“Beautiful,” I sign.
“I like your new necklace too,” she signs. “You have a gift for bringing people together.”
When Ezra Brewer arrives, I think she is right. Papa grins broadly as he shakes my rescuer’s hand. Mama raises her eyebrows a little bit, but she seems content and even offers to take Ezra Brewer’s sealskin coat.
“Aye,” he signs, grinning like a rogue. His other hand is poised under the coat, and when it is removed, I see why. Underneath is a tiny kitten, mostly black but with patches of white and pumpkin-orange fur, and a yellow flank. This must have been the source of Smithy’s recent rotundity. The kitten is tiny. “I’ve saved ye the runt of the litter, Mary,” he tells me with a wink. “I call her Yellow Leg.”
I turn to Mama. “May I keep the kitten?” I plead.
“Your father and I have already agreed to it, as soon as she’s weaned from her mother,” she signs. “We’ll see what Sam has to say about it.”
I almost kiss Ezra Brewer but think better of it. “Thank you!” I sign.
Mama is signing to all, “Come in, come in.”
We sit around the table. Yellow Leg is tucked into my lap.
There aren’t fresh flowers yet, but Mama has laid out the daintiest dishes from the cupboard. We wave our hands in applause when she sets the pudding on the table. It is made from suet and treacle with delightful candied orange slices. Mama knows I always look forward to her Christmas pudding. This more than makes up for the one I missed.
Mama pours ale for the men and Miss Hammond. Papa slips me a quick sip. No interpreter is needed. We eat in contented silence, searching one another’s faces, making amusing expressions while our hands are full, and laughing together while we ask for seconds and empty our plates. It is a relief to be home.
Afterward, we move to the sitting room. Mama and Papa sit on one sofa, with Miss Hammond and Mr. Pye on the other. Ezra Brewer sits in the rocking chair in the corner, with Nancy, Yellow Leg, and I comfortable on the braided rug. The conversation is lively and civil. I hope I’ll never be as suspicious of outsiders as Ezra Brewer, but Andrew sowed such discontent.
Though Ezra Brewer isn’t used to playing second fiddle, he’s on his best behavior with Mama as his hostess. And his latest thrilling tale is all too familiar to me. I have no desire to relive it. Tonight, Miss Hammond has a story to tell.
“In your absence, Mary,” she signs, “my brother-in-law Daniel visited to trade for wool and baleen. As you know, I always ask for details of his travels to share with my students.”
“You are not going to talk about mermaids and other imaginary sea creatures, are you?” Ezra Brewer asks.
“No, Ezra, I won’t tell wild stories like you do,” she says, giving me a wink.
Miss Hammond stands up and moves her feet like she is walking in place. She is trying to set a visual scene for her audience. It’s not too different from what she does in the classroom.
She begins, “After a long journey, Daniel was glad to have his feet planted firmly on the ground again in Paris, France. Out walking, a Frenchman in front of him was gesturing animatedly to his companion, and his companion was answering in a similar pattern. Daniel recognized the rhythm of language, so he rushed to catch up with the men. They were talking in signs!”
“Were their signs like ours?” I blurt out, my hands moving fast.
“No,” Miss Hammond signs. “That’s what confused Daniel. Their movements were different from anything he’d seen on the Vineyard. They spelled their names for him. Daniel couldn’t decipher it at first. It seems that the French make the manual alphabet with one hand!”
Miss Hammond continues. “Daniel followed the men. He discovered that they live at a grand school for young deaf people. As a matter of fact, one of them was a teacher.”
Ezra Brewer rocks back and forth and signs, “I ought to be getting to bed.” He fluffs an imaginary pillow under his head and yawns theatrically.
“Please stay, Ezra,” Miss Hammond encourages him like an unruly pupil. “The best is yet to come.”
Ezra Brewer crosses his arms and waits.
Miss Hammond signs, “At the deaf school, Daniel saw dozens of people walking down every path and hallway signing together. They must have come from all over the country.
