Debut

by Carol Emshwiller

There are always the helping hands of my sisters and everywhere the rustle of soft silk and the tinkle of iced drinks, so being blind is no hardship. All is dark and calm and cool with the flutter of fans. Hands touch me, guide me. My sisters talk in soft voices and sometimes they sing. Their hands are thin and dry. Their long fingernails seldom scratch, only now and then when they can’t help it.

Sometimes I say, “I wish I could see,” yet never really wanting to, for I have all I could wish for now. I don’t need to see with their hands always about me and their fans fanning me. “Better not to see,” they answer. “The world is a black place. The days are sharp with thorns. Better not to see the world,” and they sing me a slow song.

Mara says the world is blacker even than anything I see now, but I don’t believe it. Also I don’t see black always, but red sometimes and sometimes purple stripes, sometimes white pricks of light.

Mara and Netta take me to the banks of the stream to listen to the water. “It’s nice to hear water over stones,” they say, and, “sound is better than sight.” Mara combs my hair and Netta washes my feet. I lie on my side with my knees drawn up and play with my blunted daggers, thick as fingers on the string of my belt. I put my hands down sometimes to rub my knees or across to feel how my breasts have grown. I think: There’s a change coming. I’m nervous. I’m not sure, today, if I like my hair combed or not or my feet washed. Perhaps I do. Perhaps I don’t. (One of these days the daggers won’t be so blunt. I wonder if, under their thick shells, there might not be needle points, with poison perhaps, to kill or put asleep. I hope so, but what a strange hope and what a strange thought that comes from nowhere unless from the sound of the pines which also have needles.) This time I won’t tell Mara my thoughts, but shall I tell her to stop combing? I don’t believe I can ask it gently. I don’t feel gentle. I turn onto my other side. By mistake I kick Netta.

“Dear Princess,” Mara says, “listen to the music of the stream. It sings just for you.” She combs my hair faster and puts her hand on my forehead. Now I know that I don’t like the combing. “Stop,” I shout. “Don’t you ever get enough hair combing? This is the last of it… ever.” I bang down one fat dagger and it does break open. I hear it shatter and I feel with my finger that it’s now a needle shape just as I guessed and almost as long as my hand. I don’t yet know if it’s poison.

My sisters are quiet and I don’t feel their touch. I wonder have they gone off quietly on their bare tiptoes and left me, poor blind thing, alone in the forest? But I don’t call out or make any move. I sit with my head up and listen. There’s the sound of leaves and of water flowing. I’ve never been without the rustle of my sisters’ sounds or their touch before. Their hands that hold my cup of milk and feed me my bread and honey, my strawberries, my plums, would they now, silently, suddenly, desert me? But have I ever spoken so harshly to them before?

Then some other sister comes. I hear her humming from somewhere across the stream, and then I hear Mara, still quiet near me, say to the one coming, “Thus the Princess,” and I turn my face toward her sound. The other comes. It’s Mona. “Ah,” she says, “I’ll go on ahead and tell the Queen.” What she says frightens me, but the tone of her voice makes me angry. If she’s talking about the Queen, I think, why doesn’t she sound grander, or if not grander then more servile. But I was never angry at Mona’s voice before. She is one, with Lula and others too, who comes to sing me to sleep.

Now that I know my sisters haven’t left me alone, I get to my knees by myself and put my arms above my head and feel how strong I seem today. I stretch and then gather my hair behind my shoulders. I loop it in my necklace like my sisters do when they go hunting. I think how my sisters say I’m beautiful. How they say the Queen doesn’t like beauty or strength like mine and I wonder will the sisters stand by me with the Queen. They’ve been sweet and loving, all with their hands coming to feed me and wash me and cover me with my silk, but will they stand by me as I come, so blind and helpless, to see the Queen? I’m not sure that they will. The world is black, they say. Mara sometimes would hold me in her arms. “Never see it,” she would say. “I hope you never see the black world.” “Woman child,” she called me. Mara is my closest sister, but even so I’m not sure she’ll stand by me. Perhaps, after all, the world is as black as what I can see now, perhaps with purple stripes and frightening pricks of light.

I feel the sisters’ hands help me to my feet. This time they don’t ask me if I’d like to swim before going back. This irritates me, for at least they could ask even though I would say no. Haven’t they any respect for my feelings? Can’t they let me refuse for myself? Do they, perhaps, think me so stupid, so ignorant, that I might say yes? I don’t think I want them on my side before the Queen if that’s how they feel about me. I, helpless as I am, will stand up to the Queen alone. But why am I so angry?

Though I’m blind, I know our house well. I’ve walked along its wide verandas and, when I was younger, played on its steps. I know its many open doors, its porches. I know its stone, its wood, its cushions, curtains, tassels, tapestries. I’ve heard sounds echo through high-ceilinged rooms. I’ve put my arms around fat pillars and could not touch my fingertips at the other side, and always I’ve heard the steps of sisters, upstairs and down, night and day, their rustlings and tinklings, their songs, their humming and sometimes the sound of their spears.

Yet, though the house is big, the doors and porches wide, my own world is always close about me. Sometimes I seem to walk in a ball of dark hardly wider than my fingertips can reach. The world comes to me as I feel it and mostly from the hands of my sisters.

I don’t think I was born blind. I have dim memories of once having seen. I remember it best in dreams. Faces come to me, all of them pale, all with long hair. I think I know what lace looks like, and white and pink coverlets, beds that hang from the ceiling on thin golden cords. In my dreams I can see tall, narrow windows with misty light coming in. I see lamps on the walls with fringe hiding their brilliance, but only in the dreams have these things any meaning for me now.

