Emailing: picture of ricky.eml
Emailing: picture of ricky.eml
A setback, then a chance to help others
She puts two tape recorders on her desk at Community Employment Inc., a nonprofit that helps people with disabilities find and keep jobs.
The tape recorder on her left will ask them a series of questions about their work history; the one to her right documents their answers. Later, she will enter their answers in her computer. But at the time of the interview, she turns, faces the sound of their voice and listens without the slightest hint that she can't see them.
"Physical disability doesn't mean mental disability," Christine McDonald says of her clients, all of whom, like her, are blind or have very low vision.
"People don't understand what we're capable of."
After years on the street selling her body for crack, Christine cleaned up but then lost her eyesight in 2005 when she was pregnant with her son Ricky, now 2. Her blindness resulted from an inflammation called uveitis. Blood vessels burst during her pregnancy, her eyes swelled and she lost her sight. Her right eye was removed.
Last year, physicians at the Barnes Retina Institute in St. Louis operated on her remaining eye, hoping to restore some vision, but the surgery was not a success. For months, she considered going overseas for stem-cell treatments, but the costs were prohibitive. Then Christine learned that her remaining eye was so unhealthy it would have to be removed.
Her stomach sank to the ground. She had held onto that eye and the hope for treatment so one day she could see the face behind Ricky's giggle. Blindness had allowed her to see people from the inside out. It hadn't been horrible, but it was not the same as seeing, really seeing. She tried not to think about it too much.
Instead, she completed her high school degree and enrolled in Metropolitan Community College. In June, she decided it was time to find a job.
"I came into my kitchen, did some dishes and decided to look at Craigslist," she recalled from her trailer park home, where she has a computer equipped for blind users. "I found a person-wanted ad to help people with disabilities. Honey, I was on it."
She noticed one detail: Valid driver's license required. She ignored that, but Derrill Grim, program supervisor at Community Employment, 819 Walnut St., could not. After a short interview, he turned her down.
But while she waited on the first floor for a ride home, he reconsidered.
"She had such a bubbly attitude," he said, "having a disability and not letting it stop her. It was real refreshing. It was amazing."
After several minutes, Grim walked downstairs and told Christine he would give her a try.
"She's great, real warm and friendly," he said. "After what she's been through, it doesn't happen. Most of us, if we don't get our two pumps of latté, our day is damaged. Not her."
On a Monday morning, Christine, 39, arranged her tape recorders, sat back and collected herself with a cup of coffee. What's better for a blind girl than coffee delivered to your office, she quipped.
It had been an interesting weekend. The hallway floor of her trailer in east Kansas City collapsed and only a brown rug covered the gaping hole. She will have to replace it, but doesn't know when. Still, the trailer is better than a lot of places she has lived. A neighbor, Benny, and his mama cut her grass. Ricky has a yard to play in. When he wants her outside with him, he takes her hand and leads her down the three front steps.
There you go, he says.
No one knocks on her door at odd hours. She has a nice, quiet place, even if she has never seen it, even if it is floorless at the moment.
Christine shook loose thoughts of her home, refocused on her job and considered some of her clients. She makes cold calls to employers, but too many sighted people don't see how blind people can work. They can, using adaptive equipment. They just need employers to suspend their disbelief and give them a chance, as much as blind people must give themselves a chance.
Oh, I'm blind, some clients tell her. Honey, she responds, I've been blind for three years. Get over it. It is what it is. That's the truth. What are we going to do about it?
"Hi, this is Christine McDonald at Community Employment. We help people with disabilities get employment. I'm calling to see if you have positions open we could send some people to apply for. OK. Thank you."
She put the phone down.
"Call back. Everyone's always in a meeting."
She has two men who have graduated from community colleges. One tried for a receptionist position, but was up against 175 other applicants. Christine had no doubts he was fully capable, but going up against that many people and being disabled? She shook her head, knowing she would have to continue working with him.
The other gentleman is an artist. Christine has decided to introduce him to a blind man who makes birdhouses to show him it is possible to pursue his vocation. The fingers of her left hand crab-walked to a phone and she punched in a number.
"Hi, Pete, how the heck are you? I've got a client, he's blind and he wants to work with wood. Anyway, I could set him up with you and bring him over? Thursday? That'll work. I'll put you in my book. I've always wanted to say that."
She called her client.
"Hey, you, how the heck are you? You sound out of breath, you cutting your grass? Bless your heart. You want to hang out with a blind carpenter who builds birdhouses for a living? You would, wouldn't you? You tell me a time, and I'll tell him."
She put the phone down.
"He told me he stole his neighbor's lawn mower to fix his. I won't touch that."
Twice a month after work, Christine and her friend Kris Judd, a minister at Community of Christ Church, buy bottled water and dozens of cheeseburgers and drive Independence Avenue looking for people in need.
Christine once worked around Independence and Spruce avenues. Nobody made her leave as she stood on the corner, and although she can no longer see it, she has never forgotten it or the men and women still out here. She sure wished someone had given her a hamburger a time or two. Water, food, socks in the winter.
"Here's a man," Judd said on a Thursday evening.
"Want a burger?" Christine shouted out the window.
The man, stoop-shouldered and staggering slightly, kept walking.
"Is he coming?"
"No."
"I sure wish I could see."
They drove to a slanted house just south of Independence Avenue on Sixth Street where they had stopped before. A puppy romped in the overgrown yard, dashing around a shopping cart stuffed with cans and scrap metal. The door opened and an elderly woman peered out.
"You hungry?" Judd shouted. "How many you got?"
"Me, my old man, sister, my granddaughter."
Christine began counting out 12 burgers from paper sacks, feeling each one.
One, two, three. . .
She hasn't given up hope that one day she will regain her sight. She plans to meet with doctors at the University of Utah to discuss the possibility of joining a cortical implant study for artificial vision.
Abruptly, she stopped counting. Think about it. From six prison stints to 20 years off and on the street to working downtown. Wow. She resumed counting, accepting the idea that despite herself she has become a successful blind person. She even has health insurance and might get sick for the pleasure of seeing a doctor and getting some attention.
eight, nine, 10
Her good fortune is not the same as seeing, but as she picked up the stack of hamburgers, and Judd looped a hand around her elbow to guide her toward the house and the family waiting, Christine asked herself the question she poses to her clients:
Honey, what are we going to do about it?