“There was a big room with seats in a circle like a theater. Deaf men, older pupils, and teachers stood up front and gave lectures in sign to the general public to demonstrate the success of the school and the faculties of deaf-mutes. They were smartly dressed and dazzled the audience.
“From Daniel’s description, I dare say one or two of them were more colorful than Ezra in their signing.” Miss Hammond glances coyly at Ezra Brewer.
He uncrosses his arms and signs, “Harrumph.” He makes a fancy movement with his left hand to indicate French people. Like many Americans, he considers himself superior to Frenchmen.
She starts signing again. “One gentleman named Laurent really impressed Daniel. It wasn’t just his signs, but his facial expressions. He performed famous scenes in history—like the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution—with a few hand signs and a lit-up face that showed every emotion. Visitors who knew no sign language could guess what he was talking about.”
After what I learned in Boston, the idea that a school attracts the deaf from all over their country, possibly all over the world, and gathers them for education is astounding. To think of all those deaf people, with stories so very different from mine, gathered in one place. I feel greedy to share in their stories, and to tell mine!
Miss Hammond signs, “In all Daniel’s travels, he says our island and the school in Paris are the only two places he’s seen sign language. He’s visited places where one family has created simple hand signs to communicate with a deaf relative in the home, but no other places where everyone speaks the same signs.
“Though I’ve read that the Plains Indian Nations, like Crow and Cheyenne, use a complex sign language,” she adds. “Not just for trading between tribes, but for storytelling and everyday conversation too. I understand most of them are not deaf.”
“True?” I ask Papa.
“I suppose so,” Papa says.
Miss Hammond signs, smiling, “On my honor as a schoolteacher.”
I turn to Mama and ask, “You think we will have a deaf school in America soon?”
“I expect so,” she replies.
“If children go there from the Vineyard, will they forget island sign language?” I wonder.
Papa signs, “I don’t imagine that will happen.”
I can’t hear Grandmother Harmony’s clock on the mantelpiece, but I see that it is growing late. Mama rises, signaling to everyone.
Mr. Pye and Miss Hammond leave together. They offer Ezra Brewer a ride, but he’d rather walk. “Don’t worry about me,” he signs, tucking Yellow Leg back under his coat. “I’ll follow the stars.”
Papa will drive Nancy home. He taps me on the shoulder. I turn around to face them both.
“Bid farewell to your friend,” he tells me. “She’ll be leaving first thing in the morning.”
I hold up my hand to indicate that I will return quickly. I run to the desk in my room. I bring out the map of memories and place it in her hands.
“Don’t forget!” I sign broadly as Papa drives her away.
“Never!” she signs, looking back. Then she’s gone.
I realize too late I forgot to ask her the whereabouts of Grandmother Edith’s teapot. But I expect her to return to the Vineyard one day. None of us can stay away forever.
Before I climb into bed, I peer into the looking glass and try to tell the story of the Boston Massacre with only my face. My eyes just look wild, my expression comical. The Frenchman Miss Hammond described must be a magician.
Lying under my new blanket, my mind is full of ideas.
I feel hopeful that men like Laurent will come to America with their Paris sign language. If people in Boston and the other colonies
see them as teachers and great thinkers, maybe they won’t disparage the deaf anymore. If I changed Dr. Minot’s mind about the deaf, imagine what deaf scholars could do.
But what will that mean for our close-knit community in Chilmark?
It’s late. I yawn and snuggle under my blanket. As I do, a bedtime story comes …
Once upon a time, I travel across the land at incredible speed, day and night, through cold and heat. I can’t see where I’m going, but the place is familiar when I get there.
There are people signing. I recognize some of the signs; others I cannot easily decipher. At first, it’s a confusing babble of hands. Then we begin to teach one another.
Our signs blend together to make one sign language. We keep what is unique to the places we came from. We light a beacon.
