by Joanne Weber
He turned away, already restless with my fumbling signed English. He dismissed me with a thin tight mouth and bounced hh off his fingers: “Oh, you’re hard-of-hearing.”
He and his lab partner began to play with the magnets on top of the laboratory table.
Murray signed to them: “Go ahead, here’s the hammer, now smash them.”
Their eyebrows shot up. They signed: “Are you sure you want us to do this?”
I interjected too, with my stumbling fingers: “You sure about that?”
Murray nodded slowly, his face expressionless.
Behind his back, I watched the two Deaf boys hold hammers hesitantly over the magnets.
I signed (and spoke): “Actually, I’m profoundly deaf.”
Murray nodded and held up his index finger. He turned to encourage his Deaf students to break the magnets. Then he asked: “How did you learn when you were in school?”
I spoke (and then remembered to add sign, the Deaf boys had a right to see the conversations in the room): “Well, not like those boys.”
I jumped slightly when the magnet snapped in two and the pieces reverberated against the walls in the science laboratory.
Murray turned to the boys and signed to them: “Now read these science sheets and complete them using those magnet pieces.”
While he passed out the papers, I mulled over his question. The question no one has ever bothered to ask me. I thought: He actually wants to know how I was able to write stories, poems, essays, research papers, and balance chemistry equations. I fidgeted with my internship observation papers, and finally lay them down.
I began to sign with him, dropping my voice, even though he was Hearing and my speech was nearly perfect: “Well, basically, I’m self taught. The teacher was pretty much useless, talking endlessly at the front of the classroom. I didn’t pay much attention.”
His fingers carved out: “Why not?”
My fingers danced out: “I couldn’t hear the teacher. I could hear his voice, but everything was so muffled. I’m not sure I learned everything I was supposed to learn.”
His fingers: “Well, you did, didn’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have made it through university, to here, would you?”
I paused. I thought about this some more. I signed: “You mean it’s possible to learn without a teacher?”
He answered with: “I don’t see why not. That way of learning is just as legitimate as anything else.”
Murray’s classroom was a science laboratory, with lab tables, sinks, and microscopes. The windows looked out onto the basketball court at the back of the school. A stack of educational journals rested on his desk. I pointed at them. I ask: “You read those?”
Murray nodded, busy with the boys again.
I sidled over to the desk. Language development, cognition, psychology of deafness, studies contesting the use of Signed English over American Sign Language. The steps inherent in the scientific method, outlined on the blackboard: hypothesis, test design, variables, methodology, experiment, observation, data, conclusion.
I thought: He has confidence in me, that I managed to learn with teachers who were there but not there. Maybe it was just their pity that pushed me along to higher grades, maybe I’m a fraud. I looked at Murray again. He has confidence in me.
I felt: I don’t.
Nearly fifteen years later, at seven thirty in the morning, I let myself into the only carpeted room at a high school in Regina.
Will my new job unlock the mystery why I ran away from every home I’ve lived in and away from the people I love? Will it bring back to me the way I grew up and became integrated into the school and the Hearing world at large, will it spit up clues, hints, and memories and explain this incessant urge to flee? Would it have been better for me if I’d joined the Deaf community and attended the School for the Deaf from the age of three? Would I have been any happier, more able to stay at home?
This morning while our car idled in front of the school, Murray told me: “It can’t have worked any other way. It’s your parents, your tenacity, and your intelligence that’s made you who you are. It’s time you stopped complaining about the path you’ve taken.” He kissed me. He tried to hold me, but I pushed him away as I slid across the front seat and out of our car. An inexplicable grief welled up within me as I watched him drive off to his own school a few blocks down the road.
The room is one third the size of a regular classroom, the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Resource room, once part of a large staff room and now facing the glass-walled administrative offices across a large wide hallway. A typical special education closet, smelling of sweat, dust and mould. The carpet not vacuumed in some time. Crammed with furniture. Five teacher desks. Two round tables. A small desk bearing a coffee machine and snacks. Two file cabinets. In 425 square feet. Painted cement brick walls. Three blackboards. Two bulletin boards. Full-sized. A computer workstation wedged between two of the interpreters’ desks. Shelves. Class notes, in binders. Spines labelled with the names of classes and teachers. I take a deep breath.
