by Joanne Weber
Seven
Green Journal
There is something in the way Joanne runs to me when I come back from golfing with Sue. Something strange in how she moves her arms, her elbows twisting from side to side, and in the flapping of her open red coat, as she bursts between the low gates in front of our house, nearly slamming into me, running over from the neighbour’s house, and I remember something about Tommy, how he was discovered wearing his sister’s clothes, and I resolve never to let him babysit her again.
We are both distracted. Joanne twists around in her chair, knocking her glass of milk over on the table, and I just sit, letting the milk drip onto the floor. I am unable to think of what to do next, if anything happened next door with that boy, how much can she remember, without language, how can she even think about it? She is only three years old.
Later she puts her bear in our bed, scolds it, picks it up lovingly, and lays it to rest once more. Then she backs out of the door, still scolding, shuts the door tightly, opens the door, scolds the bear, this time leaving the door open a crack, then she backs down the hall, pretends to listen, and scolds. She refuses to allow the bear to be removed from the bed the rest of the day.
“Is the baby asleep?” I ask her.
She points to the bedroom. “Ma ma.”
My heart sinks. She remembers everything. She must remember the time we left her in the hospital for two weeks because of a severe bronchial infection and after two days of looking through a glass window, watching her being manhandled by that nurse, I couldn’t bear to watch her scream, standing in the crib, clutching the bars. We stayed home for two weeks, dishes often left unwashed on the table, and wondered how we could ever explain the doctor’s decision, that we loved her, that we were coming back, hoping she slept in that tall crib, instead of gazing all day through the bars. But she’d wake to that nurse and her brusque hands, ripping the sheets from under her, whipping the blanket off to inspect her diapers, and I could hear her screaming again and again until she slumped against the bars of her crib, exhausted. When we came to pick her up, on that winter day, the nurse brought her out, limp as a rag doll. She turned her face away from Ed as he took her into his arms, and refused to look at me. She looked waxen, as if she’d been drugged. Her lips were blood red. Her hair was matted with sweat.
For the next twenty four hours, we tried to play with her, talk to her, coax her to eat, but she lay on the couch, under her blanket. I held her hand, but it slid out of my palm. Her eyes smouldered, like the peat fires on my father’s homestead up north. The next day though, she came to life, began to walk about the house, looked at the Degas prints of ballerinas that hang on our bedroom wall, picked up her puzzle board and began to fit the pieces into their slots. I thought: She is going to think that the world is a frightening and hostile place.
In the evenings, my father pulled out his saxophone and I ran eagerly to get my costumes from the box in the living room. My favourite was a lavender silk tutu with petals over a stiff ring of white netting. The music was already flowing when I shot out from the long hallway into our living room like a cannonball. I leapt to the high notes of the saxophone and shimmied to the ululating notes as my father tapped his foot to his big band music. I attempted to claw up into the air, pointing to the ceiling of our old house. Amidst the dying notes, I ran into my bedroom to change into another dance costume. Now in a filmy skirt, I pirouetted, lifting my leg and arching my foot. As my muscles rippled under my skin-tight bodice, I wanted to shed my body, rise in the air, slither along window panes, and wrap myself around my mother’s neck. I floated round and round in dizzying circles, wanting my skin to spin off my body, leaving behind bone or muscle as I flew upwards, but I danced like the stiff bare branches of the small tree potted at Easter, feeling my arms weighted by Easter eggs. There was a rabbit cake at the base of the tree, with pink paper ears. I wanted to be lovely just like that, a tree, upon which I could fasten my broken vowels and pin consonants to my words. Afterwards, I lay on the floor, my head spinning among the dying notes of my father’s saxophone, spinning in my own loveliness, the beauty of myself apart from having to hear, listen, and form the letters properly, and the relief of not having to wear those heavy headphones and to imitate my mother’s voice day in and day out.
Green Journal
Just returned from Saskatoon today. Our visit with Dr. Alvin Buckwold has me reeling. I can barely collect my thoughts and emotions after hearing what he had to say about Joanne. I’m quite surprised to hear his emphasis on cognitive development, especially the development of abstract thinking. He is particularly pleased with what I’ve done with Joanne so far, using the Montessori ideas, and assures me that Joanne will perform at the same rate as her peers, even though her speech is still far behind. He warns me, however, to be strict with her, and not overindulge her. So many children with disabilities are ruined, he says, and cannot cope with future demands, because their parents pity them and give into their every wish and whim.
Joanne isn’t giving out as many hugs as she used to. She doesn’t do much with her teddy bear or dolls anymore, either, but spends many hours making marks on a piece of paper. Most likely she prefers thinking about things to touching things, but Ed and I need more education in order to teach her. The Tracy course is very helpful, but the letters from the clinic are so brief. I still don’t understand the connection between imitation and memory. Joanne survives by imitating what is expected of her, but does she understand what she is doing and why she is doing it? Perhaps Minot State College in North Dakota can help answer these questions. They’ve been providing deaf education classes for many years now. Perhaps this summer.
