The Deaf House

by Joanne Weber

  I almost explained myself with the wrong story, but it was still the wrong story. But it was not a waste of my time. The story led me to a partially torn away wall in the old broken-down house where we live. I have yet to turn into another room, knowing that in the centre, there is a bed with fresh sheets, where I can lie down with my love, nestled in stories about what is right in me. Indeed, love is building a house.

  Driving up to Selkirk in the border country of Scotland was one long drink of beauty. I had no inkling how this strange and terrible beauty would soon nearly destroy me. The terrain changed from flat moors with sparse clumps of trees to a land dotted with sheep grazing on low, mountainous hills. I gazed through forests as we drove over low streams trickling over the stones in their beds. Further north, wide mountain valleys were parcelled by stone wall fences. The houses were far apart. Some were large stone manors. I tried to imagine my mother’s ancestors in the Scottish Borders, but I only felt a sense of melancholy and displacement. Then I recognized it: it was a dour Scotsman, eternally pining for the hills and heather, the wide green valleys, the sudden darkness of the forests and languid waters smoothing the stones in the streams. It was The Lord is my Shepherd scene that my mother inherited from her mother, Grandma Mary Carson — an old-fashioned print from the Scottish Borders.

  Murray drove quickly on the long winding roads and up and down the hillsides. My stomach lurched after each plunge. There were so many. The roads were narrow, and even though one could see a car approaching, passing could be dicey. I tried to concentrate on the lonely, dark valleys instead.

  Anna woke me during the night and asked to move in with Murray and me on the sagging foldout bed in the cottage we’d rented. Of course, I was squished in the middle, and Anna pulled all of the blankets toward her, leaving Murray and me cold, Murray moved onto the couch, but Anna sprawled over the narrow hide-a-bed, her arms and legs jerking me awake, so I got up and crawled into Anna’s bunk, and now I saw why she complained that her hips hurt. The bunk was a mere slab of foam and I couldn’t stretch out to full length, and Anna was taller than me, no wonder she couldn’t sleep there. In the morning, I awoke weeping, although I told myself: You’re merely sleep deprived and the bed is impossible. We’ll set up better sleeping arrangements.

  But I knew better. The dragon was coming closer and I had to flee.

  I bolted from the cottage for the twisting streets of Selkirk. The wind was bitter. None of my family realized that I hadn’t had a real conversation in days, because we’d been together constantly since we’d arrived in the United Kingdom. I didn’t catch anything at meals, in the car, on the street, or in museums, travelling with them had become solitary confinement. I couldn’t hear well enough to talk on the phone, to talk to my friends, I couldn’t go anywhere without feeling so left out of their laughter and silliness - it was like layers of varnish, dirt, and gunk on a hardwood floor. I thought: The build-up is making you crazy. You’ve reached your saturation point.

  The wind pushed harder in my face and I zipped up my light summer jacket, and walked past a small stone house whose front door was a mere foot back from the sidewalk. I thought: There are people living in this house, so close to the street. They can see it all.

  I glanced at the flowers in the window boxes and turned away, guiltily, as I could see right into the house. I felt like an intruder who had easily unbolted the front door, and as I hurried on, I wondered: How do people live so close to busy traffic?

  At the river, lamentations began in my head: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song . . . I thought: Indeed, the Hearing are my captors. Demanding that I speak, that I hear, that I sing their songs. I am captive. No matter where I go. Langley Hall, coffee shops, my classroom, England, and now the Borders.

  I took longer and faster strides along the narrow streets. I was so close to the danger. The dragon now held me in its gaze. I felt the flames all about my head, the flames in the winds coming off the Highlands. I told myself: Be strong. You have to hold this mystery, to contain this Deafhood, somehow, in your own body. You’re the only one in this family that can carry the Deafhood. I told myself again and again: I carry the Deafhood for them. I do it for them. Because they can’t carry it themselves. This is not the time to run away. Not again. Go back to the cottage. Talk to Murray. Tell him how you really feel.

