‘I’m hungry, Pop.’
‘You’ve just had an ice-cream.’
‘I’m hungry for food. Can we go to Hungry Jack’s?’
‘Grandma is making your favourite dessert tonight.’
‘Not trifle again.’
‘It’s your favourite.’
‘It was my favourite. Until I had to eat it every Sunday night.’
I followed her back through the zoo, past the flamingoes and armadillos, past the pygmy hippo and the yellow-footed rock wallaby—none of them apparently worth a glance. I followed helplessly, the exhausted partner of a tennis-machine. Exhaustion: a no-hands family sign, tongue lolling out, head flopped sideways.
‘Dad, you’re embarrassing me.’
I pulled in my tongue, jerked my head upright. ‘Sorry, sweetheart.’
‘You look like a spaz.’
She hurried ahead; I remembered with some poignancy those numerous times I had walked several paces behind or ahead of my own parents. A large Coke and regular fries kept her reasonably quiet until we reached home.
‘Nice day?’ my mother signed.
Rosie shaped the Good Hand automatically, without feeling. She replied in Sign to my father’s standard Sunday questions about her progress at school—which to him meant school sport, scores and best player status—then headed for the television.
‘Swim,’ I shaped to my mother.
‘Swim after,’ she signed back. ‘Dinner ready.’
I swam after dinner, in a tranquil twilight. Suspended in the still water, looking shorewards, I could see the front window of the house, a picture window, curtains drawn, lit from within. The television flickered against the moon-faces of the people inside: Rosie flopped in a bean-bag, my parents on the sofa behind her. I couldn’t see, but I could feel, in sympathy, my father’s toes poking the small of her back from time to time. Rosie signs slowly, but accurately—I taught her Sign in her first months of life, and sent her to Sign kindergarten in her infancy, before we travelled. She still signs with her grandparents; with me she thinks it pointless.
I floated, immobile, hypnotised by this scene of domesticity—a scene from my own childhood. A tiny car turned the corner, crawled along the esplanade and stopped outside the house, partly obscuring the window. The familiar figure of Jill emerged, stepped briskly through the neat garden, and pressed the door-button. The door-alarm could be seen flashing through every window, the door opened, my mother appeared, smiling. I was some distance off, but I could read Jill’s Good Hand hello, and even, with the eye of faith, her plodding finger-spelling. My mother’s conversation was also decipherable, her hands moving at snail-pace and with great precision, as if speaking loudly and slowly to someone hard of hearing.
I first met Jill at a Sign class; she was my student for several months, dabbling in Auslan for a thesis she was writing. What little I know of linguistics I gleaned from Jill; she helped me organise my understanding of Sign, stretch it onto a rough theoretical framework. In turn, I taught her the basics. Her questions in those first classes intrigued me. She had been working in the desert, writing a dissertation on the Sign-language of Aboriginal widows. Forbidden to speak after the deaths of their husbands, the women had developed a complex Sign-language. Jill was interested in comparisons, in signs that might be seen as natural, or universal. The Two Hand shape for ‘look’, we soon discovered, was common to both languages, a simple representation of the eyes.
She was less interested in learning fluent Sign—she had no time, she told me, repeatedly. Her head was already crammed full of spoken languages. She was even less interested in the world of the Deaf. A ‘ghetto’, she once termed it, in an unguarded moment. The Deaf should be out in the larger world, assimilating, she told me on another occasion, digging herself in more deeply. Preserving their language, certainly—but also learning to lip-read, to speak, or at least finger-spell English, not hiving off into a private world of Sign.
She learnt to finger-spell—her minimal duty as a daughter-in-law—but she never grasped more than a handful of Auslan signs. Hi, good, yes, no, look.
At first my mother would finger-spell back to her, but the process proved arduous and exhausting. They soon found it more convenient to speak through me. This had an added advantage: I could filter out any misconceptions or unintended slights. And especially any intended slights; I could improve their conversations, grease the wheels, even sneak in little flatteries and courtesies that were never intended.
For a time each believed she was held in higher esteem by her in-law than she was.
