The Deaf House

by Joanne Weber

  The audience shifted in its chairs. The woman sitting next to me was fingerspelling under the table.

  Gary pounded out: “Look at Ontario. We stayed strong. We organized and fought the government, and we still have our Deaf schools, our language, and our culture. You must do the same. Stay strong, work together for the sake of our Deaf children.” Gary ended by throwing his fist in a punch at an invisible foe.

  The Deaf waved their hands with vigour, applauding his address. At that moment, the double doors of the dining room burst open and a stream of Deaf welfare recipients swarmed among the tables. Dressed in finery, mostly gleaned from second-hand clothing stores, they came for the cards, gossip, and impromptu storytelling. They couldn’t afford a ticket to the banquet, but they would not miss a rare opportunity to see all those who once attended the Deaf school in Saskatoon. Gina ran over to me, pulling her Hearing boyfriend by the hand. They were both beaming at me, and Gina was excitedly pumping Murray’s hand and saying: “Thank you for editing that DVD! When will I get it?”

  The boyfriend signed to me: “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  Gina blushed and held her hand to her mouth.

  Murray nodded, and I smiled.

  Gina and her boyfriend turned away to visit at a nearby table.

  Already, many tables were abandoned. People were crowding to catch a story by Art Hillcox, known for his clever way with signs. The conversation around my table turned to D brushed over the heart, who founded the school for the Deaf and died several years ago who entertained the school’s children with stories while he worked his shift as a supervisor on the dorms. Many former students said they saw the ghostly figure of Williams patrolling the halls in the grand old school. Someone fingerspelled the name of another teacher, and giggles began to erupt, as every mistake and mishap was dissected and acted out to the tittering and hooting audience, red-faced in tears and laughter. Only a few teachers escaped this pitiless retelling of faults and foibles. The Deaf have long memories.

  I glanced at Murray to see his reaction as many of his old teaching colleagues were being mercilessly roasted, but he still looked rather bewildered and nodded politely.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around. It was Roger Carver and his wife, Shelly, their faces wreathed in large grins. I hadn’t seen them since Paula was born. Now they stood before me, older, eyes more sunken, but with the same energy and passion travelling through their fingers. Roger earned his master’s degree in deaf education at the University of Alberta. Shelly earned a degree in social work at Gallaudet University. They’d just moved back to Saskatchewan.

  I asked: “What brought you back to this godforsaken province?”

  Roger answered with a shrug: “Shelly’s family is here.”

  I cocked my head and said: “But you’ve been in the best places in Canada. You’ve lived in the most active, and advanced Deaf communities. Vancouver, Edmonton.”

  Roger nodded and said: “Yes, well, there’s lots to do here.”

  After each story, all hands rested in laps, or languished carelessly on the table. I sat with my hands under the long table, my eyes feasting on the richness of the bodies, how they swayed. I’d never seen the Deaf so animated with rhythm, the grace of their hands folding, unfolding, dipping, swerving, and gliding, and the vivid facial grimaces coming and going as if a series of masks had been donned and then discarded. I was overwhelmed at this freedom to express one’s self and to be understood. I excused myself, leaving Murray to sit in the circle of signs. On the tables, remains of dessert, bitten strawberries abandoned against scraps of cheesecake, glistening under the chandeliers, half-filled coffee cups standing neglected while hands floated, dipped, and folded nearby. A daughter had moved away, a teacher had retired, a Deaf man was redoing the shingles on the roof, and a grandson had been born. Over the sea of bodies gyrating and gesturing, my eyes swam with tears. I thought: If I don’t leave soon, I’ll want to stay in the room for the rest of my life. And: I have to pull myself away from the blessed sight.

  Then I saw Murray. His face was gaunt and tired. I had to drive him back to our hotel. I motioned for him to come along.

  Many of the Deaf paused their conversations to wave goodbye to me. Some rushed forward to hug me again. Murray and I walked past three men signing in earnest, whose cigarettes were forked between their fingers, the smoke trailing their swooping hands. Outside the hotel, Murray and I returned to the night. Snow flurries grazed the street lamps. Cold night air seeped up the hem of my coat. I felt a strange sort of relief: I’m no longer alone in this province, now that Roger and Shelly have come back.

