If a Tree Falls

by Jennifer Rosner

  Nellie sets aside her practice sheet and places a piece of fine writing paper on the wobbly table near her bedside. Her hand shakes as she begins her letter.

  dear Bayla,

  I wait wait you.

  Here buildings to sky! People everywhere, moving fast.

  Lill and Samuel let us stay, their home our home also.

  Job I got. what? sewing. I one of many girls, all of us sewing.

  Met woman, deaf also. Name Sylvia.

  Last I saw you, crying. Horse-driver-man took you from carriage.

  I wrote to Mama letter, need Mama, Papa, family join us here.

  Need Bayla with me here.

  Biggest hugs,

  Nellie

  Nellie inspects her crooked, ugly penmanship. She knows that the language of her hands doesn’t match up with written language. If only she’d had more time with Rayzl, to learn. She carefully folds the letter into an envelope—for Bayla it is all right—and in the morning, she presses it into Samuel’s hands as he leaves for work.

  Weeks later, Samuel hands Nellie a wrinkled envelope. Nellie stares for a moment at the writing, so pretty and curved, in the center. She smoothes it out. Then she rips it open.

  dear Nellie,

  Letter from you arrived here. Happy!

  Letter from Mama not yet.

  Last I saw you, man in carriage took me.

  I stay at school. Cry.

  Teacher brought to me doll baby. Try feel better.

  I wait wait letter from Mama. I wait. I patient.

  Want soon I see sister Nellie.

  Biggest hugs,

  Bayla

  Nellie reads and re-reads Bayla’s letter, then tucks it into her skirt pocket. Soon, surely soon, Bayla will receive word from Mama and they will journey together to America! Nellie rushes to work now at the corset factory. All afternoon, she will feel the flat, folded letter upon her thigh as she sits at the sewing table, her fingers moving deftly, her head lost in thought about Bayla.

  It is dusk by the time Nellie looks up from the sewing table. She walks home quickly, breathing in the chilly, autumn air. As she passes by the park, she sees Sylvia walking toward her. Beside Sylvia is a young man, tall and handsome with black wavy hair. As he comes closer, Nellie can see that his chin has a small cleft in it, his eyes are round and dark like chestnuts. His hands make large, graceful strokes in the air.

  “Hello. My name is Mordechai.” His eyes dart to the ground, a sweet crinkle of a smile in his eyelids.

  Nellie signs back: “I’m pleased to meet you.” The three walk together in the direction of Lill’s apartment, Nellie with a flush in her cheek and a thump in her chest.

  In a letter to Bayla, Nellie writes: dear Bayla,

  Letter from you arrived. Excited!

  Big news, I meet man, deaf too. His name is Mordechai.

  Walk everywhere together, happy!

  Dress now pretty, help me my friend Sylvia.

  Herschel cry Mama. Sad. I write letter again.

  I wait and wait. Not patient. I miss my sister Bayla.

  Biggest hugs!

  Nellie

  Months later, Nellie writes again.

  dear Bayla,

  Mordechai asked me marriage.

  Cry happy!

  Nothing, no letter from Mama.

  You for me, please write letter to Mama.

  Need must Mama Papa family come join us here.

  Biggest hugs!

  Nellie

  Galicia 1886

  PEARL STANDS AT THE SINK. Little Sarah yanks at Pearl’s skirts, but she hardly notices. How much time has passed since that carriage drove out of Tasse? Each week, each day, each minute her hope withers, and now Pearl persists—subsists—on the echo of a question: How can she reunite her family in America?

  Pearl receives letters from both Nellie and Bayla, cherished letters she reads over and over with quivering lips and pooling eyes. She takes out her own writing paper, she walks to the scribe. But then she turns back. Wordless. Mute. She cannot manage to reply.

  One night, when Moshe comes home, Pearl begs him. Can they make a trip to Budapest at least, to check on Bayla? Moshe takes Pearl’s face in his large, rough hands.

  Three days later, they sit huddled in a carriage that clanks slowly through Budapest’s uneven cobblestone streets. Pearl’s stomach roils in tight knots. She rushes out of the carriage the moment it stops.

