I
. . . .The same day that she realized that she was losing her sight, Aida stormed into the river in a fit of mindless rage.
. . . .She was grasping a young stick in her hand as she scattered the flies that hovered lazily over the surface. She struck at them over and over again until the sapling snapped. She snarled and screamed and swung until Ephraim jumped into the water and took her by the arms.
. . . .“Stop, Aida. You’re scaring the adults,” he said firmly to calm her. Aida looked through the window of her dripping hair, towards the blurry shore where all the men and women were standing like dark wraiths in the scorching sun, batting at the flies with speckled hands while blinking their sightless, milky eyes. Then, she lifted her head to the sky to expose the hot tears that further distorted her vision. When they fell from her face and melted into the water, all she could see were the tiny spheres of light.
. . . .“It’s pretty,” she said, despite herself, and began to cry. Ephraim consoled her by silently stroking the back of her hand as he helped her climb onto the bank.
. . . .The people knew that the blindness came from the river. It was the river that fed and watered the villagers, washed their clothes and provided relief. It was the river that sluggishly slumped along the banks of lion’s-hair grass and slowed into a stagnancy as the land became flat.
. . . .Since she had been very young, Aida had been told that she would go blind. That the insects that bred in the greenish waters would crawl into her skin and grow and grow until they finally reached her eyes and ate them. When that happened, she would finally be an adult. The children would sing and weave the pale Mound flowers into her ashy-black hair while she touched all of their faces to memorize with her hands what her eyes could no longer see. She would owe them her life, because her whole livelihood and locomotion would depend completely on their temporal eyes.
. . . .That was the inevitable and hateful truth of the village.
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