by Joanne Weber
Embarrassed, I broke away from the labyrinth. Then Simon walked up to me.
He said: “Joanne, it’s time to go back to Paris.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the rows of somber stone saints on the outer wall of the cathedral, and silently said to them: I will come back someday, to finish the pilgrimage I started on that labyrinth in the floor.
Simon and I parted immediately after arriving back in Saskatoon. That year, I worked in the St. Thomas More Library. Each day, I walked to the university campus, thinking of the men I’d left behind: Mark, Jan, Kevin, Simon. And how I had to get back to England, Greece, Italy, and France. There was something I had to redo in those places. I did research in the library on how to get a PhD at Oxford. There, perhaps I would reclaim something I’d lost. I read Jane Eyre again. I heard the strange woman in the attic scream in the nights, and woke up tired. In the mornings, I swallowed a concoction of raw eggs and protein powder mixed with milk. I’d never consumed this unappetizing mixture before, but food seemed strangely irrelevant now. Soon, I forgot about lunch. Sometimes I came home and drank the same thing again.
The Greek peplos I’d bought in Athens now flowed over my body like a curtain. I moved to an apartment downtown to live alone, away from Simon’s home across the river. In the early fall mornings, I walked toward the university bridge glimpsing, over the low branches of trees, the river running grey in the rising mist, shutting my hearing aid off so I wouldn’t hear the heavy traffic thundering past me. Without my hearing aid, the bridge became a quiet stroll across the river Thames, alongside the spires of Oxford. I thought often of Clare, sleeping in her body, protected by a glass cage in the stone crypt below the basilica in Assisi, with her hands folded under her breasts and her skin the colour of dark mottled paper. She is who she is because of her body. Her body is her identity. These thoughts slowly took shape in me while I dreamed of St. Francis beckoning me down a spiralling stairway into a crypt. I wanted desperately to go back to Assisi, where intellectual jewels formed a breastplate over my heart, protecting me from my failure to love and to be loved. I couldn’t help thinking: I am being greedy. And: The pilgrimage I took with Simon was an utter failure.
The days moved slowly. I walked around the city, along the serpentine path alongside the river, and over the bridge to and from work. On better days, at night I quietly made myself a mountainous salad. I quietly watched my body fade, observing how its walls, floors, and foundation were crumbling.
Dragon Journal
Two months later. Something must change. I am too thin. Those graduation photographs from the University of Saskatchewan with yet another degree (!) reveal a morose young woman with eyes like burnt sockets. I can scarcely recognize myself. Although I’m grateful for the heavy folds of the graduation gown, my ankles are whittled down to toothpicks, as I stand bracketed by the heavier figures of my mother and grandmother.
I dreamt last night that I was entering the crypt of St. Francis, going down a spiral staircase below the basilica, in a cold sweat, afraid of what I would find. I think it is a sign. I must contact the Franciscans. Perhaps I am to join the religious life.
I parked my bicycle at the side of the steps leading up to Ain Karim, a center of theological study and exploration established by two nuns in an inauspicious house in south eastern Saskatoon. It was October, and the Europe trip hung over me like a diagnosis of a terminal illness. I hiked up the waistband of my jeans, now so loose, before ringing the doorbell.
A tall woman, clad in a simple long brown dress, with a wimple on her head, answered the door. She smiled with her eyes: Welcome.
Behind her, the living room was sparsely furnished. I had been here before with Simon, to study the theology of the body. At our first session, we’d received copies of a three inch thick book on philosophy, theology, science, literature, and spirituality, called Theologies of the Body, Humanist and Christian. Last winter, I had curled up in the giant chairs in the Education building on campus reading the thick tome. Simon merely tossed it on his desk in his office in the Arts Tower, already crammed with books and clothing. But I was not here to see Sister Sarah about the theology of the body. I wanted to talk about what happened at Assisi this past summer, about Clare and Francis, and about finding a way to a deeper life, to peace — perhaps through her order, the Franciscans?
I’m ready to join her order, since there’s nothing left for me to do.
Sr. Sarah pointed to a plate of Nanaimo squares: “Have something to eat.”
