READING BRAILLE

by Mary J. Breen


            In 1952, when I was eight, my mother started calling me a Nosy Parker because I asked too many questions, and snooped in too many places, and listened in on conversations not meant for me. It didn’t help that I was always literally sticking my nose into things because I was very nearsighted, although no one had figured that out yet. My parents just thought little Mary was much too inclined to pry, and she was probably a bit slow to boot. And she squinted too much.
            Our very small family in our very small house in our very small village gave me a hunger for the greener, more interesting pastures that I knew had to be out there, starting with wanting to know what people in other houses did. I had a feeling they had thrilling games to play and thrilling books to read, and boxes of chocolate-covered Christmas cherries every day of the year. I wanted to know if they prayed or sang or played cards together every evening, and if their mothers made wonderful new desserts every single day, and if any of the kids had had scarlet fever, and if their friends were allowed to stay overnight, and if they got smacked a lot, and if they were ever afraid of their mothers or did they all love each other just like Jesus said we should. There was so much to find out.
            So, my mother was right; I was nosy. I prefer to think I was inquisitive. It all comes down to point of view.
            My curiosity was the reason I loved to go visiting on a summer’s afternoon—getting myself invited into friends’ and neighbours’ homes where I could hear their tales and tell them mine, and look around. Their oatmeal cookies and Canada Dry were good too. I loved seeing all those new rooms—kitchens and bathrooms and bedrooms—and all the new things I spotted there.
            For a while, one of my favourite places was a house at the end of our street. Down past a couple of solid yellow brick houses was a small, Easter egg green wooden cottage where two middle-aged sisters lived. I have no memory of their names, just that one of them was blind. Maybe that was why they often wore the exact same dresses.
            They always made me feel welcome. One afternoon, the blind woman was holding a very large book on her lap. I could see that its pages were pale brown, rough-edged, and thick, thicker even than the construction paper we had at school. Even odder, the pages appeared to be entirely blank. I started asking questions about how it was that her book contained no print at all, so she showed me that the pages were imprinted with rows and rows of tiny bumps. This, she said, was Braille, and via these little Braille bumps, she was able to “read” her book. And if I wanted, she would show me. She placed the fingertips of both of her hands together near the middle of the book, and then, leaving her left hand to mark the beginning of the line, she began to slide her other hand along the row of bumps, her fingers moving up and down just a little as they went. With her fingers guiding her, she began to read aloud. I was astonished. I asked more questions, and when she realized how interested I was, she asked her sister to give me one of the many books she had on a nearby shelf. She also gave me a little card showing the combinations of embossed dots that make up the Braille alphabet. “See if you can figure it out,” she said. I was thrilled. I lugged the book home prepared to set about my task, keen to discover the story literally at my fingertips, a kind of message in a bottle from another universe.
            The book was large and heavy, about fifteen inches high and over two feet wide when open, larger even than the Wizard of Oz books from the library. It was as unwieldy as a book of wallpaper samples, and to try to “read” it, I had to lay it on the kitchen table, stand beside it, and hold down its left half with my whole forearm. It smelled like old ashtrays.
            I soon discovered that I had none of this woman’s talent. Identifying the letters by touch proved impossible, so I was reduced to using my eyes. One-by-one, I did my best to find the letters hidden within the clusters of dots. When I thought I might have one—and I decided the letters really should have more space between them—I printed it in pencil in the little spaces below. I managed only a few words, and they didn’t make any sense. Clearly, there was much more to reading Braille than met the eye.
            Not only was trying to “read” the book not fun, I got it in my head that this nice woman needed my help, and she wanted me to print out the whole book for her. When I realized I was hopeless and this meant I’d be letting her down, I stopped visiting her and her sister. Kids can get things so wrong.
            Although I never even figured out the book’s title, it was years before I gave it away. I kept thinking that maybe, someday, I might teach myself to read via my fingertips. I think now that some of the appeal of becoming competent in Braille was that it might give me an advantage over my mother: here was a book she could never read. Not that I could either—yet—but I loved the idea of being able to have something completely unreachable by the prying eyes of a mother who, I was convinced, was rather nosy herself.


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Mary J. Breen is the author of two books about women's health. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in essay collections, travel magazines, health journals, national newspapers, and literary magazines including Brick, The Christian Science Monitor, Ars Medica, Persimmon Tree, and Brevity Blog. She was a regular contributor to The Toast. She lives in Peterborough Ontario Canada where, among other things, she teaches writing.