Hands of My Father

by Myron Uhlberg

  A tremendous roar shot out from the radio. Conn's down. He's down! HE'S DOWN! Louis caught him right on the end of the jaw, between a bob and a weave. My bobbing stopped. My weaving ended. My chin jerked up. Conn's not dancing now. I stopped dancing. I fell. You can run, but you can't hide. Not from the Brown Bomber, Lying on the rag rug of the ring, I knew that. “You can run, but you can't hide from Joe Louis.”

  The count droned its way to the inevitable conclusion of every one of Joe Louis's fights: TEN! AND YOU'RE OUT!

  I leaped to my feet. I signed the inevitable numbers. I signed, FINISHED/

  Wonderful! Wonderful! my father signed with obvious glee.

  My mother just looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time, dumbstruck. She had never, in all the eight years of my life, witnessed such a signing performance. She was impressed.

  In 1942 Joe Louis was inducted into the United States Army, along with a million other young boys and grown men. So were two of my mother's younger brothers: Harry the quiet one, who, to the consternation of his mother, Celia, dated only Italian girls and was as chary of his words as he was of his money; and Milton, the youngest, who always had much to say, all of it directed at the failures of the capitalist system. In those simple days you volunteered; you did not wait to be drafted. It was a different war, a much different time.

  There would be no more fights for the duration. Even kids knew what the “duration” meant—until the war was over. While this life-and-death struggle was being fought, everything in our young lives would be suspended for the “duration.” And the cry went up all over Brooklyn, from a million mothers’ lips, every time we asked for something: “Don't you know there's a war on!” That effectively ended every discussion.

  The fact that I could now take a break from my special signing was okay with me, as I didn't think I had another round in me after that epic fight.

  By 1946, however, when the war was over and Joe Louis resumed his boxing career, I was thirteen and stronger. Although my signing was now much more sophisticated and complex, my father insisted I continue to sign the fights as I had in the old days, with my special signing. So it was lucky for me that I had gained in strength and endurance, because Louis was now older and slower; he did not finish off his opponents as quickly as he once had. His bouts lasted many rounds. In 1947 he took the full fifteen rounds to gain a decision over the up-and-coming Jersey Joe Walcott. My father told me that that was my best performance as a fighter… he meant, signer.

  In 1949 my father bought a DuMont television set. It had been reduced to $999. In those days the minimum wage was forty cents an hour. How my father managed this purchase is still beyond me. Being deaf, however, he viewed television not as a luxury but as a necessity.

  With a plastic magnifying lens hooked to the front of the set by two wires, the eye-squinting eight-by-ten-inch screen was blown up to a highly distorted twenty-inch one. The resulting watery, convex image made us feel like goldfish looking out through the glass sides of a fish tank.

  From now on my father would watch the fights on TV. There was no longer any need for me to sign them for him.

  And so I retired, undefeated. In an extended ceremony, as my mother looked on with great amusement, my father crowned me with a newspaper hat that he had made out of a page from the day's paper; I was now the reigning world champion of boxing signs.

  At the conclusion of the ceremony, my father signed to me wistfully, “Sure, I like to see the fights on TV now, but somehow they just don't have the same excitement as when you were in your prime.” I felt good knowing this. But then he added, a gleam in his eye, a smile on his lips, “And they sure aren't nearly as funny.”

  Sounds in the Night

  One night, long after I had gone to bed, I was awakened by strange sounds in our otherwise silent apartment. It sounded as if someone were being beaten, the blows accompanied by grunts and muffled screams.

  I jumped out of bed and rushed to my parents’ bedroom. Their door was closed, but it was never locked as, being deaf, they dared not shut out their hearing son.

  I threw open the door, realizing as I did that this was where the sounds were coming from. Rushing into the dimly lighted room, I saw my father on top of my mother. He was grunting, and she was moaning. It was a frightening sight. I leaped on my father's bare back, screaming into his deaf ears, “Stop! Stop! You're killing my mother!”

  In shocked reaction, my father bucked me off his back, and I landed with a thud on the wooden floor. On went the lights, and bang bang bang went the broom handle Mrs. Abromovitz thumped against the ceiling of her bedroom one floor below.

  My father picked me up in his arms. I was crying. He stilled my shaking and gently wiped away my tears with the tips of his fingers.

  “What's wrong?” he signed.

  “Why are you beating my mother?” I signed. There are no fewer than five signs for beat, and I used every one of them.

  My father watched my agitated performance in wonder, and upon its completion, he laughed uproariously.

  Catching his breath, he signed, “Not killing.” Then after some thought he added, “We're exercising.” And with that he laughed some more.

  I, of course, had no idea what was so funny. But I was reassured by his easy laughter that everything was all right.

  This must have been true, as all throughout my childhood I heard my father and my mother exercising on a regular basis.

  4

  Another Child

  My brother, Irwin, was born the year I turned four. My mother's parents, Celia and Max, had been against their deaf daughter having another child. Since they did not know with certainty why it was that she, their oldest child, had become deaf, they thought her children would most likely be deaf as well. The fact that I, their daughter's firstborn child, could hear was for them no less than a miracle. But, they reasoned, why take a chance on another miracle? Better to be safe than sorry. “No more children,” her mother told her. “One is enough!” her father insisted, jabbing his forefinger at her.

