by Ginny Rorby
Her mother, without looking at her, reached across, pulled the door closed, and drove away.
Joey bit her lip to keep from crying. It wasn’t until she turned that she saw Kenny watching from the front steps. He didn’t smile or wave; he turned, as Joey did, to watch Ruth pull into the Senior Center parking lot, make a U-turn, and head back the way they’d come.
“I didn’t tell him,” Joey whispered, as she passed without looking over.
* * *
Kenny was at her favorite table when she came into biology class. He had a foot on one of the chairs. When Joey hesitated, he dropped it to the floor and motioned for her to come over. He’d been doodling on a piece of notebook paper: No Fear, with jagged lightning bolts and a very good pirate’s face with angular cheekbones, square jaw, and a patch over one eye. He flipped the page to expose a clean sheet when she sat down. Hi, he wrote.
Joey almost laughed, but she was too touched. “Hi,” she said.
Last week’s notes, he wrote, then handed her photocopies of the notes he’d scribbled in class. At the top he’d written For Joey. The “o” in her name was a tiny heart.
She blinked, sure her imagination had created it out of sloppy handwriting, but it was there. “Thank you.” She quickly put them away as if she hadn’t noticed.
How was your weekend?
“Good. Yours?”
Same ole. Your old lady looked mad this morning.
“She was.”
How come?
Joey shrugged.
Kristin and Jason came in, trying to elbow each other aside to be the first to reach the table. Out of the corner of her eye, Joey saw Kenny cover what he’d written with his drawings.
Jason won and fell into the chair with his back to the teacher. “What’s happening?”
Before she could answer, she saw Kristin glance at the ceiling. “Nothing much,” Joey mouthed.
“Gotcha, dork.” Kenny laughed and high-fived Joey, who blushed with pleasure.
In math, which was her best subject, there was a test, so time flew. She turned her paper in the minute she was done and left to get to the cafeteria ahead of the crowd.
Motion was sound. Joey heard with her eyes, so the running, pushing, shoving, arm-waving, ball-and-book tossing, the scrape of chairs and tables in the cafeteria, in the mood she was in, was more noise than her eyes could stand. Brad was at a back table, waiting for Roxy, but Joey didn’t want to be with them. She got a sandwich and took it to eat at her favorite spot behind the library where trees grew densely on a steep hillside. There was a high chain-link fence along the property line, which kept her from actually finding a good spot in the woods. But between the driveway along the rear of the building and the fence was a line of trees and one stump. Her stump. Before she met Roxy, she used to go there every day and sit with her back against the fence and read while she ate.
As she was leaving the cafeteria with her lunch, she caught a glimpse of Kenny paying for his. He was with a couple of friends and either hadn’t seen her or pretended he hadn’t. She scooted out quickly before he caught her looking. She was afraid to let how he’d acted in biology class mean too much.
She sat with her book on her knees; the second half of her sandwich kept the pages from flipping. She hadn’t seen Kenny coming and nearly jumped out of her skin when he kicked her foot, tipping the book off her knee and dropping her sandwich onto the ground.
“Sorry,” he said and bent to pick them up.
“No problem. I was full.” She took her sandwich, turned and jammed it through the fence for a possum or raccoon to get later.
He handed her a sheet of notebook paper. How come you eat out here by yourself?
Joey shrugged. “I like it here.”
Kenny squatted to sit on his haunches. “Can you read lips?”
“Sometimes. Some people’s lips are easier to read than others.”
“Are mine easy or hard?”
“Medium.” She smiled.
“I dried two ----------” He glanced away. “---------- wood bee ----------.” He looked down to open a bag of chips. “---------- deaf ----------.” He offered her some as he chewed. “---------- mug my ----------.” He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “---------- enough not to hear.”
Joey couldn’t even attempt a bluff. She shook her head. “Sorry, I missed too much of that.”
Kenny balanced his notebook on his knee and wrote, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be deaf but I couldn’t plug my ears enough not to hear. What is it like?
“Real quiet.”
Kenny’s serious, sympathetic expression lit up at her answer, then he laughed. “Like, duh.”
In spite of trying to stay calm and cool, Joey blushed again, hating herself for not being able to keep her color under control. “That’s okay. It’s a good question. I wasn’t always deaf so I know the difference and that’s pretty much it. There are no sounds except really loud noises like motorcycles and car horns, chain saws, stuff like that. All the pretty sounds are gone. Like I’ve never heard the ocean.”
It sounds whooshy.
Joey grinned. “That’s the best description I’ve ever seen.”
“Are the scars where…” He reached and lightly brushed aside her hair. “They tried to fix your hearing?”
The question caught Joey off guard. She kept her hair medium length and bushy to cover those scars. No one had ever seemed to notice them before. Without thinking, she touched the one behind her right ear. “Not … Well, yes. Sort of.”
To her relief, he was writing his next question: Do you and your parents talk in sign language?
“That’s what my mother was mad about.” Joey hesitated. She wanted to tell him everything, especially about Sukari.
What do you mean?
“My mother doesn’t want me to learn sign language.”
“How come?”
