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busy angering Velvet. God. All she knew was that she was somewhere
between the Castro and the Blind Eye office in the Flood Building
downtown. What was she going to do?
Yoshi tried to fight off the terror sneaking up on her. She hated
this. She hated being so damn vulnerable. Hot tears stung her eyes. She
swiped angrily at them. Get it together.
She was a smart, strong, independent Asian woman. She could
do this. A woman blind from birth had run the grueling thousand-mile
Iditarod through the Alaskan tundra. By God, the least Yoshi could
do was navigate her way to some place familiar. Then again, a half
dozen seeing-eye Huskies had accompanied Rachael Scdoris on her
adventure, and the only dangerous predators Scdoris had to contend
with were polar bears. They might be voracious hunters, but they were
nothing compared to the predators loose on San Francisco streets.
Everyone knew to stay away from polar bears; even Yoshi wouldn’t
ask a wild animal for directions. But human predators were much more
difficult to detect. And defend against.
She should not travel downhill. Doing so might point her directly
at San Francisco’s shadier neighborhoods, the Tenderloin or Bayview.
Depending on where she was to begin with, strolling uphill should steer
her back toward the Castro neighborhood or to Nob Hill. Either would
be preferable to the other options.
Yoshi returned the cell phone to her purse and pulled out the white
telescoping cane. At least she had that with her. Remembering that
Velvet had pulled over to the right to let her out, she started walking
back the direction they’d come. She tapped her way to the end of the
block where her cane dipped off the curb.
Most of San Francisco’s intersections were not equipped with the
chirping jangle that indicated to the blind when to walk and when to
stop. This was just one reason Yoshi preferred a friendly cab service
• 93 •
DIANE AND JACOB ANDERSON-MINSHALL
that could take her directly where she wanted to go. These days, she
limited walking to situations where she had the advantage of familiarity,
having mapped them in her memory from years past.
Now Yoshi waited nervously at the corner of a street she did
not recognize, listening to the sound of cars driving through the
intersection. The traffic parallel to her seemed to flow through the
intersection without stopping. This meant there was no stop sign. Yoshi
waited a little longer. She still had not heard cars slow or idle and she
determined, therefore, that there was no signal light either. Thus, the
traffic on the street perpendicular must have a stop sign and would need
to come to a stop before continuing through the intersection.
Yoshi cautiously stepped off the curb. When no drivers responded
by honking or shouting warnings, she hurried across the street. It seemed
a very long time before her cane bumped against the far curb and she
stepped back on safer ground. When she did, she felt as triumphant as if
she had crossed the distance on a tightrope strung high in the air.
It was merely one lone street, and yet it served to restore her
confidence. I can do this. Now the statement was made with conviction,
instead of as a positive-thinking mantra meant to reassure herself. She
could successfully traverse the streets of San Francisco, using her
senses to deduce when it was safe to cross. But, she thought as another
wave of trepidation washed over her, could she truly navigate? Just
because she could walk down sidewalks and cross streets did not mean
she knew where she was heading. And what if she was attacked? Could
she defend herself?
If her father were with her now, he would not tolerate her self-
doubt. Hiroki Yakamota had insisted she learn defensive moves in
preparation for just such a situation. He had enrolled her in karate,
kickboxing, judo, and jujitsu, hoping to find one at which she was
particularly skilled. An image came to her of her adult self shrunken
to age seven or eight, wearing her white karate gi, standing with other
children her age on a padded floor. Her father stood against the wall
of the gym, the look on his face clearly conveying an odd mixture of
disappointment, bemusement, pride, and love.
Yoshi could almost hear him speaking to another parent, his
Japanese accent still thick after a decade in the United States: See the
girl with the long dark hair? The one who lost every match? She’s my
daughter. I am so proud of her. She is simply awful. But she never quits.
I love that determination.
• 94 •
BLIND LEAP
She had never excelled at any one discipline, but she had mastered
specific moves. Eventually she had combined the moves she was good
at into an amalgamation of her own. But she had not practiced in many
years, and though practitioners of the ancient arts employed all of their
senses, she had not personally used the defensive tactics since losing
her eyesight. Who knew if she would lose her balance or lash out
aimlessly, connecting with nothing while her opponent danced around
her, easily overpowering her defenses? The prospect was frightening.
During the Rosemary Finney case, and again at the recent hip-
hop concert, she had been completely overwhelmed by the sense of
helplessness that had been stalking her for years. Yoshi had begun to
worry that she could no longer do her job alone. Perhaps her future
lay not in direct, hands-on investigation, but rather in administrative
support for her investigative team. She would give up the only job she
had ever loved.
But tonight, tonight she was beginning to think otherwise. Perhaps
Velvet’s abandonment was a much-needed wake-up call to shake her
out of her incessant reliance upon others. This could be the incentive
she needed to reconnect with her self-reliance and shed the tedious role
of the helpless disabled person.
She had heard about a new television program that featured a
blind man who designed houses. If he could do that, why couldn’t she
continue investigating? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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