Seven students. I flip through their cumulative files on my desk. Four are hard-of-hearing students. A quick check. Many of their hearing losses are the result of genetic disorders. Or maybe fetal alcohol syndrome. I nod grimly. I think: That means they might have other problems. Not like the generation I grew up in, where the rubella epidemic produced many bright and able deaf children. The two deaf students who use sign language rely on a staff of three interpreters who rotate between translating and taking notes for the other hard-of-hearing students. The sixth student has a hearing loss in one ear only. I do a mental tally in my head: Five are oral. Only two use sign language. I fill my coffee cup and nod brief smiles to the few teachers in the staff room. I say to myself: I am not unfriendly. I just have no energy for pretending to laugh and smile at small talk. I used to be able to do that when I was younger, but I’m over forty. The years have left their mark of impatience.
In the classroom, I find the students sitting around a table. One of them stares at the computer monitor.
Why aren’t they chatting with each other? They’ll have to spend four years in the same room at certain times throughout the day. Surely they have something in common. A bolt from the blue answers: They can’t understand each other. Their speech is too poor. Not all of them can sign.
I pause by the girl on the computer. I sign and speak: “Your name?”
“M-e-l-i-s-s-a.” She finger spells her name instead of using her voice. She shrugs. Her eyes are vacant. She unfolds her long legs under the desk.
I feel a tap on my back and turn around. The interpreter. A petite woman with a shock of blond hair, sprayed and moussed. She turns her back so that Melissa doesn’t see her signs.
“Don’t get her started on another stupid story about her cousins on the reserve.” Her signs are light and swift, disappearing a nanosecond after they arc through the air.
I sign: “Reserve?”
“Yeah, Melissa comes from there. There’s a note in her file about her going on and on about her family. By the way, I’m Lisa.”
I sign: “Maybe it’s all she’s got.”
I shake Lisa’s hand and glance over my shoulder at the three hard-of-hearing students waiting at their table. They still aren’t talking to each other. They are engrossed in painting their binders with whiteout fluid.
One is Casey. Her bright pink T-shirt dips barely above her breasts. Her father is Métis. It’s in her file. She has his high cheekbones. Dark brown hair laps around her eyes. Her long narrow fingers tap her binder, which is painted with logos, tattoo designs, and the initials of her boyfriends.
“Do you know sign language?” I sign, using a pidgin mixture of American Sign Language, spoken and Signed English. “I am Ms. Weber, and my sign name is JW.” I show them how to make the handshape j circle over my left hand and land with a w on the back of my hand. I realize: I have three names: Joanne, Ms. Weber, and JW. And it’s been so long since I’ve been known as
JW.
Casey’s pea-green eyes shift to the right, past my shoulder as she says, in answer: “Boo, aeh, eh wha nnoo hea.”
Lisa nods and smiles to acknowledge what Casey has just said.
Me: Puzzled look.
Another girl nods in my direction. “She’s my sister.” Her black eyes flash as she speaks through carefully formed lips, concentrating on where to put her tongue in her mouth.
Her voice is authoritative: “Casey means that she doesn’t know any sign and she doesn’t want to learn.”
Casey nods, a wide smile growing across her face, and vocalizes: “Tee ee Andrea. Andy.”
I realize: They are twins. Identical. Except that this one is wearing black, the U shape of her shirt plunging between her breasts.
Their jeans are ultra-tight. Andy’s arm is etched with old scratches. She catches me looking and quickly pulls down her sleeve. I nod and look at the other students. Their faces are immobile and uncomprehending.
I ask a deaf boy: “And what about you? Do you sign?”
His face is sullen. He shakes his dreadlocks over his eyes. He says: “I doan nee et, my spee ee fine.”