The sisters lead me into the house and into a back room I don’t remember having been in before. From here I can smell bread baking and rabbit or perhaps pig cooking, but I know none will be for me. I’m not hungry, but still it makes me angry that none will be for me. I sit stiffly as the sisters take off the soft, light clothes I wear and give me softer, lighter ones. They give me shoes and I’m not used to shoes but they tie them on tightly with knots so I can’t take them off. They have thick, soft soles as though I walked on moss or one of our rugs, but the strings around my ankles make me furious. Before they’ve finished dressing me, I begin to tremble and I touch my shattered dagger and the other blunt one. I feel very strong.

They take me down long halls and then up the central stairway to the top to see the Queen. The Queen calls me “my dear.” “My dear,” she says and her voice is very old and ugly. “My sweet, my dear,” she says, “you’ve come to me at last, my prettiest one.” Does she think I came for compliments? Has she no dignity at all? She’s too old. I can tell by her voice. I turn my head toward her. She isn’t far from me. I take my one true dagger and leap toward her and, just as I feared, my sisters don’t stand by me. Their hands hold me back just when they should be helping. One has her arm across my throat, choking me. Mara, I suppose.

“See, my sweet one, see!” screams the Queen and someone rips my mask from my face and I do see, I see the brilliant world at last. My sisters let me go but now I can’t kill the Queen because I don’t know anymore where she is. No one moves and gradually I come to understand that there’s a mirror along the back wall. I even remember that mirror though I had forgotten it, and I know it’s a mirror, and I see now that the Queen sits, or rather reclines before me twice, once in her reflection, and she’s not quite as old as her voice seems. And I stand here, and there behind the Queen too, and I know this one in shoes and green scarves with her hair tied up behind is I. And all along I see my sisters, pale ladies, gentle warriors, some leaning toward their spears. Now I’m among strangers, for I don’t even know which one is Mara. Now I see how the world is. I still tremble, but from sight.

The Queen is smiling. “Take her,” she says and they take me, not bothering now if their fingernails dig and scratch. They take me down the long stairways, across the halls and out the wide doors, away across the meadow and then the stream, away into the forest until we come to a hill. We climb this hill and at the top one sister says, “Sit down.” She brings out mead and a little bread. “You must stay here now,” she says. “You must wait.” They all turn to leave, but one, no different from the others, turns back. “I’m Mara,” she says, “and you must stay and wait,” and then she goes.

I sit and look. I think they’ve left me to die. I’ve seen how the Queen hates me, but still to be able to look is a wonderful thing. I look and recognize and even remember the squirrel, the bird and the beetle.

Soon the sun gets low and the birds sing louder. It’s cool. A rabbit comes out to feed not far from where I sit. Then suddenly something drops from a tree not far from me, silent as a fox, but I see him. I jump to my feet. I’ve never seen a creature like this but I know what it is. I’ve not heard the word except in whispers in the hallways. I’ve hardly believed they could exist. Taller, thicker than I, than any of us. Brother to the goat spirit. It is Man. Now I know what the shoes are for. I turn and run, but away from our house and into the hills.

It grows dark as I run and then the moon comes up and I run on and on, back where the hills are steeper and there are more rocks and fewer trees. In my shoes I don’t worry about the sharp stones or the long, steep, slippery climbs, for the shoes stick like flies on the wall and I go up or down like a lizard. I’ve never run like this in my life. I’m supple as water. Nothing can stop me. My steps are like wind in summer. My eyes fly with me and they see everything.

Then there’s the steepest climb of all. He can’t be close behind me now, for even I, with my magic shoes, am winded, but I keep on to the top where the trees are twisted and small from the wind. There’s a hollow, soft with pine needles. I lie down there to hide and turn to face the moon. I’m not afraid of the forest or the night. It’s not as dark as blindness.

I lie panting and when my own breathing quiets I hear panting still. I look away from the moon and I see the creature, Man, lying as I lie, exhausted. I watch him until his eyes close, then I close my own. I’ve run a long way. I don’t think or even dream anymore now.

In the first light of dawn the brother to the goat’s ghost touches me on my breast and wakes me. My anger of yesterday has changed. I tremble. Man’s fingers are strong as the golden bed cords. His hands aren’t dry and cool like my sister’s hands. He tears away a green scarf and I feel there, at my neck, the coarse hairs by his mouth. I shut my eyes and for a moment I think that I’m being eaten, but then I feel again that I’m running like a lizard on the mountainsides, and Man breathes like a lion in my ear.

Afterward he rolls away and looks at the morning sky. Quickly, before it’s too late, I smash the other dagger open, grasp the two and stab him twice with each hand. He makes a big bird sound and curls like a caterpillar. Then I rest a little while.

I understand now. Of course the Queen hates me, but she’ll care for me, and all those like me, well. And I hate her, but I don’t feel irritable any longer. I’m happy and relaxed. I rest, and later I hear my sisters coming for me, singing in the hills. How I love my sisters. Someday they might stand by me before the Queen, so I’ll let them comb my hair. I’ll drink milk from their cups and I’ll eat strawberries out of their hands even though I’m no longer blind.

Now Mara and Netta will be the first to come to me. I’ll kiss them and they’ll feed me. We’ll stay on this hill and in this hollow all night and we’ll pray together by moonlight to the goat’s ghost for the birth of a girl.