“Hearing people talk only with the mouth. Hearing words tumble from the mouth, one word after another word, like a long word train. The meaning is not clear until the caboose word comes out of the mouth tunnel. These are only dry words, like dead insects. Mouth-talk is like a painting with no color. You can see shape. Understand an idea. But it's flat, like a black and white picture. There is no life in a black and white picture.
“My language is not a black and white language. The language of my hands and face and body is a Technicolor language. When I am angry, my language is red-hot like the sun. When I am happy, my language is blue like the ocean, and green like a meadow, and yellow like pretty flowers.
“My language is God's language. He put His language in my hands for all my time on earth. In heaven I will have no need for sign. I will talk directly to God.”
My father had made himself a student of how spoken language compares to sign language. Now he decided it was time to give my brother and me a demonstration of the difference between the two.
“Now you mouth-talk,” he signed. “Say drum,”
He watched my mouth carefully as I said, “Drum.”
“Say thunder,”
He put his open palm in front of my mouth as I said, “Thunder.”
“Say crash,”
I said, “Crash.”
“I cannot see a loud sound when you say these hearing mouth-words,” my father signed. “And I do not feel a loud sound coming from your mouth.”
“Yes,” I answered him. “To make my words explain how loud a drum sounds, or how loud the thunder is, or how loud the crash is, I have to use other words, words that describe the original word. Adjectives.”
“I know hearing adjective words,” he answered with derision. “Adjectives are decoration words, like silver tinsel on a green Christmas tree. They are not real words with their own meaning. A beautiful green tree needs no decoration. Such a tree is most beautiful in the ground and not in a living room with its beauty covered up with tinsel, lights, and hanging balls. Your mouth-talk is a weak thing. It needs many more words to explain the original word.”
He thought a minute. “Watch me now talk with my hands.”
My father signed drum. His hands held invisible drumsticks, and he slowly began to beat an invisible drum. Softly.
My brother and I sat mesmerized at the sight of our father's closed hands rising and falling.
Then his hands moved faster, more forcefully, and I saw the ends of the drumsticks striking the skin of the drumhead and began to “hear” his hands, while Irwin laughed with glee.
Suddenly a look of intense concentration spread across my father's face, and his shoulders and body bent into the beating of his hands as they banged away with the now-visible drumsticks on the now-visible drum. I listened to the sound of his face and body and hands, all indivisible, and the sound was deafening. I covered my ears, and my brother followed my lead and covered his as well.
My father stopped banging. His hands were empty. The drumsticks had disappeared. The drum had disappeared. The sound had disappeared.
“My language is a picture language,” he signed, breathing heavily. “There is no need to explain.”
His point made, my father smiled and picked up the newspaper that he had brought home from work that day.
“Come watch,” my father said. “Now I make magic. I will make foryou and Irwin four-cornered newspaper hats. Hats like my pals and me wear in the newspaper plant to keep the ink mist off our heads.”
As my mother dried the last of the dishes, my father carefully spread the paper out on the kitchen table. Selecting a perfect section, one that had been mechanically folded exactly down the center, his hands began to create magic. Folding the double-spread first this way and that, while scoring the edges with his strong nails, he tucked and folded the sheet of newsprint until, out of all the folds and creases, the shape of a hat emerged.
Tucking the final folds into place, he opened the shaped newsprint, and suddenly, before my eyes, he held a three-dimensional newspaper hat where but moments earlier there had been a one-dimensional sheet of paper. He gently placed it on my head. Somehow, miraculously, the hat was—as it always was—a perfect fit.
“You're a printer now. Like me. No ink will get in your hair to make your pillow dirty and make Mother Sarah angry.”
He then repeated the process and placed a small newspaper hat on my brother's head. We wore our newspaper hats to bed.
I often dreamed I was a printer, standing on the printing press floor alongside my father. He wore a newspaper hat. There was no ink in his hair.
