Burn Down the Ground

by Kambri Crews

  Trips to visit Dad’s parents always included at least one reminder of how my soul was in peril. For years I dreaded the Second Coming. Sometimes on Boars Head when Mom and Dad took off on impulsive explorations through the woods, I didn’t know where they were, and I wondered if the End had come.

  “I wasn’t always the man I am today,” Grandpa told me as the two of us sat in his recliner one afternoon. “I used tobacco and wasn’t very nice. But then I found God, and I quit all that. Now I go to church every Sunday, and I’m at peace knowing that when the Lord comes I’m going with Him.” His voice was gentle but stern. “I want you to come with us, too. You hear me, Kambri?”

  I felt uneasy whenever Grandpa Crews spoke about religion. As he talked, his sad eyes got misty. I tried to stay still in his lap and nodded my head politely to prove I got his message.

  “To go to Heaven, you have to be saved, and you have to ask for Christ’s forgiveness. Kambri, you must accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Do you read your Bible?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was only a half lie since I really did like the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ book of Bible stories I had received as a gift from a childhood friend, but I knew my grandfather wouldn’t approve. He would want me to read the King James version like his. By the time I left the farm, I was converted, promising myself that when I got home I would read it start to finish. And though I tried, I was never able to make it past the first page of Genesis.

  The Crews farm guaranteed there was peace between my brother and me. The bullying had gotten so bad at home that I wondered if maybe he’d been poisoned by venom when he had been bitten by the copperhead snake. But now he was so kind and well behaved. His decision to be cruel to me at home had to be a conscious choice. My father’s warnings about my grandfather’s temper and the sight of the razor strap hanging on the wall in the kitchen could have influenced him. The daily reminders of God and church may have helped, too. But more noteworthy, my father’s parents were hearing. One whine or cry from me, and I would have been out helping David select a switch from a cherry tree for a beating of his own.

  Being on the Crews farm on our best behavior for a whole week was exhausting. Although I enjoyed my time there, my brother and I let out a sigh of relief when we saw Grandma and Grandpa Worth’s new van lumbering down the country road to pick us up. We would be spending the remainder of the summer with Mom’s parents in Tulsa, where we could be ourselves, and heathens or not, they would love us regardless.

  Our grandparents’ custom van was more befitting of pothead college kids than sixty-something adults. It had backseats folded out into a bed and diamond-shaped mirrors on the walls and ceiling. Each mirror was outlined with bright royal blue fake fur. As we rumbled toward Tulsa, David and I stuck our hands underneath the curtained windows and flipped off passing cars. They honked in protest but of course my grandparents couldn’t hear it. Our good behavior didn’t make it past Interstate 44.

  Grandpa Worth was tall and slender, with dark hair and a persistent five o’clock shadow peppered with gray stubbles. He was a man of few words, in ASL or otherwise. If he did make noise to get someone’s attention or express disapproval, he grunted with a deep bass tone but never formed any actual words. He was the only deaf person in his whole family. To protect him, his mother had kept him close by her side while she toiled in the kitchen. Grandpa Worth was her loyal assistant and picked up her talents. He could cook better than anyone I knew, especially when it came to frying up fresh catfish we caught from a day of fishing in his bass boat. Most days, Grandpa Worth worked at Century Electronics, while his wife stayed at home and tended to their two-bedroom house in a quiet Tulsa subdivision.

  Out of four children, Grandma Worth, her twin brother, Bobby, and older sister, Wilma, were born deaf. Grandma dyed her hair jet black and wore bright red lipstick every day, even if she was just puttering around the house in her terry cloth slippers and housecoat. She subscribed to the National Enquirer, and kept back issues piled in a stack near her recliner. She never missed a single episode of The Price Is Right or The Young and the Restless. Like Grandpa, she didn’t vocalize much, but when she did, hers was a husky, gravelly voice from years of smoking a pack of Winstons a day. She kept her cigarettes in a leather case and her lighter was emblazoned with an eagle made of turquoise, her birthstone.