My mother always had books with her, books with no pictures, not at all like the books that she gave me. Her books were always high up on the dining room table. She pushed the books aside when she set the table, but I climbed up on the table and flipped through their pages while her back was turned in the kitchen.
I thought: No pictures.
I ran to her with Chicken Little. I wanted to know how the sky could fall in. My mother could never explain anything to me, but I wanted to know right now. Does it fall like a blanket down around my shoulders? Those wisps of clouds in the sky must be very soft. Let it come down around my shoulders, I wanted to say to my mother, but I couldn’t say anything. Instead, I repeated after her as she read in other books, “The horse says neigh, the cow says moo, and the cat says meow,” because she wanted to me say these things. I would rather say other things, but I couldn’t.
At least, I could move my body. I looked through my father’s magazine, Sports Illustrated, and saw a man with a stick high up in the air. There were many pictures of him moving that stick. I traced the stick with my finger, watching it rise above the man’s shoulder and down in an arc toward the ground. I ran to my mother, “Loo,” and raised an imaginary stick to show her. My mother quickly cut out the pictures and pasted them into a book for me to look at every day.
I sat with my books, paper foothills stacked against my knees. I had papers spread out in front of me, and several coloured pencils. I hunched over the papers, and painstakingly made a tiny mark with a blue pencil, and then I used a green pencil. Soon, all my papers had many tiny marks, in all colors of the rainbow.
When my parents read to me, as they did several times a day, I began to see the marks in the books swelling on the pages, becoming longer and rounder. The voices of my parents swirling around my head became one voice inside my head reading to me as I slid my finger along the words on the page. And the voices of other people, broken, fragmented, and confounding, coalesced into a voice inside my head as I read, telling me that what was described in those pages was the only life that was real.
Green Journal
Joanne is practically never in the house these days although she’s willing to sit and be read to when the opportunity presents itself. But she is still not talking much. Some small pimple in her outer ear made me refrain from allowing her to wear the
aid for about two weeks. She’s now quite choosy about wearing it, and often refuses it unless I tie in the presentation with a book or record. I think she’s self-conscious about it now, because so many people are seeing it for the first time and asking questions about it, while staring at her as she clutches her red jacket to cover it up. And clothing is a real sore point. Joanne always knows exactly what she wants to wear and if it isn’t what I have in mind, it takes brute force to dress her. Finally I leave her dresser empty and hide her clothes in the basement.
Nolan is taking an International Baccalaureate art class. His marks don’t qualify him for full entry into the IB program, but the art teachers agree that his work deserves attention and further development. He is given a thick black notebook. He is to research art movements, develop his own art practice and an approach to his own artwork. At first, he doesn’t understand what this means.
“It’s a journey. You need to find out what’s inside of you and why you are interested in certain forms of art and not others.”
Nolan shrugs. He continues sketching cars with flames licking the doors, hoods, and roofs. I’ve seen those flames — on skateboards and T-shirts.
I try: “Maybe it’s a certain kind of car you like.”
Nolan shrugs again. He continues to draw coupés with flames.
I try, again: “Well, what is it about those coupés?”
He signs: “I don’t know. They’re nice cars.”
The interpreters and I circle him for the next two months, eager to look at his research book, but behind his back we cluck and shake our heads.
Clucking Women: “He’s still drawing cars. He’s not going anywhere with this research. He’s not reading anything. Just cars. He can do so much more than just cars. We’ve seen that drawing of his father, that painting of his mother, why can’t he get beyond the cars?”
Nolan wants to write too. He gives me drafts of stories and screenplays he has written. At first, the plots are intense, full of action, and mostly about the relationship between robots and humanity. The names are strange: Halo, Neo, Trinity.
Lisa sighs: “Has anyone seen The Matrix? He’s just taking bits and pieces of the plot and rearranging them. They’re just plot summaries of movies he has seen.”
Joanne counters with: “He’s told me that he has really made this up himself.”
Lisa persists: “Nolan’s done that before.” She turns to Catherine, “Remember two years ago? He came to school with a bandage wrapped around his arm? Said he broke his arm?”
“Yeah, we phoned his parents.” Catherine says, “They said that there was nothing wrong with his arm. It was all a charade. He doesn’t know the difference between reality and fantasy.”
The mistrust in Catherine’s eyes makes me feel uncomfortable.
I persist: “But why would he do such a thing?”
Catherine explains: “He’s seen nothing but movies. He plays video games far into the night. He doesn’t know anything else.”
I sink into the dirty velvet plush chair at my desk. Why are there answers that stop discussion and answers that invite more exploration? On a hunch, I begin to type “Deaf artists” into Google. Soon, I’m arranging images of their work into a PowerPoint presentation. It might be a waste of time, because I have to help other students with their Math, English, and Science homework, but I direct Lisa and Catherine to do the tutorials with the students so I can finish the presentation.
The next day, I’m ready. First I show Nolan Susan Dupor’s Family Dog. The Deaf family member sits on the floor, his eyes bright, his tongue hanging out, while the Hearing family members sit elevated on the chesterfield, their arms folded, their faces obscured, looking down at him. I sneak a look at Nolan. His face remains impassive.