An older woman, her hair dyed to a soft brown, who must’ve been in her early sixties, interrupts, exactly like this: “Yes, you don’t need to sign as you do speak very well.”
I see gnarled hands and think: Signing hurts.
She returns her gaze to the boy. So do I. His face is flushed with her praise.
I nod and turn to another student. Nolan. A tall aboriginal student built like a football player. I sign speak: “Did you just understand what he just said?”
He shakes his head.
At first, I say: “ . . . ” Then I say: “ . . . ”
I’m at a loss. I stand before the three students as the two additional staff arrive and huddle in the corner, conversing in soft tones. I can’t make out anything they are saying.
I walk up to them. I sign, sans voice: “Uh, good morning. Can anyone give me a schedule, so I can decide who is responsible for which class?”
Lisa’s eyes narrow at my signing.
I made a mistake. I tapped my left shoulder with slightly cupped hands indicating “responsibility” instead of crossing my fingers into the r handshape. She knows that I am an ASL signer, which is contraband in her eyes. She is a Signed English signer. She uses an Anglicized version of sign language. She signs like she is speaking Chinese in English word order, with an English accent, and using the English alphabet instead of characters. We Deaf don’t sign like that. Sign language is not English. Oh brother.
Lisa signs in this Signed English to the deaf students in my classroom. Although I took a Signed English course a long time ago, I can’t remember which signs are alphabetized. The older interpreter steps into the space between Lisa and me.
She says: “I’m Catherine.”
Grateful, I shake her twisted fingers.
I turn to Lisa, “Is it just me, or is Casey’s speech really that bad?”
“Her speech is terrible, but we’re used to it.”
“The other two students are not much good either. You’ll have to interpret for them.”
“They don’t want to use sign language.”
Catherine says: “Their parents want them to be oral.”
I say: “It’s not them. It’s for me. I need to be able to understand them.”
Catherine explains: “But I have to go and take notes in the class for them. I can’t be here at the same time.”
I sigh. I turn to my chair. The only window in the room is locked. With a narrow wooden stick. It is covered by curtains. Heavy with dust. They don’t fit. A foot-wide strip of glass is exposed.
I feel another tap on my shoulder. Melissa. She is standing before me. Her large brown eyes are nearly black with anxiety. Her books are lying on the table.
Melissa and Ms. Weber sign together:
MELISSA: “I don’t want to go to class.”
JW: “You have to. Your interpreter’s waiting for you.”
MELISSA: “I don’t understand my interpreter.”
JW: “When did you start working with the interpreter?”
MELISSA: “Just today. I talked with her for five minutes.”
JW: “You mean you signed with her. It’s scary for all grade nines. You can come back and tell me about it in an hour.”
MELISSA: “All the interpreters think they’re wonderful.”
JW: “Give her a chance. I promise you I’ll think about this.”
MELISSA: “But everyone thinks I’m a freak. They all stare at me.”
JW: “It’s the first day of Grade Nine. Everyone is scared shitless.”
End of our signing.
I sit in my chair wondering if I should have signed “shit.”
Five minutes later, Lisa stomps into the room. She throws her clipboard on her desk. Ms. Weber and Lisa talk, loudly. It ends in a lecture.
LISA: “Melissa’s in a bad mood. Did she complain to you about my signing?”
MS. WEBER: “Why aren’t you in the auditorium interpreting for her?”
LISA: “There’s nothing going on. Just kids in the auditorium, milling around. The principal hasn’t arrived yet.”
MS. WEBER: “Maybe you’d better get back there. She might like to talk to someone.”
LISA: “Oh, she has some speech. She’ll be okay.”
MS. WEBER: “I haven’t heard it yet.”
LISA: “They always have some speech. They always use their voice with me.”
MS. WEBER: “It’s one thing to have speech. But it is another thing to have speech that is intelligible. And she has to be able to understand the other students. Have you noticed that our deaf students don’t even understand each other in here? You need to get back to the auditorium.”
