Blind Spot
by Carol Fischbach
Soumya Netrabile, The Rise of the Conspiracists, oil on canvas, 16x20 inches, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
Blind Spot
Carol Fischbach / Nov 2021 / Issue 11
Something outside the back of the house had moved, caught my attention. I carried a mug of coffee to the patio door, watched morning light filter through hemlock and fir and cedar branches, blanketing the large, landscaped partly wooded yard. Morning dew nestled on ferns, new coils unfolding in spring after being dormant all winter, mist layered the back deck, steam rose from the path that meandered back and forth through the yard and up to the fence line.
I scanned the grasses and ferns and Oregon grape ivy and the slanted tree that grew nearly horizontal to the ground where racoons ran up and down the trunk, mom, dad, and babies. There, just below that tree—cradled in the greens and yellows and earth browns, coiled in foliage—was a baby deer. A white-spotted fawn, a soft lump just a few feet from the back deck. Head resting on folded legs, eyes closed, peaceful, asleep. A seedling barely planted.
She blended in with the faded bark dust, lay tucked in between fiddlehead ferns and blooming heather and ivy vines with hand-sized leaves where rats made nests under them, or so my neighbors told me.
Johann came up behind me, his arms snaked under my breasts, around my belly, I leaned back into his six-foot frame, his chin rested on top of my head. Look, I said, and pointed to the fawn. I don’t see her mother. I twisted around to look up at him. Saw the small circles of his faded denim eyes squinting, skimming over the yard. I’d never noticed how small his pupils were.
Maybe he’d spot the mother.
He didn’t.
We wondered between us if the fawn had been abandoned. Was she okay? Where was her mama? What should we do? Johann left the room, took the warmth with him, maybe to do some research about baby deer. He seldom told me what he was up to. I had stopped asking.
The fawn didn’t move. Her eyes were closed, her chest rose and fell like a gentle breeze. I scanned the yard again for mama. No sign.
Johann’s muffled voice drifted in, maybe he was making a call somewhere, animal rescue, forest service.
What if mama didn’t come back?
A baby deer, possibly abandoned, was asleep on my half landscaped, half wild and wooded yard, this piece of land with a single-family home, a home my estranged husband still paid for, a home with just me, a non-mama, a kitty mama, living there alone without a family, just a boyfriend who occasionally stayed overnight, less and less often, barely once a month, a boyfriend for whom I had traded a reliable husband, and the deal had not been a good one.
Deer. Animals of prey. Pathfinders who look for easy trails. Easy food in landscaped yards. Light footed—can easily clear a six-foot fence. Mine was four-foot.
When Johann got off the phone he told me that animal rescue said mama deer often leave their babies in a safe place to go feed. They leave them so predators won’t follow their mama scent to the young.
Baby deer have no scent.
Mama deer won’t take them along to feed until the young are strong enough to stand on their own. Until they can run from predators.
But bobcats and cougars are all around, I said.
The experts told Johann that mama deer won’t leave unless it’s safe. He was sure before she went to feed that she’d looked all around, sniffed the air, listened for predator sounds.
Deer eyes are ten times the size of a human’s and are situated on the sides of their head with horizontal pupils that provide a 310˚ field of vision so they don’t have to move their head to see what’s around them. If they’re not looking at you, it doesn’t mean they don’t see you.
Their blind spot is only 50˚compared to humans who have a 180˚ blind spot. Deer can detect predators and spot escape routes. Prey animals have exceptional horizontal vision but their straight-ahead vision is out of focus.
Johann said the mama might be gone more than a few hours. But she’ll come back, he said they said.
Most predators have forward facing eyes with either vertical pupils (like cats) or circular pupils (like coyotes) which gives them greater depth perception and allows them to judge the distance between themselves and their prey.
Johann was planning to leave the next day. Sunday. End of weekend. Maybe I could get him to stay another day. I always tried to get him to stay another day. At the very least, maybe he’d promise to come out next weekend.