Her mother’s face popped into her mind. “Dumb reasons,” Joey said, deciding it was better not to go where the details would lead. “Have you ever heard about Washoe, the chimpanzee who uses sign language? I read all about her in a National Geographic.”
“I thought…” he said, then wrote it instead: I thought it was a gorilla.
“Koko is the gorilla who signs, but Washoe was the first and she’s a chimpanzee. She’s still alive, I think. Someplace.”
What about her?
“I know a chimpanzee that signs. My neighbor owns her and I bet he’d let you meet her if you wanted to.”
Kenny’s head bobbed. “Rad.”
“What?”
Radical. Cool.
“Oh.” Joey nodded. “Her name is Sukari.…”
“What?”
“The chimp. Her name is Sukari. That’s Swahili for ‘sugar.’ She’s just a baby, but you can talk to her with your hands. I know the alphabet and a few words. I’m teaching myself with the sign language book her owner gave me and I could show you a few…”
He glanced away.
“… words.…” Her voice trailed off.
“Yeah. Sure.” Kenny stood up. “There’s the bell.” He held his hand out to help her up. “Want to eat together tomorrow?”
Joey nodded and took his hand but felt she could have just as easily floated to her feet.
* * *
On Tuesday, Joey waited in the library for Roxy, but she never showed up, nor was she in the cafeteria when she got her sandwich and went to meet Kenny. She was disappointed. She wanted to tell her about Kenny and hoped they could all sit together at lunch now that she kind of had a boyfriend, too.
Roxy wasn’t in class on Wednesday, either. On Thursday, Joey saw her sitting alone with Brad in the far corner of the cafeteria. They both looked upset and Joey guessed they were having an argument.
Joey got to history class early, running through the rain, to make sure she was there early enough to save Roxy a seat beside her. Each time the pressure in her ears changed with the opening of the door, she looked up. When the door
opened and it was Roxy, she looked as if she’d been crying.
Maybe it’s rain, Joey thought. She smiled and moved her backpack off the seat of the desk next to hers.
Roxy glanced her way, then walked to the back of the room and flopped into a desk in the last row.
Joey waved for her attention. “I saved this for you,” she mouthed.
Roxy looked away.
Joey felt the sting of tears, blinked them back, and turned around.
After class, she caught up with Roxy, who had fled the room the second the bell rang. “What’s the matter?” Joey asked, catching her sleeve.
Roxy pulled away. “Nothing.”
“Why were you crying?”
“Me? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Are you mad”—Joey lowered her voice when other kids slowed to look at them—“at me?”
Roxy stopped and turned to face her. “Read my lips. Leave me alone.”
Joey felt as if she’d been slapped. Roxy spun, marched a few feet, then turned again. “I’m sick to death of deaf people,” she shouted.
Joey couldn’t move. She stood like a rock in a stream, holding her stomach and staring at Roxy’s back. It wasn’t until someone took her arm and led her out under the breezeway that she felt the cold air on her wet cheeks and knew she’d been crying. She looked up. Kenny smiled at her and wiped a tear away with his thumb.
“I don’t know what I did to make her hate me,” Joey said.
“It’s not you. Understand?”
Joey nodded.
Kenny opened his notebook to a blank page, held it against the wall, and wrote, It’s crap with her mother.
Joey watched for him to write more. When he didn’t, she looked up.
“Like what?”
I don’t know exactly, but Dillon said, her old lady is getting back together with her father, who’s a real piece of work, and they are moving away.
“She just moved here.”
Kenny nodded. “I know. That’s why she’s so upset. Her mother’s DEAF, right?”
Joey blinked. “You signed.”
I kinda looked up a few words. You want to go to Goodings for a Coke or something?
Joey was almost too moved to speak. “I … I can’t really,” she said finally. “I have to catch the bus.”
Kenny shrugged. “I live in town. My brother could take you home later. Understand?”
“Yes, I do. This is the sign for understand.” She flicked her index finger away from her forehead.
“Cool.”
They walked, without trying to talk, down Franklin Street toward Goodings, the hamburger and malt shop on the corner opposite the post office. The sleeves of their jackets brushed against each other as they walked and it felt electric. Is this like my first date? she wondered, then decided it was close enough. That’s what she’d tell Charlie when she saw him this weekend.
She thought about Roxy as they walked and wished she could have told her that she understood. Her mother had gone back to her father a bunch of times. Still, Joey guessed it wouldn’t have helped Roxy to know that, not while they were still at the mercy of their parents.
* * *
The days got longer, the daffodils bloomed, and the rusty-sided Allen’s hummingbirds returned to engage the year-round Anna’s hummingbirds in warfare over possession of the feeders.
Joey felt the same tug. Though her mother never said another word one way or the other about her visits to see Charlie and Sukari, Joey never said that was where she was going. Instead, she took a book, and told Ruth she was going out to read. Only if it rained did she stay home to keep up the pretense.
She’d slipped The Joy of Signing into the house and hidden it under the blankets and afghans in the cedar chest at the foot of her bed. Now, whenever she was home alone, she practiced signing.