  The dragon’s fiery breath cooled on my face, and I only felt the Scottish wind rolling down from the hills. I told myself: The dragon will return again and I must be prepared to stay with my family and fight.

  I went back to fight.

  But there was no time to talk to Murray, because we had to leave for Stirling immediately, Murray was not pleased about my bolting from the cottage, he and the girls were forced to wait, patiently, until I came back.

  Sheepish, apologetic, I climbed into the car.

  A couple of hours later, we were wandering about Stirling Castle, where I consoled myself like this: This is the closest we can get to my ancestors of Dumbarton Castle, because its artefacts were moved to Stirling, including an axe, my family’s axe, I never saw that axe, but my great, great, great uncle Charlie was born in the bedroom used by Mary, Queen of Scots when she was imprisoned at Dumbarton. Legends, mostly.

  I’d read that the baptismal ceremony for Mary’s son, here at Stirling, included an elaborate ceremony in which a “fantasy castle” was built to enact a siege. People linked hands around the edifice and danced. Then the effigy was burned and a magnificent fireworks display ended the ceremony. I tried to imagine: I’m at the ceremony, in the middle of the night, with dragon flames hot against my face, people cheering in the night, dancing in rings, because the siege is over, the castle is in ruins, and a royal child is baptized.

  My mind balked. I didn’t understand the need for fire at a baptism. Unless it was the dipping of a burning candle into the waters of baptism, as in the Catholic Easter liturgy. I thought: Perhaps, burning the castle at the end of the siege is a symbol of old life giving way to new freedom. Fire has its usefulness. It razes forests to the ground in order to make way for new growth.

  In the cottage at Selkirk, I woke up at 4:00 am again in tears. I heard voices in my head, all of its meaningless chatter, and I knew it was merely tinnitus, but there was a plaintive voice that came through. I breathed slowly, trying to listen. I heard: “You are still not paying any attention to me. I won’t let you ignore me any longer.” I cast about in my head, trying to remember where I’d heard this before. I heard her again: “I warned you. Now I will destroy you, because I will not be ignored or dismissed any longer. All your reading, all your Hearing ways, your English will not save you. ” Her ominous words had a familiar ring. I quickly pushed it away and let the bubbling Hearing voices in my head crowd her out, the only time I was grateful for the tinnitus. I finally fell asleep again at 6:45 am. Murray woke me only minutes later. When I opened my eyes, a terrible sadness fell over me. I heard: “I long to go away.” I closed my eyes, to fight the tears. Under my eyelids, I saw the dragon’s flames.

  Later that morning, Murray tried to hold my hand and sheltered me with his large chest from the bitter wind while we waited for the bus to take us to Edinburgh. I looked at him, and wondered. There it was again, how the beauty of my husband with his tall and wide girth, his large hands that stumbled in his signs, his kind eyes, his ready laughter slipped inside of me. I saw: Murray’s kindness is a shield from the dragon who is spreading his wings all about me, his flames licking at my hair. Suddenly I seized the shield and apologized to him, looking up into his face, shivering in my shorts and sandals. I looked about me, at the gust of wind that tore at us, I no longer saw any flames. I knew that the flames would come back, but for now, I rested in the warmth of Murray’s body.

  On our way out of Scotland, we drove through the purple heather and rounded, swollen hills (they
seemed to be with child), and valleys dotted with sheep. I thought: I want to remember these stone fences that plait the valleys, and the bluffs of trees, and the worn pebbles in the streams, how they let the streams trickle softly over them as if they are saying, let it be done to me. I want to always remember the homes built into the hillsides, their heavy stone walls softened by brave flower gardens. It is enough for me.

  Liverpool. Sunday morning. We’d been looking for a Catholic church but had stumbled on an Anglican one instead, St. Margaret’s of Antioch, with two men waiting outside in the churchyard, who gave us directions to the Catholic church and mentioned that they too had the Eucharist that morning, and since the Catholic mass was at midday and we’d have to wait for an hour and a half, we accepted their invitation.

