by Joanne Weber
Jan was a physics major, an immigrant from Holland, working toward a graduate degree, but taking English classes to improve his English. I thought nothing of his attempts to converse with me or his insistence on walking with me to Lister Hall at the University of Alberta where we occupied rooms. I nodded my head frequently to his thick, guttural noises, and in my absentmindedness, said “yeah” on several occasions.
After finishing part of the master’s degree in library science, I moved back to Saskatchewan to room with Dorene. Jan wrote me a letter and charged me with tormenting him like Sue Brideshead in Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. After the initial shock, my interest was piqued.
I thought: He actually liked my bohemian clothes, my love of literature, and my intelligence, but he was furious with me for having said “yes” to his invitation to meet him for coffee, or to go to a movie with him and then standing him up several times, my heart must be cold and callous, I’d toyed with him especially when we were meant to be together, and would I just please admit that I loved him too. I examined each angle of his copious letters. I exclaimed with pleasure over the flowers he sent me, and the cookies from Holland, where he was visiting his parents for the summer. His passion in his letters, his intense interest in the books I read, his appreciation of every small thing I wrote or said made me think: perhaps a love affair based on written communication was possible. But when I was with him, the guttural vowels of his thick Dutch accent poured over me like sodden lumps of gravy. Lipreading him was exhausting, because he didn’t move his mouth in a natural way. I was used to the tongue being in certain places, the lips flattening and pursing, the mouth opening and closing in expected rhythms. His didn’t. Yet in his words on paper, the music came through in his lamentations over my not returning his love. He told me of his sacrifices for me, how he had forgone dental surgery to buy me flowers instead. My response was “ . . . ” He wrote me of his sickness, of his love for me, “this is happening to me, Jan, Jan Van Alst,” and I was struck with the ringing of his name, the particularity of his being, this cry from his heart echoed in my head nearly all the time when I read his letters. It seemed preposterous to turn away a man truly in love with me only because lipreading him was exhausting, yet I decided: I will not discuss this issue, my inability to easily comprehend his speech with him. Never.
Jan wrote me his last letter, declaring that he could no longer contact me, as he was too tormented with the idea of not being able to hold me.
Sadly I filed his letter away in an envelope with these words written on the outside, Jan, Jan Van Alst.
Sunday morning. We are going to church. Anna is driving. It is February. Langley Hall sits sullenly on the street, with snow skirted against her walls. The forked tree, with its three branches reaches to the sky in despair at this impossible cold. Anna is careful on the icy ridges in these streets. The radio is loud. I’m curious. A drama begins:
DEAF MOTHER: “What are you listening to?”
ANNA: “Oooshhsiii.”
Anna turns the corner, the steering wheel slides through her hands, my mind is spinning, whirring like an iPod wheel with possible names of bands, trying to find a match for what she’s just said. I think: Perhaps if I just think about it, the word will come to me, that way I’ll not have to ask her to repeat it. Anna grasps my chin and pushes it away from her toward the windshield.
ANNA(Shouts): “Don’t look at me like that!”
I lean my head against the passenger window and try to hold back the tears. I can’t bring myself to leave the car once Anna has parked it in front of the church.
DEAF MOTHER: “You go on ahead. I just need a few minutes here.”
ANNA:(Her face stricken as she hands me the keys) “I’m sorry, Mom.”
DEAF MOTHER: “It’s all right. I’ll be right along.”
Instead, I drive home to tell Murray what I always tell him: “I don’t want to live here anymore, I don’t want to live in a Hearing family, I don’t want to go through years of meals at the table and not be able to follow a conversation, I don’t want to be dismissed or scorned every time I ask a question they’ve answered hours ago but I’ve either not understood the first time, or have forgotten.” And: “I want to leave, Murray, get my own place, have you guys come and visit, and when I’ve had enough, you all can go home. I can’t do it, Murray. I just can’t do this. Please respect that.” The drama ends with:
MURRAY: “No, I will not respect that. We made a commitment to being married and we will work this out.”
I slam the door on my way out of the house, armed with my laptop and swim bag. I think: The only answer to this oppressive loneliness is to get out and get away from Murray and my daughters.
