other word will do.

    To express the opposite of blindness, however, we need at least two words. Generally, we use the words sight and vision interchangeably, though recently some eye specialists make a distinction, using sight to refer to the functioning of the eye itself and vision to refer to the functioning of the eye and brain together. Originally vision was used to mean spiritual or metaphysical perception. Later it became synonymous with sight. In common usage positive connotations predominate. Seeing, after all, is believing. We speak of vision as a virtue. We want our leaders to be at least clear-sighted, if not possessed of "that vision thing." We hold dear our views, outlooks, and perspectives. We know a picture is worth a thousand words. We want to see eye to eye.

   `Of course people who are blind use language the same way. Though the joke "I see,' says the blind man" can always get a laugh out of children and perhaps adults as well, blind people are as likely as anyone else to say, "I see what you mean," or "Let me look at that," and without excessive self-consciousness or irony.

    The absolute equation of sight with good and blindness with evil breaks down from time to time. Seeing may be believing, but sometimes you cannot (should not) believe your eyes. When we say, "Love is blind," it cuts both ways. Love makes us oblivious to the beloved's flaws, putting us at risk of exploitation, abuse, and deception. But it also causes us to overlook the superficial defects and shortcomings of physical appearance, financial condition, and social status, which others may see as obstacles to happiness. Myth and folklore abound with complex portrayals of the interplay between love and sight. Willful deities divert themselves by temporarily or permanently blinding mortals for the sole purpose of watching them fall in love with inappropriate partners. Sight restored, there's always a joke on someone, human or divine. Psyche finds herself united to a man she cannot see. When she finally lights the lamp and looks at Love, his beauty so startles her that she spills hot oil on him and he flees. The message: look too closely at the beloved and someone will get burned.

    It's no accident that the eyes are the most often mentioned feature in love poetry. Beautiful themselves for their gemlike color and liquid sheen, eyes not only are windows into the soul, but they also can send elaborate messages of love. They glow with affection, smoulder with passion, dilate with emotion. When we gaze into the eyes of the beloved and see a reflection of ourselves, our narcissistic tendencies are gratified. Now, as in the past, women spend more time and money accentuating, highlighting, lining, defining, and emphasizing their eyes than any other feature. Small wonder that women and men losing their sight often report anxiety about their sexuality. Women fear that without sight their eyes will no longer be alluring--no more bedroom eyes, come-hither looks. Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses. If the girl is blind, she will be that much more unattractive, or that much less able to control her own sexuality. On the other hand, there is a particular sexual folklore which holds that blind women are more desirable than their sighted sisters. Rumor has it that because a blind woman lacks one sense, her other senses must be heightened to an unnatural degree, making her exceptionally responsive, exceptionally eager to touch, to taste, to smell. On top of this, a blind woman's insecurities about her appearance should make her grateful for the attention of any man and so eager to please him that she would be ready to perform acts a sighted woman would refuse. And no one could expect a self-respecting sighted man to marry a blind woman. What good would she be out of bed? Perhaps for this reason, blind girls in some cultures have been sold into prostitution. Presumably they were expected to service men even other professionals would find repulsive to look at. Or else they could serve the Peeping Tom trade. Customers could enjoy the particular titillation of watching a woman who couldn't look back.

    For men the loss of sight is devastating in a different way. The male gaze is supposed to project messages of intention and desire. But the act of seeing also plays a large part in male sexual arousal--an argument often made to defend pornography. If voracious and deviant males can get their jollies looking at dirty pictures, they'll keep their lecherous looks (and hands) to themselves. Oedipus tears out his eyes even if another organ might seem more appropriate, given his crime. His act not only symbolizes castration but makes it unnecessary. What you can't see, you can't want. And don't forget: masturbation will make you blind.

    Is sex really different for the blind? Like most blind people, I've been asked this question more often then I care to remember. I could respond that I have no means for comparison, since I lost my sight before my sex life began. But I've always taken the question as an overture, a come-on, rather than a genuine inquiry. I've heard it asked only in dark corners, in husky voices whose leering intensity made it clear that my lack of sight was my major attraction. I'd edge toward the exit, saying, "Oh, yeah! It's like doing it in the dark."

