Reverend of Silence

by Pamela Sparkman

  When Lucy smiled and waved back, I loved Mama for it.

  On the way to school, Lucy led, same as the day before. Noah and I followed. My eyes were fixated on the long braid down the center of Lucy’s back as I let Noah do most of the talking. I’m not even sure of the things he was saying because while he had been talking to me, I wanted to be talking to her. Or, at least, include her. I hated how life went on around Lucy while she didn’t seem to be a part of any of it. Irritation bubbled underneath my skin.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Noah asked.

  “What?” I said. “No, sorry. I suppose I’m distracted this morning.”

  “What are you distracted about?”

  I didn’t want to admit that it was his sister that had me distracted, so I shrugged and said, “Just stuff.”

  “Just stuff,” he repeated. “Sounds interesting.”

  I did the only thing I could do. I shrugged again.

  “Do you not want to be friends with us, Sam?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “You’re not acting like it.”

  “How am I acting?”

  “Well, you’re not giving us the cut direct, but you’re halfway there.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t think I can tell that you would rather be anywhere else than walking to school with us right now?” Noah picked a leaf and crumpled it between his fingers.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then why haven’t you said more than two words to me this morning?”

  “I told you. I have stuff on my mind.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Noah, please.”

  “Please what? So, I can tell you stuff, but you can’t tell me stuff? Am I not a good someone for you?”

  “All right, fine. You want to know what’s bothering me? I’ll tell you. You always refer to us,” I said. “As in you and Lucy, right?”

  Noah’s head swiveled in my direction. “I told you. You get me, you get her.”

  “Then why don’t you ever include her on anything?”

  “What are you talking about? She’s with me now. She’s with me everywhere I go!”

  “But you don’t acknowledge her. Not really. She’s just there. Like your shadow or something. Invisible to everyone—to the kids at school—to Mr. Goulrich. Everyone, Noah. Even your own parents failed to acknowledge her presence the entire time I was in your home last night. And you want to walk behind her on the way to school and chat like she’s not even there! And I can’t do it. Do you know she cried last night?” Noah’s eyes bulged, his mouth gaped open, and I was afraid I’d said too much. But he needed to know. Didn’t he? And he’d asked for me to tell him what was on my mind—practically guilted me into telling him. Still, I felt a pang in my chest for having told him. I let my eyes drop from his and faced forward again. “She cried, Noah. I think her feelings were hurt,” I finished.

  “Sam,” Noah choked out.

  “What?”

  “I—I didn’t realize . . .”

  I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t know what I should say. I focused on Lucy’s long braid again and kept my mouth shut.

  Noah grew quiet, and neither of us spoke for some time.

  We were almost to school when a brown and white streak darted out of the bushes in front of us and ran up a tree. Lucy startled, almost making her drop her things. I had immediately rushed forward, touched her shoulder, looked her in the eyes and said, “It’s all right.” But it was Noah who calmed her. He set his lunch pail and slate on the ground, came up to her and made a gesture with his index finger and thumb from his mouth outward, like whiskers, and pointed to the tree, showing her what had streaked past her. Lucy and I followed where he pointed, and there it was: a brown and white cat, perched on a limb, its tail doing an angry sweep back and forth.

  She laughed then. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh out loud, not hiding it this time. It was a contagious thing, her laugh, because Noah and I began laughing too.

  “A cat,” he said, speaking to Lucy, using his hands to also communicate. She responded with her free hand, a quick motion that I didn’t quite catch, then nodded. She continued walking after that, as though nothing had happened.

  “What was that?” I asked Noah as we followed behind Lucy again. “That thing you two were doing . . . the gestures with your—”

  “Signing,” he said. “Lucy started doing it when she was little to get our attention or try to tell us what she needed. It’s not like we have whole conversations or anything, and we still struggle, but some things we’ve managed to figure out.” Glancing my way, he added, “I do talk to my sister, Sam. Please know that. I just . . . I don’t normally use our home signs with her in public because she doesn’t like to do it.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling a bit put in my place. “Why not?”

