The Postcard by Beverly Lewis Page B

hard for me, too, at your age.”
    “It was?”
    “Oh my, yes.” She remembered the many times her mamma had asked her to stop rutschich —squirming. “That was long before you were born,” Rachel added.
    “How old were you when it started . . . the rutsching, I mean?”
    She had to laugh. “Well, ya know, I was born with the wiggles most prob’ly. Was forever running through your dawdi Benjamin’s farmland—makin’ mazes in the cornfields an’ all. Just ask him.”
    Annie must’ve moved again because Rachel lost hold of the braid. “Ach, where’d you go to?”
    “I’m right here, Mamma. Right in front of you.” There was a long pause, though Rachel heard Annie’s short, breathy sighs. “How much of me can ya see just now?”
    A pain stabbed her heart. “Why do ya ask?”
    “ ’Cause I wanna know.”
    Rachel didn’t know how to begin to tell anyone the truth, let alone her own little girl. And her heart thumped against her rib cage, so hard she wondered if Annie might be able to see her apron puff out.
    “Mamma? Won’tcha tell me what you see?”
    She moaned, resisting the question, not wanting to say one word about her blindness. “I . . . it’s not so easy to tell you what I see and what I don’t,” she began. “If I lift my hand up to your face, like this—” and here she reached out to find Annie’s forehead, allowing her fingers to slip down over the warm cheeks and across to the familiar button nose—“if I do that, I can see you in my own way.”
    “But what if I got up real close to you, like this,” said Annie. “ Then could ya see my face without feeling it?”
    Sadly, Rachel knew enough not to try. “Sometimes I see light flickers, but that’s only on good days. It doesn’t matter, really, how close you sit to me, Annie; I don’t see any part of your face at all.”
    “What about my eyes, if I make them great big, like this?”
    Rachel suspected what her daughter was doing. “Are your eyes as big as moons?” she asked, playing along.
    “Jah, very big moons.” Annie giggled.
    “And are they big and beautiful blue moons?” she asked quickly, hoping to divert Annie’s attention.
    “How’d ya know, Mamma? Jah, they’re blue!” Annie was in her lap now, hugging her neck. “Oh, Mamma, you can see me! You can!”
    She waited for Annie to settle down a bit. “No, I really can’t see your face. But I do know how beautiful and blue your eyes are. I saw you the night you were born, and I saw you every day of your life until . . .”
    “Every day till what, Mamma? Till the accident?”
    Rachel sucked in air suddenly, then coughed. Someone had reminded Annie about the Crossroad, about that horrible day. Surely they had, for her daughter, at only four years of age, would never have remembered without someone prompting her.
    Who?
    It was then that she actually tried to force herself to see, that very moment as she pulled her darling girl into her arms, holding her close. She tried so deliberately that it hurt, like knowing there was surely a light at the end of a long, long dark tunnel. Knowing this only because people told you it was there, and trying so hard to see it for yourself.
    Leaning forward . . . straining, with Annie still tight in her embrace, Rachel strove to catch a glimpse of the minuscule, round opening—the light—at the end of the blackness, her blackness. At the end of the pain.
    “Why can’t you see, Mamma?”
    “I . . . well . . .” She couldn’t explain, not really. How could she make her daughter understand something so complicated?
    “Mamma?”
    She felt Annie’s tears against her own face. Oh, her heart was going to break in two all over again if she didn’t put a stop to this. “Now, ya mustn’t be cryin’ over nothing at all,” she said, stroking the tiny head.
    “I won’t cry,” Annie said, sniffling. “I promise I won’t, Mamma, if you won’t.”
    Again, the pain cut a blow to her heart. How did Annie know about Rachel’s