by Ginny Rorby
“He loved you, honey,” Lynn said, then wrote, He wanted only the best for you.
“Does Mom know?”
“Yes, and she said no.” But I think that was a knee-jerk reaction, Lynn wrote. I think she’ll change her mind. Don’t tell her you know. Anger will make it harder for her to think it through, to realize what this means for you. Right now, I think she feels Charlie has stolen you from her, and that this extends his reach beyond the grave. She needs to get past that.
Lynn may have thought her mother would change her mind, but Joey didn’t. As she knelt in front of Sukari to tell her that she was going with Lynn, Joey believed that they would drive away and she would never see either of them again.
Joey took a small suitcase from the hall closet and went into Sukari’s room. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as she opened it on the floor and began to fold Sukari’s clothes, putting them in piece by piece.
Sukari stood in the doorway and watched for a minute or so before she ran in, pulled the clothes out, and threw them around the room. Joey sat down in the middle of the floor. “Come sit with me,” she said.
One of the signs for “doctor” is to tap the pulse in the wrist with the “D” hand. Lynn’s sign-name was the thumb of the “L” hand tapped against the pulse. Joey hugged Sukari, then made her watch as she signed, YOU GO L HER HOUSE.
Sukari broke free and ran circles around her, slapping her on the back each time she passed. Joey caught her arm and pulled her into her lap. SUKARI GO L HER HOUSE, Joey signed, then with a tightness in her chest that made it hard to breathe, she added, SEE TURTLE.
Sukari watched Joey’s hands, then studied her face. SEE TURTLE?
Joey nodded.
J-Y GO?
Joey pulled Sukari close so that she couldn’t see her tears. “Not just yet,” she whispered.
In the end, they had to “slip her a mickey,” as Lynn called it, with some tranquilizers she’d gotten from the Humane Society. Joey fed them to Sukari in a banana, then read to her until she was asleep. Joey lined the big carry-cage Lynn had brought with Sukari’s blanket and folded Charlie’s sweater for a pillow. She added her favorite animal book and her teddy bear, then carried Sukari to the car, but couldn’t bring herself to put her down. She just stood there with her head bowed and her skin stinging in the cool air as if she’d been peeled. When Lynn touched her shoulder, Joey buried her face against her little friend’s neck. “My heart is breaking,” she whispered, then leaned and laid Sukari on the floor of the cage.
The last thing Lynn did before driving away was to nail a for-sale sign on a tree by the road. She stood with her arm around Joey’s shoulders and stared back at the house, wiping her eyes from time to time with the heel of her hand. Lynn had let Joey pick anything she wanted of Charlie’s to keep. She took Sukari’s tortoise and its aquarium for Luke and for herself chose his binoculars, the field guide he’d loaned her on their first walk in the woods, and a baby picture of Sukari taken in Africa. In it Charlie stood behind his wife, who held Sukari up to face the camera. But when the picture was snapped Sukari had twisted to reach for the baby bottle in Charlie’s hand. The photo caught Charlie holding the bottle out of her reach like a torch as he leaned to kiss Sukari’s forehead. At the same moment his wife, on her tiptoes, kissed his cheek.
* * *
On the second Monday after Lynn left with Sukari, Ruth, Joey, and Luke came home from school to find a strange man sitting in a BMW in front of their house. He stepped out as they came down the hill from the mailbox. He was dressed in a suit and tie, so Joey thought that he was a Jehovah’s Witness, but it wasn’t Saturday.
“He must be from out of town.” She glanced at her mother. The angry expression on her mother’s face surprised her and suggested that she knew who he was and why he was there. It only took a second more for her to figure out that this was Charlie’s lawyer.
Joey nodded at the stranger and started for the house when out of the corner of her eye she saw him wave for her attention. Her mother looked grim.
The man handed both Joey and her mother a business card that read, BRYAN MCCULLY, ATTORNEY AT LAW, THE LAW OFFICES OF MCCULLY, WHITNEY, AND SAMUELS, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. Joey started to hand the card back, but Mr. McCully signed, KEEP, and then, USE A-S-L YOU?