One day, she was sitting on the side of her bed facing the window, practicing “Location and Direction,” when she looked up and saw her mother’s reflection in the glass of her sliding door. Her hands froze. Neither of them moved, then Joey slowly turned around. Her mother just stared at her. Joey’s heart thudded in her chest.
A small washer-dryer unit, one on top of the other, was in a little closet in Joey’s room. Her mother held a load of dirty clothes. “As long as you’re not sneaking over to that old man’s house today,” she said, “you can wash these.” She dropped the whole load on the floor. She stopped in the hallway and looked back at Joey before grabbing the knob and slamming the door.
Joey took a deep breath. She’s known all along, she thought. Why did she wait till now to get mad? Then Joey realized something about her mother, and about herself, that she should have seen before. They were still afraid of conflict—her mother more so than herself. Ruth let irritations fester even though it was now safe to get angry. Recognizing this suddenly made Joey feel older. She thought about Roxy, whom she’d never seen again, and realized that her fury that day was Roxy toughing it out, trying to cope with her frustration at being uprooted on a parental impulse. As Joey sorted the pile of laundry into darks and lights, she knew that she was free to continue teaching herself to sign. Mom just threw in the towel, she thought, dropping one into the washer.
That Saturday dawned sunny and warm. Joey was on the stool at the kitchen counter eating a waffle when her mother came running from the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel, and grabbed the receiver.
Her expression soured immediately after she said hello, and she turned her back. When she hung up, she looked at Joey. “That was your friend. He wants you to go to Pine Beach with him and the chimp for a picnic.”
Joey’s eyes lit up, then clouded just as quickly. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him you could go.”
Joey jumped off the stool and hugged her mother. “Thank you. Thank you,” she cried, started for her room, then came back. WHAT TIME? she signed before she caught herself and clamped her hands into fists. “What time?” she asked.
Her mother had watched Joey draw her right index finger across the upturned fingers of her left hand, then point at her watch dial. She looked up. “It’s bad enough you are learning that … that language against my will. Don’t use it in this house,” she snapped.
Joey flinched. “I forgot.”
“Damn that old man.”
“It’s not his fault.”
“Whose fault is it then that you’re going against my wishes and learning to talk with your hands like a mute?”
The madder her mother got, the faster she talked, the harder it was to read her lips. Joey missed some of what she’d said. “I want to…” she said, then lost her nerve.
“You want to what?”
Her insides trembled. She wanted to shout, I’m sick of only having you to talk to. I hate my nasal-sounding voice. Charlie says I have pretty hands to speak with. Poetry in motion, he said. But she hooked her bottom lip with her teeth and clenched and unclenched her fists. “Nothing,” she said.
Ruth stared at her for a moment, eyes narrowed, then she nodded and turned to go back to the bathroom, fluffing her wet hair with the towel.
Joey almost let it end there. Almost. “People make faces when I talk,” she said so softly that she didn’t think she’d spoken out loud.
But her mother turned. “We’ll get you more therapy.”
“If I can’t read somebody’s lips, they don’t bother trying to talk to me.”
“You think talking with your hands will change that? You should practice reading lips instead.”
“I do, but why can’t I do both?”
“Well you are, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but in secret, like it was against the law or something. Why can’t I teach it to Luke and to Ray so I could talk to them?”
“I don’t understand this, Joey. You can talk to them now.”
“But, Mom, they can’t talk to me. I can’t read their lips or very many other people’s. I don’t hold conversations with anyone but you, and Charlie because
he writes his half.”
“Well, practice more. If you get better at reading lips you can talk to everybody in the world and nobody has to learn that stunted language.”
“You think because I can read your lips I should be able to read anybody’s. Watch TV without the sound on, Mom. See how hard it is and how different people talk. Some lips are impossible, like Ray’s because of his mustache and other people who hardly move their mouths when they talk. It’s not that easy. You try it.” Joey realized she was shouting and looked down.
“I don’t want to argue this with you again. Sign language is not the answer. Use it to talk to that chimp if you want to, but don’t use it in public. People will feel sorry for you. You don’t want to encourage pity, do you?”
“Charlie says…” came out of her mouth before she could stop herself, so she plunged ahead, “it’s more pitiful to be left out of everything.”
Her mother had been softening but her expression changed swiftly at the mention of Charlie’s name. “Well, I’ll tell you what,” she snapped. “You want to learn sign language so bad, you can stay home today and practice.” Her mother turned away.
Sometimes Joey forgot that other people could hear even when their backs were turned. This was one of those moments. “No,” she whispered.
Her mother whirled around. “What do you mean, no?”
Joey felt her knees get rubbery. Faces disfigured by anger made her want to run and her knees always threatened to fail her.
“Nothing,” she said. She took a step backward, lifted her plate up off the counter, and held it with both hands in front of her stomach. “I want to go to the beach.”
“You should have thought of that before you sassed me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, while you’re sitting here today, you can think about how just being sorry isn’t always enough.”
After her mother went back into the bathroom and closed the door, Joey stood holding her plate for a few minutes, looking down at her reflection in the syrupy slick. She tilted the plate one way then the other, distorting her features, then carried it to the sink to rinse but decided to leave it; maybe her mother would see herself in it, too. She got her coat and left the house.