My Name is E

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My Name is E Page 22

by Frederick Lightfoot


  He nodded. I kissed him again, twice, briefly, like promises, then backed away smiling, saying: ‘‘I’ll bring a blanket, so we won’t be cold. I don’t want to be cold.’’ From the door I called back, again assuming that playful, impertinent tone of earlier. ‘‘There’s one thing intrigues me about you.’’ He simply cocked his head in question. ‘‘Do you never wonder who you are?’’

  So, how far would I go to find the light, that thing I was to become so suspicious of and troubled by? Did it matter, if in the end I was able to kill him? Wasn’t there a transcendental beauty to that?

  Maybe.

  *

  We were collected each morning in a small bus together with nine other special school kids from the surrounding villages.

  On the first day it felt like a holiday. Not only had we escaped the village school and Mr Miller, but also we were going on a journey. Only Grace had ever been on a bus before, her mother regularly taking her with her when she went shopping in town. Abby felt it too. She told everyone on the bus her name, groaning its syllable as loud as she could. It began straight away when the driver had to get out and turn a handle to start the engine, and the whole bus began to shake and made enough noise that Grace and I could hear. Abby couldn’t help but shout. Grace was quite embarrassed by her display. She signed for her to be quiet, but there was no hope of that. A boy on another bench – there were four rows of wooden benches – signed to Grace that it was all right. His signs were very small compared to ours, those that Aidan, Peter and Paul had taught Grace and Grace had taught us. He was a pretty boy, with a light, luminous expression with deep blue eyes and straight blond hair combed in a neat quiff. I thought he was shy and liked Grace. I hoped he liked her. They were as pretty as each other. I told her straight off that he liked her. Grace frowned in her quirky, grown-up child’s way. She didn’t sign another thing to Abby.

  Later we discovered that the boy was called Phillip and he was sorry he had signed to her.

  The special school was to our eyes a grandiose place, a sandstone building at the end of a rough track with two wings with triangular frontage, and roofs that seemed to go in all directions. There were two short lawns, then trees all around. Later, we learnt that there was a small yard to the rear where we could play that was in permanent shadow.

  The driver took us to the office of Mr Archibald, the master, as he called him. – The driver, Mr McBride, a short, casual man, we always considered friendly, though he never did anything but smile at us as we boarded his bus. – Mr Archibald, a plump, bald, round faced man, stood up and peered down at us through thick rimmed, circular spectacles. He neither smiled nor frowned. He spoke to Mr McBride, but we heard neither part of the conversation. As Mr McBride left he waved. Grace began to wave back, but Mr Archibald reached for her hand and pushed it down, then pressed it gently against her thigh and held it there, his five fingers spread across it. When he released his hold he gave a brief, negligible smile then told us to follow.

  He led us through the school’s wood-panelled entrance hall, along a corridor to Miss Sowerby’s class, the deaf unit. Phillip was in the front row. He blushed as we walked in. Grace gave him a discreet greeting. Miss Sowerby was standing on a wooden platform at the front of the class before a board perched onto the front of a blackboard covered with small pictures of everyday objects, a cane pointer in her hand. She was a thin woman, with straight features, her hair parted to either side and curled at the fringes. She looked at Grace disapprovingly. Grace blushed more deeply than Phillip. She called Grace to her. Grace stepped up to the platform. Miss Sowerby pointed to one of the pictures, one of a ball, and asked Grace to say it. Grace signed ball. Mrs Sowerby put down her cane, walked to the edge of the platform, bent over Grace, pushed Grace’s hands to her sides and held them, as Mr Archibald had done, and mouthed at her: ball, b-all. Grace repeated the word. Miss Sowerby stood up, and with a look of satisfaction spread across her face announced: Rarely write, never gesticulate, always speak.

  Rarely write, never gesticulate, always speak, she repeated, and then demanded that the class say it with her, calling out in an agitated voice: Say it, say it. The response was mumbled, broken and incoherent, nevertheless Miss Sowerby looked pleased. She turned to me and Abby, who were still standing just beyond the classroom door with Mr Archibald, and invited us to say it. Abby told her her name, assuming that that was what was needed, a name to identify her. I mumbled the response she wanted, but Abby’s name was stronger. Miss Sowerby looked crestfallen.