YES, Joey signed, nervous that he might be as good as Charlie and would lose her if he signed too fast. LITTLE BIT, she added.
Her mother folded her arms across her chest.
Mr. McCully opened his briefcase on the hood of his car and took out a notepad. I am Dr. Mansell’s attorney, he wrote.
Joey didn’t say anything.
Mr. McCully glanced at her mother, then wrote, Dr. Mansell left his estate to his niece but he set up a special trust for you: an education fund. You can go to the California School for the Deaf in Fremont free of charge, if your parents are willing, and the trust will pay for all your other expenses.
He was smiling when Joey looked up from the note. “Really?” Joey said, and hoped she seemed surprised. She glanced at her mother, who’d read the note over her shoulder. Her expression confused her. She didn’t look mad anymore. Her face showed no emotion at all; it was as blank as if she’d been told a joke she didn’t get. Joey risked the question: “Can I go?”
Ruth’s face clouded. “I’m not going to decide that right this minute. We’ll talk about it later.”
Mr. McCully had added more to his note: There is also a provision in the trust that will pay for your college education. There is Gallaudet in Washington, D.C., or California State University at Northridge.
“Wow,” Joey said. Lynn hadn’t told her about college.
In addition, Dr. Mansell—
Joey’s mother moved in suddenly and took her arm. “Go in the house. I want to talk to Mr. McCully alone.”
Joey did as she was told but watched from the window, hoping to catch something of the conversation. Instead, her mother purposely maneuvered them so that they talked side by side facing away from her and toward the road. Joey crossed her fingers behind her back, but her heart sank when Mr. McCully shook his head, got into his car, and left without glancing back.
By the time her mother came into the house, Joey had gotten plates down and was setting the table. “Did he mention Sukari?” Joey asked.
“No.”
“What did he say?”
Ruth opened the refrigerator door and stood staring at the contents for a full minute before closing it without taking anything out. She turned to face Joey. “You know what, I’m not ready to talk about this and I want you to accept that for now.”
It was the first week of May. There was no sense pushing her mother. If she decided to let her go, it wouldn’t be until September, anyway. Joey nodded and went back to setting three places for dinner.
CHAPTER TEN
Every year, on the weekend in June closest to the summer solstice, the neighbors gathered at one house for a potluck. This year it was the Willises’ turn to host the party, which meant they provided the meat. Ray planned to smoke a turkey.
In preparation, Joey mowed the dry, brown weeds in their yard while Ray cleared a spot for the small bonfire at the edge of the gravel drive at a point farthest from any trees. He made a circle of plastic lawn chairs and two-foot-tall redwood rounds, then placed firewood nearby, though not the dry, clean, woodstove wood that he’d split himself. Instead, he collected and stacked cruddy wood, full of sow bugs, earwigs, and slugs. Luke helped by gathering twigs and small branches to use as kindling.
That afternoon, following the first greeting, no one made much effort to talk to Joey. She stood apart from the clutches of people chatting and watched Luke chase and be chased by the other neighborhood children. Once or twice, Joey saw him brush the back of his hand with his index finger, Sukari’s sign for CHASE ME. It meant nothing to the other children, but Joey had to blink back tears. She wanted to close her eyes, open them again, and see Sukari race past with Luke on her heels; see Charlie sitting i
n the late afternoon sun, throw back his head and laugh.
As soon as the sun dipped behind the trees, the air grew chilly. Someone lit the fire and people began to slide closer to its warmth, backing up to it with their hands held behind them, palms to the flames.
The tradition was that everyone who played an instrument brought it for the after-dinner sing-along. While the children roasted chocolate-and-marshmallow-stuffed banana boats, the musicians sat on the redwood rounds and everyone else settled into the lawn chairs.
It was dark by the time the band of a harmonica, a fiddle, two guitars, an accordion, and a flute struck up. The Nadeaus had brought cheese and crackers on a tray made from an old washboard. Ron Nadeau had since rinsed it clean with the garden hose. He kept a rhythm strumming it while Gregory Smith slapped out the beat on the cardboard box his parents had carried the salad bowl in. In the middle of one of the livelier tunes, Luke dragged Lyle Nadeau out to dance.
