Alyssa Frierson

PLAYING IN THE DARK

Lyla sat on the vinyl-covered mattress in the unfamiliar room. She touched the thin blanket, picked up a corner of it, and held it to her nose. That was the only way she could see things anymore, and even then she could only tell color and basic shapes and outlines. She thought the blanket was dark orange. Maybe red or brown.

She reached to her left for the blanket she'd brought with her. It was the one her mother had made for her-- blues and purples. She wrapped it around her body. Even though it was the middle of August, she was freezing. She didn't want to bump around in the room to find the dresser or the closet, and she couldn't remember where her father said he had put her sweatshirts.

It felt like hours since her father had left.

"This is your room," Mr. Julio, the head of the dorm staff, said in his Hispanic accent as Lyla and her father followed him through the door and into the cold and musty-smelling room. "your roommate's name is Jenna Hampton. She's out with her parents now, but she'll be back later. I'll let you get settled. I'll come back later and see how you're doing, or I'll be in my office if you need me. Just make a right when you come out of your room, Lyla, and make a left when you reach the end of the carpet. My office is straight ahead; you'll probably be able to smell the coffee."

"Thank you," her father said.

After Mr. Julio left, Lyla's father sighed and said, "Well, let's get you unpacked."

Her father told her where he was putting things, but she wasn't listening very carefully. Lyla was his only daughter; she still couldn't believe he was leaving her here. Her mother never would have let him leave her like this.

"Bye, honey. I love you." That was the last thing he'd said to her before leaving her alone. It was his idea to send her to the school for the blind. He said they could teach her things here he couldn't, but Lyla couldn't help wondering if it hurt him too much to look at her because she looked like her mother.

Lyla heard the doorknob rattle and automatically turned her head towards the door. "Hello?" she called instinctively.

Someone banged through the doorway and over to where she thought the other bed was. "Hi," came a female voice. Lyla heard the rustle of plastic bags and the girl drop something on the bed. "I'm Jenna." Jenna started walking towards where Lyla was sitting. "I'm your roommate."

"Hi. I'm Lyla."

Jenna sat beside Lyla. "I haven't seen you around here before. Are you new?"

"Yeah."

"Are you excited about starting classes tomorrow?"

"I'm nervous. This is all really new to me."

"You haven't been blind your whole life?"

"No."

"How'd you become blind?"

Lyla hesitated. "I was in an accident. About eight months ago."

Oh." Jenna changed the subject. "What's your first class tomorrow?"

Lyla felt a little embarrassed, but she thought maybe she shouldn't be. "Well, they gave me the schedule in Braille, and I only know a few letters," she admitted.

"Can I see it?"

Lyla reached to her right and felt for the ledge above the bed. She found the paper, held it out to Jenna, shook it a little, and let go when she felt the weight of Jenna's hand on it. She heard Jenna's fingers racing over the dots on the page. "Your first two classes are Reading and English with Mrs. Jackson. Then you have Mobility with Mr. Larson, Technology with Mr. Jackson, Math with Miss Lambert, and another mobility lesson." It sounded like an overwhelmingly full day to Lyla.

"Are Mr. and Mrs. Jackson related?"

"They're husband and wife. They're both great."

"Have you been going here long?"

"Since first grade."

"Wow."

"I like your hair."

Lyla had asked the girl who cut her auburn hair to give her long bangs so no one could see the scar on her forehead from the accident. Her father had helped her pull it into a ponytail this morning.

"Thanks." Lyla was a little confused. She wondered how much Jenna could see. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Can you see?"

"I can see a little. Not enough to drive or read regular-sized print or anything."

There was a knock at the door. "Girls?" A female staff member poked her head in the doorway. Lyla could see the light from the hallway behind her head, and she could tell she had long dark hair. "Dinner's in about half an hour."

"Okay, Ms. Scarlet," Jenna replied.

Lyla heard the door shut. "Who was that?"

"Ms. Scarlet. She's one of the dorm staff. She's really sweet. She'll call you honey and baby all the time. It's just part of who she is; she calls everyone that." They were quiet for a few moments. "I'm going to go take a shower before dinner." Lyla heard Jenna rummage around in a drawer across the room and then heard the bathroom door close behind her.

Lyla touched the corner of the blanket that was still wrapped around her. She thought about her mother. It had been almost eight months since the accident. Lyla could still remember how her mother smelled of lilacs. She still heard her mother singing the version of "Hello Dolly" she sang when Lyla came home from school every day.

Hello, Lyla

Well hello, Lyla

It's so nice to have you home where you belong.

Lyla lay on the flat pillow and closed her eyes. She felt almost as afraid as she had after the accident. She ha d walked cautiously around her house for months, but this place was unfamiliar, and people here would expect her to do things she hadn't been made to do since she'd lost her sight. The next thing she knew Ms. Scarlet was standing beside her bed. "It's time for dinner. Are you all right, honey?"