  Mr Archibald stepped up onto the platform beside Miss Sowerby, stroking Grace on the head as he went past her, to which show of sympathy Miss Sowerby screwed up her face in derision. He removed the picture poster from the front of the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk and wrote, Abigail Sempie, after which he turned to Abby and said: Your name, Abigail Sempie. Ab-i-gail Semp-ie, Semp-ie, ie, ie, ie.

  Abby was victorious and, like me, assumed he had understood that she was saying her name. She greeted the recognition with a great answering rendition of who she was.

  Mr Archibald smiled, whilst Miss Sowerby looked on expressionless.

  He turned back to the board and wrote the name Judith Salt beneath Abby’s, then turned to me and said: Your name, Ju-dith Salt, S-alt, S-alt.

  Judith Salt, my name, I agreed.

  He wrote Grace Powers below Judith Salt.

  Grace claimed her name before him, which to my surprise pleased him more than offended him. He smiled broadly and agreed with her, nodding his head and repeating, Grace Powers, good, Grace Powers, your name, good. You speak fairly well then, I didn’t realise.

  The naming was too much for Abby who straight away wet herself. It had recently become one of her personal signs, though it covered a multitude of meanings. Miss Sowerby gazed at the pool of urine forming around her boots and, as if speaking to it, said she hadn’t been told.

  Mr Archibald tutted a few times, shook his head, and made to step from the platform, but then corrected himself, evidently remembering something he had overlooked. He made a small speech, which I presume was something he had learnt off by heart and was able to deliver whenever circumstances demanded, such as to new children, visiting dignitaries and school governors. The breath of life, he recited, resides in the voice, transmitting enlightenment through it. The voice is the interpreter of our hearts and expresses its affections and desires. The voice is a living emanation of that spirit that God breathed into man when he created him a living soul.

  His speech concluded he again tutted and shook his head then stepped from the platform and taking Abby’s hand led her away. When they had gone Miss Sowerby told us to sit, warning us to be sure to have our hearing aids turned on at all times. She replaced the picture board, covering the two lower names but not Abby’s, Abigail Sempie remaining like a title over the everyday objects, then again picked up her cane pointer and indicated a brush, then mouthed at the class, b-rush, b-russsh. Having repeated the word twice with great gymnastics of her thin lips, she turned to Grace and told her it would be better if she sat on her hands for the rest of the lesson. Grace blushed as she placed her hands, palm down on the seat beneath her buttocks, and strangely enough, I saw that Phillip did too.

  We had been right through the pictures when Mr Archibald brought Abby back. She was dressed in a clean pinafore, with clean socks and slippers instead of boots. The pinafore was too small for her and she obviously didn’t like it because she was quiet for the rest of the day, obstinately quiet, though both Grace and I told her it looked fine.

  At break we ran off into the woods with Phillip. He signalled it as soon as we were in the yard. It was like being part of an escape troop following him, the careful way he kept looking back, kept checking we were still with him. He really was as lovely as Grace. It was inevitable they would tend towards each other but, funnily enough, Grace never claimed him as a brother: there was no repeat of our momentous meeting on the shoreline. I think it was sufficient for all three of us, the
sisters, to realise we weren’t alone, that there were others of the same generation. Martha was right to be hostile; we couldn’t help but love each other. Phillip was so full of remorse it was silly. He hadn’t realised that Grace didn’t know it was forbidden to sign. It was all right on the bus, he explained, because even though Mr McBride could see you in his mirror he didn’t seem to care. He told us that lots of kids, those with parents who could hear, couldn’t sign but the other kids shared them. We didn’t need to ask why. Signing was easier.

  As Phillip was describing special school to us Abby lay down sideways against a tree, twisted in that shape she adopted when she believed she had insect qualities, her knees up and crooked, her arms held up to her chest, her hands dangling from pendant wrists, her eyes sunken but searching out undergrowth, confinement, a narrow world.

  Seeing her press herself ever harder against the tree Phillip broke off speaking to us and went and knelt down in front of her, despite the fact the woodland floor was damp. He asked her what her name was. Grace said her name was Abby. He smiled, touched Abby’s lips with his fingertips, and said, of course, it was a pretty name and she should be proud of such a name. There was something lovely about the fact that he realised she had been saying her name, announcing it with great sociability to the whole class, which was so much her way. He repeated it a number of times, drawing it in the air, a name to be proud of, a pretty name, Abby, her name, traced in space, in flight.