We were in the kitchen breakfast nook, sitting across from each other over tea. I pushed the ever protruding ear mold back into my ear, knowing that every time I bit, the mold would become displaced.
My hearing aid: “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
I reached stealthily for a square, and opened my mouth but: “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Sister Sarah asked: “Do you know sign language?”
I shook my head: “No.” I paused: “No. I don’t need it.”
I bit into the Nanaimo square.
My hearing aid: “EeeeeeeEEEEEE!”
I fiddled.
SISTER ACUTE OBSERVER: “But you’re Deaf.”
JOANNE DENIAL #1: “Not really. I communicate very well.”
PERSISTENT ACUTE OBSERVER: “You really think so?”
JOANNE DENIAL #2: “Yeah.”
I impatiently pushed my ear mold back into my ear, anticipating another squeak, as I bit into the second Nanaimo square. Sr. Sarah scooted another plate over to me. This time, matrimonial squares. I realized how hungry I was, and took the matrimonial square, too. I licked my fingers before beginning.
JOANNE DENIAL #3: “Anyway, I’m here because I want to explore Franciscan spirituality.”
Sr. Sarah smiled and leaned forward, with her elbows on the table and the sleeves of her habit pooling on the table like spilled coffee. She said: “St. Francis had a very difficult relationship with his father. He wanted him to become a wealthy cloth merchant.”
I nodded: “Uh, uh.” I thought: She isn’t getting what I really want to talk about.
She said: “Francis kissed a leper. That was a pivotal point in his life. He chose to embrace poverty instead of the life that his father wanted for him.”
An image came before me: Francis pushing through strands of dyed wool hanging from beams in his father’s dye house; peering through the steam rising from the vats of dye; men, women, and children standing, stirring silently in their grey rags; how he tries to take the wool strand away from the old blind man who is dipping it in a vat of blue dye. Francis leaps back in pain, having scalded his hands, not even aware that the dye is so very hot, how profoundly disturbed he is, as he climbs up the stairs to his mother, Pica, whose face is wreathed in an immaculate white wimple. She reaches out to him in tenderness.
It was the Zefirelli movie.
PICA(Extends her hand): “What’s wrong?” She looks at me closely.
JOANNE OF ASSISI(Just sits there, is not sure): I have a wonderful relationship with my father, and with my family. Nothing is wrong.
PICA: “Joanne, how do you feel about your deafness?”
JOANNE OF ASSISI: “Fine, just fine. No problems really. I communicate very well.”
PICA: “No, how do you really feel about your deafness?”
I was not sure what to say. Sr. Sarah waited, her heavy cross clinking against the table as she shifted to a more comfortable position, she said nothing, though her face was expectant.
Suddenly I felt as though I was being lowered into a well: the shock of the cold water, the beating of air about my ears will drive me mad, the vapours rising from moss-covered bricks all inform me of an impending death, I must stop here, tug on the rope, have Sister Sarah pull me back up, away from the underground cistern, so I can run down the cobbled path, step into my coach, with an eye to my luggage, bark out the orders to the driver to take me to Thornfield Hall immediately, but there was one difficulty. There was no Rochester waiting for me. There was o
nly Francis and his difficult father.
My eyes filled with tears.
Sr. Sarah pushed a box of Kleenex across the table. After I finished sobbing, she asked: “Why don’t you learn sign language?”
“I told you, I don’t really need it.”
“You could communicate with other Deaf people.”
“I don’t want to.” I sniffled.
“Why not?”
I struggled, looking at the remains of the matrimonial cake, its oatmeal buds trailing near the rim of the plate.
“Well . . . I find that Deaf people are not very well educated. They are rather uncouth.”
Sr. Sarah leaned forward, perched her chin on top of her hands. “That sounds rather snobbish. Do you know any Deaf people?”
“Well, I have nothing in common with them.”
“Why don’t you read a book about Deaf people? That’s not so scary.” Sr. Sarah bit into a square, grinning. “You can do research.”
“I guess so.”