  In the front office of the School, Pearl runs her finger along the careful scroll work of the oak secretary, inhales the distant scent of polish. From down the corridor, Bayla is walking toward her, the school administrator a step behind. Bayla has altered since leaving Tasse, Pearl thinks—her face is more angular; she is taller even. She is wearing an unfamiliar dress. Pearl pauses before her child, then she rushes toward her, pulling her in. Bayla is stiff at first, then melts into her mother.

  Moshe shuffles into the office, speaks briefly to the administrator, then ushers Pearl and Bayla out through the heavy iron and glass doors into the chilled air. Pearl struggles to sign the few words she knew just a month ago. Down a narrow staircase, into a café, they sit together at a small round table. Moshe folds his hands in his lap, lowers his eyes. He knows no sign words at all.

  Bayla looks at her parents expectantly. She is sure that they have come with news, that they have made plans, secured tickets, for the journey to America. She eats hungrily at first, then she slows, her eyes darting between her mother and her father.

  “How are you, Bayla?” Pearl signs.

  “All right, Mama. And you? I worried so, when you didn’t write.”

  Pearl is lost, immediately, by Bayla’s simple but fluid hand movements, by her own inability to answer back. She shoves her plate off to the side and leans in on crossed hands. Write? Pearl frowns. If Bayla only knew how many times she started a letter, only to tear it up in despair! Malkie, the Scribe—he thinks she is crazy. Maybe she is. But Pearl bears the weight of an ocean between Nellie and Bayla. Without good news, she cannot manage to post a letter.

  Pearl searches Bayla’s face. There is so much she wants to know: Is Bayla eating enough? She looks thin. Do the schoolmasters treat her kindly? Is she making friends there? But Pearl cannot ask, and she would not understand Bayla’s answers even if she could. Pearl looks away from her daughter mournfully and slides her chair back a little. She gives Moshe a pleading look. Moshe proposes that they write out messages to Bayla—in Yiddish, just like Rayzl taught her. As Moshe walks off to ask the waiter for something to write on, Bayla signs to Pearl.

  “Did you get letters from Nellie?”

  Pearl nods her head, tears now streaking her cheeks. Bayla can’t bear to bring up the news of Nellie’s engagement. Instead, she takes a tattered piece of paper from her dress pocket. It has been folded and unfolded so many times, it nearly breaks into four squares as she delicately opens it. She holds it up for Pearl to see. A single hand form, drawn by Nellie: the sign word “soon.”

  Pearl’s lips quiver into a smile, but Bayla can see how pained her mother is. She realizes now that her parents have not come with travel news, that there is no impending journey. With quaking hands, Bayla folds the paper along its creases and places it back into her pocket. She wants to beg, to plead with her mother and her father to get them to America! But the exhaustion in their faces, the weariness in their hunched shoulders, their fraying clothes, stops her. Bayla sits stiffly, her napkin tucked in her lap the way she learned in school, her back pressed flat against the upright café chair.

  Pearl clasps Bayla’s hand when they stand to leave, and they walk slowly down the street. When they reach the school office, Pearl hugs Bayla tight; Moshe caresses her cheek. Bayla steps away, and turns to walk down the corridor. She does not look back as her parents wave good-bye.

  In her room, Bayla shakes; she can’t stop shaking. She buries her head in her pillow and sobs. Beneath Bayla’s dormitory window, Pearl falters as she steps into the carriage. She gasps for air as s
he sits on the hard bench, her own unheard cries lost in the shirt folds around Moshe’s shoulder.

  Massachusetts, April 2005

  AT OUR KITCHEN TABLE, SOPHIA bent over a pad of paper and a basket of colored markers. It was a lazy Sunday morning, and while Bill and Juliet were out at the bagel shop, Sophia practiced writing her name in a rainbow array of colors, over and over again. Her letters were uneven and slanty, her S backward every time. I pulled a chair next to hers. Sophia gripped the thick pink marker to form a shaky, lopsided circle: a giant capital O.

  Why hadn’t I let Pearl write to Nellie and Bayla?