She’s probably not that far away, Johann said. She’ll be listening.
Deers’ twitchy ears hear above and below human frequencies. Their ears rotate so they can accurately assess where sounds originate. They can distinguish between squirrels playing, whispers of hunters, the approach of predators.
Johann lived three hours away.
I hadn’t heard him say anything about next weekend.
He never planned ahead.
Deer have an “elite” sense of smell with millions of nerve cells grouped together in their nasal passages. Each nerve group is assigned one single smell. Each smell is attached to an experience. If they smell humans and have had a bad experience, they are always on alert when they smell them.
The fawn’s mama chose my yard. Just a few feet from my patio door. Maybe she associated my smell with a good experience.
Or maybe I had no scent and it was Johann’s musky smell that made her feel safe.
Neighbors called him the dog whisperer. When he took long walks up and down the hills in our gated, wooded community, every time he encountered a dog, the animal fell at his feet, rolled over to expose its belly, tongue hanging out, eyes pleading to be touched.
My kitties followed him around the house, climbed in his lap whenever he sat down, rolled over on their backs. Waited to be petted. The megahertz of their purrs vibrated the air.
We’ll wait and see if the mother comes back, Johann determined.
He left for a walk and I pulled out my anatomy book to study for an upcoming test. Anatomy was a prerequisite for dental hygiene school and nursing school.
I was sixty years old. Ten years older than Johann. Ready to begin again. A last new beginning. No more time to wait. Soon I’d have to pay all the bills.
Years ago I had worked in dentistry—for nearly eighteen years. Before their divorce, Johann and his ex had managed dental practices. We could manage dental practices together, I told Johann. Sure, he said, then changed the subject.
When I was young, I wanted to be a nurse.
After a while, when names and illustrations of muscles and bones and nerve endings balled together in my brain, I got up and checked the fawn. She was still there. Occasionally she woke up and looked around, tried to stand on shaky legs, then flopped back down and slept some more.
Anatomy class was hard. For exams the instructor set up stations with slides of cells under microscopes and we had to identify each cell. Other stations had skeletal drawings with arrows pointing to specific bones. There were euthanized shelter cats splayed open with a pin in a specific muscle and we had to name it. I usually bombed the tests. I couldn’t remember the names of all those tissues, muscles, and bones. Sixty-year-old brain.
I crammed the day before exams. If I studied too far in advance, I forgot most of the information. Fortunately, the anatomy instructor gave us frequent opportunities for extra credit. I would pass that course with a 4.0 but I never felt like I earned it.
At the end of the day, the fawn was still there. We agreed if she was still there in the morning we’d make another call, maybe do something different. Johann would decide.
He was a CPA, who, shortly after we got together, was fired from a local company where he was some sort of executive. Or so he said. He had called me at 2:00am the night he lost his job. His whisper can you come over was barely audible. I’ll be right there, I said.
When I got to his rental house, the porch light was on, front door unlocked, I tiptoed inside, interior dark, a long lump on the couch, Johann, nearly catatonic. I knelt next to him, his body stretched out full length, blanket pulled over his head, I cradled him the best I could, my knees sore from the rough carpet, bones cracking, muscles twisted, joints locked, but I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to disturb him. He’d taken it hard.
The next day when he could finally talk, he made me promise to be with him when he died.
I thought it was a commitment.
All fawns lose their spots after three or four months and begin to supplement mothers’ milk with forage. Female fawns stay with their mothers up to two years before they go off on their own. Males only stay a year before their mothers chase them off because young males will try to mate with their mother.
Unable to find another job in this small town, Johann convinced a dean at a college up north to hire him as a part-time adjunct professor in accounting. That’s when he had moved three hours away.
I might need your help if the fawn is still here tomorrow, I said at dinner. Johann’s teeth made measured bites into the cheese quesadilla I’d prepared, a small one, he never ate a lot at one sitting, mostly he snacked. He shook his head. He’d leave early the next morning. There was always a line for the ferry to Whidbey Island, that fastest route north was always full on Sunday mornings, he didn’t want to risk missing it.
