On Stilts

She was the only child, she says — she never got to play. Mother put her to work as soon as she could walk, a brand-new list of chores every morning. Pennsylvania Germans were very judgmental, she says, her eyes made enormous by thick glasses. Whenever anything bad happened, it could only be punishment for some slip: the Lord is good.

Now, with both parents dead, she thought she was unlikely ever to go back. But after the surgery, she had to lie prone for two weeks while her eyes refilled with fluid. Short trips to the bathroom were O.K., as long as she didn’t look at anything but the floor. If she tilted her head back just once, the ophthalmologist warned, her eyes might collapse into their sockets. She felt like a slug, complete with retractable eyestalks.

Her husband bought her a laptop & placed it on a chair at the foot of the bed where she could comfortably reach the keys, & she bookmarked pictures of the sky. They helped her fall asleep — a few, difficult hours wrested from the interminable wakefulness. She dreamt of crossing darkened fields & forests on tall stilts, the lamp-lit kitchens of her childhood teetering below.