The Deaf House

by Joanne Weber

I snatched up books from our school library. I rifled through the pages of picture books, wondering: What does a deaf prostitute, who’s nearly languageless, know? How to give a good blow job?

  Sophie’s eyes were large and sad.

  I told her: “We’ll start by naming things in our classroom. We’ll check to see what signs he knows: table, chair, student, teacher, pencil, paper, and book. We need a baseline.”

  Sophie’s answer: “And if he’s making those signs properly? The people who work on those northern reserves have no access to the Deaf community. They’ll be learning signs from a book. If anyone claimed to be fluent in French after learning from tapes and books, he would be laughed out of town.”

  I wondered: What world am I about to give him? Do the people and things in my world have any meaning for him? Developing language at the age of thirteen is a daunting task. The window for maximum receptivity to language learning closes around age seven.

  Then I learned that he wasn’t coming after all, that his First Nations band had decided that the best placement for him was back on the reserve with his family, that it didn’t matter that he’d escaped the reserve and was found five hundred miles south, prostituting himself. His deafness and lack of language was of little consequence. He was neither Hearing nor Deaf. He was dead. He was merely a possession to be retrieved again.

  Sophie asked: “How are his people going to prevent him from escaping from the reserve again? Are they going to do anything different, like learning sign language?”

  I answered with a shrug: “When he has a cochlear implant? I don’t think so. They’ll just replace the processor and probably confine him somehow.”

  Deaf dead Deaf dead, the train rattled on, lurching around corners and screeching to stops at stations. Hearing Deaf, Deaf Dead. I couldn’t be both at the same time. There was no crucible that would forge the two halves in me.

  Twenty-Five

  I LOOKED DOWN FROM THE UPPER deck of the bus at the stone-faced Londoners rushing through traffic and wondered at the general happiness of the Britons, thinking about divorce. I remembered how the Deaf women in my small circle of Deaf friends used to cluck over Agnes, a Deaf woman married to a Hearing man. They’d sighed and signed, “Husband Hearing,” barely concealing the pity in their eyes. For them, the word Hearing had little to do with the ability to hear sound but everything to do with domination. They added: “He controls her because he can’t sign her language.”

  Paulette’s signs floated up in my face, her usual friendly smile was troubled: “And it’s always worse if you’re almost Hearing. If you marry a Hearing man, then your life will be on his terms. He’ll expect you to use your voice all the time and lipread. He won’t sign well enough for you to understand him easily. You’ll have to do all the work.”

  Murray pulled at my sleeve: “We get off here.”

  Anna and Paula were already disappearing down the stairs to the lower floor of the double decker bus.

  In the heat, burnt by hours of walking in the sun between Westminster Abbey and the London Aquarium, we strolled among the willow trees of the promenade along the South Bank. On the burnt brown grass, we listened to the buskers and finally paused at a caravan parked in front of the National Theatre and shaded by a large awning. Two men were playing a trumpet and a saxophone on the quickly fading patch of grass. The saxophonist was wearing a multi-coloured patchwork vest. The other man, who was black, continued, utterly engrossed with his music. The man in the vest beckoned to us.

  “Are you a family?” He motioned with his finger.

  Not prone to giving away much information, Murray nodded cautiously.

  The man looked over his shoulder at the trumpet player. He said: “That’s my cousin. He plays all the time. Can’t quit.” He looked around nervously, his face reddened by the sun. He asked: “How would you like to come inside our trailer and hear a story about a bear?”

  We hesitated. We didn’t come to London to be gullible tourists. Al Qaeda was still high in the air, and the smell of those failed London bombs still filled our nostrils.

  He pleaded: “It doesn’t cost you anything. Come, have a little food, a drink perhaps.”

  He beckoned us toward a trailer parked on the lawn backing the theatre. To my horror, Murray nodded, and our daughters followed him in single file. I trailed behind.

