Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [28]
Once when I was small, our mother was teaching me to shell peas. They bounced out through my fingers, and when I reached for them I upset the whole basket. Then I cried, and my mother would have let me go and play on the grass, but my father made me crawl round and pick every pea up off the floor, and then wash the dust off them, for he said he knew I could do whatever I set my mind to. And he was right. But tonight when he was putting on his greatcoat to go to Meeting, he didn't seem so sure.
I bury my face under the blanket and I make up pictures of things that cannot be. A town with seven windmills, and wolves with hair as long as sheep have, and a well in the woods that will make anything dipped in it grow. Sometimes in my imaginings I take a wrong turning, and scare myself. Then my thoughts feed on each other like worms in the black ground, but I must bite my thumb and lie still and not disturb the others, because we are so many in one room.
I remember the last three being born. We all heard, through the wall, though we pretended not to. Our mother doesn't make half as much noise as most women, I heard the midwife say. I know I will never make that noise. I am a girl much like other girls, but 111 not grow up to be a woman like other women. Who would have a blind wife if he could help it? But I am a great help with the little ones, our mother says. I've never dropped one yet.
I was just learning to talk when the smallpox got me, so Eliza says. Before that I could see, though I don't remember it. All I have is a sense of what seeing means, and what a colour might feel like.
Some of the Elders told my father that by rights I should not have lived after I was blinded. My father told my mother what was said, and she cried; they didn't know I was listening. And another time when my father asked the Minister the reason for my blindness, he was told it might be a punishment from the Almighty for some sin my parents had committed. But they couldn't think which sin that might have been.
I have a handful of pocks over my eyebrows still; I finger them sometimes, to remind me. The Minister must be wrong. Didn't I live, when bigger children died of the same fever? This must mean that I have been chosen for something. There must be another future for me, if I'm not to be a woman like other women and have twelve children. If I do not grow up to be a poet, then what does it all mean?
A heavy step on the path at last: Father. I hear the tired squeak of the latch. My mother stands up to greet him, and the chair rocks like a branch in high wind.
The voices behind the wall are low, as if telling of a death, but I cannot make out the words. When I sit up, cold air worms its way into the bed; Martha burrows down deeper.
How can I wait till morning?
Tabby wakes when I clamber over her, and mutters something, but I put my hand over her mouth to shush her.
The floor is cold. My nightshirt shifts in the draught as I pull open the door to the kitchen. It makes a terrible creak.
"Franny?" says my mother.
I can smell the fire, and fresh mud on my father's boots. At times like these I wish I could read faces. How can I know what way he is looking at me?
"Here."
I think he's smiling.
I walk towards his voice with my hand out. Something hard stops my fingertips: a book. I take its weight into my hands and feel its cover; it is not one I know.
"Its called The Odyssey. Mr. McGranahan says if you bring it in to school tomorrow he'll teach you the first line."
I turn my face away so as not to wet the paper.
"Go to sleep, now," says my mother.
Note
"Night Vision" is about the childhood of Frances Brown or Browne (1816–70), known as the Blind Poetess of Donegal, who went on to become a successful novelist in London, living with her younger sister and amanuensis. The best source of information on her is Brenda O'Hanrahan's Donegal Authors: A Bibliography (1982). I have also used the autobiographical sketch