  “She’s been ridiculed for it, so she stopped doing it outside of home.”

  “What? Why would anyone ridicule her for trying to communicate?”

  “Do you know why the kids at school treat Lucy the way they do?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t.”

  “To them and their parents and their grandparents, they see Lucy and those like her on the same level as an animal—someone unable to learn, unable to think—”

  “Lucy isn’t stupid!” I said.

  Noah’s eyebrows lifted at my interruption, and for a moment, he held his mouth closed like he was fighting a smile. “No,” he finally said, “Lucy isn’t stupid. But because she doesn’t use her voice to speak, they treat her poorly. Signing or gesturing to them isn’t communicating. They won’t even try to understand her. So, whenever she’s out in public—”

  “She disappears,” I finished for him.

  “Yes, I suppose she does.”

  “What about your parents? Why don’t they do something about the way—”

  “Listen,” Noah said, rubbing the back of his neck. “You were partly right about my family. We need to try harder with Lucy. But they don’t know what to do with her. I mean, she can’t read or write.”

  “Has anyone tried to teach her?”

  His brows furrowed. “Teach her?”

  “Well, you can’t expect her to learn on her own, can you?”

  “Sam, I don’t think you fully understand. How could she possibly learn to read if she can’t hear the sounds the letters make?”

  “I—I don’t know. But I’m sure there’s a way to teach her. Look at her, Noah,” I said, pointing to her. “Where does she go every day?”

  “With me. She goes with me everywhere. You know that.”

  “And where do you go?”

  “To school.”

  “And you don’t think that maybe she might want to learn something? That maybe somebody will want to teach her something?” We made it to the schoolhouse and I walked ahead of him, but before I opened the door for Lucy, I said over my shoulder, “Or do you think her coming here every day is all about you?”

  The kids in the schoolroom either had their heads bent low over a book, were writing something, or were speaking quietly among themselves as one tutored the other while Mr. Goulrich wrote something at his desk. Everyone, including myself, had a purpose, a reason for showing up to school every day. We were learning something, gaining something.

  Lucy doodled lines on her slate.

  I tried not to let that bother me. I wanted it to not bother me. But it did. It bothered me that she spent her days doodling and nothing else.

  I pushed those thoughts aside, as well as the book I was supposed to be reading, and thought about our walk to school instead. She had laughed about the cat in the tree, and I wondered how I could get her to laugh again.

  I put down the book I was supposed to be reading and decided I’d draw a funny face. I drew an oval-shaped head, a big circle in the center for the nose and two smaller circles above it for the eyes. In the center of those, I drew eyeballs goi
ng in different directions. I gave it a smile, of course. And two big lopsided ears. I gave it hair that stood straight up, and as a finishing touch, lots of freckles across the cheeks.

  I smiled at my creation and slid it to Lucy. When she turned her head, I watched as her eyes widened and then flew up to meet mine. I hitched my thumb toward Fredrick, then pointed at my artwork, all serious-like, as though it was a true depiction. She followed the connection and burst into a fit of laughter.

  “Quiet!” Mr. Goulrich said.

  But Lucy couldn’t hear his command and continued laughing.

  “Shh,” I said, and covered her mouth with one hand while pointing to our teacher with the other. Our classmates were now looking on. Lucy got the message and placed her head on the desk, hiding her face in the crook of her arm, but her shoulders still shook with laughter.

  “Sorry, Mr. Goulrich,” I mumbled.

  “What are you two doing back there?” he asked.

  “I uh . . . did something to make her laugh,” I confessed. Noah was staring at me, but I couldn’t look at him or any of the other kids. I was too busy confessing sins and hoping Lucy didn’t get punished for my mistake. I hadn’t thought it through, wanting to hear her laughter during class time. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

  He stared at me for the longest time. Not with anger, but with confusion, like he’d wandered into the wrong room. “Just, uh, get back to work,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.” I released a long breath, and my eyes clashed with Noah’s. But to my relief, he just grinned, turned around, and let me be.