Esteem had faded but civility remained, at least during the transfer of Rosie. I watched my mother’s hands invite Jill in, a standard courtesy, I watched the polite refusal, a smiling headshake and tapping of her wristwatch. Rosie herself appeared in the door, always eager after an hour or two to escape the company of her grandparents.
Words were exchanged between mother and daughter, inaudible to me, and they both turned my way. Rosie raised a Point Hand, Jill waved, I lifted a dripping arm from the water and waved back, Rosie blew a kiss, then they climbed into their toy car and were gone.
9
‘You walk-up-trees,’ Wish demanded.
We sat in the garden at her request. March had arrived, but summer gave no sign that it was retreating; the day was hot, the blue sky completely free of cloud-lint.
Clive scribbled in his notebook; Stella watched, leaning back on the garden bench, hands behind her head, her dogs sleeping at her feet. Wish’s hands were the usual blur.
‘Sign again,’ I requested. ‘Slowly.’
‘Walk-up-trees.’
I liked her improvisation—a smooth blend of the three separate signs—but felt it was a bit long-winded.
I showed her ‘climb’, two different versions. The Claw Hand mime, hand over hand.
And, more economically, two fingers walking up a vertical palm, a pair of little legs.
She preferred the first, repeating it with flourish. ‘Climb trees—joy.’
‘I believe you,’ I signed back, with heavy irony.
She grinned broadly, pleased to have detected the nuance. ‘Not true!’
I traced the shape of a long tongue between thumb and forefinger, the sign for fib.
She was puzzled. ‘Long tongue?’
‘Long-tongue equals not-true,’ I signed back. ‘But good not-true. Funny not-true.’
The concept seemed beyond her; she reverted to her original demand. ‘Climb with me, Sweet-Tooth.’
‘I climb trees—not!’
‘I teach you.’
Her pronunciation of the teach-shape was slightly skewed; more ‘forget’ than ‘teach’, two signs that have an improbable similarity in Auslan.
I signed: ‘You teach me to forget?’
This time she understood. She laughed her throaty chuckle, and pronounced ‘teach’ with perfect accuracy. Then abruptly she was gone, ascending the nearest tree trunk vertically, arm over arm, reaching the highest branches within seconds.
Stella spoke for the first time. ‘Is that something, J.J.? Have you ever seen anything like it? Power and grace, like flying.’
We craned our heads, watching. Wish’s face peeped over the edge of the tree-house platform, then her right hand appeared, beckoning.
‘J.J. come.’
She was thirty feet up; a speaker would have needed to shout. It was no more than a whispered invitation, but clearly visible.
‘Too fat,’ I signed back, using our family see-through shape. ‘Maybe fall.’
She didn’t know the shape; I hammed up the pantomime elements, trying to get through.
‘Fall on fat,’ she signed. ‘Not hurt. Fall on—cushion.’
Or on pillow, or on mattress—the shape is interchangeable. She was teasing me about my weight, without doubt. She laughed—but a breeze was stirring the leaves around her, carrying off any sound that might have reached us. She stretched out an impossibly long arm and jiggled the thick rope from whi
ch the tyre was suspended.
‘Sit,’ her free hand ordered. ‘I swing you.’
Swing: a simple pendulum motion, an improvisation. I turned to Stella, she nodded encouragingly: ‘You’re quite safe.’
I squeezed my shoulders through the tyre, eased my backside into the seat, and clutched the rope with both hands. Almost immediately I began to rise smoothly through the air. I tightened my grip, white-knuckled, terrified. Wish was reeling me in, effortlessly; before I could gather my thoughts I was too high to consider escaping. It was an astonishing feat, requiring muscle strength far greater than even the strongest human male.
Suddenly we were face to face, she dangled me, one-handed, above thirty feet of empty air. With her free hand she tapped the platform next to her; I refused to release my tight grip on the tyre. Finally she swung the whole heavy pendulum onto the platform next to her; I tumbled free.
My hands were trembling, signing was difficult. ‘Get down how?’ I managed.
She held my eyes for a moment, a wicked glint in her own, then flapped her arms, bird-fashion.