I try this: “I’ve always thought being deaf in the Hearing world is like being a fox.”
His eyes slowly focus on me. “What do you mean?”
I unfold my idea: “It’s like being chased during a fox hunt. Hearing people run after me and demand that I be like them. They want me to imitate everything they do. People are always watching me, to see how much I am like them.”
“It’s like being in a fishbowl,” Nolan nods.
I rush on with: “My foxholes are bathrooms, libraries, bedrooms, kitchen sinks, closets, and cars. I often give people the slip.”
Nolan comes back the next day with his research book opened to a page. He beckons me over to look at it. He has drawn his own portrait: only his head, inside of a fishbowl.
I ask: “What does it mean to you?”
“People are always watching me,” he says and flips open to another page. He has drawn himself, a full body this time, but as a child against the backdrop of tall people, black and grey in their clothes. His coat is red.
He says: “I can’t see those people. They don’t exist. They don’t have any colour to them. I can only see myself.”
I sit down before him, arrested by his drawing, unable to move. Lisa comes up behind Nolan and looks over his shoulder at his research book. He explains to her what his two drawings mean.
She frowns. Then she signs to him in her impeccable English: “Why don’t you start around American politics? 9/11, for instance. Sports, maybe. This stuff here . . . I don’t think anyone is interested in it.”
From that day, Nolan turns his interest toward three dimensional art. He constructs a miniature of the White House, with the flag of the American eagle, skirted with debris. His art teacher reluctantly passes him and he is still in his basement bedroom, his walls painted black, playing for hours on Xbox, incommunicado.
Green Journal
Joanne doesn’t have many more new words, only about twenty so far. Although she listens carefully and seems to understand everything we say. I hope Joanne is starting to forget whatever she went through with Tommy next door. She never looks at him and he turns the other way too. Is she remembering? But how can she remember without being able to talk? Doesn’t memory rely on language? I’m sure you can’t remember feelings without having language first. And the speech pathologists insist that she can’t think or reason without language. I’m not so sure about that. I clipped an article about Montessori today from the Saturday Evening Post. It says something like if a child perceives through the senses, then those perceptions are stored in his mind somehow, and contribute to building the intellect. Yet, Joanne has to understand what things mean to her. That’s where the language comes in.
Eight
ANDY AND CASEY ARE TWO LOLITAS, hand in hand. They rely on their parents, or the men they’ve slept with, to wake them up in the morning, because they will not use special alarm clocks for the deaf. After they’ve pulled their tightest pair of jeans over their hips, and donned their faded black hoodies, they’ll come to school around ten, clutching coffees, with hair meticulously arranged to cover the cochlear implant processors hooked over their ears and twinned to a magnet placed over another magnet inside their skulls.
Today Andy raises her cup as she walks into the classroom and announces: “Robin’s Donuts is the best.” Before she pushes her sleeve down, I again notice faded cuts on her wrists.
Casey’s words are unintelligible.
Andy nods: “Yeah, she got a hair in her donut from Tim Horton’s.”
Coffee shops, Walmart, the assorted men that come and go, and the spirits that flit in and out of their house, translucent globes hovering over their dead dog, pictures that they took on their cell phone cameras, I shake my head. And friends! Every criminal within a fifty mile radius of Regina, every victim who has died and every person who has wielded a gun or a knife.
When they disappear for days at a time, they say: “It’s because we’re grieving.” Hours on the internet, researching the lives of every serial killer, every convicted murderer, and every sexual predator, their excuse: “We are traumatized. That’s why we can’t come to school often.” Every distant relative who’s killed or the friend of a friend of a friend who’s now in jail, an intim
acy with so many people, most of them in gangs, or dealing drugs: predators. The two girls are savvy to their evil, even though they’re trying very hard to become pregnant with any man who will sleep with them. In their dream plan for their family, there’s no father, no husband, and no lover. Instead, they will live together in the same house and raise their babies together. They just need a man or two who will spend a couple of nights pumping his sperm into them while they look at the wall.
Research says that approximately fifty percent of deaf children are sexually abused.
This is how far we get: the fight they got into with a group of girls, and the knife in their friend’s locker. Casey’s speech is so poor that Andy often steps in to repeat what she’s said. The language of twins. Andy won’t talk about sexual abuse, so Casey can’t even bring up the subject.
They’re never without each other, except on the day Casey comes to school alone and announces: “Andy is with a guy today. He works nights, so they have to do it during the day.”
I shrug. I am teaching “The Highwayman”. I have a yardstick. Tucked under my arm. I establish that Bess, the landlord’s daughter, and the highwayman are romantically linked, and that the King’s Men have tied Bess to a bedpost in full view of the window where she can see the Highwayman galloping down the road. I point. I say: “Read this line out loud.”
Casey reads in a quiet voice. I can’t follow her “She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good! She twisted her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!” at all.
I ask: “What is Bess doing?”