  I stared out our huge kitchen window. Did I want to inject cruelness into Pearl? Amidst a painful separation, have her sever all contact, go wordless, leave her girls bereft of their mother, confused and despairing? Was I vindictive? I was jolted by Sophia posing a question while she worked away at her letters.

  “Mama, why do me and Juliet have hearing loss, but you and Daddy don’t?”

  Ye Gods.

  “Well, Soph,” I ventured—collecting my thoughts while reminding myself that she was not yet five years old—“every baby gets a growing plan, half from its mother and half from its father. A growing plan has all sorts of commands, to help the baby develop and be healthy. One command is to get something called potassium to the baby’s ears. In the growing plans Daddy and I passed to you, that command was missing. Daddy and I don’t have hearing loss because when we were growing, each of our plans only had half of the missing command. But you and Juliet both got a whole missing command, half from each of us.”

  “So, will our babies be deaf?”

  “Well, that will depend. Your babies will get their growing plans, half from you and half from their fathers. Your half will be missing the command. If the fathers’ plans have the command, then your babies won’t have hearing loss. If the fathers’ plans are missing the command, then it’s likely that your babies will be deaf. What do you think that would be like for you?”

  After a long pause, “It would be ok. If we decided to, we could get our babies hearing aids or cochlear implants.”

  While Sophia and I were talking, Bill and Juliet came home. Juliet settled herself on the kitchen floor beside us, her hands sticky with cream cheese, and set to work disabling her cochlear implant. She recently figured out how to reach to the back of her head and yank off the magnetic disc. She was one and a half now; her implant had been activated five months ago. It seemed she’d decided that hearing was hard work, and that she didn’t always want sound. I placed the magnet on again, but she glowered at me and batted it back off. I didn’t persist. I let her putter around the house soundlessly.

  Juliet built a wooden tower, then knocked it down—without the kaboom. She typed on the keyboard of her play computer—without the click click click. I took her out to the swingset, and let her swing back and forth without the creak creak of the metal chains.

  Juliet was happy enough for us to put her processor on each morning, but from then on, if a restaurant was too loud or she was tired, yank—and I rushed to catch her thousand dollar “ear” before she set it on a table smeared with ketchup or blue cheese dressing. Just as quickly, I raced to settle Juliet into a comfortable position, because with the blessing of quiet and the shut of her eyes, Juliet would fall asleep in seconds.

  Juliet ripped her processor off at the sight of the blender and the vacuum cleaner. She put it back on when she spied a favorite book we could read to her or a video she could watch. It was like a baseball cap—off for the bath, on for the playdate, off to skitter through the sprinkler, then back on for the cupcakes. I wondered sometimes whether to encourage it. Why should she hear the babies crying at the pediatrician’s office if she doesn’t have to? Why not miss the jackhammer blast when the car is stuck in traffic? Juliet sensed most of what was happening through vibrations anyway. Whether her sound was on or off, she knew when someone walked into the room, and she could read a face like a book.

  Juliet’s favorite face was Sophia’s, and their play did not require hearing. Sophia put herself nose to nose with Juliet, locking eyes to secure her attention. Then Sophia led Juliet in play: they toted their baby dolls from room to room, they gave each other foot baths with bowls of warm water, they emptied every drawer in the house for inspection. They rigged up strings and cups and played telephone games. They put on music, whether or not they could hear it, and then they donned butterfly wings. So what if it was “Georgia Rae” that accompanied their dance moves and fairy games? So what if Bill and I might ourselves go deaf with the volume turned way up? They were having fun together, and they understood each other perfectly.

  I marveled at the seeming irrelevance of sound. Juliet was fully ensconced in the life of our family and in the larger community all around her. She was bonding, exploring, playing, learning.

  But not talking. Juliet was not talking yet. Juliet needed to hear in order to learn spoken language. With the lure of new storybooks, a set of bells, our old harmonica, we’d coax her and gently return the processing magnet—glup—to her head.