She said: “Remember, Francis kissed a leper though he didn’t want to.” Sister Sarah pushed back her chair and stood tall over me in her long brown habit and wimple. She said, softly: “You’re very, very strong, Joanne.” And: “You can do this.”
I rode my bicycle back home in the dark. My bike light shone only two feet ahead in the dark streets. At home. I held up my fingers in the mirror. My fingers were small. Knotted. Each muscle defined. I studied the queerness. Of how I held my head to the left. All the time. Because I wore a hearing aid in that ear. How I worked my mouth in humming. Eyes darting everywhere. I gasped: Dear God, I am Deaf. I’ve not been able to hide it.
My eyes were now deep in their sockets. Smouldering. As Simon used to say. My cheeks were hollow. A cavity lay between my hips. Where a soft belly used to rest. But my bones were strong. I still had plenty of muscle. And enough energy to walk, to ride my bike, and to swim. I thought: Sr. Sarah sees how I am strong, despite my cadaverous appearance. I said to the mirror: She says so, herself. I thought: Although she has seen the spirit that travels throughout my body, the restless, homeless spirit that sometimes lives upstairs in my head, and sometimes down in my belly. I shifted in the mirror looking for it. Until I realized: Sr. Sarah has invited my spirit to occupy me all at once, to go anywhere without restriction, willy-nilly, like water seeping through walls.
Eighteen
SNOW CAME IN LATE MARCH, COVERING Saskatoon in white. My brother stood in the cramped entrance of my apartment, lifting his boots off the linoleum, looking for a mat. Snake-like strips of compacted snow fell from his boots as he pushed a parcel at me that our mother had sent. I wondered why he looked at me closely, until I realized he hadn’t seen me for months. He hasn’t seen how hollow my cheeks have become.
I said: “Come for a walk? I have to go to the university.”
The evening was lit by snow-flecked streetlights, their necks bowing down toward us. I found it difficult to lip-read David, I kept sliding and slipping on the slush of the sidewalk, I could not read a face that moved, even if I was doing the moving.
David turned his face toward me, trying to enunciate his words carefully. His faint voice said: “I . . . ooohh, course . . . mark . . . ee . . . ”
I thought: Damn, my hearing aid battery is weakening fast.
I nodded at David, to encourage him to continue his talking, and felt for the small, round pack of batteries inside my pockets, then my purse, and then my backpack. I twisted my back sharply in the slush, and almost lost my footing. David continued his barrage of words, which now felt like vomit spattered all over my coat.
I must clean up this mess. Was he upset? I’d never known David to talk this much.
My mind was racing with possible explanations. I’d heard the words philosophy, paper, and Professor Corrigan. I thought: It’s got to be about a mark he got on his paper. But I was not sure. I nodded, hoping this would comfort him and convey a sense that I understood the heart of the matter that claimed his mind while I remain mired in silence, but I was a child again, a child signing in stone, a silence of stone, signing in stone, signing silence.
My eyes swelled with tears. I’d got my e.e. cummings mixed up.
I told Sister Sarah how I was chased, constantly out of breath, trying to find safety where I wouldn’t be judged, evaluated, or measured how closely I could approach the Hearing in everyday speech, manner, and living. It’s a fox hunt, I told her: I am Sylva, the fox wife in the novel by Jean Vercors. She nodded and pushed another plate of cookies at me.
SISTER VERCORS: “Your deafness is a gift, Joanne.”
SYLVA: “No one else sees it that way. It’s something that has to be fixed.”
SISTER VERCORS: “It’s the cornerstone which the builders rejected.”
SYLVA(Barks): “I don’t understand what you mean.”
I looked at the dark pools made by Sr. Sarah’s brown habit.
SYLVA(Sniffs): “ . . . ?”
SISTER VERCORS: “You have a Deaf body. It is a gift for others.”
SYLVA(Whines): “I don’t understand.”
SISTER VERCORS: “Go find someone who signs.”
She stood up. I realized: It’s time to leave.
I rode home on the bus, looking out at the grey spring slush through the dirt-streaked windows watching the trees bend toward the bus as it careened around tight corners. Their branches are thin, frail bones waiting for the flesh of summer.
