"No Longer Blinded By Our Eyes"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 485, 8 October 1948, Page 17

"No Longer Blinded By Our Eyes"

_ MUST tell you about Kata! This morning when I went to ~~ school I had a surprise. I found all my little sick ones back after their colds and where I had had 20 or 30 infants last week I had about 50 to-day, including two brand new ones; an infinitesimal boy, and, believe it or not, blind Kata! "I expected her to be shy, extra shy, but as I watched her standing just within the door between Ruhi and big Wharepa I had a feeling that she wasn’t, and that her stillness had its source in an alert attention. Moreover, her uplifted face was serene, there was a lilt at the corners of her mouth and her big dark eyes glancing upward from side to side made me think she was watching something. glorious flying. to and fro. I told Ruhi to sit her on a small chair by the fire, thinking from habit that a little new one would be nervous in a desk, and I put the doll in her arms. Then forgetting the urgency of my preparation fow such unexpected numbers, and oblivious of the liquid sound of running voices rising in the room, I stood a moment and watched her. She began at once excitedly to mather the doll, The hands almost quivered with sensitivity as she felt feverishly and lovingly over it. She stroked and patted it just as her own mother must have done, yet much more passionately. This mothering was more intense than anything I had seen in a child, and I must haye handled hundreds in my infant-teaching work, th@®usands I suppose. Kata’s hands seemed to speak. She seemed to have no shyness of us and I thought it must be because she couldn't’ see the strangeness of us. Yet for a while before I had placed the doll in her arms she had plainly felt us. 1 couldn’t have mistaken that absolute stillness of receptivity at the door. And apparently she still felt us. She didn’t apeak as she warded off the heat from the blazing manuka on her bare legs,

--_ ] A Short Story, written for |

|| "The Listener" by

SYLVIA

HENDERSON

and when I told Ruhi to move her further from the fire I felt again the inner alertness. Then I had to get on with my preparation for the other 49. | Later on when I was well under way, I remembered to tell Ruhi, who was the | doll monitor, to get the doll’s bed. She | put it before Kata, but Kata obviously didn’t know, and it was I who put the bed on her knee and said, "This is a bed for the doll, Kata." . At once the sensitive hands started in on it. She began smoothing the mattress | and balancing the stuffing as well as I | could myself with two eyes to aid me. SOON she was talking and laughing happily to herself as I have seen her do down in the pa, and when Rangi with his hooligan blood began to sniggey and | to draw the attention of the others to. laugh at her also, I forgot my patience | learnt over the years of association with | young .children and spoke sharply, | reminding them of the rule not to laugh ) at the very little ones. Not, I realised | with a shock, that Kata would have | known if they had. When playtime came, I let the whole | bubbling, jostling lot out before I went | to Kata to tell her it was time to go out ) to play. But she said clearly, her eyes | flinging to and fro as though following | flying things above her, "I take the doll, | Mrs. Som’set!" "4 But I answered, "No, you can’t oud) the doll, Kata. Not outside." . I knew how long the doll would last outside once the small girls began | quarrelling over it. Besides the toys had. such a way of disappearing once | they passed through the infant room door. And I wanted to preserve my collection of toys for the little ones, to show them how pleasant school could

be. Also the doll that_ Kata had loved half the morning was a_ pre-war doll with sleeping eyes. and they had been off the market for years a ready. Moreover it | was the doll we had. brought home from | Wellington two or three years ago to our own, little girl after I had | * been away from her so, long "lt I didn’t want | it- lost or broken. Kata said instantly, "I Stay by the doll." | But from my hazed inner sight I: took the unfair advantage of authority. I said, "You. must go outside row, Kata, for some sun and fom some cocoa. ‘Leave. the doll here and when) you come back you can |

"Her big dark eyes glancing upward made me. think have it again." she was watching something glorious" (continued on next page)

SHORT STORY (continued from previous page) _ $She gave the doll up at once to Ruhi and said, "I come back to the doll!" Ruhi_ took her out although she didn’t appear to need much taking. Indeed it almost seemed that she could see as she made confidently for the door and the steep steps beyond. And as I watched the small brown fingers feeling sensitively over the door, I realised that the thing stabbing me most sharply about her blindness was this trust in the world about her. N no time she was back, On her own. She felt her way eagerly through the door, her face lifted upward and her eyes flashing from side to side. She said clearly in my direction, "I come back to the doll!" But the sun was outside and we had not had sun like this for weeks, and it seemedito me like flying in the face of God not to send the little ones Into the sun when it came. I felt the necessity of a decision coming -on me. Then suddenly the decision was there readymade. I said, giving her the doll, "Take the doll outside, Kata, and bring it back when you come inside again." It was stimulating the way the child understood and obeyed at once everything that I said. The way /she accepted every decree without question or resentment was a change for me, dealing constantly as I do with little new ones; with their inhibitions of shyness and the crowding conflicting ‘impressions dulling their responses to me.... Ina normal child I would have put down such unquestioning obedience to bullying parents. But Kata’s mother and father were easy-going and gentle. I thought, perhaps, it is because her widest area of impression, her sight, is closed, that her response is so absolute. She became gently hilarious with herself during the second half of the morn7