  Juliet was still waking up through the night. Like a jack-in-the-box, she’d pop up and yell at the top of her lungs. (She didn’t hear it!) When I told my mother about Juliet’s wake-ups, she suggested that Juliet might feel disconnected and scared without her sound, through the dark of night.

  “You have no idea, Jenny, how disconnecting a hearing loss can be. I’ve struggled my whole life with disconnection,” my mother said to me.

  My mother’s words, so plain and disclosing—they untied me. I asked her to tell me about her childhood ear infections, the surgeries, her hearing loss. I don’t know why I had waited so long to ask her directly. My mother told me that she’d spent her childhood hiding her deafness. “Mouth the words in chorus,” my grandmother Mae had suggested, when my mother brought news of her second grade concert.

  My mother got her first pair of hearing aids in her thirties when my oldest brother was born. She had struggled, lip-reading, before that.

  “I wanted to be able to hear my children,” my mother told me.

  She went back to brainstorming about Juliet’s sleep troubles, suggesting that, perhaps, Juliet could sleep with her implant processor on, or that Bill and I could talk to Juliet about her fears at night.

  As my mother spoke, I imagined her sitting in an audiologist’s chair, getting hearing aids for the first time. Maybe she held her new baby in her lap. Maybe she shivered as the cold silicon molded inside her ears. Her own mother, nowhere in sight.

  My mother had wanted a string, a steady connection, to her children! It was her aim, her longing, no matter how tattered it turned out to be. It was mine.

  She continued problem solving. We could try warm milk or chamomile tea at Juliet’s bedtime, or calming music just before we removed her sound for the night. And as my mother spoke, I wondered at how my daughters’ deafness had summoned her forward, steadied her, bridged her lost connections—enabling her to hear, and in hearing, to respond.

  One sunny morning in May, Juliet stood in the kitchen and signed for milk, her right hand pumping at an imaginary cow udder. Her hair was still a surprise of auburn—as unexpected as Bill’s reddened beard stubble when he left off shaving—and it tumbled around her face, all waves and curls, like ribbon candy. Juliet was tinier even than Sophia was at that age, donning a pink and white sundress that billowed at her ankles. We would have been worried about her low weight, too, if we hadn’t been through it before with Sophia. We could add all the butter and cream in the world. We simply made small children.

  “You want milk?” I asked, signing to her as I spoke. “Sure,” I continued narrating in my over-enunciating way, “I’ll get you some.”

  I went to the fridge and took out the milk. As I poured milk into her bottle, I heard a word declared in a high, quiet register:

  “Milk.”

  I turned on my heels, spilling milk all over the granite counter. Juliet’s eyes danced and her
cheeks rose with a slow, broad smile.

  “Milk,” she said again, now more loudly.

  “Milk—yes!” I stuttered back in awe, and I grabbed her two hands and spun her long-armed around the kitchen, as she squealed with delight.

  For the next few weeks, Bill and I danced through our days as we poured, drank and added MILK to everything! At the market, I stocked up: vanilla milk, coconut milk, condensed milk, buttermilk. Maple milk. Tiger’s milk! Strawberry and chocolate milk. (Anyone for cocoa? So what if it’s May?) Just to hear the precious utterance from Juliet’s lips, again and again and again.

  A flow of words came tumbling after: bye-bye, dog, yellow, top, shoe, ball, cup. Just like with Sophia, Juliet was hearing, and she was speaking! She sounded wonderful.

  Before Juliet started speaking, I was haunted by questions. Would the language center in Juliet’s brain make sense of the electronic stimulations? Would she sound electronic? There was not a hint of Vader nor his friends in her voice. To hear Juliet speak just like a hearing child, with a clear, resonant voice, was amazing.

  As Juliet’s vocabulary grew, I kept a list of words on the fridge, as I had with Sophia. One day, I took down the girls’ word lists and placed them side by side. At the stage when Sophia was seemingly obsessed with emotions—happy, silly, angry—Juliet was consumed with action verbs—kick, run, throw. Their distinctiveness—Sophia perching quietly in our arms, studying the faces around her; and Juliet rolling a ball, then jubilantly running to catch it—found expression even here, in the order of words that each child spoke.