  Perhaps it’s the beginning of the reversal of the exodus of Deaf professionals begun by the Task Force, nearly fifteen years ago.

  Far away from the golden crowd high up in the hotel, I took Murray’s hand as we walked back to our car.

  During the Christmas season, I was warm with optimism and contentment, relieved to have gotten past dredging up childhood memories. A deep magic was in the air: the sparkling snow outside, the ice-crusted roads, the high snowbanks, and the crunch of tires as Murray brought our crimson Olds 98 into the driveway. I was in a liminal space dissolving distinctions between Gina and me, between all living things. I thought: After all, the Book of Kells has beasts entwined throughout its illuminated pages, and around the faces and limbs of saints. Snakes meeting face-to-face with fangs bared. The four evangelists are even depicted as animals: John is an eagle; Mark, a lion; Luke, an ox. Only Matthew is portrayed as a man. There are mythical animals: griffins, dragons, and unicorns. An otter with a fish. A peacock. Two mice nibbling a Eucharistic host. Two cats with other mice on their backs, solemnly watching the spectacle. Saints are accompanied by a dragon. Francis of Assisi was able to talk with a wolf, convincing it not to kill or terrorize the people of Gubbio. I thought: The dragon in my dreams, in my waking consciousness is a beast that lives within me, now in peace. Maybe. I hope.

  In late January, Sophie came back from an errand she had run at Safeway during noon hour. She shuddered as she took her gloves off to sign to me: “I saw Gina. She was out there in her winter coat, pushing all those shopping carts together. Gina said, ‘This is hard, but this is okay for now’.”

  I was not sure what this short report meant. I asked, hesitatingly: “So, she’s not really happy with her job?”

  Sophie shook her head: “No. She says she wants to get her Grade 12 and that she’ll leave this job as soon as she can.”

  I threw up my hands and hissed: “She’s so damn stubborn.”

  Later, I swivelled in my chair and spoke out into the nearly empty room: “I once read somewhere that humility is about accepting the truth of your limitations.”

  Sophie lifted her head and smiled: “And your potential.”

  I am my own wild bird, with nowhere to go, no matter how much I’ve achieved, no matter how many accolades I’ve gathered or praise I’ve accumulated. I’m now in a classroom. I can’t impart to my students much about Deaf culture, sign language, or the great freedom in letting oneself be Deaf. I am trussed up in this province and in this small prairie city. Within me, there’s only a pitiful child, more feral than human, trying to cover her body aid with her red coat. Her old, accusing voice counters me with: You still don’t pay enough attention to me.

  I pulled the dark curtains over the brilliant sunlight, and prepared to leave my classroom for the day, and with a hand raised to push down the light switches, I paused in the light from the hallway, realizing: At Gally, I always signed off my exchanges with this irritating and demanding child in me, a quick image of myself curled under a roof of a house, with: I am sleeping in the house that love is building. I thought more on it: I’ve forgotten to do that for years.

  I turned away from my classroom. The door clicked behind me. That click had a sense of finality. I sensed that I was expelled from the classroom, propelled to a Deaf house within myself, a house whose walls were made of my skin, my bones, and my blood. I must stop
looking for ways to escape my Deaf body and accept that this house truly shelters me, a most bitter and ferocious child. I whispered in my mind: I accept myself, and at that moment I remembered the end to the legend of Margaret of Antioch, how she realized that things that appeared menacing was not necessarily evil, and how it was at that moment that the dragon spat her out of his mouth.

  Twenty-Eight

  JOHANNA

  This weary walk in the desert is not without travellers crossing my path who are even more parched than I am. How are they able to remain sane? How are they able to fend off the demons of self doubt, despair, and mockery? How do they manage to defeat accedie, that constant whine in the ears, urging them to lay down, to die of loneliness, to not hope anymore for any meaningful human contact. At least I have my books.

