Traveling Blind by Susan Krieger

Author:Susan Krieger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781557535573
Publisher: Purdue University Press

Chapter 8

Are You Training that Dog?

In the supermarket, I am carrying a basket with my jar and a few other items up to the checkout counter. I’m remembering the time I bought sauerkraut thinking it was applesauce. I am more careful to study labels now. I put my groceries on the moving rubber counter, holding Teela close at my side. As the clerk begins to ring me up, I hear a woman behind me in line speaking to my back. “Are you training that dog?” she asks. I flinch, feeling frozen to the spot. How do I answer her? Why does she assume from my back that I can see? Why is she talking to my back? I wonder. I am suddenly angry. I let a silence hang in the air, hoping the woman will come to her senses. Then I turn around. “I’m blind,” I say. “She’s guiding me.”

“Oh how nice for you, dear,” the woman says. “It must be a real help to have her.”

“Yes it is,” I answer, smiling, and turn to face the clerk.

“What’s my total?” I ask him, since I can’t read the amount on the electronic screen. In answer, he points to the screen.

“I can’t see it,” I elaborate.

He shakes his head, as if I should be making more of an effort. I can see his gestures because he is close to me and large, while the small, fine lines on the screen blur away.

“Can you please read the amount to me?” I finally ask him. He takes a breath, expels some air in a gesture of exasperation, and reads me my total. As I begin to sign my name on the credit card receipt, he moves my hand up higher on the paper. I am convinced I can sign anywhere, that the exact spot does not matter, but I don’t say anything. I move the pen to where he points on the scrap of paper and sign. I am thinking now about how accustomed I have become to using my credit card even for small amounts, because it is awkward for me to make change. It takes me longer than others to identify my bills and coins, and to manage Teela with my other hand, and I don’t want to hold up the line. The incident with the clerk takes my mind off the “training that dog” question, though the woman who asked is still behind me.

On another day, I am walking past some stores. A man comes toward me and stops me. “Are you training that dog?” he asks. He seems concerned. Still, I feel he is prying, looking into my eyes. “No, she’s already trained, she’s guiding me,” I say, walking on.

I go home and look at myself in the bathroom mirror, staring at my eyes, trying to see what others see. Outside, I put on my dark glasses, thinking they will protect me from people seeing my eyes, noticing that they move and seem to focus, and then asking me,

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