MAESTRA CLARITA

They knew not to stare, her lids sewn shut, hair combed by breeze, fingers always searching for chalk like a tarantula crossing a banana leaf, and they knew how she moved, homemade cane tapping stoops and posts, scattering chickens down un-named alleys, sandals scraping stones or trudging the mud of tropical winter, the chatter with the student whose day it was to be her eyes as she shuffled to the village elementary.

But mostly they knew to call her Maestra Clarita, a nickname from before the rubella, wedded to respect for her station, for love of “Blind Woman,” the eyes-closed series of games they played, wandering in the dark, the thrill of touch and smell, their bits of English the only way to express it.

Huddled two to a desk, the present lived in the taste of rice-&-beans, the past as Balboa, bearded and armored, slashing across the isthmus, their favorite, “If I Could See,” a journey into the conditional, the waving of palm fronds, the sight of hopping toads and lumbering oxen, the way clay roofs sloped from village to city, where they too might become teachers or Canal engineers, for them the opening of eyes, for her, discovery of another new world, she re-united with her sight.

Richard Krohn