ing, maintaining a stream of laughter and chatter. She put the doll to bed: she took it out. She took off its bonnet: she put it on herself. She tucked the doll in again: she sang to it: she arranged its pillows tenderly, pushed the bed to and fro like a pram. And all the time her hands fixed and patted feverishly and sensitively, and all the time her face turned upward, always upward,’ her eyes seeming to follow something wonderful above. I paused many times during the noisy business of teaching little ones to watch her: to watch her eyes and marvel at her hands and to say once or twice,

"Softer, Kata. I can’t hear the other children." And each time the crowing voice dropped immediately. Indeed she seemed to be so much at ease that I thought perhaps she could

stand the unfamiliarity of a desk, so I myself took her from the chair before the fire that had been her own spot during the morning and guided her to a desk, feeling that she could also stand the strangeness of my touch, being apparently already at peace with my voice. Again her trust in me hurt. No hesitation; just complete and wondering acceptance., Her bare brown feet turned instantly at my lightest touch on her’ shoulder and felt round the corner of the desk. And when, with the gentlest pressure on her shoulders I said "Sit down, Kata," she sat down as confidently as though she had known there was a seat there and had often sat on it. Then lunch, time came and what should happen but that Ruhi should snatch the doll from her to put it away. "That’s mine!" Scores of brown eyes turned on her at the urgency in her voice, yet her face was still uplifted, her eyes still chasing the darting things above. I myself felt her pain sharply enough until I realised that she was still sitting there, unable to pursue the thief or even to look in her direction. Then I couldn’t bear it.: I tried to speak in the level voice I always keep for excited children, but found myself shouting, "Give it back! She doesn’t know you are only\ putting it away!" Ruhi skipped lightly back across the Toom and replaced the doll.in Kata’s arms, and I said, with overdone gentleness, ‘We are just putting the doll away for lunch time, Kata. When you come back you can have it again." "I come back to the doll!" she said, confidently, as big Wharepa and the others came in ‘to take her wuye to the pa for lunch, HE did come back and we placed the doll in her arms again. But I was so busy during the first half of the after. noog that I hardly noticed © her. Although I can’t say that concerned her. When I called all the new cnes to me for a first reading lesson and had to leave her out she was engrossed in stroking the surface of the desk. And again when we were playing an impromptu game of things that could fly, (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) and I again had to leave her out, she hadthe doll on her back Maori fashioa. And another time she even called mé. "I give. the doll. Mrs. Som’set!" and laid the doll for a moment. in the little new boy’s arms beside her. And as for the second half of the afternoon, well, I confess I seemed to forget ner altogether, Not only was her piesence lost to me beneath the flood tide of conversation, but also I was lost to her.. I was completely absorbed in the strange, brilliantly coloured flying things the children. were , drawing:: darting birds, dragon-flies, flitting fairies, flying angels, shooting stars, butterflies, in abandoned and gorgeous designs. So when she appeared before me with Ruhi at the end of the day I was a little surprised, until she spoke in her clear voice, with the same remarkable absence of nervousness. "I take the doll home, Mrs. Som’set?" But I still couldn’t see, I thought in my pitiable reasoning that I must keep the attraction at school. I want her to love school, I said to myself. I want there to be one exciting place for her to,come to. Besides, to do what she wanted would mean good-bye to an irreplaceable doll. So I replied, "No, you can’t take the doll home, Kata. You can have it again in the morning when you come back." At once she gave the doll up to Ruhi and turning away said, "I come back to the doll!" BYT she didn’t. Some time later I met her mother down in the pa and she told me that the next day om the way to school big Wharepa and the others had left her behind and the pig had chased her and she had run right into a pool... Mud! Mud on her face, mud on her clothes, fnud on her hands and legs... . I couldn’t bear it. I left my kit with Kata’s mother and ran, or tried to run all the way back up to school and got the doll and brought it down to’ the pa, where Kata was sitting on the side of the road listening to the voices and steps going by. I stared a moment at the old rags she was in and at her dirty face and hands, then put the doll in her arms. For an incredulous moment the moving eyes lay still. Then her face lifted and once again the eyes flashed from side to side, filled with rapture at the flitting things above. She spoke, in a voice clear and high with fulfilrhent, "You give the doll, Mrs. Som’set!"