  Soon we were sitting on an L-shaped bench that ran along the length and width of his cramped and smelly trailer. Another man sat at the long end of this seat, his face visibly trembling. The saxophone player stood in front of us, his back to a short, narrow workbench holding a bottle of vodka and a plate of crackers smeared with some sort of red sauce and topped with green peppers. A curtained partition made from a green paisley fabric ran across the ends of the L-shaped seat and workbench. Small black and white photographs festooned with sprigs of dried herbs hung above the seat, in the sweltering van, while the black trumpet man continued to play softly outside. A woman swathed from head-to-toe in dark blue broadcloth with a scarf around her head crawled out from underneath the curtain and beckoned a timid young man in his thirties to come out of the small opening behind her. The green curtain quickly settled into place.

  She spoke in a heavy accent: “It eeez too hot.” She made fanning motions with her hands and flapped her apron. She encouraged the nervous man to sit with us, at the end of the bench nearest the curtained wall and made our host open the windows, then she smiled and left us.

  I looked through glazed eyes. Our host was gesticulating wildly, running rapidly through an assortment of accents. The first was Spanish.

  Murray was quite good-natured, and murmured: “Sí, sí.”

  Alarmed, the man switched into another accent. He boasted that he could speak several languages, including “Canadian.”

  The stricken-looking man dressed in khaki shorts and T-shirt suddenly bolted from the trailer. Our host nodded briefly at his disappearing back and clapped his hands, then rubbed them together. Now for the story he promised us. He began by offering us the stale crackers topped with a tomato sauce and jalapeño peppers. The smell of tomato that had sat out in the heat, for hours, I suspected, filled me with nausea.

  Our host flashed a bottle of vodka at our teenage daughters. They vigorously shook their heads in the negative. I wondered what Murray would do, but he shook his head too.

  Our host seemed quite disappointed. Nevertheless he switched on a tape recorder. I heard the indistinct sounds of a man talking.

  Our host said: “That’s my grandfather talking. He was a bear trainer.”

  He whipped out a jar in which suspicious looking stones rattled. He rang a bell by each of our ears, rattled the stones again, and instructed us to sniff the jar.

  He said: “It’s bear cheese. My grandfather used this to train the bears.”

  Dutifully we sniffed. Or pretended to. I held my breath while the smells of dust, sweat, and stale crackers threatened to overtake my queasy stomach. Murray and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised in warning. He closed his hand over his wallet in his pocket.

  Undaunted our host went on: “See these photographs. These are people who have the heart of a bear.” He looked at me sitting almost beneath him. “And women’s hearts are like teabags.”

  I nodded gravely, hoping not to overly arouse him, lest he move on to less desirable topics. He rapidly flipped through the pages of a laminated homemade book, ignoring much of the text. I squinted to look at the text and then watched his face carefully, until I realized that he wasn’t following the story at all. He paused at intervals to point to some of the pictures which looked suspiciously like poor black and white photocopies of illustrations from Winnie the Pooh.

  He said: “There was a boy who had a bad heart. He was often sick and wasn’t strong enough to participate in sports. And he had a good friend, a bear. One day, they took a walk in the woods and fell asleep. The boy woke up to find the bear dead, with his heart removed, and found a curious long scar running the length of his c
hest. He felt stronger and braver than before, until he realized the bear had given him his heart.”

  Our host flipped the pages even faster. He said: “Reluctant to tell anyone, he now had the heart of the bear and wanting to protect the rest of the bears in the forest, he sewed his lips shut. And that’s why there are still bears in the forest.”

  I thought: Well, then he’d have to sign. I was about to make the flippant remark when he snapped the book shut and looked at us with a great intensity.

  He said: “Now you can see the bear.”

  He smacked the curtained partition. He smacked it again as if to alert the bear of our coming. Then he pulled aside the curtain for our youngest daughter to enter. My husband motioned to me to go in after her. I was about to protest, wanting to kick Murray for making the women go first, but my petite daughter had already disappeared through the small hole. I scrambled after her.

  The back wall of the van was covered in green fabric. A tree stump stood in front of us. A light was placed in the corner on a floor littered with wood chips. The beam shone upon the stump, where a wooden carving of a bear was placed precariously. The bear was upright. A large heart was superimposed against his chest.

  The man’s voice came in from the other side of the curtain.

