Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices

24 SAM

If you look real carefully, you can see the scars on my eyes. I was born cross-eyed, and the first operation was done when I was so young I cannot remember. Medically speaking, the procedure involved tightening up the slack muscles that let my eye wander. Invisible stitches, I guess. There’s hardly anything there now, twenty-four years later, except a thin line of film in each eye, like a yellow eyelash. You can see this when I look out the corner of my eye.

Until I had the second operation I wore thick Coke-bottle glasses; round ones that made me look something like a bullfrog or a lawyer. I did not have many friends, and during recess I’d sit alone behind the swings and eat the sandwich my mother had packed in my lunch box. Sometimes the other kids came up, called me four-eyes or crossed their eyes to make fun of me. If I came home from school crying, my mother would bury my face in her apron-it smelled of fresh flour-and tell me how handsome I was. I wanted to believe her, but I couldn’t. I took to looking down at my shoes.

My teachers began to say I was shy, and they called up my mother, concerned. One day my parents told me I was going to have an operation. I would stay in a hospital, and I would have patches on my eyes for a while, and when it was all over my eyes would look just like everyone else’s. Like I said, I do not remember my first operation, but the second is very clear. I was scared it would change the way I’d see things. I wondered if when the bandages were removed, I would look the way I thought I looked. If the colors I saw would be the same.

The day after the operation I heard my mother’s voice at the foot of the bed. “Sam, honey, how do you feel?”

My father touched my shoulder and handed me a wrapped package.-“See if you can tell what it is.” I ripped off the paper and ran my hands along he soft leather folds of a soccer ball. Best of all-I knew exactly what it would look like.

I asked to hold the soccer ball when my bandages were removed. The doctor smelled like aftershave and told me what he was doing every step of the way. Finally he told me to open my eyes.

When I did, everything was fuzzy, but I could make out the black and white boxes of the soccer ball. Black was still black and white was still white. As I blinked, everything started to come clear-clearer than it was before the operation, in fact. I smiled when I saw my mother. “It’s you,” I said, and she laughed.

“Who did you expect?” she asked.

Sometimes when I look in the mirror now I still see my eyes crossed. I’ve dated ladies who tell me how nice my eyes are: the most unusual color, reminds them of the fog in summer, things like that. I let the words roll right off my back. I’m no more handsome than the next guy, really. In a lot of ways I’m still four-eyes, eating lunch behind the swings at school.

My mother burned all the photos she had of me with my eyes crossed. Said we didn’t need a reminder of that around the house, now that I had the operation. So at this point all I have left is this faulty perception, from time to time, and the scars. I also have that soccer ball. I keep it in my closet, because I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you should ever get rid of.