  I, however, still had this connection to Lucy, and I didn’t want to waste it. I drew another picture, a cat, and wrote C A T across the bottom. I tapped her shoulder, slid the slate over to her and waited for her reaction.

  She lifted her head, and her eyes found the drawing, then did a slow climb to my eyes. I smiled. “Cat,” I whispered.

  She blinked.

  I tapped the slate, drawing her eyes back to it, then tapped her slate. I wanted her to draw a picture. Any picture. Something other than stupid lines.

  Her eyes drifted back toward the cat I’d drawn, then she ran her finger underneath the letters. Her eyebrows puckered.

  I tapped her arm so she would look at me. “Cat.” She watched my mouth intently. “Cat,” I said again. I formed the letter “C” with my hand, held it to my mouth so that the “C” was facing away from me, turned my head so I was in profile, and made the “cah” sound while my hand made a claw action from my mouth. I think I was trying to get her to see the sound. Then I said the word again. “Cat.” I reached for her slate, erased all the doodled lines, and wrote C A T on it and handed her the piece of chalk.

  Blink. Blink, blink.

  I smiled and tapped her slate. She slowly turned toward it and began tracing the letters I had written for her.

  “No, not like that. Like this.” I showed her how each letter was to be traced. “Now you do it,” I said, handing her back the chalk.

  She nodded and smiled so brightly, I nearly lost my breath.

  When I finally took my eyes away from her, I realized everyone in the class had been watching us, including Noah.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  What was I doing?

  I hadn’t thought about it. I had just acted on impulse. “Teaching her,” I said.

  “Teaching her what?” he asked.

  I looked around the entire room. Everyone was staring, and I thought about what my mother had said the first day of school when I’d been worried that everyone would stare at the new boy—me. “So let them stare.” How little I cared if they stared now.

  I sat up straighter, looked Noah in the eyes, and said, “To read. I’m going to teach your sister to read.”

  I did teach Lucy to read—and write for that matter, though it was only a few words: Cat, hat, sat, bat. And a few other easy words, including her name: Lucy Marie Hallison.

  It was my parents who helped Lucy the most. My father had sent out letters of inquiry requesting assistance in the teaching of a deaf girl through his ministerial friends. It would be several weeks before he received a response, and when it came, it was an invitation for someone to come to Hartford, Connecticut to learn from a Miss Lydia Huntley, who was currently teaching a deaf student, another girl, and was unable to leave to come to us.

  My mother volunteered to make the journey after discussing it with Lucy’s parents. She stayed in Hartford for three months, my mother shadowing Miss Huntley, learning all she could, and came back ready to teach Lucy reading, writing, and arithmetic.

  The first year, Lucy had learned a few nouns and verbs and she had taken command of them with a determination I had expected from her. But by the second year, Lucy’s literacy had soared beyond everyone’s expectations. Her perseverance and thirst for knowledge were unmatched by anyone I’d ever known. I was in awe of her daily. By years three and four, Lucy had accomplished learning her sums (adding faster than Noah, but don’t tell him I told you), and she often practiced her writing by copying whole passages from Papa’s Bible. By year five, Lucy had an itch to learn more.

  To this day, I will never be able to thank my mother enough for what she did for Lucy.

  But even though Lucy was proving that she could adjust—that she could learn—that she was able to think—that she was, in fact, a person who just wished to be treated like any other girl—certain people within our township and our church—they were the ones to prove incapable of adjusting—of learning to accept—unable to believe that their wrongmindedness was causing grave harm to Lucy’s spirit.