  He said it was better not to leave Abby alone with Mr Archibald.

  He sprang up, burst out laughing and said all the kids knew that, not to be alone with Mr Archibald. He looked down at Abby, her gaze gone to those far away places only she could access, and said you sometimes had to be careful of the kids who didn’t talk because, even when they could hear they liked to sign and they got you into trouble. Grace said she thought all the kids couldn’t hear. Phillip laughed at her and said there were all sorts in Ingwall, all sorts, kids in carts, mad kids, strange kids, deaf, dumb and blind kids.

  And we’re all special, Grace said, and laughed, which was very like Phillip’s.

  When we returned to the classroom Abby was very ritualistic, though her language had changed. It seemed to me she had lost patience with her former signs and adopted ones more rigorous, more severe, involving her entire body: there was a great deal of head shaking and touching of different body parts, no longer just the shoulder but the cheeks, the ears, the top of the head, then the neck and the torso, and finally the thighs, both inside and out.

  Miss Sowerby watched her go through her dance with the same expressionless look of earlier, then she stepped from her platform and went and stood over her, eyeing her with a look I couldn’t comprehend, but certainly was neither anger nor sympathy, but a merging of the two making something new, something too complex to define.

  Grace thought Abby was going to get into trouble, or worse, wet herself and be taken out once again by Mr Archibald, so she signed for her to sit.

  Miss Sowerby rounded on her instantly, saying she could see her in the reflection of her glasses, and what had she said, never gesticulate, always speak. As it was Grace’s second offence in one day she would have to spend the rest of the lesson with her hands tied behind her back. Grace blushed and as her wrists were knotted together struggled against the tears which were burning her eyes.

  Abby took the restraint of her sister very badly. She banged in and out of her seat, sitting then springing to her feet whilst at the same time thumping on her desk. I didn’t understand the performance at the time, the sign she was creating, but I have seen apes with eyes almost as beautiful as hers describe their cages in very much the same way – Donald took me to the zoo in Regent’s Park a couple of times, despite the fact that on both occasions I cried for the gorillas, monkeys and polar bears. Miss Sowerby once again strolled from her platform and stood over her, watching her with the same complicated look as before, but this time suddenly reached out and slapped her across the head. In response Abby called her name, as if she were trying to make contact with someone in the woods, and began to laugh: it was unmistakable, though not something she was prone to.

  Miss Sowerby shook her head and, speaking aloud that Abby would have to be removed, went out of the classroom, returning a few minutes later with Mr Archibald. As Abby was led out Miss Sowerby lowered her head refusing to look.

  I don’t think either of my sisters were quite the same after that.

  In the ensuing lesson we had to painstakingly repeat the sounds Miss Sowerby made, deaf children searching for the right place to put the tongue, the right vibration, our hands in turn on Miss Sowerby’s throat then our own – Grace released temporarily – comparing, copying, trying to get it right, taaa, daaa, teee, deee, over and over. At the end Grace asked whether she had been a good girl, and Miss Sowerby conceded that she had. Grace blushed with pleasure. Phillip pressed his lips together, but I think he was pleased as well.

  Abby was brought back to us halfway through the lesson, but she refused to participate, preferring to quietly hum her name to herself, defying the classroom with identity. From then on she was marked out by the fact she didn’t want or need to please. She didn’t care what anyone thought about her name, about her, about her acts: she proclaimed herself with a new obstinacy, a new stubbornness, an individuality that even her sisters struggled to breach, though we weren’t ever banished entirely.

  Grace and I would have claimed that we didn’t want to please either and that our commitment to ourselves was such that we would never be anything we didn’t like, but that was never really the case. We couldn’t help but want to please. Grace’s refrain at the end of every lesson became, have I been a good girl, and it was a refrain she took home to Seamus, desperate for approval, for sanction, which certainly Miss Sowerby gave, albeit sadly, though I doubt Seamus ever truly did. It didn’t matter that Phillip would tell her over the years that she was better than those she asked; even when Ingwall was long past Grace was still requesting of a grownup world, of which her deafness somehow deprived her, whether she had been a good girl.