I want to say: I am not a pet, who must be told how to sit and move.
I want to warn them. I am a dangerous animal. I say: “ . . . !”
I sit in the Atlantis coffee shop on Victoria. Liz is coming. Murray’s words are reverberating in my head: Yes, Anna corrects your speech and that’s a power thing. Yes. They are too full of themselves. But for goodness sakes, get more engaged with them. I think: How? I want to scream: HOW? When I can’t be spontaneous, or play with them?
I stare out at the flame lit in front of a restaurant across the street, mesmerized by the way it licks the cold arctic wind. I wave at Liz who comes through the door of the coffee shop, her face reddened by the cold air.
Liz Warren is assigned by the Saskatchewan Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services to provide sign language interpretations of my poetry to Deaf and Hearing audiences. I’ve given her a copy of The Pear Orchard so she can prepare for the poetry readings throughout Saskatchewan. She is one of the best interpreters in Canada, the daughter of two Deaf parents. Her first language is British Sign Language even though she was born and raised in Ireland. She can’t remember much of it, having moved to Canada as a young woman. She has a natural gift for sign language interpreting; one of her prized qualities as an interpreter is the ability to provide a translation in ASL with all the subtleties of meaning of the English spoken by the Hearing person. For this reason, she disappears when she is interpreting. After having used many interpreters, I know that this ability is rare even among children of Deaf parents who become professional interpreters within the Deaf community.
In the coffee shop, we practice together. She signs while I read. We stop to puzzle out ways in which the poems can be translated into American Sign Language. It’s no easy task. I’ve created a fox wife, Sylva, who in her human form is a Deaf woman. In Liz’s hands, Sylva is alive and mirrors every thought I’ve ever had about being Deaf: the shame, the anger, rage, frustration, and fear of having to live with the Hearing. I watch Liz create a pear orchard with her hands, imitating the heaviness of fruit on a branch growing within her womb. Then she becomes Sylva, a Deaf woman, whose puzzlement and frustration appears on her face as she tries to grasp flashing lights from mirrors hanging from the branches of the trees. Sylva is unable to grasp speech in its entirety. Liz as Sylva makes me want to comfort her immediately, hold her in my arms, and say it is all right. Sylva gives birth, the labour pains causing her body to sway helplessly. With a tongue firmly embedded in Liz’s check and a furtive look in her eye, Sylva becomes a fox-wife trying to navigate her way through a master-captive relationship with a Hearing man. Liz pulls up her hands as claws to her chest, in order to convey gathering chicken bones in her bed.
I wonder: Who is this Deaf woman, Sylva, in Liz’s hands? She is now someone I’ve never seen before, Liz’s creation as much as mine. Somehow Liz is the Deaf woman in the pear orchard, not me. I think: But she is Hearing, not Deaf.
At supper, I am wary of Anna. Should I just accept her perfunctory apology, although Murray urges me not to? But I remember the stricken look in her eyes, and think: Maybe she is sorry enough. Perhaps it’s best that I be silent, accept her apology, although I want her to understand me, my deafness, and what it means to be a Deaf mother.
That evening, I scurry alone through the
exhaust of cars idling in front of Holy Rosary cathedral. I tell myself: It’s best that I be quiet for now. Let me think on these things further before speaking. Let me see if I need to speak at all. I am afraid. Of my anger, and the remorse afterwards, I mean. The vitriolic words I can hurl out and the remorse afterwards. Murray’s: “You’re so fierce, Joanne. Sometimes you can be so mean. How can you want to leave me and our children?” What is this thing that is so beastly and hateful within me? The capacity to destroy and discard relationships even though I am so alone. I’ve failed to connect with those whom I love. A misshapen creature lives in me. It mocks me: How do you think you can be close to anyone if you always push people away?