The Palmer Method
Icame home from school one day, my notebook filled with lines of gorgeous letters all in a row, bounding across the page like a herd of prancing gazelles. Sandwiched between these lines of soaring grace were leaden lines of crawling caterpillars.
This had been my first exposure to the dreaded Palmer Method of penmanship, which the school authorities of Brooklyn, in their wisdom, had determined was essential to the education of every budding street scholar. In my particular case, it was deemed critical. “Myron, what on earth are these words?” my teacher had said, at her wit's end. “This page looks like the yard of a chicken run. What could these chicken tracks possibly mean?” I tried to explain, but in truth, some of the words were indecipherable even to me; this was impressive, as I had written them just a moment before.
As I listened to my traitorous classmates laughing, I watched in awe as my teacher proceeded to fill my notebook with lines of graceful, elegant letters—in alternating capitals and lower case.
“Now, Myron, take your notebook home and practice]”
That evening, after my mother had cleared the supper dishes from the kitchen table, I practiced my penmanship. In the blank lines between my teacher's beautiful gazellelike words, I scrawled my ugly, clumsy counterparts, as my father sat across from me, reading his paper.
Setting the newspaper aside, my father turned my notebook around so that he could look at what I had written.
“What in heaven's name are you doing?” he signed. The look on his face was one of pure puzzlement.
“I'm practicing my penmanship.”
“Is that what it is?” my father said skeptically. “So why can't I read it?” he added—unnecessarily, I thought.
Not meaning to be rude but realizing this line of conversation was not leading anywhere that I wanted to go, I took the notebook back and resumed my tortured, crabbed, and— even to my mind—pathetic squiggles across the page.
Line after line of miserable … what? Yes, I realized, they were exactly as my teacher had said: chicken tracks.
I laid down my pen in utter frustration. I was a beaten kid. And besides, my hand hurt.
Looking up at my father, I saw him break into the most exaggerated signs, punctuated with carefully sculpted finger-spelled letters of the alphabet. It was as if he were cutting those letters from a block of marble one by one, each letter perfect.
His signs looped and soared with the ornamental elegance of a peacock, blended with the agility of a long-tailed swallow.
“That's my Palmer Method,” he signed, picking up his newspaper again.
14
Parent-Teacher Night
The year I turned nine, I was faced with my ultimate challenge as intermediary between my father and the outside world: the dreaded Parent-Teacher Night.
When I learned that our parents were invited—and attendance was definitely not optional—to a conference with our teachers regarding our progress (or lack of it in my case) in our schoolwork and our social development (Deportment? Works and plays well with others? Conduct? Good grief!), this news chilled me to the bone. I was sure that my father would insist that I accompany them to the event. For something this important I knew he would not be content merely to shuffle cryptic, tediously scrawled notes back and forth with my impatient teacher. He would want me to act—as I had since I was six—as his interpret
er, so that he could have access to the same full understanding of the exchange between teacher and parent that any hearing person would unthinkingly enjoy.
Holding on to some small fragment of hope that I could get out of going, I explained to my father that we, the children, were not invited. But my father insisted on my presence, as he always did on any occasion of note that required him to interact with the hearing world.
This occasion, of course, was different from any of the others. Up until now I had been merely a glass window through which language passed from the hearing to my deaf father, and then in the other direction—I was the facilitator. But now Í would be the subject, the whole point of the exercise that evening. The thoughts and opinions I would be passing on to my father and teacher, in sign and spoken language, would consist of highly subjective opinions about myself. I was horrified. Only seven short days separated me from the upcoming ordeal. I passed over and through the intervening hours as if I were being dragged over hot coals.
My concerns were manifold and complex. Up until now my entire world, the world I inhabited with my deaf mother and father, had been my Brooklyn block—actually only half of it, as I rarely if ever ventured past the midway point. In this world I was known as the hearing son of two deaf parents, no more, no less—and best of all, no big deal.