    Since sex with a blind person seems a little kinky, the sighted life partners of the blind are often viewed askance. They are assumed either to crave control to a pathological extent or to suffer from an acute martyr complex. Is marriage to a blind person really so different? I ask my sighted husband this, but he can't really answer. He's only ever been married to me. Would he be threatened by a completely independent wife? Does my blindness unman him, forcing him to take on the caretaking role traditionally reserved for females? Behind these questions is the assumption that blind spouses bring nothing to the union except utter dependence and, if the sighted spouse is lucky, a cloying gratitude. Blind people are so needy, so defined by their need, that they must be incapable of nurture, affection, love, loyalty, laughter, companionship, comfort, conversation, support, sympathy, or any of the other qualities people seek in a life partner. Perhaps I'm deluded, but I have a hard time seeing myself in this light. I recognize that the pattern of our everyday life differs from other couples'. We spend a lot more time together, for one thing. Nick has to do the errands that require a car, and I try to accompany him whenever possible. But when we lived in New York without a car, we tended to do these errands together as well. I usually do the cooking and laundry, tasks where I can employ my nonvisual senses to compensate for my visual impairment. Nick typically does the dishes and cleaning, tasks require more sight. I rely on Nick to proofread my writing, but he reads his prose aloud to me, and I alert him to any flaws I hear. Do we share these activities and divide household labor simply because I am blind, or does the shape of our life together conform to other needs? I have no way of knowing.

    But whatever I may claim, many people assume that blindness must dominate all aspects of a person's private life. And it is said to have an impact in the public sphere as well. Look at Justice. Observe that she is not blind but blindfolded. True, it's difficult to depict blindness in painting or sculpture without representing some unsightly deformity, unless the blindfold is actually a bandage hiding a gruesome wound. But it seems more likely that she has willingly renounced sight. She makes herself blind to extenuating circumstances. Presumably when Justice is off duty she can see. The blindfold could even slip. She could lift an edge of it and peek if her hands weren't full. In one hand she holds a book, presumably of law, which she cannot read blindfolded. Perhaps it's there as a reminder that she could at any moment rip off the rag and look up the relevant statute. In the other hand she holds a scale to weigh evidence. But she cannot see the balance or lack of balance that is registered. Perhaps she can feel it with the heightened sensitivity that blind people are supposed to have.

    Despite this apparent reverence for the impartiality of the blind, still, in some states, the legally blind are automatically exempt from jury duty. Though Justice is blind, the jury should be sighted. Jurors may have to examine evidence or respond to the ocular proof of a bloodstain or fingerprint. Attorneys coach witnesses not only on what to say but how to look while saying it. "Look at the defendant," the lawyer urges. "Are those the eyes of a murderer?" True, looks can be deceiving, but in a court of law they still count for a great deal.

    My husband was once dismissed from a jury pool because of my blindness. A doctor had allegedly misdiagnosed a patient's symptoms as psychosomatic and failed to test her for the brain tumor that caused her to go blind. The jurors were asked if the fact that the patient had ended up blind, as opposed to disabled in some other way, would have any bearing on their ability to arrive at an equitable settlement. Nick said, "No amount of money could compensate for lost sight." Both attorneys, even the one for the blind plaintiff, wanted him dismissed. They viewed Nick's close association with blindness as an impairment of his vision, his ability to make a clear-sighted judgment. He might even upset the balance in the minds of other jurors with irrelevant details of the exact nature of this disability.

    Law, love, language--the peculiar, double-edged sword of sight never leaves us alone. It's fear, of course. Americans' fear of blindness is second only to their fear of cancer, and as ancient as the fear of darkness. So these constant references to blindness, equating it with stupidity, narrow-mindedness, or evil, make up a verbal game of chicken. Taunt the fates. Name the demon you fear and insult it. It's a way perpetually to reanimate the fear, keep the sense of dread alive. This is why the cliches seem always fresh. At the same time, calling justice and love blind is a dire warning. There's more here than meets the eye, but what meets the eye is still what matters most. Look deeper. Watch carefully. Don't blink. Use it or lose it.

    Fear of blindness leads naturally to fear of the blind. The competent and independent blind pose a particular threat to the sighted, and they can't refrain from comment. Every blind person is familiar with the praise. "You manage so well," the sighted coo. They go into raptures over the simplest tasks: our ability to recognize them from their voices, to eat spaghetti, to unlock a door. People sometimes express astonishment when I find the light switch or pick up my coffee cup. "It's where it was the last time I checked," I say. I try not to challenge every question, however. When someone says, "How did you cook that?" I assume that they want a recipe or a tip, and not that they are amazed a blind person could prepare anything edible. I tell them I turn the soft-shell crabs when they start to pop. I add flour to the pie dough when it feels too sticky. My mother, who was sighted, taught me to time vegetables by smell. When the broccoli begins to smell like broccoli, it's done. When it smells like cabbage, has gone too long.

    An eye doctor once praised me for the way I lead my life. I had just given him a copy of my first novel. He said that most people with my condition become invalids and recluses. I was at first pleased with this affirmation, but then I thought about it. He was not so much praising me as defining what he considered "normal'' for the blind. By his definition, the blind beggar does pretty well--at least he gets out of bed each morning and hauls himself and his dog down to the subway token booth. If I had expressed disappointment to that doctor, said I wished had continued my education, had published more, or had a better job, he might have consoled me. "Don't press so hard," he might have said. "No one expects you to live up to the standards of sighted people."