  I sat beside Nay in the school conference room. He wore a grey jacket and a toque of the same colour jammed over his head, long swaths of hair framing his heart-shaped, coffee- skinned face. His large brown eyes swallow me, Sophie, the Karen interpreter, and the principal. His mother, a diminutive woman, sits across from us, wearing a traditional Karen dress woven in rows of emerald green, ruby red, lilac, and golden yellow. Nay is so grey, I shake my head. I touch him on the arm. He recoils.

  Slowly, I sign: “SCHOOL TOMORROW, TEACH YOU,” knowing that he has understood nothing of my signs. He is languageless, having lived in the jungle with his family until he was seven years old, and then moved to a Thai refugee camp along with his mother, his two brothers, and grandmother.

  Except that he doesn’t know who these people are. At first, he wants to sleep in my classroom. I pull the chair with him sitting in it, away from the table so that he can’t use his arms as a pillow. I draw pictures. He finally picks up a pencil.

  Then I show him a birthing video. His eyes open wide in fear. “MOTHER YOURS, BABY, YOU SAME,” I sign. He nods slowly. He now has a mother.

  Three weeks go by and he still lifts his hands to copy everything we sign. No matter how often we point at objects in our room, and provide the signs, he points and copies the signs. “WHAT?” I sign. “WHAT,” he signs back. Nothing more.

  This goes on for another month. Finally I say to Sophie: “He doesn’t see the need to sign. Why should he sign? When he’s gotten everything he’s wanted by pointing. He’s not connecting our signs to anything that is important to him.”

  In desperation, I lay bamboo reeds from a craft store on the table. I give him a knife and a glue gun. “HOUSE,” I sign. “HOUSE MAKE.” He copies me, “HOUSE.” I sigh. He has no idea what I’ve just signed.

  But he seizes the knife. We quickly insert a block of wood under the dry tough reeds and he saws away. In two hours, he has cut, glued, and shaped his bamboo house.

  “SLEEP WHERE?” I ask him, adding a classifier, the shape of a person laying on a floor. He points to the far right side of the house. I show him the sign that means “bed” and “sleep” and wonder how he is going to understand the difference between the two words if he is only given one sign that means both.

  “BROTHER WHERE?” I sign. He raises his eyes, puzzled. I pretend to be in pain of childbirth, popping out three babies between my legs. Tamla, Nay and Gler. He nods in recognition. “BROTHER,” I say again. He points to his teeth. Then I realize. Gler has three top teeth missing. It’s Nay’s home name sign for his brother.

  The lesson is finished and he is exhausted. I nod at Sophie. “Not yet,” I sign. “He hasn’t had his Helen Keller moment.”

  Sophie and I watch Nay point to everything in rapid succession. Sophie resolutely sits down every morning to review the book of a thousand pictures with him, patiently going through the signs. I manage to impress upon Nay that he has a father who is dead. I mimic man and woman having sex, making a baby. MOTHER FATHER. Then I feign death. I make signs for heart beating, and then stopped. Then I show a gun with my fingers. He now understands. His father was shot in the civil conflict between the Burmese and the Karen jungle fighters. He brings me a portrait of his family upon arrival in the Thai camp. His mother’s arms are touching Nay’s shoulders protectively while she looks dead in her eyes. The man beside her, Nay points. FATHER? His eyes seem to inquire. No, I tell him, it is the uncle who was hanged.

  His mother, Thoe Paw, comes to me and says, “You are his mother now, he is your son as he will only listen to you.”My eyes fill with tears.

  From that day, Little Red Coat begins to speak to me. She tells me, “You are finally paying attention to me. Let me tell you my real name. It is Johanna.”

  A year later on Christmas Eve, the smell of sour cabbage, the holopsti welcomed us after the cold blasts of air rushing at our backs as we scurried to get inside my parents’ house in Wilkie. The house was pulsing with people. David had brought his wife, Dawn, and their five children over from Unity. Ruth and Joe had already arrived an hour ago from the farm with their four children. Carol and Colin had packed up their five little ones in a van and driven on the icy roads from North Battleford. With Murray and our daughters, we were twenty-six people crammed into the house that my parents had occupied for the past thirty years. All day, children were playing everywhere, in the upstairs bedrooms, and on the main floor, winding their way among us women washing dishes and chopping vegetables, while the men sat in the cramped kitchen, their voices loud, faces red over the bottles of beer crowding the small kitchen table, and a turkey pan with neatly rolled holopsti rested on the range, ready to go into the dining room, and now we were around the table, and I couldn’t make out a thing anyone was saying, and they were all talking at once.