  My father agreed with both of them. This was rare—actually, unheard-of. My father considered his wife's parents to be little better than uneducated illiterate immigrants, barely off the boat. He was particularly incensed, though he never openly showed it, when they butted into his family's affairs. “Where do these immigrants get off telling me what to do?” his hands would mutter. “Just because I'm deaf they think me stupid; nothing more than a child.” But as my father worshiped his beautiful wife, who in turn had always basked in the undiluted love of her mother, he held his tongue—hands actually. In moments of extreme agitation, such as when his wife's sister, Mary, wrote out his father-in-law's dire warnings about how innocent and childlike and irresponsible my father was because he was a “deaf and dumb mute,” my father would literally sit on his hands so as to contain them, as if they possessed an independent will to strangle this Hungarian Gypsy fool.

  But on this point, that one child was enough, he found himself in agreement with his in-laws. As was always the case, my mother ignored her family's wishes entirely. She dearly loved her mother, Celia, but had always known, with a certainty beyond her years, that she was different from her mother and the rest of her hearing family. Her life now was with her own family, her deaf family. And she was determined to talk her husband into a second child.

  She had been arguing with him about this for over three years—ever since they both concluded that my hearing was in no danger of being lost. He pointed out to her that they could much better afford to provide for one child than for two. It was 1937, and the Depression still gripped the country. “What if the newspaper cuts back my hours?” he argued intelligently. “I want another little baby,” my mother signed sweetly. “What if I have to go back on the lobster shift? How will you manage at night?” he pointed out reasonably. “Myron will help me,” my mother said.

  All argument was useless; my mother wanted another baby in the house. And as my father adored my mother, he gav
e in. The outcome of this issue, as with all others, was never in doubt; what Sarah wanted, Sarah would have. And so she and Lou had another child.

  My brother, Irwin, was born hearing. (Actually, ninety percent of all children born to deaf parents can hear.) When it was announced, at the hospital, that the new baby could hear, both sides of the family assumed that the curse of deafness had been broken. And with this baby, neither my mother's nor my father's family felt the need to make regularly scheduled weekend visits to our apartment for the yearlong ritual of banging on pots and pans.

  From the day my mother came home from the hospital, I was required to be my brother's surrogate parent. No longer did my mother have to rely, as she had with me, on a ribbon tied from her arm to her new baby's foot. That velvet ribbon was now replaced by me. For my mother, I was a much more satisfactory connection between her newborn son and herself. After all, a ribbon can't speak in sign.

  My brother's crib was placed alongside my bed. When he awoke at night, crying for his bottle, it was my job to wake my mother. When he awoke at night with a stomachache, it was my job to wake my mother. When he awoke at night, fussy and fretful, it was my job to wake my mother. But as he grew older, he would sometimes awaken simply because he was no longer sleepy; then I would play with him as he lay on his back in his crib.

  Irwin and I

  Irwin was an extremely placid baby, somewhat on the chubby side, quick to make eye contact and just as quick to smile and giggle. When I looked at him, he would often cycle his legs and wave his arms in what appeared to me to be great excitement. I, in turn, would wave my arms back at him to see if I could get an even greater response. And if this failed, I would make faces at him. Having unconsciously learned from my parents the exaggerated facial expressions that are a part of deaf grammar, I would raise my eyebrows high and fatten my cheeks to bursting, to see if he would imitate me.

  It was at such times—in the middle of the night—that I thought to teach my brother to speak. Our house was a silent one, and other than the voices that emanated from my radio, I heard no speech. But if my brother could learn to speak, I reasoned, I would have a companion, one whom I could talk to and who, in turn, would talk back to me. I was curious as to what his speaking voice would sound like. Being the child of deaf parents, I was acutely aware of the sound of speech—the way the people on my block articulated words, their accents, and in the case of my friend Jerry's immigrant Italian father, the music of their speech. And so as my brother looked up at me—wide awake, and not in the least bit sleepy—I would look down at him and repeat words over and over again, hoping to elicit a response. Of course, at that early age none was forthcoming. Nonetheless I was determined to be for my baby brother the human replacement for the radio that had spoken to me when I was a baby. And in time, at an unusually early age, he did begin to speak.

  A black-and-white picture of my brother at about the age of three hangs on my wall of family photographs. An extraordinarily cute child, he is towheaded, with a hank of fluffy hair hanging down over his left eye. His look is one of pure Huck Finn mischief. His face is round, with cheeks so plump he might be hiding a small knobby crabapple in each one—to tease my mother, no doubt. His eyes are the outstanding feature of his face; they are large, dark, and lively. A deep shining intelligence illuminates them; they are looking off to the side, completely unaware of the camera, as if planning the next prank. The satisfied smile that forms on his lips suggests his sense of anticipation.