Lyla concentrated on the directions Mr. Larson was giving her. He had a rough, barking voice. He was helping her find Mrs. Jackson's classroom. "Use your hand and follow the wall to the drinking fountain." Lyla put the back of her hand against the cinder block wall to her right. "Cup your fingers a little more." She did and slowly, cautiously started walking towards the low hum of the drinking fountain. "When you reach the drinking fountain, you'll make a left. The door will be straight in front of you." Lyla turned left when she reached the drinking fountain and let her hand fall to her side. "Stop." Mr. Larson put his large hand on her shoulder. "Use the upper body protective technique I showed you this morning." Lyla didn't remember how she was supposed to position herself for the upper body protective technique. She had been shown so many new things today, and Mr. Larson had gone over so many techniques and positions with her that morning that her brain felt like scrambled eggs. She stuck her arm straight out at shoulder-level and pointed her fingers upward. She took a step forward, but Mr. Larson stopped her. He repositioned her arm so that it was bent at the elbow and her right hand hovered just above her left shoulder. "Okay, go."

Lyla walked forward and stopped when her arm hit a wooden door after a few steps. "Reach up and to the right." She did and found the plastic plate displaying the room number in raised print and Braille. She traced her fingers over the printed numbers: 132.

"Okay, we're out of time for the day. Take me back to the entrance to the building, and I'll walk you to the dorm."

Lyla walked back across the hall to the drinking fountain. She put the back of her hand against the wall and followed it to the carpets in front of the exit. "Cup your fingers more," Mr. Larson reminded her. As she cupped her fingers and turned left at the carpet, she wondered when she was going to get to learn to use a cane like Jenna and the other students.

"Night, Lyla." Jenna called from across the room a few days later.

"Good night." Lyla replied.

Lyla pulled the blanket her mother had made tighter around her. She remembered her mother's soft hands and clear blue eyes. She wondered for the millionth time why her mother hadn't survived the accident. Lyla closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

In her dreams, Lyla relived the accident. She was in the passenger's seat because her mother didn't trust her to drive on the slick roads. She'd agreed, since she'd only had her license a few months and it was the first big snow of the season.

There was a sign up ahead, but Lyla didn't see what it said before they hit the black ice. She closed her eyes and heard screeching brakes, her mother's screams, her own screams, and a crash and breaking glass.

She woke up in the hospital with a bandage across her forehead and unable to see the television mounted on the wall.

"Lyla?" Her father's voice said quietly. He was sitting beside her bed.

"Daddy? Where's Mom?"

"Honey," his hand was cold on her arm. "she didn't make it."

"What do you mean she didn't make it? Of course she made it! She's fine; she has to be!"

"Lyla," his voice broke just saying her name. "I wish I could… I wish… She's gone, Lyla."

Lyla started screaming.

"Lyla," someone was shaking her. "Lyla? It's Jenna. Are you okay?" Lyla sat up, trying to shake herself out of her dream.

"Girls, what's the matter?" a female voice asked. Lyla heard the door open. Suddenly someone else's hand was on her shoulder. "Lyla? What's wrong?"

Lyla couldn't speak. She just sat clinging to her blanket with tears rolling down her cheeks.

When Lyla finally got a cane into her hands a few weeks later, it felt strange. She hadn't asked to really see Jenna's or anyone else's cane to get an idea of what it looked like. She didn't know how they walked with it. All she knew was that when Jenna wanted to go somewhere, she grabbed her cane and was off as if someone had lit a fire under her. Lyla wanted what a cane seemed to give everyone else.

"Place your first finger along the flat part of the grip," Mr. Larson instructed. The grip was the rubber-covered top part of the cane. "Wrap your last three fingers around the rounded part, and let your thumb rest on top."

"Is this right? It feels funny."

"That's right. Move your hand up a little." Lyla moved her hand up, but it still felt funny. She knew it would take a while for her fingers to get used to being positioned like that. She kept wanting to hold it like a golf club.

"Put it out in front of you," Mr. Larson instructed. "Let's work on clearing. Sweep it from side to side and make sure the tip is in front of your foot before you take a step. If you're starting with your right foot forward, the tip of the cane should be in front of your left foot."

Lyla tried, but Mr. Larson stopped her a few times. Her feet wanted to move faster than the tip of the cane. She was pretty sure she looked like some kind of wounded bird the way her elbow flapped at her side as she moved the cane back and forth. Mr. Larson wanted her to move the cane by moving her wrist and keeping her elbow at her side, but she couldn't get the hang of it.

Mr. Larson eventually gave her so many instructions and corrected her so many times that Lyla stopped and refused to move another step. She was beyond frustrated. It was all too hard. She couldn't use a cane correctly the way everyone else could. Braille was hard because eventually all the dots ran together and she couldn't distinguish the letters from one another. Technology class was hard because she had trouble understanding the speech output software on the computers. She wanted to give up and go home. She wondered what her father would do if she called him and told him that. He probably would insist that it was better that she stay. She wondered if he was still sleeping on the couch every night the way he had ever since her mother died. Lyla let the question of what her mother would say enter her mind and stay there. Her mother would have been calling her every day, telling her how proud she was and encouraging her to keep going. But if her mother were still able to say those things, there never would have been an accident, and there would be no reason for Lyla to be here at all.