I wondered: Can they see that I’m deaf. I hope not. I gingerly sat on the edge of a black vinyl couch in one of the meeting rooms in St. Thomas More College. Sr. Doreen Smith, who was hired by the Diocese of Saskatoon to work with the Deaf, had gathered a few university students to teach them sign language so that they might assist her in this ministry. There was a Deaf woman there, Diane, who smiled constantly while Sr. Doreen signed and spoke at the same time. I gathered that Diane was her assistant.
I told myself: I am only here to learn a few signs, to satisfy my curiosity about the world of the Deaf, no more. I might even incorporate this experience into a research thesis, expanding on the significance of the visual in literature about Deaf people and its application to the mass media. After all, my English professor liked my last essay about Marshall McLuhan. Furthermore, I have done my research. I’ve come to this class armed with the history of sign language, the linguistic discoveries of Stokoe affirming sign language as a true language. And, of course, the Deaf culture.
The sign language class was most boring. Lists of signs, grouped according to function, sat on transparent sheets humming atop an overhead projector. Diane was patient, sometimes reaching to mold another person’s hand into a shape that might be the letter K. I sat at the back of the room, thumbing through my textbook. I saw that American Sign Language sentences were odd: “You Deaf You?”
I thought: Why repeat “you” twice?
I looked at the word lists in my lap. They want me to start at the beginning like everyone else.
More classes transpired, the long list of signs was exhausted, and we were to make sentences for the first time. Diane had everyone make a sentence from a list of beginning phrases. Boy blue. Girl fast. Nice meet you.
It was my turn. I wanted to say: “Happen today boy fell.”
Instead, I sat back with arms crossed. I had read ahead in this ridiculously slow class, watching others fumble with their signs. But Sr. Doreen and Diane’s sternness increased with every minute. The students were not to talk, ever. We had to forfeit small change in a cup if we bleated out any kind of a noise. Diane no longer mouthed the signs, no longer flashed the transparencies up on the overhead. Her signs swam by like iridescent minnows, while the Hearing students were stone still, sitting in a circle watching Diane attempt conversation: “You Deaf you?”
All the Hearing students shook their heads. I couldn’t, and I suspected: They can’t figure out these strange inversions, “boy tall, girl sad,” the beginning of a story with the word “happen”. I thought: What’s wrong wi
th last week, or yesterday, or once upon a time?
Three hours later, I snapped my textbook shut. I didn’t want to start all over again with another language. I didn’t want to think in baby phrases anymore. I joined the file of students leaving the classroom.
A voice: “Wait.” Sister Doreen touched me on the arm. Her signing was slow and she mouthed: “You should meet Patti, one of the Deaf teachers at the School for the Deaf. How about I take you to see her next week?”
I nosed into the parking lot at the back of the School for the Deaf on Cumberland Avenue, near the University of Saskatchewan. The school was a dream of the twenties, a sprawling mansion on an expanse of sloping green lawn lined with poplar and oak trees. I stood in the cool spring air on the football field. The still leafless trees at the other side of the field scratched at the grey sky.
I paused. This is a building that contains a culture and a language few are privy to. I’m about to step into a foreign country.
I hurried around to the front of the building, tripping on the uneven concrete slabs in the sidewalk, the steps to the Tyndall stone arch, the heavy oak doors of the building. It clanged behind me, the fusty smell of chalk, sweat, and old carpet assaulting me as I stood in the large stairwell leading up to the main floor.
Patti spied me before I saw her. Her hand shot out of a crowd of students who’d gathered around her. She continued her signing so I had to wait outside the circle until she finished. Her tight golden curls, pushed back at the sides with small combs, bounced as she wove her hands in and out of a story. Finally, she looked over their heads at me and nodded, quickly dismissing them. Her Texas drawl was evident in her speech: flat, nasal, and weak on the endings.
I realized: She talks like me.
Her hands were strong as she coordinated them to sign in unison with her words. I realized: It’s not a natural way for her to sign. She is doing this so I’ll understand.