    When the sighted label the accomplishments of a blind person as "exceptional" or "overcompensating" they reveal their diminished expectations for life without sight, and a superstitious belief that should belong to another era. They seem to secretly suspect an unseen force prompting our responses, guiding our hands. Since they can see with their own eyes that there are no strings or mirrors, they are compelled to reinvent the ancient myths about compensatory powers, supersensory perception. The sixth sense, second sight, third eye. We are supposed to have both extra-accurate hearing and perfect pitch, more numerous and more acute tastebuds, a finer touch, a bloodhound's sense of smell. We allegedly possess an unfair advantage that we could use against the sighted, hearing the secrets in their sighs, smelling their fear. While the tradition of the Blind Seer might seem to represent a more respectable and positive image of blindness, it is still on the outskirts of normal human experience. Blind Tireas knows the truth, but he is seldom applauded when he reports it, and so he leads a life apart. The blind are either supernatural or subhuman, alien or animal. We are not only different but dangerous. But when we express any of this, the sighted scoff: "Don't be silly. I can see you as you really are. You don't scare me. You're just being oversensitive."

    It's so much simpler to deal with the blind beggar in the subway. The sighted can pity him and fear becoming like him. Specifically, they fear the absolute dependence he represents, dependence on his dog, and on family, educators, social workers, public and private charities, strangers. This dread may be particularly pronounced in Americans, driven as we are by ideals of individual freedom and self-determination. Being blind is un-American. Our national anthem asks a question the blind can answer only in the negative. "No. I cannot see it. The dawn's early light is too feeble. The rocket's red glare was too fleeting to prove anything to me." The National Federation of the Blind, the organization most concerned with the civil rights and political status of the blind, schedules its annual convention to coincide with Independence Day. To the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" they sing: "Blind eyes have seen the vision / Of the Federalist way ..." When the National Library Service began to offer recorded books for the blind in the 1930s, the first offerings included not only the Bible and some works of Shakespeare but the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence, perhaps in an effort to educate and patriate a population already at the farthest periphery of the American scene.

    A major part of the American fear of blindness has to do with driving. "It's not just your car; it's your freedom," one car ad proclaimed recently. Thus, if you can't drive, your freedom, your enjoyment of the great American open road, will be seriously restricted. Growing up in New York City, I was spared awareness of this aspect of my disability until I was an adult. I could get wherever I wanted to go on public transportation or on foot, as all my peers did. When I left New York, I learned that in most of America, suburban sprawl and inadequate or nonexistent public transportation make driving a necessity. And driving is not merely a matter of getting from place to place. Americans express their personality through the make of car they purchase and the style with which they drive it. Sight-impaired teenagers who cannot join in the automotive rites of passage of driver's ed classes and road tests experience an increased sense of both physical and social isolation. The inability to drive sets them apart, reinforcing their status as abnormal. Because in America today, and increasingly in the rest of the industrialized world as well, normal means not only to see, hear, walk, talk, and possess an average IQ and income, but also to drive.

    But the fear of blindness goes beyond a fear of the inconveniences of personal transport. In the simplest terms, the fear is linked to the fear of old age and death. Since blindness equals darkness in most people's eyes, and darkness equals death, the final equation seems to follow as inevitably as the ones linking sight and light and life. In this view, blindness is as good as death. When I was eleven, after my condition was diagnosed, I wrote a poem about death. Memory has kindly erased all but the bouncy lines: "I've just been told, I'm getting old. / I don't want to die." But I do remember knowing what I was really writing about was blindness. My fear, only barely acknowledged, was that, like Bette Davis in Dark Victory , my lost sight was simply a sign of imminent death. When I allowed myself to think about it, I had little confidence in my eye doctor. After all, in his initial examinations he had failed to see my damaged retinas. Perhaps he had also missed some threatening disease, which would soon take its toll. I waited, trying to be as brave as Bette, but nothing happened.

    The belief that human experience, both physical and mental, is essentially visual, and that any other type of experience is necessarily second rate, leads to the conclusion that not to see is not to experience, not to live, not to be. At best, the sighted imagine blindness as a state between life and death, an existence encased in darkness, an invisible coffin.

    As overextended as this logic may be, the fact remains that the most common causes of blindness tend to occur late in life, thus close to death. Two-thirds of the legally blind in America are over age fifty-five. Cells atrophy. Irregular blood pressure does damage. Even a relatively minor stroke can affect the vision centers of the brain. Macular degeneration affects 10 percent of Americans over seventy. Twenty-five percent develop cataracts. This is not counting glaucoma, diabetes, nor accidents--projectiles, chemical spills, gunshot wounds. And there is no guarantee that vision disorders can occur only one at a time. Live long enough and, chances are, you'll go blind, too.

    You won't be alone. As more and more people live longer, the ranks of the blind will swell. For the currently blind this is cause for, if not celebration, at least optimism. We imagine the blind becoming a more and more significant force, demanding services and rights, changing the image of blindness.

(Continues...)