Deaf children, who can’t communicate with their families and believe there is no one else like them, find us. We accept them, no matter where they come from. We take them in, even if they are angry or hurt.
I see myself in a tall stone building, looking out the window in a classroom. A stone bench in a courtyard is covered with autumn leaves and then powdery snow and then dogwood flowers. I am a student in a deaf school, and then I am a teacher.
My hair fades and ages, like the leaves in a book. Others take my place and write their own stories. They read the book I wrote and say, “That’s how it was on their island. It is different now. But they came before. They helped us to become who we are. We won’t ever forget them.”
A NOTE ON THE LANGUAGES
I am Deaf. I do not speak Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL). People have tried to preserve the language, but it has never been fully documented. The last native speaker, Katie West, died in 1952.
I am a fluent speaker of American Sign Language (ASL) and because MVSL influenced the development of ASL, I have used variations of ASL signs to describe some MVSL signs. As a child, I used home signs or gestures created by my family. Those signs also influenced the sign descriptions in this book. In other words, I used the sign languages I know to create the sign language in this book.
Throughout the story, I tried to highlight the differences between sign language and spoken language. In a few scenes, I chose to show readers that sign languages have their own construction that differs from English. I wanted readers to experience a flavor of that, without distracting from the narrative. These passages are not meant to be an exact glossing, or interpretation, of modern ASL. I hope these scenes convey the intimacy, complexity, and expressiveness of sign language.
HEREDITARY DEAFNESS ON MARTHA’S VINEYARD
Hereditary deafness in isolated communities is not completely unusual. These communities often created their own sign language. It is referred to as “village sign language.” From 1640 through the late 1800s, hereditary deafness was common on Martha’s Vineyard, especially in the town of Chilmark. At one time, one in twenty-five residents of Chilmark was born deaf. In a section of town called Squibnocket, there were as many as one in four deaf residents, compared with one in six thousand in the rest of the country.
Deafness was a recessive trait that affected White settlers equally. The genetic mutation produced complete deafness at birth with no associated anomalies.
It is true that it was brought over from the county of Kent, England, especially the region known as the Weald, by prominent families like the Lamberts, Skiffes, and Tiltons. It is believed that they also brought Old Kentish Sign Language with them. The English use a two-handed manual alphabet to this day.
Because the families in the small-knit farming and fishing village intermarried for generations, the trait for deafness remained strong. It started to disappear as residents moved off-island and married outsiders.
Because there was a complete lack of knowledge of Mendelian genetics at the time, scientists were puzzled that families could have both deaf and hearing relatives, in a seemingly random pattern. Some of the theories of the time are described in this book: environmental factors, maternal fright, and even tight corsets during pregnancy!
The one major study on the subject is Nora Ellen Groce’s ethnography: Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language, Harvard University Press, 1985. I could not have written this book if I hadn’t read that one.
DEAF EDUCATION AND AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE
In 1817, the American School for the Deaf opened in Hartford, Connecticut, laying the groundwork for the development of a national sign language. The school in its earliest years was a mixture of different sign languages. Some students came from village sign communities, a notable example being Martha’s Vineyard. Others had created home signs that only their families understood. The American School for the Deaf was a Whites-only school, and Deaf education was largely segregated into the mid-twentieth century.
The school’s cofounder and first teacher, Laurent Clerc, was a former pupil of the Paris school, the first free school for the Deaf in the world, established in 1670. He introduced Old French Sign Language and the one-handed manual alphabet to America. Though lesser known by the general population than Thomas Gallaudet, Clerc is still greatly revered in Deaf culture.
Eventually, MVSL, home sign, and the French system merged into what would become American Sign Language (ASL).
Home sign still exists in families, as do village sign communities in many countries. There are dialects in contemporary ASL, both regional and cultural. Some vibrant examples are Black American Sign Language (BASL) and American Indian Sign Language (AISL), which is distinct from Plains Sign Talk (PISL). Each of these sign languages has its own rich traditions and history.