When my mother called my name, Mhhhaaarinnn, from our third-floor apartment window in her sharp deaf voice, no one even turned his or her head to see where that keening sound came from. When my father cheered me on during games of stickball and touch football in his hard harsh voice, my friends barely noticed. And when my father signed to me, and I signed back, no one stared. The rhythmic movements of our arms and hands and bodies as we signed were as natural as the waving of the branches of the few trees on our block in the occasional breeze from Coney Island.
On this block, in this world, I was unremarkable.
But now all that would change. Now, in a few painfully short days, I would be with my parents in a huge auditorium filled with teachers and parents—strangers who had never encountered a deaf person, or heard a deaf voice, or seen what to them would appear a meaningless, almost demented, arm-waving, grimacing, squeaking, and scowling performance.
Moreover, I would have to endure my father's request that I translate into spoken words his admiration of my numerous skills and attributes, each and every one of them, to my teacher.
In turn, I would have to interpret my teacher's honest, critical, but oh-so-constructive opinions of my shortcomings, also one by one.
The evening inevitably arrived, on schedule.
“Myron, please tell your parents I'm very happy to finally meet them,” my teacher said in her pleasantly soft-pitched voice.
I smiled and interpreted word for word, my facial grammar expressing her happiness.
“Myron, please tell the teacher that we are as well,” signed and voiced my father, in exaggerated sign and harsh voice.
I cringed and interpreted word for word.
“Myron, please tell your parents that although you are a good student, you are a severe discipline problem.”
“The teacher says I'm a pleasure to have in her class.”
“Tell them that if you don't improve in deportment, conduct, and paying attention, I'll have to recommend that you be left back a grade.”
“My teacher says that at the rate I'm learning, she may recommend me for skipping a grade,” I signed creatively.
“Furthermore,” my teacher said in her sweetly modulated voice, “tell your parents that you are the worst discipline problem I've ever encountered in all of my twenty-two years of teaching in Brooklyn schools. Myron, you are truly unique.”
“My teacher says that she sees a bright future for me, perhaps as a surgeon or an airline pilot.”
By now my mother was beaming.
But my father, who had watched the very active and prolonged movement of my teacher's lips throughout the entire exchange, was scowling with marked skepticism.
“Bullshit!” he signed to me in our home sign for the word. “Bullshit,” he repeated in exasperation.
“Now, by God, tell me exactly what the teacher is saying,” he signed in his no-nonsense sign. My father, who could read the face of a hearing person as an Egyptologist can read the Rosetta Stone, had cracked the hieroglyphics of my teacher's face and gestures. He knew the gist of what she was saying, and now he wanted the details. The jig was up. Now I was back to performing my disappearing act—in an instant I became the clear glass through which the unedited thoughts and comments of my teacher and my father would pass, back and forth.
Looking at my father's grim face and angry gestures, my teacher said in the voice she reserved for speaking to me when I disobeyed her request to be quiet in class, “Myron, what have you been telling your father?”
“Well…” I began, but couldn't continue.
“Myron, tell your father exactly what I'm saying to him now.”
I visibly cringed.
Seeing my discomfort, my dear teacher took pity on me.
“Myron is a good boy. He reads well and is obviously intelligent, but he has a discipline problem.” Then she smiled and said, “He has ants in his pants.” Reflecting on her own metaphor, she added, “And there are times I'm tempted to squash him, like an ant.”
The sign for ant is iconic and graphic: the closed left hand is the body of an ant and sits above the back of the right hand, which moves forward while the fingers wiggle furiously like an ant's legs. In my newfound honesty, to eliminate any doubt in my father's mind as to exactly what my teacher meant by this statement, I followed with the second version of this sign: the hands are closed in fists, and the right extended thumbnail comes down repeatedly against the left thumbnail, squashing an army of ants between the thumbnails. I executed this last sign with such descriptive power that my mother smiled—and nodded vigorously in agreement— while my father collapsed in convulsive laughter that was interrupted by an emphatically barked “YES! YES!” followed by his sign for “Sometimes, same me! Squash Myron like an ant.”