End of conversation.
I glare at Lisa until she slowly turns and walks out the door.
My ears are roaring with tinnitus. Too much coffee? Stressed out? I don’t know. I sit for a few moments, watching the sun peek in and out of the window. A fake plant jitters on top of the vent. twist a pen with my hands. The wall of a portable classroom and a wire fence closes the far end of the inner courtyard. I think: Well, at least I get my own backyard. And this cramped, cluttered classroom is the only place in Regina that I can be Deaf, sign my way through the day, and where exchanges with students and teachers might be interpreted when necessary. Better than nothing. It’s the only place in the universe where deafness is not a malicious, unwelcome guest snickering at my ineptness. I think: But the garden is a desolate and empty place.
Murray looks up with inquiring eyes as I plop into the couch, hardly able to speak. After several stilted starts at conversation, I finally say, “Those kids do not share anybody. They want undivided attention from me or the interpreters. Even though they patiently wait their turn, I get the feeling that they are resentful for not having me to themselves all day.”
“How do you know that?”
“They won’t talk among themselves. They won’t converse in a group. They all wait for one to one conversations. I think I’m exactly the same way. With you, Anna, and Paula, I mean.”
“That’s because those kids are just young. Naturally they want undivided attention.”
My chest tightens: “It’s a deaf thing, Murray.” I can hear the impatience in my own voice, as it says: “It has nothing to do with maturity.”
Later that evening, I lie on the bed, brushing away the fringes of a crocheted afghan, a hideous orange, purple, and red affair, as I read. Murray lifts, his eyebrows high again with inquiry, but I burrow more deeply into the bed.
But he snaps on another lamp.
His voice is low. “Anna, . . . ” I lean over to catch his vowels, “wants to go to a party tomorrow night.” The dimmed lights make his face look like a fading photograph.
I ask: “Well, what did you tell her?”
He says: “I told her that I’d talk to you.”
I hook
my fingers through the loose stitches in the afghan. I’d rather not say anything, in case I say something wrong. I think: Why couldn’t you have said yes to Anna? The fox wife answers: Ah, but he doesn’t want you to accuse him of controlling you by not consulting with you in the first place. I find myself tongue-tied. This is such a simple question. I tell myself: Yes or no. The fox wife says: Except that Murray would want to analyze all the pros and cons, how much homework, housework, and computer time Anna has been doing lately, who else is going to the party, whether the parents would be at home and whether there will be alcohol. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. I tell myself: Say yes and be done with it. Too much discussion. Why couldn’t you just make the decision and spare me the painful deliberations. I blurt: “I really can’t be a part of this family, this Hearing family.”
Murray rolls his eyes.
MRS. DEAF: “I saw that, Murray. Mr. Wonderful Communicator.”
His voice is firm. “We have a decision to make. Together.”
MRS SULLEN: “The only thing left for me is to do everything on your terms.”
MR. WONDERFUL COMMUNICATOR: “You’re jealous of us, Joanne. Get over it.”
I tighten my arms around my waist and say: “ . . . ” I think: He might be a teacher of the deaf, but he still doesn’t understand Deaf.
AND BITTERLY:He’s Hearing.
MR. HEARING: “Joanne, I want us to be a family. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but you can be in both worlds. I thought signing was important to you, that having Deaf friends makes you feel normal. Now you can teach deaf kids.”
MRS. SULLEN WITH HER BACK UP: “It’s about your fundamental orientation toward me. I have a Deaf body and you have a Hearing body. There’s one hell of a difference.”
MR. KEEP FAMILY TOGETHER: “Joanne, this is not about you. I am tired of being made to feel guilty that you can’t hear. I don’t want our daughters to grow up with that kind of guilt.”
MRS. OH-HO!: “Guilt? Is that what you think?”
MR. THINKER: “Joanne, don’t you see? They want a private life apart from us. They don’t want us to know anything about what they’re doing at school.”