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Show family, are having a picnic on the lawn of the hospital. A bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken sits next to me. Dressed in thin pink pajamas, I look up at the camera, my eyes still crossed, a forced smile on my face. I am alone in the picture, though I imagine my brothers and parents hover close by. Perhaps it is my father who is taking the picture, holding his daughter in the frame the way he has often held her sleeping body as he has carried her to bed. For a long time after my fall, years, I will have to visit the ophthalmologist regularly to have my vision checked. Sometimes he will sit me in front of a giant dish containing an infinite number of lights and ask me to push a button whenever I see a red flare in my peripheral vision. Other times, darkening the room, he will simply hold a bright light in front of my face while I look past his ear and at a wall I cannot see but trust is there. Whenever I visit the doctor, I am asked to tell the story of my fall, and I always hesitate. For while I know which story he wants- the one where I fall through the air but never land-the story that asks to be told, pulls on me impatiently like a small child and begs to be shared, is about the moment when I discovered that I was capable of hurting my father, a mountain of a man, who had come to the hospital to visit his daughter. Instead I talk of double vision, and dizziness, of long moments where I cannot remember what happened, of how it felt to never land. 86 |