Every country in the world has its own sign language; some have more than one.
THE NAMING OF MARTHA’S VINEYARD
There are several versions of the story. I went with English captain Bartholomew Gosnold naming it after his baby daughter in 1602. I followed Arthur R. Railton’s telling of Gosnold searching for the “happy and beautiful bay” described by Giovanni de Verrazzano in a letter to King Francis I of France. Railton’s book, The History of Martha’s Vineyard: How We Got to Where We Are, Commonwealth Editions, 2006, was helpful in many instances.
THE WAMPANOAG OF GAY HEAD (AQUINNAH)
The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) is a federally recognized, sovereign tribe of Wampanoag people based in the town of Aquinnah (“high land”) on Martha’s Vineyard. Their ancestors have lived on the island of Noepe (“land amid the waters”) for at least ten thousand years.
In the early 1800s, many Wampanoag men had died from diseases that settlers brought, or left the island to find work. The Wampanoag women welcomed freedmen as husbands. Their children were Wampanoag of Aquinnah.
Aquinnah Wampanoag practices of welcoming members into their tribe regardless of blood quantum, accepting mixed-race marriages and offspring, and owning land collectively were regarded as wrong by the English settlers. These differences created more prejudice and discrimination against the Wampanoag.
In 1972, the Wampanoag Tribal Council of Gay Head, Inc., was formed to promote self-determination, to ensure preservation and continuation of Wampanoag history and culture, to achieve federal recognition for the Tribe, and to seek the return of tribal lands to the Wampanoag people. The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) became a federally acknowledged tribe on April 10, 1987, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the stereotypical character of Tashtego is Aquinnah Wampanoag. In 1902, Amos Smalley, an Aquinnah whaler, harpooned his own great white sperm whale, the only man who has ever done so. The Tribe retains to present day their aboriginal rights to any drift whales that beach along or near the shores of Noepe.
There is a Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project to teach Wampanoag children their language.
Two books greatly helped in my research. Moshup’s Footsteps: The Wampanoag Nation, Gay Head/Aquinnah; The People of First Light by Helen Manning, Blue Cloud Across the Moon Publishing, 2001; and The Wampanoag Tribe of Mar
tha’s Vineyard: Colonization to Recognition by Thomas Dresser, The History Press, 2011. Lastly the Tribe’s official webpage, wapmanoagtribe.org, is the best resource.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank the following people:
Brian Selznick wrote Wonderstruck, an extraordinary book about Deaf culture, history, and language, and paid it forward by introducing me to his editor at Scholastic Press, Tracy Mack.
Tracy was a great partner and mentor for this book. She saw what I was trying to do before I did. I am grateful for her tough revisions, excitement for the project, and understanding that not all writers are coming to English from the same direction. Her patience and guidance are deeply appreciated, and she has uncanny instincts for what works, even beyond her cultural experiences. I am enriched by our friendship.
During Tracy’s sabbatical, I worked with editor Leslie Budnick, whose friendly emails were always welcome and who left her unique mark on the story.
Assistant editor Benjamin Gartenberg was knowledgeable, insightful, and helpful from beginning to end. An essential member of the team.
I am delighted and honored to have Julie Morstad’s cover art. Special thanks to art director Marijka Kostiw and production editor Melissa Schirmer.
I am grateful to my sensitivity readers. Cherryl Toney Holley, the current chief of the Hassanamisco band of the Nipmuc Nation, who is also hearing impaired, provided key historical information. Penny Gamble-Williams of Wampanoag and African heritage is an activist involved in Native land, freedom of religion and sacred site issues, and Indigenous and environmental rights. She is a member of the Chappaquiddick Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation. Her generous, in-depth assistance and enthusiasm for the project was of inestimable help. I admire her work as an artist and the museum exhibits she has created. Tom L. Humphries is an American academic, author, and lecturer on Deaf culture and deaf communication; I appreciate his input.
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