What Love Sees Read Online Free PDF Page B

were probably red and puffy. Lorraine’s voice sounded kind. Maybe it was okay to tell her. “Is anybody else here?”
    “No.”
    “The principal sent his secretary out to get me from my first class this morning.”
    “What did old pudding-face want?”
    She laughed even though a moment earlier she was afraid she’d cry. “I’m excused from science and math.”
    “Lucky you! What’s wrong with that?”
    “Nothing, I guess, only the way it happened. Mr. Collins is my math teacher and he said, right in front of me, like I was a piece of furniture, ‘Frankly, I can’t see how she can ever learn math.’ Only I was sitting right there. He could have at least talked to me instead of about me. I felt like telling him I’m not deaf or dead. Only blind.”
    “Did you?”
    “No.”
    “You should have. Just because he’s a teacher doesn’t mean he knows everything. He’s really the one that’s blind.”
    Jean dipped her head. She wasn’t sure whether the hard lump in her throat was because Mr. Collins was insensitive or because Lorraine was the opposite. She tried to think of something else to talk about. “Today in English Miss Fitzsimmons read another poem. We knew it was coming. She started like she always does, squeaking out, ‘Here’s yet another treasure from the literary giants of New England.’” Jean tried to mimic her. “It didn’t make any difference. I still heard George Jameson snore behind me.”
    “He doesn’t snore in German class.”
    “Of course not. There’s more to Miss Jennings than Miss Fitzsimmons. Who can be afraid of a squeak? What’s Miss Fitz look like, anyway?”
    “Like a pencil. Her face is as tall as she is and her hair’s turning gray. She’s not very pretty.”
    “Too bad. I wonder if she’ll always be Miss Fitzsimmons.”
    “Always? She’s already an old maid, Jean.”
    “But she doesn’t sound old. She just sounds small.” It was another shocker, like her blue canary.
    That winter Lorraine told her, “I’m going to learn how to write Braille.”
    “You are? Whatever for?”
    “So I can Braille the German lit book for you. I got a punch and the right kind of paper and I signed up for lessons downtown.”
    Jean’s mouth opened, but no words came out for a moment. She shook her head slightly and her eyebrows drew together. “But, Lorraine, it’ll take you forever. You don’t have to do that. Miss Jennings never expected that, and I don’t.”
    “I know.” Lorraine’s voice sounded like a bird, so simple, as if what she was saying was as commonplace as saying “I caught a worm this morning.”
    Jean went home that day in a daze. No one had ever done anything that took so much time, just for her. Lorraine seemed suddenly older, even older than Tready. Maybe her plain home life had done it. Jean remembered Father talking about the Depression one evening and she wondered out loud how it would affect Lorraine.
    “Destined to work on the line at the parts factory,” he said. “Soon she’ll be happy to spend days rolling ball bearings around on mirrors to detect flaws.”
    “Father!” she started, but as usual, didn’t know how to counter him. He obviously knew more of the world than she did. “That’s a horrible thing for Lorraine to have ahead of her.”
    “Why?”
    “Because…” She felt her insides wither, felt his indifference, his superiority cross the dinner table between them. “Because she doesn’t deserve that.”
    “The world doesn’t hand out just what people deserve, Jean. You ought to know that.”
    She ought to know that. She ought to know that. That didn’t make it right. Didn’t make it so you couldn’t care. But her throat dried and she couldn’t say any more. Not to him.

Chapter Four
    In the spring of 1934 Jean invited Lorraine to Hickory Hill for a Saturday. When she told her parents ahead of time, Mother said, “Well, I suppose that would be all right. She’s done a lot to help you in class.”
    It was a comment