  Paula whispered to me: “He said, ‘Go on, pet him.’”

  I wondered: Go on, pet him?

  Anyway, the voice commanded us. My daughter gingerly touched the bear’s head. Incense began to rise all around us, while we stood, politely wondering what to do next, waiting for a signal of some sort. An onslaught of self-recrimination fell upon me. I signed to Paula: “Do you realize that we’ve given this man so much power over us? We’ve eaten his food, we are standing in this tiny trap hole, this is so dangerous and stupid.”

  Neither of us moved, wondering, submitting, and absorbing the incense, the heat, and the growing silence in the green bower. Finally a call from the other side of the curtain reached us. Gratefully we swooped down to crawl out of the space. My husband raised his eyebrows at me as he followed Anna into the bear sanctuary. Our host glanced at my husband’s behind as he squeezed through the small hole.

  “Whoa, big man. A big bear. How do you like being married to a bear?” By now, he sounded American. I decided to play along.

  I said: “I have to have a very strong heart.”

  He said: “You have a woman’s heart, like a teabag.” He jabbed the air with his finger, his eyes strangely triumphant. “You have to absorb everything and then release it. You can’t hold anything back.”

  Our host paced back and forth before Paula and me, who were sitting obediently on the bench. He finally said: “You must have found it quite peaceful. You stayed so long.”

  Murray and Anna quickly emerged from the cavity, with vague nods of appreciation.

  Mute, we shook hands with our host, stood still long enough for a picture with him, and hastily retreated to the long promenade along the South Bank. Blinking in the bright sun, we found a bench and roared with laughter and relief, although we had simply no way to make any sense of it. Uppermost in our minds was gratitude for having escaped the van without being robbed or harmed.

  Paula asked: “What was that all about? You are our parents, you’re supposed to protect us.”

  I protested: “I saw a bobby nearby. It must’ve been okay.”

  Otherwise, my lips were sewn shut. I couldn’t explain what happened, how we stumbled into a story that is strangely mine and Murray’s. I reminded myself: We are risk takers, and have committed many acts of colossal stupidity. But things have a mysterious way of working out despite our foolishness. And, in that hot, cramped crucible, I realized I have a Deaf teabag heart. It absorbs the murmur of voices, and then releases whatever I’ve been able to make sense of. I thought: I have to share my heart of Deafhood which makes Murray and our daughters stronger, more patient, slower, more willing to listen.

  But I was cautious not to repeat the teabag heart business. Murray was removing the disk from the video camera. The willow trees tittered in the gentle breeze.

  He said: “Bear-baiting was a popular pastime in Elizabethan England. I guess the story is about having compassion for a bear who sacrificed his heart for a human.”

  In the softening light of the late afternoon sun, the waters that lapped the South Bank move quietly among the sailboats and the odd dark trawler, following the Thames out into the sea. We walked along the Strand in this way, ignoring the cries of the buskers and the laughter of the crowds. I thought: The beauty of my Hearing husband, what he will risk for me, taking on Deafhood as if it were his too. How generous he is. And our Hearing children are just as shaped by my Deafhood as I am by their Hearing ways. Does it matter that we are Hearing and Deaf, all of us?

  Soon the sun lowered and sat on the brown London waters, turning it into blood that pulses in and out of the heart of the city.

  I was grateful that I’d thought to purchase a copy of The Tempest two days before to follow along in addition to listening carefully. We sat in the second balcony, on hard wooden seats in the Globe theatre, the replica of Shakespeare’s own theatre.

  Murray signed: “I can’t follow this play.” He read along with me in my playbook.

  Anna and Paula wore looks of exasperation, because four characters were playing multiple parts.

  I signed to them the clues: “When he puts his head inside the noose for a few seconds, then that tells you that Prospero is now Alonzo.”

  They shrugged. They didn’t understand enough sign language to comprehend what I was trying to tell them.

  Now I poked Murray: “Sebastian is Miranda, see, he puts that lace collar on. Tell the girls.”