Joey laughed and drummed randomly on her thighs until she saw her mother shake her head. “You’re throwing off the beat.”
“Sorry.” Joey hunched her shoulders and jammed her hands between her knees.
Luke and Lyle went from dancing to chasing each other around the fire. When Ruth clapped her hands for them to stop, they began to dance again, doing something that resembled the twist, fists punching the space between them with each shift of their squat little bodies. The first time their fists bumped, they rolled into each other and fell to the ground, wrestling like bear cubs.
Ruth got up, pulled them apart, brushed the dust and ash from their bottoms, and shoved them out through the circle of singers and musicians to let them work it out in the yard. “Help me keep an eye on them,” she said to Joey when she sat back down.
The music turned melancholy. Ruth and Gregory’s sister, Katherine, began a song. The light from the fire flickered on the ring of faces, many with their eyes closed to listen—the opposite of how Joey heard.
Ruth and she were sharing space on a log. Joey shifted a bit so she could keep an eye on the boys playing in a bright patch of moonlight and still watch her mother. She had no memory of her mother’s singing voice, so the words “if ever I would leave you, it wouldn’t be in springtime” sounded spoken in her mind.
When she glanced at her mother again, Ruth’s cheeks glistened in the firelight.
“Are you crying?”
Her mother shook her head. “Not really.”
“Your face is wet. Is it a sad song?”
Ruth wiped beneath her eyes with the heels of her hands. “It’s just an old song … popular when I was about your age.”
“Did it make you sad back then?”
“No. It just reminded me of all the things I wanted to do with my life. I guess I never dreamed that I’d end up here…” she glanced around, “like this.”
“This is a good place, isn’t it?”
Ruth put a finger to her lips as she often did when Joey’s voice rose too high in conversation. “This is a wonderful place. That’s not it.”
The next song started and her mother waved an end to the discussion. It was a lively tune and Gregory pounded the cardboard box; fingers flashed on the guitars and a bow whipped the fiddle strings. Joey put her palms flat against the log, trying to feel the subtle bass thump like she sometimes felt in her feet and chest from the stereo of a passing car. Her foot began to tap in the dust, but she stopped when she felt her mother watching her. Joey turned again to watch the boys.
Ruth tapped her shoulder. When Joey looked, her mother began to clap the rhythm. She smiled and her head bobbed in time. “Come on,” she said.
Joey picked up the beat first with a foot, then with her hands until they smacked in time with her mother’s.
The next morning, Ruth came out to where Joey raked the coals aside while Ray carried shovels full of ashes to spread around the flowerbeds.
“Fun last night, huh?” her mother said.
Joey nodded and smiled. “Is Luke still asleep?”
“Dead to the world,” her mother said, then bit her lip. “Do you really want to go to the deaf school?”
With the question hanging between them, Joey, for the moment, wasn’t sure it was what she wanted. She also knew that if she wavered, there might not be another chance. “Yes, Mom, I do.”
“Then I think you should go.”
Joey felt as if her heart had stopped midbeat. “You do?”
“I’ll call Mr. McCully on Monday.” She turned and started for the house, then stopped and came back.
She’s gonna change her mind, Joey thought. Or tell me she’s still against it.
But her mother took the rake from her and laid it on the ground, then she hugged her, tightly, before she let go and stepped back, holding both of Joey’s hands in hers. “Charlie was right.”
Ray, who had scooped another shovel full of ashes, stopped to listen.
Ruth began to tremble with emotion. “He was right…” Her grip had shifted to Joey’s wrist and she groped for Ray’s arm for added support with the other. “And he’s given me a chance to change that.” Tears streaked her face. She waved her hands, unable to continue. “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, Mom, don’t cry.” Joey hugged her. “It doesn’t matter. Earlier would have been too soon.”
Ray dropped the shovel and put his arms around them both, smiling broadly at Joey over the top of her mother’s head.
* * *
Even though the California School for the Deaf was in Fremont, it wasn’t going to be the huge move that they had thought it would be. Joey would live at the school during the week, but all students went home on weekends. It meant Ruth or Ray would have to drive the twisty road to Willits where the bus stopped twice each weekend, which they both swore they didn’t mind doing.