But I am at Mass. I should not indulge in imaginary conversation. I stand with the rest of the congregation as the organ begins its drone. Then I hear “My Wild Irish Rose”. I look furtively at my neighbour’s hymnal. I read: “You are the voice of the living God”. But the wild Irish rose song keeps playing in my head and I give up trying to follow along as the priest strides down the aisle during the recessional, I’ve never heard anyone sing it, but I’ve read it in song books, in novels, and once on a crinkled song sheet crackling against a bush after a late night campfire, and I keep hearing the phantom music as I step out into the dark street, lighted by the street lamps and headlights of cars leaving the cathedral. I hear a foot tapping and a young man singing in my head, “my wild Irish rose, the sweetest flower that grows.”
Liz sits at the table in my classroom, sharing her lunch with Sophie and me as she tries out different sign glosses for The Pear Orchard reading coming up next week. The table is strewn with Liz’s carefully prepared glosses. Liz pauses and mutters to herself with her hands while I try out possible combinations with my own. We are on the stage of ourselves:
LIZ:(Suddenly looking up at me) “How about this?” (Signs) WOMAN FOX DEAF CRAVE HAND SIGN PRECIOUS.
DEAF POET:Yes! Craving. Liz understands the hunger for communication.
LIZ: “These poems are about my mother.”
DEAF POET: “Your mother?”
LIZ: “Yes, she was an intelligent, easily frustrated woman who was not as content with being Deaf as my father was. She was well educated, a self taught reader, and tried to sign more in English than in BSL.”
DEAF POET: “So, you had problems in your relationship with her?”
LIZ: “No. I was the baby. But my oldest sister had to take care of things and resented our mother’s deafness. She refused to sign after she left home. I just loved signing and of course, as you see, I became an interpreter.”
DEAF POET: “Your sister had to do things for your mom?”
LIZ: “Yes. Phone calls, messages, interpreting. Although my mother was very independent, there were just many things she couldn’t do. I didn’t have to do any of that for her, so she was just a mom to me.”
DEAF POET MOM: “What about your sister?”
LIZ: “She was so angry for years. After she left home, she never interpreted for anyone and had no interest in Deaf culture or sign language. Deafness in our family became an off limits topic. But she never understood our parents’ Deaf experience as simply another way to live, as “Deafhood”. Instead, she saw our parents as disabled and just didn’t want to talk about deafness and how that affected her while growing up.”
DEAF POET MOM: “Are you saying that Deaf people shouldn’t raise children on their own?”
LIZ: “Of course not. My parents had jobs and cared for us very well. There were things that they just couldn’t do. Funny thing, it never bothered my father that he wasn’t able to do everything that a Hearing person could. He was well liked, gregarious, and comfortable with who he was.”
DEAF POET MOM: “But why was your mother having difficulty with her deafness?”
LIZ: “She was more Hearing in her thinking. She had much better English, read more, knew more of the Hearing world than my father. She was a Hearing woman trapped in a Deaf body.”
DEAF POET MOM: “She was in both worlds. Or wanted to be.”
LIZ: “Yes, and being Deaf and Hearing at the same time ripped her apart, I think.”
I look at Liz’s large blue eyes and her finely shaped nostrils, her full lips, and her long fingers as she shapes the signs before me. She sways from side to side as she signs, her fingerspelling slow and careful, her tempo even as she flashes her hands in a shower of images. Suddenly, I see Liz’s mother, a Deaf woman long dead, a woman I’ve never met. And I hear in my head: “Oh, my wild Irish rose, the sweetest flower that grows.”
Now I want to go to Ireland and Scotland. To the “thin spaces” marked by standing stones, Celtic prayers, and mythical beasts. Something I read long ago by Margot King but had forgotten, something to the effect of: The presence of Desert Fathers and Mothers in the deserts of Egypt, Syria, Israel and ancient Mesopotamia led to the development of Celtic Christianity. Perhaps this explains why there were more Irish monastics in comparison to other recluses in Europe. I think: The “thin spaces” are places where the physical and spiritual interconnect, where there is a sense of timelessness, a profound sense of God. The Celtic saints often spoke of this thin space. Oh, I’m often in a thin space, with Jane Eyre and Mary of Egypt flitting in and out of my consciousness. And: My mother’s family is of Scottish and Irish descent. They were border Scots who settled in the north of Ireland. I’ll tell Murray we’ll take that trip to the British Isles after all.