  Irwin, circa 1940

  My brother is wearing a sweater knitted for him by our mother. It bunches up around his waist, and the sleeves are rolled back to the middle of his arms. His chubby hands hang straight down, fat fingers like ten little sausages pointing to the ground. My mother was a skilled and inventive knitter and seamstress (no need, ever, for patterns), but she always made every garment too large. “So you won't outgrow it,” she always signed, when I would complain about some article of clothing she had made for me that hung halfway to the floor. (Come to think of it, in all the years I was a child I never seemed to outgrow a single thing she made for me.)

  Beneath the hand-knit sweater my brother wears a rumpled pair of shorts. The shorts expose his bare legs, which are also pudgy, with a pair of dimples at each knee. Hand-knitted patterned socks peek above his high-top laced leather shoes. One bow has become untied, and the laces trail on the ground at his foot. This photograph of my brother, taken by our father with his Brownie box camera, could have been painted by Gainsborough.

  Two years later my brother would have his first epileptic seizure.

  One night I was awakened by sounds I had never heard before. I groped for the switch on my bedside lamp, and when I turned the knob, I saw a sight that made me gasp. In the bed next to mine, the location he had slept in all of his life, my brother was gripped with an epileptic grand mal seizure. His eyes were rolled back in his head, only the whites showing. The skin on his face was drawn tightly to his skull. His mouth was clamped shut, with the edge of his tongue protruding, and blood was spurting all over his white pillowcase. His body was as rigid as a wooden plank. He squirmed and writhed and jerked about. His arms and legs flew in every direction, like the demented arms of a windmill. Sweat was flying from his body. I was stunned, turned to stone.

  I couldn't say afterward if his seizure had lasted one minute or an hour. Time had no meaning. My entire focus of attention was on my brother as he was transformed into a creature beyond my comprehension.

  When he was finally still—which happened, it seemed, in an instant—he lay there drenched in sweat, his face covered in blood, completely unconscious.

  In time—I can't say how long—I went to get my father and mother. When I jerked my father awake, the look on my face threw him into a panic, and my mother screamed. Rushing into my bedroom, they saw a sight that is the stuff of every parent's nightmare: their son covered in blood, blood everywhere on his sheets and pillow, while he lay, scarcely breathing, as if dead.

  While my mother held his now limp, boneless, virtually lifeless body in her arms, my father tenderly wiped the blood from his body and face with a damp cloth, searching for its source.

  That evening was the beginning of a year of nonstop, nightly seizures. Every night when it was time to go to sleep, my father tied a cloth strip from my arm to my brother's arm as he lay in his bed, which was now drawn right alongside my own. On my bedside table was a selection of wooden tongue depressors, which my father had wrapped thickly in gauze. My instructions were simple. “When you feel the cloth jerk, that's the signal that Irwin will be going into a seizure. Get up immediately. Straddle your brother, force his jaws open, clear his tongue away from his teeth, and slip the tongue depressor between his jaws, making sure, doubly sure, that his tongue is clear of his teeth. Then, and only then, remove your fingers from his mouth. Be sure, but be quick. When he goes into convulsions, straddle his body between your thighs, and hold him as still as you can. Whatever you do, don't let him jerk himself off his bed.” He added, “Your mother and I are counting on you. You can hear. We are deaf.” I was nine years old.

  I became quite adept at these esoteric skills. I slept lightly, never dreaming, and would snap awake the instant my brother stiffened, which happened each night that first year, as regularly as a clock alarm. His arm would jerk, the cloth stretched between us would yank on my arm, and I would leap onto his body, straddling him between my thighs. A gauze-wrapped tongue depressor found its way into my hand without any conscious thought on my part. Holding his mouth open, I thrust the depressor into his mouth and pushed aside his tongue. Most nights I was successful. Some nights I managed to get my fingers out of his mouth before it snapped shut, but I was not able to clear his tongue completely from his clenching jaws. Then the blood would fly. Occasionally I was not quick enough to remove my fingers before his jaws clamped shut, and then my blood would mingle with his.

  Deep into that year my brother began to have episodes of repeated seizures. When thi
s happened, I had to awaken our downstairs neighbor and ask to use her phone so that I could call 911 (or whatever its equivalent was sixty-five years ago). She did not once complain. When the ambulance arrived, I accompanied my father and my unconscious brother to Coney Island Hospital. There I went through the usual routine of being my father's ears and voice. But in this situation I was also the voice and ears of my unconscious brother.

  I instinctively knew that my father hated being in this situation, helpless because of his deafness. And the unthinking, uncaring, unsympathetic treatment he received from the hospital staff—all of them, from ambulance driver to orderly to nurse and doctor— was deeply painful to him. Not one of them had a moment for my father. I, on the other hand, was the center of their attention. As an adult with children of my own, I can very well imagine the humiliation my father must have felt at those times: ignored and dismissed as if he were a child of no consequence, while I was spoken to almost as the parent of my little brother.

  My brother's epileptic seizures were to last for five years, gradually diminishing in frequency. During that time he drank a daily concoction of powerful sedatives—including phenobarbital— which transformed him into a virtual zombie. And although he entered school at the appropriate age, he never seemed to be fully aware of what was going on in his classes; he always seemed to be sleepwalking. As he told me many years later about his school years, “I just didn't get it.” How could he, drugged into oblivion by sedatives that would never be prescribed for an epileptic child today?