  Since David and I had spent a chunk of our early childhood living across the street, we felt right at home with Grandma and Grandpa Worth. We also identified with them more than we did with Dad’s parents, because in Tulsa we were part of the Deaf community. David spent his days with Grandpa hunting, fishing, working in the garage, and doing other things boys and grandfathers do, while I stayed home with my grandmother.

  Grandma told me that having me around was like having a miniature version of my mother. I gave Grandma a voice, making her day-to-day life a bit easier. I accompanied her to doctors’ appointments, the pharmacy, the bank, and the shoe store; she would give me instructions on her various needs. I never minded interpreting for her the way I did when Mom asked, maybe because she was fully deaf and I was in complete control of each transaction, whether it be simple, like requesting a pair of shoes in her size from a salesman, to complex, like asking detailed questions about her blood pressure from a physician. I would interpret the doctor’s warning about the effects smoking was having on her health. It scared me to hear his stern lecture, and I could tell he wasn’t sure how much to tell me. I worried if my grandmother was getting the best care from him, but I didn’t say anything. Girls at school could keep their silly role-playing games of doctor or bank teller. I was living the real deal.

  My grandparents’ house was a hub of activity. Deaf friends were always dropping in for unannounced visits. Linda Sloan’s father, Fred, kept a lit cigar permanently lodged in the corner of his mouth to leave his hands free for signing. When he signed, his heavy breathing growled and whistled. The noise drove me crazy, so I cranked up the new MTV channel as loud as I could.

  My grandparents’ friend Otto was my favorite surprise guest. He had been popping in for visits since my mother was a young girl. He always greeted me with “Hey now, brown cow! Where’s the cow?” He made as much sense to me as a Spanish variety show, but I loved him anyway.

  My grandparents had known Fred and Otto since their school days at Oklahoma School for the Deaf. They had newer friends at their local Deaf club. In fact, they didn’t appear to have a single hearing friend. I figured David and I didn’t count.

  In Tulsa, just like most every major American city at the time, Deaf clubs were centers that served as the nucleus for their community. Many had general elections to select board members. Clubs issued monthly newsletters listing recent births and deaths and upcoming events, and relayed important local and national news that might affect their civil rights. Even though we lived all the way down in Montgomery, we still subscribed to the Oklahoma Association of the Deaf newsletter to stay connected.

  These clubs were a necessary part of life, especially for deaf people of my grandparents’ generation. Without them, their lives would have been lonely and disengaged. Born in the 1920s and living before civil liberties for the disabled, my grandparents might have lived isolated, friendless lives. Teletypewriters (TTY) weren’t around until the 1970s and closed captioning for television began in the 1980s. The clubs provided a TTY and enabled them to connect with friends and enjoy activities like potluck dinners, bowling, and bass fishing competitions. Depending on the number of patrons and monetary contributions by its members, some Deaf clubs owned centers while others rented halls or small houses. In Tulsa, the Deaf club operated out of a two-story home with a finished basement and small backyard.

  Every stay with our grandparents included at least one trip to their club and lots of loud, intense play with the other deaf and hearing children. No one ever told us to “settle down” or “hush up.” We ran like a stampede of horses under the bright fluorescent lights, playing games of hide-an
d-seek and tag.

  In the past, because the gadgets needed to communicate weren’t readily available or were too expensive, deaf members used the club’s devices. Privacy was difficult because the TTY typed out transcripts and eavesdropping was simply a matter of looking across the room at somebody else’s signed conversation.

  Today, many Deaf clubs have been closed down in favor of seeing close friends at malls, coffee shops, and bookstores without the need to pay monthly dues. Advances in technology have served the Deaf well. Computers and the Internet are readily available, cellphones and texting are commonplace, and video phones put the callers face-to-face. There are far fewer obstacles preventing the Deaf from communicating with one another and the hearing world.