I checked on the fawn one last time before going to bed. The outdoor light barely reached her in the dark, but I saw the contours of her lump still nestled in the foliage. I envied her innocence. A seedling of courage.
I turned out the lights, spilled my clothes next to the bed, grateful to hide sagging breasts and belly and wrinkled skin in the dark. Johann insisted we sleep naked despite the long-lasting lack of intimacy. I curled into his warmth, my head on his chest, his arm around my neck, hand pulling me close. Until his arm got sore. His arm always got sore. He pulled away, rolled over with his back to me, eyes closed, sleep easily claimed him. The chill moved in the second he turned away.
I was the first one up the next morning. I started the coffee, walked to the patio door and, as I expected, the yard had been a temporary haven and the fawn was gone. No evidence she’d ever been there. The sun sifted through the branches to her empty spot. I wondered how long it took for cold earth to be warmed by the sun.
I poured my first cup of coffee, relieved and sad that she was gone, sad Johann would soon leave, sad I’d soon have to leave this house. I leaned against the counter, sipped the organic Equal Exchange brew, my favorite. Johann never drank coffee. I heard him close the door to the guest bathroom, the one he always used, never the master bath. I heard the flush of the toilet, the rush of water in the shower, the running water in the sink where he brushed his teeth.
I sat down at the café table next to the bay window, looked out at the woods, sent blessings to the fawn and her mama.
A suitcase zipper signaled Johann was packing his bags with all his portability, soon the front door opened and closed every couple of minutes, all his trips to pack the car, he never had just one or two bags. Finally, he came to me, I turned my face up to his, his half-closed eyes forward, focused on something past me, I received his goodbye kiss and he left. The hum of the car, the crunch of gravel where he turned around, the tires that never forgot the path to the road, the silence that moved in after he drove away, the oil spot left on the driveway.
Usually I went back to bed after he left, sought the comfort of sleep, but the sun, the sprouts of spring—white crocus, yellow daffodils, red tulips, all invited me to feel the warmth of mama earth, curl into her.
I tucked the anatomy book under my arm, refilled my coffee, grabbed a blueberry muffin, and went outside to the back deck, sat down on a cushioned lounge chair. Breathed in the morning solitude of a garden awakening to spring.
No fawn.
No mama.
Just me and my book.
Nurses needed to know anatomy.
Carol Fischbach is a writer, nurse, and student archetype—a collector of degrees. At age sixty-four, she became an RN and was the oldest person in her class. She then went on to earn an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Now at seventy-two, she isn’t done yet but limits herself to lifting words instead of people. Writing is the portal through which she remembers, reframes, and releases memories. She continues to challenge herself by taking workshops that defy writing norms so she can find new ways to appear on the page.
Carol continues to add to her writing workshop portfolio with Lidia Yuknavitch and many other writers. She writes with a group of badass women writers and is also a member of Pinewood Table. Most recently, she stretched her creative muscles to include monologue performances in company with other writers and performers directed by Beth Bornstein Dunnington. Carol has been published in Propeller, Nailed Magazine, Oregon East, Tide Pools, the Port Townsend Leader, and has done past performances at ROAR, a platform for fierce feminine storytelling. She lives in Vancouver, WA with her husband, brother, and two kitties.
Soumya Netrabile (American, b. 1966 in Bangalore, India) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Netrabile received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BSEE in engineering from Rutgers University. Her current and recent solo exhibitions include Andrew Rafacz Gallery (Chicago, IL); Pt.2 Gallery (Oakland, CA); and Terra Incognito (Oak Park, IL). Recent group exhibitions include Anat Ebgi (Los Angeles, CA); Trinta Gallery (Santiago de Compostela, Spain); PRACTISE (Oak Park, IL); and KARMA (New York, NY). Her work is included in both public and private collections.