I tried to smile; my face muscles were still paralysed.
She launched herself at a bough some distance off, and vanished, hooting with laughter, into the foliage.
I waited, stranded. The sound of human laughter also carried up, despite the breeze. I risked a peep over the edge of the platform. Clive had set down his notepad and was smiling as broadly as his prim preacher’s mouth would permit. Stella was holding her sides, beside herself. I tried to fix on more distant points: Summertown nestling in the bowl of the valley a mile or so off; the triple television towers on Mt Lofty, high above the far wall of the valley.
My eyes came back to Wish, watching, amused, from the next treetop.
‘Down now!’ I begged. ‘Please!’
She shook her head, grinning toothily. ‘Climb trees—joy.’
10
The first Wednesday night class without Clive and Stella lacked a certain spark. The class had shrunk to half its original size; the survivors at least had clustered into the front desks, making themselves at home. Sign, as always, was bringing them out of themselves, turning introverts into extroverts. They asked more questions, used their hands in a more sensible fashion, but I missed the quick mind and quick hands of Stella especially.
I found myself distracted, thinking mostly of Wish, already planning the next day’s lesson.
Miss-The-Point stuck his head through the door on the half-hour, counted heads, a little theatrically, gave me a fiercely concerned look, withdrew.
I wandered down to the common room after class, in search of deaf friends. Two hours of exchanging pidgin Sign with beginners always left me unsatisfied, an appetitiser that stirred the juices without quenching them. I also felt restless and fidgety, I half-wanted to tell someone—anyone—about Wish, even though I had promised not to, and would keep that promise. I wanted to share my general excitement, if not its specific cause; I wanted somehow to spend that excitement.
Miss-The-Point was sitting at a far table; he beckoned before I could glance away and pretend not to have noticed him. His wife sat with him: Stilts, a native signer, profoundly deaf, profoundly tall. Even sitting, she towered above her squat husband.
I pecked her cheek, we small signed for a time. I hadn’t seen her for years; there was news to exchange, new instalments in our life-histories to catch up on.
‘You change—not,’ I signed, and she returned the compliment.
‘Children?’ I asked.
She showed the Two Hand, I asked their ages and genders, the standard social questionnaire. As my hands moved I found the Wish Hand sneaking into my conversation, subliminally. Stilts smiled at the sight, and crossed her own fingers.
‘Feeling lucky, Sweet-Tooth?’
‘Always lucky,’ I echoed, a Good Hand shape.
Miss-The-Point interrupted, in English: ‘Your class seems a lot smaller this week, J.J.’
Stilts craned her head to read his lips; he repeated the words, patiently, with careful, exaggerated lip movements. My heart went out to her; she might not have changed, but neither had her life. Her marriage was still less a marriage than a charitable organisation; she was less a wife than a case. Am I too uncharitable? Would Stilts have chosen Miss-The-Point if he didn’t meet some corresponding need in her? If his self-love wasn’t huge enough to somehow envelop and nourish them both? More likely, the dynamics of their relationship were another symptom of a larger problem. Miss-The-Point takes that same proprietorial, philanthropic tone with all the Deaf. He means well, he just misses the point.
‘Some drop-outs always,’ I signed.
Stilts smiled at the sight of ‘drop-out’, a see-through invention.
‘I pride myself on my low drop-out rate,’ he said, still in English, ‘in these days of funding cuts we have to generate income, J.J. We must keep bums on seats.’
Stilts didn’t seem to find it at all odd, or rude, that he chose to speak. I was tempted to translate his words into Sign—to translate, cheekily, between husband and wife.
‘Fees paid already,’ I signed, stubbornly. ‘They absent—no problem.’
He smiled, indulgently. ‘All the same—I’d like you to take a rollcall at the beginning of every lesson.’
Irritated, I spoke to him for the first time in English, excluding Stilts myself. Suddenly I didn’t want to sign, the language seemed too good to waste on him, a string of pearls cast before a swine. I also didn’t want to embarrass Stilts—someone I had always liked, despite her taste in husbands—by insulting him in her presence.