  The church was dimly lit and poorly maintained. We sat in a pew, two down from the only other occupied bench — apart from a solitary man sitting across the aisle. Halfway through the Gloria, a family with four children noisily entered the pew in front of us. The mother was commandeering, the children huddling around her. A rustle in the back and a quick look over my shoulder confirmed the presence of another newly-entered family. The sermon was on racism. The families, in front of us and behind us, were black. Murray signed: The priest announced that a black teenager was killed a week ago. The community is still in shock. The sermon was long. I couldn’t hear a word. Instead, I gazed at the newly made banners standing near the altar. All of them depicted dragons. I sat dazed. Despite the sparse attendance at this service, there were enough dragons to make up for the lack of parishioners.

  After the service, there were tender hugs, firm handshakes, and friendly chatter. The priest invited us into a small kitchen for coffee. I asked him about the dragon banners.

  He said, excitedly: “We made them!” He began to retell the tale of Margaret of Antioch and the Dragon. Apparently she was the patron saint of childbirth, since she was ejected from the innards of a dragon. In the Middle Ages, people venerated her so much that copies of her story, written on long strips of parchment, were wrapped around the abdomens of women in labour. I bent my head forward to listen more carefully to this strange tale. The priest said: “Margaret was incredibly strong-willed but her heart was like a songbird in the morning.” He waved his hands in a majestic motion as if he were conducting an orchestra. “She lived at Antioch with her father who was a magician during the reign of Diocletian; as a young woman, she became a Christian.”

  I said: “I bet her father didn’t like that.”

  The priest shook his head, his eyes full of mirth: “She laughed when the grand governor at Antioch, Olybrius proposed to her. He tried to torture her to get her to consent but she continued to laugh and sing. Then he became angry and his cries of fury woke a sleeping dragon. The dragon rushed out and swallowed Margaret whole.”

  I tried to imagine: Margaret, trapped in the belly of the dragon, trembling in fear, swooning with the fiery heat of the dragon’s innards, her gorge rising at the sulphurous fumes from the dragon’s liver, certain that she won’t survive the ordeal, the heat is unbearable, she is trapped, she only knows that the dragon is carrying her somewhere, perhaps to digest her bones.

  The priest’s voice went on and suddenly I was not able to hear him anymore. I could only see his animated face. I had become too tired with all the lipreading.

  Soon we were standing on the church lawn, blinking in the sunlight, apologizing for having to leave so soon. As I waved goodbye to the priest and his wife, he thrust a copy of the story into my hands and I held it flat to my stomach in order to keep it from flapping in the strong sea breeze, and the sun was warm on our backs as we walked over the grey stones toward the harbour, and again, I sensed flames about my own head.

  I felt something dark spread over me, like wings blocking out the rays of the sun. The dragon will shift shapes, will come in a form that will be too ordinary, that I won’t even recognize it before it can blast me into pieces.

  Twenty-Seven

  BELOW THE BROADWAY BRIDGE, THE RIVER was already filmy with translucent patches of ice. Even though this December was mild, I wished the Deaf could have their year-end banquets in the spring. Murray was struggling with a cold, and I’d been distracted with preparation for my classroom, pounding away on my laptop in our hotel room. We pushed through the revolving door into the Ramada, where I combed my hair with my fingers before taking the elevator to the banquet floor. The warm, steamy room admitted only the Deaf, along with the Hearing interpreters and the few Hearing people who had some ability to communicate in ASL. For a few precious hours, the order of the world was reversed. The Hearing, mostly professionals, became shadows in the room, while the Deaf commanded. They were the new aristocracy, sitting under the crystal chandeliers at snow-white tables set with gleaming cutlery, reflecting the night outside the long, tall windows. The Deaf men were dressed in their best suits, and their wives in their evening dress fluttered their signs like courtly fans. Black-and-white-uniformed waiters threaded their way among the tables. Choppy waves of signs rose above steaming plates of food. A black-skirted waitress bent over my shoulder and gestured with her coffee pot. Murray sat at my side, bewildered, as a sea of hands pushed against him like waves. He remained unfocused, until Tommy tapped him on the shoulder. Murray’s eyes lit up in recognition of his former student, who was already telling the others how angry he used to be at Murray, how he hated Murray for forcing him to read: “He wouldn’t answer any of my questions about the paragraph I was supposed to read. I hated him. I thought he was an awful teacher.”