On August 29th, with the backseat piled high with Joey’s clothes, she and her mother left for Fremont. They made it in five hours with a single stop for Kentucky Fried Chicken, which Joey hadn’t tasted since they moved from Reno.
They stayed in a motel that first night and were met early the next morning, as scheduled, by two women: Bridgetta, a tiny woman with the prettiest face Joey had ever seen, and Tanya, a lovely, willowy woman who wore high heels and stood ramrod straight at well over six feet.
Ruth beamed at the very pregnant Bridgetta. “When is your baby due?”
Bridgetta smiled and signed, TWO WEEKS, which Tanya repeated for Ruth.
“I’m sorry,” Ruth said to Tanya. “I didn’t know she was deaf.”
Joey knew what it was like not to be addressed directly. She put a hand on her mother’s arm. “Mom, Tanya is Bridgetta’s interpreter.”
“Yes, yes. I know that now.”
“Bridgetta understood and answered you.”
Ruth looked confused.
“Talk to her like you talk to me, Mom.”
“Of course,” she said to Tanya, then realized she was doing it again and turned to Bridgetta. “I’m sorry.”
Bridgetta squeezed Ruth’s hand, then signed, WANT BOY. She cupped the sides of her stomach, looked up, and smiled. HAVE MORE CHILDREN?
“A son,” Ruth said, after Tanya interpreted. “Luke. He’s four.”
Even as early as it was, the temperature had already soared into the eighties as Joey and Ruth followed Bridgetta and Tanya on a tour of the tree-shaded campus, including the cafeteria, the theater, a few of the classrooms, and finally her dorm room in Building 9. Her roommate had not arrived, so Joey left her bags behind the door. She wanted to start off on the right foot by letting her choose whichever bed she wanted.
Joey loved the look of the school, loved the single-story dorm units, each about the size of their house before the upstairs addition. Though the large central living room was empty, she tried to imagine girls watching TV and studying at the desks. She tried to picture herself fixing pizza in the small kitchen, but the more she tried to see herself in this setting, the more overwhelmed she became.
Bot
h Bridgetta and Tanya signed too quickly for her to understand more than a word here and there, and Tanya barely moved her lips when she spoke. Everything Bridgetta signed, Tanya interpreted for Ruth, then her mother had to repeat it for Joey. Here she was, where Charlie said she should be, at a school for deaf people, and she was beginning to think she’d be more isolated and alone than ever.
After their tour, she went to have her signing skills, which she considered pathetic, tested. Her worst fears were confirmed when she was assigned to an intensive signing class. She pictured herself crammed into a tiny first-grader’s desk, practicing the alphabet. Suddenly, Joey, who’d been so excited to be where she’d always believed she belonged, began to dread her mother’s departure. When Ruth drove away, she would be totally cut off from the hearing and the deaf.
For lunch, she and her mother went to a small restaurant in town, one recommended by the counselor. It was full of returning CSD students. Joey and her mother sat in a booth by the window and watched friends, separated for the summer, jam in together at tables, hands flashing, laughing, and hugging one another. A person from each table, obviously the one with the best oral skills, was sent up to order the sandwiches and act as interpreter for the cashier and the woman behind the counter who took their orders. Joey tried to imagine herself crammed in a booth with a half-dozen friends. How many months, or years, of intensive signing would it take before she would be accepted into a circle of friends?
“Can you tell what they’re saying?” her mother asked.
Joey shook her head. “Only a word or two. They’re talking too fast.”
“For a room full of deaf people, there sure is a lot of noise in here. Why are they pounding on the tables?”
Joey smiled. She could feel the vibrations. “To get each other’s attention, Mom.”
Ruth shook her head. “I guess I’ve never really gotten it, have I? You can’t hear.”
A girl walked by their table and signed HELLO to Joey, then stopped when Joey signed HELLO back. NEW YOU? she asked.
Joey nodded.
WELCOME. MY NAME S-A-R-A-H. NAME YOU?