①
It was a sunny summer day in 1947. My father – a humorous fat man with beautiful eyes. At this time, he was about to choose the children who would go to the county fair with him.
Father was the driver of the wealthy Miss May who lived by the road. I was two and a half years old then. Wherever my father goes, I want to go. The thought of being able to go out in the car made me excited. I was told that going to the market is fun. I was wearing a starched smock, twirling merrily, showing off my patent leather shoes and lavender socks, shaking my little head so that the ribbons on it bounced, and my back Folding his hands, he stood in front of his father. “Take me, Daddy,” I said confidently, “I’m the prettiest!”
After that, I climbed into Miss May’s shiny black car and sat in the back seat with a few other lucky people. . Back home that night, I told my family everything I remembered, until finally they said, “Enough baby, shut up and go to sleep.”
Easter 1950. I was wearing a green frock-lined dress with scalloped trim, and a pair of brand new patent-leather thongs. I am six years old and have already learned an Easter speech. As I rose to give my speech, I felt my heart pounding, filled with love, pride, and anticipation. People seem to hold their breath. You could tell they admired my dress, but it was my grown-up air that surprised them secretly.
Needless to say, I never stuttered or stopped in my speech. Back then, the word “beautiful” didn’t exist in people’s vocabulary, but “Geez, she’s lovely” drifted my way from time to time. And they added cheerfully, “Sounds right!” It’s fun to be liked. However, suddenly one day, this situation ended.
②
At the age of eight, I became a naughty girl. My playmates are my two older brothers. The clothes they wore were black and green, and that was the only difference between our clothes. Every Saturday night, we go to the movies. Back home, we dressed up as characters in the movie, chasing each other, being horse thieves, fugitives, and saving everyone from danger. My father decided to give my two older brothers toy guns. I’m a girl, so no.
One day, I was standing on the top of a temporary “motor home” we built, holding a bow and arrow in my hand, and looking towards the field. At this time, my right eye suddenly felt hit by something. I looked down just in time to see my brother put the toy gun down.
The two brothers rushed to my side. My eyes hurt, so I covered them with my hands. “If you tell your parents,” they said, “we’ll get beaten. You don’t want to do that, do you?” I don’t. “This is a piece of iron wire,” said the eldest brother, picking up the wire from the roof, “let’s say you stepped on this end, and the other end bounced and hit you.” His eyes began to hurt. “Okay.” I said. If I say no, the two brothers will find a way to make me feel sorry.
We lied in front of our parents as we had planned. They put me on a bench in front of the door and examined my right eye. A tree had been planted under the porch, and it grew over the railing to the roof. It was the last thing my right eye saw.
I fainted. In the end, the parents still knew the truth. A week after the accident, they took me to the doctor. “What took you so long to come?” he asked, shaking his head as he examined my eye. “This eye is blind.”
I was terrified by what the doctor said, but it was my eyes that worried me the most. appearance. Where my eye had been hit by a toy gun bullet, there was a whitish blob of scar tissue. Now, when I stare at people, they stare at me. Not at the “cute” little girl, but at her strange eyes.
③After
many years, I asked my mother and sister if I had changed after that “accident”. “No,” they said, puzzled, “what do you mean?”
What do I mean?
I was eight years old, and for the first time in my life, my academic performance dropped. I was twelve years old, and as long as there were relatives at home, I would hide in my room. My cousin came to play with me. She looked at the photo I took at school recently. In the photo, the “white spot” is clearly visible. She asked me, “Is your eye still unable to see?”
”No.” I said, and fell on the bed with a “bang”, pressing the book under it.
That night, like I do every night, I scolded my eyes. I cursed at it in the mirror. I begged hard, hoping that it would see the light again before dawn tomorrow morning. I don’t pray for sight, I pray for beauty.
”You haven’t changed,” they said.
I was fourteen and babysitting for my brother Bill, who was living in Boston at the time. He understood my humiliation and fear of being ugly, so he took me to a local hospital where a doctor removed the “white spots”. There was still a small bluish pit where the scar tissue had been, but the unsightly white spots had disappeared. In an instant, I seemed to have become another person, no longer the little girl who dared not look up.
I’ve made a lot of friends since I raised my head. Since I looked up, classwork flowed from my lips as impeccably as an Easter speech. When I graduated from high school, I was the valedictorian and I was the most popular student. I can’t believe my luck.
”You haven’t changed,” they said.
④
Thirty years have passed since the “accident”. A beautiful reporter came to interview me. She was going to write a cover feature for her magazine focusing on a new book of mine. “You decide how you look on the cover photo,” she said, “glamorous, or whatever.”
At night, lying in bed with my partner, I found all sorts of reasons why I didn’t want to be on the cover of magazines . “The most mediocre critics will say that my books are sold out, and my family will realize that I am now writing sensational books.”
”But what is the real reason why you don’t want to do it?” he said. ask.
”Because it is quite possible,” I said hastily, “that my eyes are not pretty.”
”That’s good enough,” he said, “and besides, I thought you had given it
up.” It occurred to me that it was.
⑤I
remember talking to my brother Jimmy and asking him if he remembered anything unusual about the day I was shot. He didn’t know that I saw that day as the last day my father favored me, nor did he know that I was suffering and angry about it. He said: “I just remember standing on the side of the road with my dad, trying to flag down a car. A white guy stopped, but when dad said he needed someone to take you to the hospital, the guy drove away.”
I I remember the first time I came to the desert, I fell in love with it completely. I realized that I had been on a mad dash through the world, looking now at this and now at that, in order to accumulate images in case my vision would fade away. But I almost missed the chance to witness the desert!
But that’s what I remember mostly—I was twenty-seven and my daughter, Rebecca, was almost three. From the time she was born, I was worried that she would find that her mother’s eyes were different from other people’s eyes. Will she be embarrassed by it? One day, as I was putting Rebecca in bed for a nap, she suddenly looked me in the eye. My heart tightened, ready to try to protect myself. All children are brutal in their perception of human body differences, maybe they don’t always intend to be that way, that’s another matter. At this time, my pain basically disappeared. I ran into the bathroom crying and laughing while Rebecca fell asleep singing to herself. I looked in the mirror and yes, it was true, I realized. There is indeed a world in my eyes. I see that it is possible for me to love it.
That night, I dreamed that I was dancing to the song called “Forever”. As I swirled happily, happier than I had ever been in my life, another beaming man jumped up with me. That person, like me, has been there, she is perfect and free. She is me.
