THE COLLISION between glass and light is a silent one, the reflection purely visual. A blind woman cannot feel or smell or intuit her image in a mirror.
No matter how closely she cups her ears to its shiny surface, no matter how thoroughly the pads of her fingertips probe the contours of her second face, a mirror will always strike her as oddly cold and flat, a magical tablet of glass with a switch she can never turn on. Light sounds no noises when it bounces from a mirror.