  Mom’s parents were city folks who lived such a modern life, I felt like a time traveler visiting the future. Their home was also equipped with a TTY similar to the one we had at the trailer. It was hooked up to a table lamp that flashed on and off when triggered, sending their rat terriers, Honeybee and Sammy, into a barking tizzy. They also possessed the holy grail of household accessories: cable television.

  Although there was a television at the Crews farm, it got only three channels, like ours back in Boars Head. It was a tiny black-and-white set and we weren’t allowed to watch it apart from the nightly news, no exceptions. But Mom’s parents had dozens of channels, including uncensored ones like HBO and Cinemax. Grandma Worth didn’t care what we watched. During the day, David and I viewed countless hours of The Little Rascals, The Price Is Right, Let’s Make a Deal, and anything on MTV and Nickelodeon. We scoured the cable guide for R ratings and warnings of graphic violence and nudity to determine which movies to watch. In a pinch, we always counted on Benny Hill for laughs and gratuitous boob shots.

  At night, the adults-only channel, Escapades, was unscrambled. David and I waited for Grandma to go into the kitchen to prepare her nightly bowl of vanilla ice cream. We then grabbed the push-button channel changer and hid the long cord that connected it to the television under rugs and blankets. Cord concealed and box in hand, we squeezed under the couch and switched on Escapades.

  Grandma emerged from the kitchen and let out an appalled gasp at seeing pornography. We laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe. She puttered around, screaming our names “Dehvih! Kahn-rare-ree!” while looking frantically for the channel changer. Eventually she gave up the search and settled into her recliner with her vanilla ice cream, as we stayed curled under the couch near her feet like kittens. If Dad’s parents knew that we even had the idea to pull a prank so wicked, I imagined they would have summoned a preacher to make a house call once the razor strap was hung back on the wall.

  Stunts like this relied on Grandma Worth’s deafness, and we always found creative ways to exploit it. We took particular pleasure in teasing her because she was such a good sport, laughing so hard at our pranks that she devolved into coughing fits.

  Unfortunately, once the novelty of being in Tulsa wore off, David was back to bullying me. Our grandparents’ home was not elevated like our trailer on Boars Head, but instead rested on slab concrete, which meant that we could run like wild monkeys through the house and no matter how hard I kicked and screamed my grandmother wouldn’t feel or hear a thing. She didn’t have to, though. Her eyesight was just fine. Their house was small and she was always home to witness David hitting me, pinning me down, thumping on me, and teasing me with dangling spit like he did back on Boars Head all those days that Mom and Dad were away from the house. She also saw that he wasn’t mindful of the disparity in our sizes and strengths, and that when he hit me, I was really being hurt. She saw that things between us were out of control and after watching several days of it, she took it upon herself to tell our mother when Mom called on June 22 to wish me a happy eleventh birthday.

  Like many summers, I spent my birthday away from home and friends. To make up for it, Mom called and sent a care package. Grandma Worth never baked me a cake. Instead she and my grandfather took us to lunch at Luby’s or Wyatt’s cafeteria in downtown Tulsa, and then to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream. It wasn’t as fun as being with friends, and I was always eager to hear from home.

  That evening, when the light for the phone flashed, I raced to answer it, hoping it would be Mom with birthday wishes. “Hello?”

  I was heartened when I was correct, and listened to her off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday.” I excitedly told her about the fishing trip I’d taken with Grandpa, our visit to the local Deaf club, and the special place we had gone for my birthday lunch. Then it was Grandma’s turn to take the line. I put the phone on the coupling device for the TTY and signed, “Mama wants to talk to you.”

  Grandma shut the door to the spare bedroom and typed with Mom for a long time before finally emerging to prepare dinner. I waited until she was out of sight before I slipped into the guest room, where I dug the paper transcript of her conversation with Mom out of the trash. I was surprised to see that she was upset over the fighting going on between my brother and me.

  Mom insisted that it was nothing more than sibling rivalry, which is what she always told me, but Grandma disagreed. “The fighting is terrible. It makes my heart beat too fast and it scares me.”