  As for their Christian behavior, they couldn’t see how it was in direct conflict to the commandment to love thy neighbor as thyself. Because some (certainly not all) in our community believed that the family or Lucy herself must be filled with wickedness and that God was punishing the Hallisons with Lucy’s affliction. Others believed that the family’s lost faith in God had caused their woes and Lucy’s illness.

  Noah admitted to me once that his father had indeed lost faith in God and he’d long since stopped going to church before my family and I ever came to town. But I often wondered if his father had lost faith in God, or if he’d simply lost faith in people.

  My father, however, was determined to make saints out of his parishioners, and on one Sunday morning, Papa’s goodwill had been tested and tried once too many times, and he unleashed a sermon the likes I’d never heard, although one could hardly call it a sermon. More like a tongue-lashing that set every parishioner back on their heels.

  I remember telling my father once, “The people didn’t know what they were getting when you came to town, did they?” And you know what his response was?

  “They saw me coming, Son. They knew what they were getting. What they didn’t see coming was you.”

  I shook my head. “No, Papa,” I said. “It was Lucy they never saw coming. It was always Lucy.”

  Bridgeport, Connecticut

  1819

  Away! Nor let me loiter in my song,

  For we have many a mountain path to tread,

  And many a varied shore to sail along,

  By pensive Sadness, not by Fiction, led—

  Climes, fair withal as ever moral head

  Imagined in its little schemes of thought;

  Or e’er in new Utopia were read:

  To teach man what he might be, or he ought;

  If that corrupted thing could ever such be taught.

  Lord Byron

  Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,

  XXXVI.

  Samuel

  “So, what is this dance?” Noah asked, rolling a leaf around his fingers.

  “Why do you do that?” I asked, plucking the leaf out of his hand.

  “It’s a habit. I can’t help it,” he said with an innocent grin on his face. “So, what kind of dance is this? Explain.”

  “It’s a social dance for families. Kids twelve and older can attend. You’re
invited. Friends and family are invited.”

  “Are you going?”

  “I don’t have a choice. My parents want me there since they’re hosting it and it’s being held in the church’s ballroom.” But if anyone had asked, I didn’t much care about going. However, the pastor’s son must be in attendance. That was what my father had said when he told me I had to be there. I had grown used to doing things I didn’t want to do, and having to behave a certain way, because of who my father was.

  “I suppose I’ll go, since you are.”

  “Are you planning on asking me to dance?” I joked.

  Noah shoved me. “Har, har.”

  “Hey, you could warn a fella or something. I nearly landed in the mud.”

  “I should have planted you in it.”

  Naturally, I did the only thing I could do. I shoved him back. This, of course, resulted in a playful scuffle. When we were done, we looked worse for the wear.

  “Our mothers are going to kill us,” Noah said, trying to smooth out the wrinkles in his jacket.

  “Most likely,” I said, picking a feather out of my hair. Where did I pick up a feather?

  “It was fun, though.”

  “Oh, definitely,” I admitted. “We better remove our shoes before going into the house, though. If we track in this mud, we’ll surely be dead by supper.”

  “You’re giving your mama a lot of credit. Supper is still a couple of hours away. If it were my mama, we wouldn’t make it to the bottom step.”

  “I suppose we’ll find out our fate soon enough. Come on.”

  We entered through the door around back because we had to leave our shoes outside to dry after we scrubbed them clean. Then we went in search of Lucy so Noah could walk her home. This was our normal routine. Well, minus the mud and the missing shoes and coming in the wrong door. After Mama became Lucy’s full-time teacher, which meant she no longer came to school with Noah and me, Mama turned the room off the parlor into Lucy’s classroom. It was also where she’d decided our pianoforte should be, making it a classroom and music room. Every Tuesday and Thursday after school, Mama made me practice the piano. Noah was always invited to join, but he would opt out, choosing to go home on Tuesdays and Thursdays, claiming he had chores to do and had no time to take music lessons. Lucy always chose to stay longer on those days because she said she loved the vibration the pianoforte made, which meant I was charged with walking her home on those days.