  Each character merged into the other with amazing ease. Prospero freed both Ariel and Miranda, who were being played by one male actor. Prospero forgave Alonzo, who was the usurper of his kingdom. I became increasingly excited. I thought: Do we not have a dark side, the shadow that usurps our own inner kingdom? Do we not have parts of ourselves that need to merge, to work together? I leaned over the balcony in eagerness, almost dropping my playbook.

  A single actor played Gonzalo, whose intentions toward Miranda were noble (and most wordy), and Caliban, who acted ignobly toward her. But Ferdinand, played by another actor, got the girl. I sat back dazed. I thought: Are we not a mixture of ignoble and noble intentions, of darkness and light?

  Then Prospero slowly relinquished control over the people, his magical powers, and his own destiny, entering his human existence, the crucible of his own limitations.

  We ambled along Southwark under the plane trees after the play while the girls grumbled in disappointment.

  Paula pronounced: “I had no idea what was going on. That was the worst Shakespeare performance ever.”

  The conversation swirled about me. It dawned on me that Prospero is all of these characters. I thought: These people are facets of his personality, all heating up within his own crucible, as his life on his island draws close to an end. Moreover, Prospero really doesn’t make choices, whether to be this or that. He lets the collection of characters, which all represent a facet of him, simply play out their parts. His only role is to keep his eyes on the end result, like a runner focused on the finish line. He can do this because he relinquishes control. And: I don’t have to decide upon any identity, whether to be Deaf or Hearing. I am Deaf when I need to be Deaf and Hearing when I need to be Hearing. It doesn’t matter anymore how often decisions are made for me or how often I make my own. I no longer need to keep a score of how many power imbalances I must endure, trusting, like Prospero, that things will come out all right in the end.

  I ambled behind the girls and Murray, letting the breeze from the Thames play in my hair, a new confidence beginning in me, that all was well.

  Just outside the small village of Chepstow, Wales, we stayed in a fourteenth century tower that formed part of a stone manor house with an inner courtyard flanked by a wide- stepped stone veranda decorated w
ith carved columns. The grounds were manicured, with mown grass, trimmed hedges, and clipped bushes. To the left of the manor was a small church, with a graveyard: a heavy grey stone set against pastoral green hedges and full, leafy trees. That night, I felt the smooth and cool white cotton sheets against my legs, and realized: The days of the crucible are leaving.

  The next night, after touring Dylan Thomas’ Swansea, I made love with Murray while Thomas’ poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night” pounded into my brain without ceasing. I felt too disturbed by Dylan Thomas, frightened by the darkness in him, which ironically made his poetry sing. There had been nothing delicate or gentle even about this reunion with Murray after nine years of living apart. Instead I’d reached the elemental things darkly hinted at by Thomas: God, sex, my body, my faith, and the power of language. I’d travelled this far, even though I’d been a fractious Arabian horse, rearing up at the slightest indication of neglect, demanding attention, remonstrating against my children’s and their father’s lack of acceptance of me as a Deaf woman. I’d been demanding and difficult. They often recoiled in hurt and surprise when I roared like a dragon who is always asleep with one eye open.

  My eyes both flew open in the dark. Murray’s sleeping body was heaving under the cool white sheets in the ivy-papered bedroom high up in the fourteenth century tower. There were dragons in Wales. Fiery red, upright dragons, emblazoned on shields, crests, and roadside signs that dotted the landscape. I thought: St. Michael is preparing to do battle with a dragon. The battle of man and beast. I turned away from Murray, pulling the white lace coverlet over my shoulder, shuddering. A thought came to me, unbidden: I am still in the crucible and now a dragon is flying towards me. I buried my face in the pillow, now tense, waiting. My mind raced. I will come face to face with a dragon. Soon.

  Twenty-Six

  JOHANNA

  Sometimes I get stuck in the wrong stories. I got tied up with a dragon once. Thought that the dragon would explain me, my angst, and heat things up so much for me and then spit me out of his mouth. Couldn’t quite see where I was going with that one. I forced something out of the story to leap toward me and explain what was wrong with me. Dragons have a way of doing that. They are shadow creatures and not to be ignored even when their jewelled chests blink in my eyes. They demand that two twigs be bent into one branch, dammit.