  “Ossy bull ow Loreen ay wit im, up or im even?” Carol’s voice. Over the noise.

  “Ill er o il, sez hees in ocen, av er from pain.” Colin. He put his arm around Carol as she reached up to clasp his hand on her shoulder.

  “Ow co e ay wit im?” My mother. She shrugged.

  I rose from the table, upsetting my plate as I maneuvered out of the necklace of people surrounding the table.

  David called: “Joanne, you want some dessert?”

  Suddenly, the swirl of words was reduced to the occasional flutter of a vowel as everyone looked at me in expectant silence. Heads nodded sympathetically as I touched my ear and stood at the head of the table, beside my father.

  I started slowly: “You know . . . uh . . . there’s this space between us. It is as if we are on the opposite banks of the river and all of you are on the other side. Neither of us can swim across the river.”

  My mother. She said: “That’s not true, Joanne. You’re part of the family. We just have to behave ourselves.” She glared at our family.

  Gabriel howled as Dawn bent to give him another spoonful of mashed carrots.

  I said, more firmly now: “No, Mom. It’s not your way. It’s not my way either. Things cut down to size. Served an abridged version without the spontaneity. Being treated like a child with a problem.”

  My mother, pleading: “If you could wear your FM system.”

  Still firmly: “It would help some, but I have to lipread. If I can’t know who is speaking, all I’d have is a bunch of loud voices in my ear and I can’t sort it out. No. There’s really no solution.”

  My mother, the reconciler: “Murray could . . . ”

  More firm yet: “No, Murray cannot interpret for me. It’s not fair to expect that of him.”

  My voice was loud. I touched my ear again, checking for volume control. The room remained silent, until I grasped the glass of wine by my plate and held it up, and said: “Look, let us just eat, and enjoy this food. You don’t need to feel guilty about me not being able to hear. Not anymore. Here, let’s drink to us.” I toasted: “To our family!”

  I sent off the first clink, which resulted in a slow waterfall of clinks. Everyone waited until the last swallow for me to say something again. Instead, my dad chuckled. He was about to tell a story, a story I’d heard so many times before but never tired of listening to, an oasis in this impossible conversation, something
I could hear through anticipation of his words because they were so familiar.

  He cleared his throat and began: “That reminds me. One day, while hanging around in the store at Revenue, I heard this man, his name was Joe and he was a bootlegger, kind of bragged that no one was ever able to locate his wine and steal any of it. I couldn’t wait to tell my friends. We planned to watch him at the next dance in the Revenue hall and see if we could steal his wine. We noticed that night, that when a customer approached him, he’d leave the hall, jump on his bike, and with a whistle take off for his cache. By the time he’d rounded St. Charles’ Church, heading west, we were following him. We heard a clink of a bottle and knew immediately that the store of wine was in a bit of buck brush about a quarter of a mile up the road. By the time Joe was back in the hall, two of us, the other two were lookouts, had found his goods. There were about five bottles in the box, but would you believe it, we took only one. One quart of wine for four kids. I don’t remember much else about that night.”

  We all chuckled, even though we’d heard this story so many times while sitting among plates strewn with bits of shredded cabbage. The holopsti were gone, a few shreds of rice, carrot, and potato still clung to our plates, and the air was now warm and moist with smells of wine and freshly brewed coffee. The silence around the story drew us in, and we all looked at each other with amusement.

  I stood and gathered my dessert plate and coffee cup. I said: “I’m going to sit in the living room with my dessert now. It’s too noisy here.” I thought: I’m going toward death. I wondered: I choose it truly. I felt: A strange release, sensing an invisible crowd of Deaf and Hearing saints, living and dead, vilified, shot, tortured for their defense of the voiceless, their hands on my shoulder, signing, singing, signing me to my rest. For now. I looked to Murray. And tonight, in his arms . . .