"Are you all right?" Mr. Larson's voice interrupted her thoughts. His hands were on both of her shoulders and he was bent down in front of her. Lyla realized she was crying.

Lyla heard the piano for the first time the week after she had started to use the cane. She walked through the double doors of the dorms, not caring that she wasn't clearing every step she took or that her elbow flapped at her side. At least her finger positioning was right.

Lyla stopped at the bottom of the small set of stairs that led into the room where the piano music came from. She didn't bother to pull her cane up into the proper position for going up steps; she let it drag beside her. "Hello," she called out as she walked closer to the piano.

"Hi," came a male voice.

"Are you playing?"

"Yes."

"You're really good."

"Thanks." He was playing "I'd do Anything" from the musical "Oliver!", and as the song ended he started playing notes that didn't seem like they were part of a song, and then he started playing "Hello Dolly."

Lyla swallowed.

"Did you want to play?" the boy asked. Lyla thought his voice sounded a little familiar, but she couldn't place where she'd heard it before. She guessed that he was about her age and height from where his voice came from.

"Oh, I don't play. My mother used to, but I never learned."

"I could teach you," he offered.

Lyla didn't know what to say.

"Are you still there?" he asked.

" Oh, yes. Sorry. I'd love to learn to play. Thank you." Lyla paused to take a breath.

"But how come I haven't heard you playing before?"

He switched to a slower song. "The piano had to be tuned. What's your name?"

"I'm Lyla."

"I'm Peter."

His name sounded familiar, too, though it was a common name. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that she should know him. Then he coughed, and she remembered why he was familiar. "Do you have technology in the morning with Mr. Jackson?"

"Yes."

"I do, too. I think we kind of sit on opposite sides of the room, though."

"Yeah, I think so."

"Well, it's nice to meet you."

"You, too." There was a beat of silence, both in the room and in the music. "Well, Lyla. I'll teach you how to play, but you've got to learn to use your cane properly."

"What?"

"I heard how it dragged when you were coming up the steps. And I've heard Ms. Scarlet's still walking you from the dorm to class every morning."

"Yes, she is."

"Don't you think that's got to stop, too?"

"It will stop!"

"When?"

Lyla felt uncomfortable all of a sudden. She took a deep breath and let it out. "So you'll teach me how to play if I walk to class by myself and use my cane the right way?"

As they lay in their beds with the lights out that night, Lyla asked Jenna about Peter. "Do you know him?"

"Yeah." Jenna responded cheerfully.

"So, he's okay."

"Yeah. Peter and I go way back. He's a good guy. When I first came here, he was the only other new student. That bonded us together and immediately gave us something in common other than not being able to see. Why'd you ask?"

Lyla recounted the events from earlier that afternoon to Jenna, and Jenna reassured her that she had nothing to worry about when it came to Peter. "Peter's really generous. He's always offering to help people," Jenna told her.

"So I should take him up on his offer to teach me the piano?"

"If you want to," Jenna replied, yawning.

"Okay, thanks."

"Sure. Night, Lyla."

"Good night."

The following Friday, Lyla asked Ms. Scarlet to meet her at Mrs. Jackson's classroom. She had been working on the route with Mr. Larson for over a week, and she wanted to see if she could make it there by herself.

"All right, honey," Ms. Scarlet agreed.

Lyla pushed through the heavy double doors of the dorm, crossed over the thick mats outside the doors, and went straight on the concrete. She could feel the smoothness of the concrete as the tip of her cane scraped against it.

She felt her cane hit against a brick wall, and knew she was going the right way. She stepped forward a few paces and her cane clanged against and got stuck under one of the metal picnic tables outside of the cafeteria. She started to sweat a little. The picnic tables always frustrated her and held her up when she worked on this route with Mr. Larson. But she was determined to get to class on her own, so she backed up and went a little to the left. She tried to be patient each time her cane got tangled in the metal picnic tables and kept the sound of the piano in her head. She finally made it to the end of the picnic tables and kept going straight. When she smelled the petunias planted opposite the picnic tables and hit grass, she made a right. She went through the doors of the General Education building and followed the wall to the drinking fountain. She made a left.

"Good job, baby. You did it," Ms. Scarlet said. Lyla beamed.

Lyla was ecstatic to tell Peter of her accomplishment, and she walked eagerly towards the sound of the piano that afternoon. She held her cane up in front of her as she went up the steps. "Peter?"

"Hi, Lyla."

"Peter, I did it! I made it from the dorm to my first class all by myself. And did you hear my cane when I came up the steps?"

"You did it right." She heard Peter smile. "Congratulations."

"Will you still teach me how to play?"

"Absolutely. Have a seat. I'll help you find Middle C."

Alyssa Frierson holds a bachelor's in Creative Writing from Missouri State University. "Playing in the Dark" is her first published story and is partly inspired by her experiences at summer school at the Kansas State School for the Blind.