As my father made the exaggerated signs for squash Myron like an ant, my teacher joined in the hilarity, all at my expense. But I didn't care. I had escaped any further elaboration of my transgressions in her class.
Soon, however, I noticed that this lively exchange had made our little group the center of attention for every parent and teacher in the room. I saw the stares and gaping mouths and looks of astonishment on their faces.
Piss off, I thought. I'll be as tough as my father. And I proceeded to stare right back at them.
That night after we returned to our apartment and my father paid the neighbor's child who had watched Irwin while we were out, my mother made hot cocoa for Irwin and me. She topped it off with my favorite—fresh whipped cream that she made by hand with an egg beater in a cold metal bowl. When I finished drinking my cocoa, she let me scoop the remaining fluffy pile of whipped cream from the bowl directly into my mouth—and when my brother complained, into his mouth as well. This was a rare treat for Irwin, as she thought the habit quite unsanitary, and she was always very protective of him. I couldn't imagine why, but my mother seemed pleased with me.
My father was another matter. He was as serious as I had ever seen him be with me. Looking at me sternly, he said, “Myron, no more of your foolishness in school. I expect a better report from your teacher at the next parent-teacher meeting.” Then, while holding my gaze, he hesitated and added, “And if you don't…,” and he made the sign for squashing an ant—and burst into laughter.
The Spider-Man of Ninth Street
Twenty years before the nerdy high school nonentity Peter Parker was bitten on his hand by a radioactive spider, transforming him instantly into Spider Man, I de cided I could climb up the brick face of my apartment house wall. I arrived at this startling conclusion after only a little practice and even less thought.
I'm practicing to be Spider-Man.
Like every other
kid in Brooklyn in 1943,1 was a great fan of the King of the Jungle, Tarzan. I saw every one of his movies at our local movie house, the Avalon Theater, the week it was released. And I bought every one of his comic books the minute it hit the rack at our local candy store. Indeed, although I wasn't much of a student in my school-based subjects, I was a summa cum laude in anything depicted in movies and comic books. Tarzan's extraordinary ability to climb trees like an ape, and to swing from trees on the vines that grew in their upper reaches, inspired me to attempt my own vine-swinging feats. Thus I swiped a length of clothesline and fashioned a Brooklyn version of an African vine.
One day, with my “vine” wound tightly around my waist, I climbed a tree that stood in our backyard. All day long I scampered up and down the length of that tree, my clothesline vine attached to one of its topmost branches so that I could swing in soaring arcs that took me over our neighbor's garage roof. Eventually, having exhausted the possibilities of simulating an African jungle experience in one tree, I lay along a limb and dreamed of further adventures.
Emboldened by my success at climbing a tree trunk and swinging from the end of a clothesline, I decided that, like Tarzan, I would use this means of transportation to move about my “jungle”—West Ninth Street, Brooklyn, New York.
But my “jungle” was rather sparse, its trees few and far between. Swinging from one to another required skills that would have taxed even Cheetah, not to mention Tarzan. Still, I was determined to expand my fantasy to its outermost limits, and so I soon settled on an interesting alternative: the telephone cables that snaked their way, high overhead, from pole to pole, down the backyards of my street. Looking up at them with my hyperactive ten-year-old imagination, I could easily visualize them as the thick jungle canopy I would soon be negotiating with my clothesline.
One afternoon, my “vine” wound tightly around my waist, where it performed no function except in my mind, I climbed a telephone pole in my backyard. Grasping the cable at the top, I began my progress above the backyards of my block, making my way slowly, hand over hand, from one pole to the next, until I reached Avenue P, the end of my street. Not bad, I thought, then reversed my position on the cable and made my way in the opposite direction until I reached Quentin Road. Had Tarzan as a boy lived in Brooklyn, could he have done any better?
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