  My heart sank as I read on. Grandma was refusing to stay alone another day with David and me, prompting my mother to change her reservation and come to Tulsa earlier than planned.

  When she arrived, she laid into us with a scathing lecture. “You two are so bad even your own grandmother doesn’t want you!”

  David was ashamed he had distressed Grandma Worth. She was so easygoing and rarely complained about anything. Upsetting her filled him with guilt that he had crossed the line. He softened his mean streak, much to my relief. The change was almost immediate. Of course, he still teased me now and again as brothers do, but the physical harassment stopped.

  On our last night in Oklahoma, David and I turned in early in anticipation of our morning flight home to Houston. We shared the hide-a-bed sofa in the living room but I couldn’t sleep. I lay wide awake, my stomach in knots, listening to the sound of David’s low, heavy breathing signaling me he was asleep. In a few weeks, I would be starting sixth grade, joining my brother at Montgomery Junior High, where he was starting eighth grade. I had a respectable number of friends, but David was reigning king of Bus #9 and the proud owner of a yearbook so packed with signatures from classmates, I was sure he was the most popular kid in his class. Facing this unknown entity called junior high, and hoping he had insight from his years of experience that he could pass down to me, I worked up the nerve to ask him for advice.

  “David? You awake?”

  “Huh? I am now.”

  His annoyed voice made me second-guess whether I should have awakened him. “Oh. Sorry. Never mind.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Liar. What’s wrong?”

  It took a while for him to draw it out of me, but finally I managed to tell him.

  “Well … I’m just scared about starting school.”

  “What’s to be scared about?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m worried about finding my way from class to class.”

  “The school’s not that big. You’ll see. It’s easy.” David rolled over and covered himself with the blanket.

  I couldn’t let him fall back asleep; I hadn’t gotten the answers I was looking for and I wouldn’t dare wake him again. I took a deep breath and plunged into the real reason I was worried. “I want to be popular … like you.”

  The words had barely left my lips when he broke into a guttural laugh. He looked over at me and saw I was hurt by his laughter.

  “It’s not something you can make happen. Anyway, why do you want to be popular?”

  “I just want people to like me. I want to have a lot of friends like you.”

  “I don’t know, Kambri. You’ll be all right. Just don’t try too hard.”

  WORKIN’ FOR A LIVIN’

&nb
sp; David was right. With about seventy-five students in each grade, Montgomery Junior High wasn’t big or hard to figure out. But I hadn’t confessed to him my real insecurity: I was uglier than an armadillo. Unlike Mom and Dad with their big, white perfect teeth that looked like Chiclets, my adult teeth were growing in like David’s. They were crooked and small and my gums were always swollen from chronic gingivitis. My formerly golden silky hair had turned into stringy, dirty-dishwater blond strands. In an effort to spruce it up, Mom gave me an Ogilvie home perm. But the “Afro” only called attention to my long, skinny face and Joker-like smile, so I let it grow out, which made the top half of my greasy hair stick-straight and the bottom half kinky curls. I couldn’t attract a magnet if I were covered in foil. While Mom was blessed with boobs so big her bra straps made deep indentations in her shoulders from the weight, I was still flat as glass and so skinny I could hide behind a stop sign.

  Money was tight and our trips to the grocery store were scheduled around my parents’ biweekly paychecks. Sometimes we ran out of staples before it was time to stock up again, so I scrounged around for anything to quell my appetite. I balled up slices of bread, sucked on dried sticks of spaghetti, gummed spoonfuls of butter, or ate peeled and salted raw potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers plucked from our garden. My brother and I were bottomless pits of hunger and never gained weight. For David, Mom purchased special high-calorie protein shakes to supplement his diet. She took me to a doctor, convinced I had worms. Luckily the doctor told her what I already knew—I wasn’t getting enough to eat for my rapidly growing body—but I was humiliated just the same.