‘You’ve got to be joking, Jeremy—it’s not a bloody high school.’
He turned to Stilts and tapped his watch; the nearest he had come to Sign since I had joined them. He pushed his chair back, rose, and turned back to me.
‘I have to insist, J.J.’ he said. ‘I want the attendance rolls on my desk first thing Thursday morning.’
Stilts sat for a moment, puzzled by the sudden chill in the air.
‘Stay,’ I signed. ‘More coffee.’
She shook her head, signed ‘late’ and rose, towering above her husband on her long stilt-legs. He took her arm and gently guided her from the room as if she were blind. Perhaps it was love of a kind—each player wins a prize. I raised the Rude Hand after him, more in amusement than in anger. My mood was too good for Miss-The-Point to dent more than momentarily; I felt invulnerable to his carping. On the far side of night Wish was waiting for me, soon I would be driving back to my real work in the Hills.
11
There are mornings when your bedding falls away like softened eggshell, and you rise and walk out into the world as if newly hatched, as if for the first time. I hadn’t felt so exultant since the first days of my marriage, and the birth of Rosie.
Those early weeks with Wish energised me in that same way. Her long black arms reached out to me each afternoon like a pair of jumper-leads, recharging my enthusiasm, forcing me to see afresh things I’d long forgotten to look at, or even to notice.
Her curiosity seemed inexhaustible, her infatuation with the world and its signs utterly engaging and infectious. We can’t think about the world until we have named it, I’d always believed. We can’t manipulate it, move it about in our minds until we have clothed it in language. We can’t even see it, naked. Words provide the costumes, the labels, the categories—words permit us to divide the world, and rule.
I was wrong. As the days passed it became clear that the signs I taught to Wish were merely clothing things that she already knew, concepts she had thought about, grasped wordlessly, but could not communicate.
My own first lesson: we don’t need words or signs to think with, merely to tell others what we already think.
How else to explain her instant absorption of Sign, except to conclude that she was ready for it? Each sign already had a pigeonhole—a think-slot—ready and waiting. My growing enthusiasm for the task alarmed Clive, who stressed, repeatedly,
the need for objectivity, and caution. Among the required reading he sent home nightly were two accounts of the attempted education of feral children. Both were pessimistic in the extreme; neither Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron, or Kamala, a girl reared by wolves in Bengal, had been able to learn to speak more than a few words. Clive’s attempts to pour cold water on my enthusiasm failed; Wish, I argued, had lived among humans since birth, her instinct for grammar had not atrophied through disuse.
I arrived on each of those first mornings with a firm agenda. Access days with Rosie were my model, the need for structure, for a schedule of activities to put spine in the day’s jelly. The best laid plans! It soon became clear that structure was irrelevant, that the day’s syllabus was being set by the student, not by the teacher. I learnt to follow where she led. I think, I hope, I was as much a companion as a teacher on those daily mystery tours. Where we finished each afternoon was rarely where I intended. Her endless questions, her thrilled inquisitiveness carried us off on strange tangents.
Clive and Stella watched over us patiently; Clive filling notepad after notepad, Stella’s hands keeping pace as best they could, sometimes—rarely—interrupting to request that I repeat a sign, more slowly. Despite her skill, she would never learn to sign with fluency; adolescence sets the human brain in concrete, her capacity for Sign was nowhere near as large as her foster-child’s.
I borrowed a small stack of library books for Wish each week, Clive added his own Set Texts to it, but there was seldom time for reading, or for translating text into Sign. A world of things surrounded us, numberless, infinitely varied. Even the small corner of that world, which was caged inside the inner-fence, could not be exhausted by mere words, or signs, in a few brief hours. We barely dabbled our toes—our fingers—in that rich, dense world.
A simple object—a leaf, a passing cloud, a stone—would lead Wish to other signs, chains of where and why and how that followed their own join-the-dots pathway through explanations, free associations, cause and effect. The limits of my own vocabulary were constantly tested and found wanting. Often I would surprise myself, remembering things that I no longer knew that I knew; equally often I would improvise, or be sent scurrying for help from dictionaries and encyclopaediae.
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