trees and with radio stations playing Christmas music and everybody talking about gifts. Everybody.
"Forget the presents," I want to tell people, but they'll think I mean that Christmas isn't about gifts, it's about Jesus, and that's not what I mean at all. What I mean is that gifts are a burden, and I dread gift-giving times.
Like Tuesday, at lunch. I'm sitting with Hannah's group, thinking partly about Gwen, partly about the sandwich I'm trying to eat neatly. Trying to close my ears to the cafeteria racket, which is impossible to sort into anything meaningful.
Suddenly I hear Charla's voice cutting through the noise. "I've gotten all your gifts, and they're all the same thing."
I freeze in my seat, wishing I was somewhere else. It's like hearing people talk about a party you haven't been asked to, or phone calls you haven't been part of.
"Have you all bought your presents for me?" Charla says, with a little giggle to show she knows she shouldn't ask.
Hannah says, "Not yet," and the others answer.
I pull my arms in miserably, hating gift exchanges.
I take a tough piece of chicken from my sandwich, try to look like I'm not paying attention to everybody around me talking about how they're going to shop for each other.
Then Charla says, "Mandy, what about you?"
I'm slow realizing she means I'm being included.
It's Hannah who answers. "Mandy's going shopping with me."
Chapter 9
I KEEP my window closed now, the curtains bunched behind their hooks.
Before, seeing Gwen really was like reading a book. I wanted things to turn out OK, but if they didn't it wouldn't matter, not really.
Now, knowing she is my grandmother, what happens does matter. I'm afraid to see it, afraid for her and for me.
So I keep the closed window and still curtains between us. I concentrate on being Mandy, which is difficult enough.
School's getting harder, and my teachers seem to think I should be able to keep up with all the other kids. I am not going to tell them that twenty minutes of homework for the others means at least an hour for me.
More like two hours in English, where the teacher gives notes nonstop. Sometimes I spend my whole homework time going back and forth on tapes, trying to find something she's said.
No geography, anyway.
One morning the first week in December the geography teacher meets me at the door. "Mandy," he says, "you've been rescheduled and won't be in my class any longer."
He sounds so satisfied, it's all I can do to hold in my anger. Don't hold it in.
"You, you..." I'm almost sputtering with the effort it takes not to call him some awful name, not to use words I don't want anyone to know I know, not to let on I care. "I was keeping up!"
A hand rests on my shoulder, just long enough to get my attention. "Mandy?" says a man's voice. "I hear you could teach this class." Somehow I know he's really saying it to the geography teacher.
The man turns out to be an orientation and mobility instructor named Mr. Burkhart. For the next couple of months I'll be seeing him twice a week during third period and having study hall the rest of the time. "O & M," he says, "that's the name of the game."
He's nice and kind of jokey-loud, and pretty soon I'm thinking of him as the Great Om. I learn more in an hour from him than I can pick up on my own in days.
Big stuff, like how to identify street intersections, deal with traffic, ask people for directions when they don't have a clue where north and south are.
He has me practice things like trailing, following a wall, listening for the water fountain outside the library.
"Snap your fingers, Mandy," Mr. Burkhart says, and I hear how the sound changes as we pass by an open doorway.
He asks questions like "Mandy, how do you search for something you've dropped?"
The answer is very carefully, curved fingers ready to pull back at the first touch of danger, or before I break whatever I'm looking for.
"Mandy," he says, "what are you going to do when you're all alone in a strange
"Forget the presents," I want to tell people, but they'll think I mean that Christmas isn't about gifts, it's about Jesus, and that's not what I mean at all. What I mean is that gifts are a burden, and I dread gift-giving times.
Like Tuesday, at lunch. I'm sitting with Hannah's group, thinking partly about Gwen, partly about the sandwich I'm trying to eat neatly. Trying to close my ears to the cafeteria racket, which is impossible to sort into anything meaningful.
Suddenly I hear Charla's voice cutting through the noise. "I've gotten all your gifts, and they're all the same thing."
I freeze in my seat, wishing I was somewhere else. It's like hearing people talk about a party you haven't been asked to, or phone calls you haven't been part of.
"Have you all bought your presents for me?" Charla says, with a little giggle to show she knows she shouldn't ask.
Hannah says, "Not yet," and the others answer.
I pull my arms in miserably, hating gift exchanges.
I take a tough piece of chicken from my sandwich, try to look like I'm not paying attention to everybody around me talking about how they're going to shop for each other.
Then Charla says, "Mandy, what about you?"
I'm slow realizing she means I'm being included.
It's Hannah who answers. "Mandy's going shopping with me."
Chapter 9
I KEEP my window closed now, the curtains bunched behind their hooks.
Before, seeing Gwen really was like reading a book. I wanted things to turn out OK, but if they didn't it wouldn't matter, not really.
Now, knowing she is my grandmother, what happens does matter. I'm afraid to see it, afraid for her and for me.
So I keep the closed window and still curtains between us. I concentrate on being Mandy, which is difficult enough.
School's getting harder, and my teachers seem to think I should be able to keep up with all the other kids. I am not going to tell them that twenty minutes of homework for the others means at least an hour for me.
More like two hours in English, where the teacher gives notes nonstop. Sometimes I spend my whole homework time going back and forth on tapes, trying to find something she's said.
No geography, anyway.
One morning the first week in December the geography teacher meets me at the door. "Mandy," he says, "you've been rescheduled and won't be in my class any longer."
He sounds so satisfied, it's all I can do to hold in my anger. Don't hold it in.
"You, you..." I'm almost sputtering with the effort it takes not to call him some awful name, not to use words I don't want anyone to know I know, not to let on I care. "I was keeping up!"
A hand rests on my shoulder, just long enough to get my attention. "Mandy?" says a man's voice. "I hear you could teach this class." Somehow I know he's really saying it to the geography teacher.
The man turns out to be an orientation and mobility instructor named Mr. Burkhart. For the next couple of months I'll be seeing him twice a week during third period and having study hall the rest of the time. "O & M," he says, "that's the name of the game."
He's nice and kind of jokey-loud, and pretty soon I'm thinking of him as the Great Om. I learn more in an hour from him than I can pick up on my own in days.
Big stuff, like how to identify street intersections, deal with traffic, ask people for directions when they don't have a clue where north and south are.
He has me practice things like trailing, following a wall, listening for the water fountain outside the library.
"Snap your fingers, Mandy," Mr. Burkhart says, and I hear how the sound changes as we pass by an open doorway.
He asks questions like "Mandy, how do you search for something you've dropped?"
The answer is very carefully, curved fingers ready to pull back at the first touch of danger, or before I break whatever I'm looking for.
"Mandy," he says, "what are you going to do when you're all alone in a strange
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