I’m not really sure how to explain it. It’s not that my family doesn’t look how I expected. It’s that they don’t look like anything at all. Or rather, I have no way of knowing which part of the soup of color and movement represents their bodies. Each splash of color bleeds into the next.
I do notice certain movements while Mom is talking. Is that her face? Or is it the ticking grandfather clock on the wall by the door? Or the bubbling goldfish tank? Or any number of other moving objects in the room? I start to feel dizzy again and have to close my eyes. I don’t want to return to the puking.
“I have no idea what you look like,” I say. “I don’t even know what a human being looks like.”
“But you’ve touched people,” interjects Mom. “You know how we are shaped.”
“By touch, yes. Not by sight.”
I hear something slide across the table. “Here, let’s start with a simpler object,” Dad says. “I’ve put it right in front of you. Open your eyes.”
I do. I see a churning mass, each color bleeding into the others.
“Recognize it?” Mom asks.
“That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know where to look. I don’t even know how to look,” I say.
“You sure you don’t know what it is?” says Mom.
“Know what what is?” I retort.
“There, right in front of you!” says Mom, as if by the intensity of her voice she can compel my pupils to focus, to rewire the nerve connection between my retinas and cortex. “Look where I am pointing! With my finger!”
“I don’t think you’re quite getting this. I don’t know where you are pointing. I don’t know what pointing looks like. I don’t know what a finger looks like.”
“You have fingers on your own hand!” says Mom.
She’s right. I do have fingers. I lift my arms, putting my hand out like I am going to shake with a new acquaintance. At the exact same moment I make the movement with my arm, I perceive a shimmer of color, and a resulting surge of nausea passes through me. I gulp down the impulse to throw up again.
That shimmer: It must be my hand. Or my arm. Some part of my body, moving through my field of vision. It is my first glimpse of myself.
I close my eyes again.
“Hold it right in front of my face so I can see it,” I say.
Mom picks up the object, and I sense it just in front of my face. I open my eyes. It’s obvious the scene has changed, but I can’t tell in what way exactly.
“You don’t recognize it?” she asks, shocked.
“Not at all,” I say.
“Touch it,” she says. I put my hands out and touch it. It takes less than a second, less than a millisecond.
“A saltshaker,” I say. “It’s the saltshaker we keep on the kitchen table.”
“This is what I was telling you about before the operation,” says Dad. “Object recognition is not instinctual. You will have to learn how to identify objects by sight in the same way you’ve learned to do it by touch.”
“Oh, hush, Henry,” says Mom. “This is hardly the time for I told you so.”
“Fine, but I did warn him,” says Dad. “Color perception, however, is instinctual. Maybe you should start there?”
“Do we have any Skittles?” I suggest.
Mom’s voice is excited. “Let me get some.”
With my eyes still closed, I hear Mom go fetch a pack of Skittles from the cupboard where she keeps the candy stash. She tears it open and pours its contents—clink clink clink—into a cereal bowl that she places on the table in front of me. I reach in and pick up one of the candies. I hold it under my nose, eyes still closed.
“Lemon,” I say, sniffing.
“Right!” says Mom.
I open my eyes. Every color bubbles in every direction. Which one is the Skittle?
“Hold it closer to your eyes!” suggests Mom.
I close my left eye and move the candy immediately in front of my right. There’s an earthshaking shift of color as I move it so near.
“That’s yellow,” says Mom.
“Yellow,” I repeat, examining the hue. “I always expected yellow would be… quieter.”
Mom and Dad laugh. And then I do, too.
I go through each flavor like this: strawberry (red), orange (the only flavor with the same color as its name), apple (green), and grape (purple). I try to associate each smell and taste with its color so I can remember it. But as soon as I close my eyes, the colors meld into a psychedelic rainbow in my mind, and I can’t remember which one is which.
“Pop quiz,” says Mom, and I look at one of the candies she holds close to my eye.
“Uh…” I say. “Orange?”
“No, it’s green apple,” Mom says, disappointed.
“Go easy on him,” says Dad. “He’s never learned his colors before.”
I practice with Mom and Dad until I can correctly guess the color of the Skittle about half the time.
More important, the dizziness seems to be settling down.
“Let’s try some objects,” Mom says. “Real fruit. Much healthier than candy.”
“I don’t think he’s ready for shapes,” says Dad.