  I don’t claim to be very different. I still want to please now. When my hairdresser suggests I grow my hair it gives me great pains to stand my ground and proclaim myself. How many other instances are there when the desire to make someone else happy prevails and another few cells of being are lost, and the translation into something I never liked takes place?

  Grace and I survived in Ingwall, despite the slaps, the blows, the ridicule, being turned into infants, on occasion eating with our hands tied behind our backs because we had been caught signing – in possession of sign, we called it, though I don’t know who was the first to say that, my guess being Phillip – but Abby never compromised and so it had to come to an end.

  Despite the fact that we were sisters, three, deaf, having discovered each other, they separated us.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I waited in the lane, again assuming my abandoned pose. I wanted to see Agnes but wasn’t going to chance being alone with her indoors; besides Harold might not go out, so the chance wouldn’t arise. Of course, if she guessed I had come from Harold all the better.

  As I waited the cloud blew over, leaving scattered fragments and a three-quarter moon. I was pleased of the moonlight, yet conscious it revealed me, revealed my charade of waiting. I wandered farther than before towards St Bridget’s, and then fearing I might miss her hurried back, only to then repeat the performance.

  As I progressed towards St Bridget’s I visualised a lichen crowned angel and thought of Abby crouched in supplication, the angel’s charge. She was capable of devotion, of signing love, despite the fact that she learnt she didn’t want or need to please. The love offered the angel was given without reservation, no strings attached, the love entered into in silence, which is always an act of trust.

  I don’t know how many times I made that tentative move towards St Bridget’s, Abby’s angel in my mind, before Agnes appeared. I know it se
emed an age, but waiting is like that, uncertain, liable to tricks, liable to setbacks and sudden progression. I was patient though, despite my gravitation towards the angel, which was, after all, just cover. I had waited for this for so long, time was immaterial.

  As soon as I saw her I set off, wanting to catch her well before she reached her door. I didn’t want Harold to hear us, to be able to piece together his own time sequence and wonder. It didn’t matter if I looked flushed and flustered, that was to the good.

  As soon as she was aware of me she stopped and eyed me all the way, until I was right in front of her. She seemed both hostile and amused. She spoke first, which I found surprising. ‘‘I expected you to be long gone.’’

  I smiled. ‘‘You’re not the first to say that, but I never said. I still have things to do.’’

  ‘‘You can’t have much here, there isn’t much.’’

  ‘‘Oh, I don’t know.’’ She shrugged and made to move on. ‘‘How is Hazel? He said that’s where you were, that you might be a while.’’

  ‘‘Harold, you were talking to Harold?’’

  ‘‘He said you’d be a while.’’

  She eyed me sharply, suggesting, maybe, that she wasn’t going to fall for that, or that she already had, then gave a brief, bored smile and said: ‘‘Fanciful.’’ She made to continue again.

  ‘‘So, how is she? You didn’t say.’’

  ‘‘I told you before, she’s not on her death-bed, just chesty.’’

  ‘‘Yes, you did, not on her death-bed, I hadn’t forgotten.’’

  ‘‘So, it’s cold and late, and he likes a bit of supper, nothing too much, cheese on toast, fried egg, nothing fancy, but something, so I’ll get on.’’

  ‘‘Do you ever think about your death-bed, Agnes?’’ She didn’t reply, but looked at me steadily, trying to read what I was saying. ‘‘I do, I think about it a lot.’’ She shrugged, as if she didn’t understand, or was deliberately making light of it, deliberately smiling at my morbid train of thought. I smiled in return, a small, insignificant but fatalistic smile. ‘‘We used to be weighed down with the thought, what if? What if there hadn’t been scarlet fever, influenza, measles? What if Mr Drake had been right and we’d found ourselves in such a country?’’ She shrugged her incomprehension. ‘‘Of course, you don’t know what Mr Drake said, or what he ever did, do you?’’ Again she shrugged, giving it the appearance of listfulness, boredom, but I knew she was listening, taking it all in, trying to decipher my pregnant signs. ‘‘What would Harold have done if he’d known about Mr Drake?’’ Still she made no reply. ‘‘Do you really not know?’’ Again she made no reply, her expression now completely blank. I smiled as before. ‘‘I think I want to ask your advice again. You see I’m trying to work things out, for myself I mean.’’

 

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