  Murray winced, though a smile played about his lips.

  Tommy extended his hands from his mouth toward Murray. He signed: “Thank you, V.” He formed the handshape for V, Murray’s name sign, against his left shoulder. “You are the greatest teacher in the world. You taught me to read.”

  The other Deaf nodded appreciatively, while Murray signed: “You did the work, Tommy. You went through the struggle.”

  The light from the chandeliers dimmed and brightened. The guest speaker stood beside the podium so everyone could see his hands. He was Gary Malkowski, the first Deaf Canadian to become a M.P.P., a Member of the Provincial Parliament in the province of Ontario. He was from Toronto. He had come to galvanize the Deaf community into action. He unfastened the buttons to his grey suit and removed his navy tie, hanging it over the podium. He was balding, his sharp black eyes darted restlessly over the tables, ice floes in a restless sea of signs. His signs were large and emphatic, he hitched back the sleeves of his shirt as if preparing for a great fight, and signed: “The school for the Deaf was closed down fifteen years ago by the Saskatchewan government. Do you realize that this closure came the year after the great protest at Gallaudet in 1988? We now have a Deaf president at the only university for the Deaf in the world. Do you understand? Fifteen years ago, in Washington, D.C, we were finally heard. We fought hard for our rights and we won. But one year later, in Saskatchewan, the Deaf school was closed. What is wrong with your province? Your government?” He gazed over the sea of greying seniors, whose eyes were trained on him like obedient children. A fury began to travel down his arms into his fingers: “No young Deaf people are entering your community. They are now scattered throughout Saskatchewan, doomed to live in isolation in their home communities. You must stop this!”

  The senior Deaf nodded in polite agreement, but I knew: They can’t step out of their twilight years and reverse this form of linguistic genocide. Some are struggling with ill health or with caring for grandchildren. I pleaded silently with Gary, they need their retirement, but he was gyrating his arms in fury up on the stage. I coughed politely, careful to drop my hands into my lap, in case people were thinking I was signing something.

  Murray raised his eyes quizzically. He wasn’t able to fully grasp Gary’s signs. I leaned over to explain. I voiced: “Gary wants us to fight for Deaf children who are in need of sign language.”

  Gary continued: “Yes, you lost t
he school for the Deaf, but the fight is not over. We must save our Deaf children from a paternalistic and oppressive system of education. We’ve been through the educational system, we’ve suffered the impact of thoughtless oralism, we are told that we are not valuable or important unless we can speak fluent English, that we are to study English for many years in the hope we’ll hear and speak just like Hearing people.”

  Again, more vigorous nods. A man shouted and waved at the back. More hands went up, in unison, to cheer Gary on.

  I searched faces, the Deaf seniors who merely wanted to play cards, dote on their grandchildren, and travel, and thought: They can’t take up another cause again. They can’t do anything to save the Deaf community or return it to its former glory. Everyone is too old and tired, and the most politically savvy leaders have left the province.

  Gary Malkowski continued despite the growing islands of fluttering signs: “We know what will work for our Deaf children. There’s no one who will understand them. Not even their parents. They are all being mainstreamed. They will be lonely, frustrated, and without friends. They will feel strange, isolated, and misbegotten. Worse than that, they’ll be handicapped because of their inability to read and write well. Deaf schools across Canada prepared us for life, gave each of us a trade: barbers, printers, painters, bakers, and jewellers. At the Deaf school, we washed our own dishes, scrubbed our own floors, and cooked our own food. We cared for each other. And now, we’re looked upon as the unfortunate ones. We, who raised families, paid taxes, and held our jobs for more than thirty years.”