LIZ: “ . . . ”
JOANNE OF SCOTLAND: “I want to ask one more question about Anna. She’s the oldest but she isn’t fluent in sign. She just knows basic signs. Is it possible that she could resent the deafness in me?”
Liz’s eyes are sad.
LIZ: “If you hate it in yourself, yes.”
That night. In front of the mirror. Thoughts: My mother is Celtic. My father is a son of German Russian immigrants who came to Saskatchewan at the turn of the century from Odessa in the Black Sea area. Suddenly I see it. I see it in my small hands and feet, the quick and nervous gestures I make even when I’m not signing: I have inherited my father’s excitable nature and his passion for storytelling, his saxophone, and choral music. I’ve learned a dogged work ethic from my mother, a Protestant work ethic that survived her intense conversion to Catholicism, and her insistence on honesty and creativity run in my own veins, and is in the blood surrounding my damaged ears. The blood gives me music.
JOHANNA
But who is really writing all this? Perhaps you’ve suspected that someone neither Deaf nor Hearing is making you privy to this travelling back and forth between two states of being.
I am here and not here, Deaf and not Deaf, Hearing and not Hearing, flashing like quicksilver, teasing, perhaps maddening with the behaviour of quantum particles: not two, not yet one, and somewhere in between.
I am Johanna.
I am an older woman now. I shut my new digital hearing aid off when street noises, engine hums, the hubbub of crowds threaten to overwhelm me. Technology is not advanced enough for me to want to wear it all the time. At times, it is too loud, picks up too much background noise, I am forced to listen to the tin tin tin of digital sound as audiologists tell me that the analog hearing aids have been phased out from the market. With people returning in droves to listen to vinyl records again, perhaps there will be a tiny revolution someday among those still forced to make the switch from rich deep tones of analog sound to artificial digital twitter. Until then, I walk up to salesmen in stores, sign without my voice and ask for paper to write on. They are happy to oblige. Why didn’t I know that before? People are eager to practice their meager sign language skills with me as soon as they detect my deaf voice. I wear my hair short so everyone can see my hearing aid. Why hide it? Murray and I sign sans voice every time we shop, eat in restaurants, attend a public event. People glance disinterestedly our way. We are inside the house of love that sign language has helped to build.
Yet, in the Deaf House for many years, a language was scorned a
nd dismissed, powerless people were doomed to live in the attic or the basement, and the house itself was threatened with oblivion, mostly through water and neglect. In this house, I was sometimes Deaf and sometimes Hearing, able to speak well, yet not hear very well, able to sign fluently in American Sign Language yet unable to live in the Deaf community. Where could I lay my head?
Now, love is building a house. Murray and I lie in bed late Saturday mornings when he pokes me awake, pressing a handshape into my back or shoulder. I roll over and he signs some more.
“We need to book our flight to Portugal today.”
“Okay, why Portugal? Remind me again.”
Murray shrugs, I turn away grinning into my pillow. He tickles me and I push his hand away in feigned annoyance. He sends the sheet billowing over us and I sink into a half sleep.
My life seems to be a series of crossings between faraway lands and my own home. This urge to travel, to pack, to be on the move never seems to leave me. Forty-nine times during my university years, the yearly move with my daughters to a new home despite everyone’s protestations, and now the trips Murray and I take every summer. And how does Murray know my compulsive need to keep looking for something? Is it a longing to go on pilgrimages, as Chaucer would say.
Something now propels us toward Latin countries. First Spanish — as in Cuba — and now Portuguese. Passion, the color red, hot humid climates, and the Portuguese nun lamenting the indifference of her soldier lover having departed again to fight another battle. Her epistles hint at hours of secret passion in her convent house, her lover having sneaked past vigilant but weary nuns. Her letters would not be well received by a Canadian woman today: Get over it, get a move on. So what if he dumped you to continue fighting in his stupid wars? Ah but Mariana Alcoforado had no choice but to remain in a convent. She couldn’t travel her way out of her heartache but lived and died among women. And historians still think today that her letters were concocted by a man. Why couldn’t a woman in the fifteenth century write of her entrapment?