Page 2 of The Sign for Home

Let BOTH interpreters with HIGH SKILLS know my old GUIDE DOG is name “SNAP”… (SNAP FINGERS is name). She is old secondhand guide dog. She do not BITE a lot. But tell interpreters with HIGH SKILLS NOT to BANG BANG on table to show they am HERE. SNAP does not like it and BARK ANGRY. GASP. GULP. Embarrass! Better way, gently TAP on my shoulder, and hold, do not move so don’t LOSE YOU. After that I will interview potentialINTERPRETERS and then pick one to work with me and Molly this summer. Okay?

Thank you for all helping me so much. I am very exciting going to WRITING CLASS at Dutchess Community College. I promise work very hard and get good grades so Brother Birch, Jehovah God, and you WILL HAVE be proud with me.

Blessings and Hugs,

Your friend

Arlo Dilly

2THE TERP

“I’m here to see Clara Shuster,” I said to the Abilities Institute receptionist. “The name is Cyril Brewster. I’m here to interview for the interpreting gig.”

“Clara will be with you in a moment. You can wait in there.”

The receptionist pointed to the door of a waiting room just off the hallway. I went inside. The decor of the Abilities Institute, like most decent purveyors of social services, strained for an aura that saidWe really, really care… no, really.Everywhere I looked there were racks of helpful brochures and cliché posters of sunsets and waterfalls with inspirational quotes written in script. One said: “It Is During Our Darkest Moments that We Must Focus to See the Light.”

Irony, I thought.

As I passed a mirror, I took note of my face. As always, I sucked in my cheeks and widened my eyes. My ex, Bruno, used to call this my fake mirror face. For a man in my middle years, I’m still decent looking—for a redhead. I stretched the crow’s feet around my eyes, and once again considered whether Botox would be feasible. It was always the same conundrum: Which do I follow, my desire to be attractive or my desire to be a good interpreter? I have what people call “Deaf face,” meaning I wear my emotions—and the hearing consumer’s emotions—like a billboard on my face. Facial expressions are a big part of ASL grammar, signaling questions, mood, anger, joy, confusion, and more. I wouldn’t have been as popularwith Deaf consumers if my face were always frozen into a dashing look of sexy disinterest.Nope. No Botox for me!

Of course, my face won’t matter if I get this job.

I felt nauseated. I had a strict policy about not taking gigs with the DeafBlind where I’d have to interpret in Tactile ASL (TSL). DeafBlind people who use TSL will express themselves the same way as any sighted ASL user. But when they “listen,” rather than using their eyes, the DeafBlind consumer will place their hands on top of the person’s with whom they are communicating,feeling the signs. Think Helen Keller talking to Annie Sullivan in that movieThe Miracle Worker. The problem was, I was no Annie Sullivan, and I knew it. You’d think they’d require a certain skill level to take a job like this, but that’s not how this business works when there aren’t enough interpreters. If you’re smart, you don’t take jobs you can’t handle. But sometimes you don’t know you can’t handle it until you do.

Before that day I had accepted exactly one DeafBlind assignment in my entire career. I was a baby interpreter, just out of my training program, and it was a medical gig. The agency that hired me said it would beexactly like regular ASL interpreting. It was a lie.

We’ll call the DeafBlind client “Shirley.”

Shirley was in her forties with prematurely gray hair and eyelids that drooped to the point of being almost closed. As soon as I arrived at the job the nurse informed me that the doctor would be giving Shirley the awful news that her daughter was dying of cancer. It was bad enough I didn’t understand the ins and outs of Tactile Sign Language, but I was being asked to transmit the worst news of this woman’s life.

Shirley’s daughter was lying in the bed unconscious, tubes coming out of every orifice. Her hands were resting on her daughter’s forearm, waiting for her to wake up. I tapped Shirley on the shoulder to introduce myself. She stood up and faced me, placing both hands on top of mine, her breath heaving onto my face, no boundary between our bodies. The Tactile thing felt awkward, like someone was putting their tongue in my ear in order tospeak. My heart pounded. Sweat poured down my temples. Due to my ignorance and panic, I envisioned myself being smothered by an elderly, fragile DeafBlind octopus.

Before I could even attempt to practice some Tactile sign with her, three doctors, two nurses, and a social worker entered the room and introduced themselves. Still feeling so unsure of myself, I awkwardly jammed my signs into Shirley’s hands, as if by sheer force I would be able to convey the message more clearly.

“I’m sorry, Shirley,” the doctor said. “Your daughter’s tumor is m-a-l-i-g-n-a-n-t. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do.”

Shirley didn’t react, so I assumed the doctor’s words weren’t registering. Was my Tactile interpreting totally off?

I repeated the doctor’s words again, changing my vocabulary and trying to slow myself down.

“Your daughter’s tumor is very very bad. Can’t operate. Can’t help. Short time, and then will pass away. Sorry. Understand?”

Still no reaction. Just as I was about to take a third stab at the interpretation, Shirley’s body started shaking. A moment later she was weeping and squeezing my hand close to her body to steady herself. Her tears fell onto my wrist, and suddenly my own eyes began to well up. But, being new, I was so concerned about being “professional” that I pushed Shirley away so I could interpret “properly” for the doctor again.Comforting herwasn’t my job,I thought. But Shirley didn’t want the doctor at that moment. She wanted me, the person who allegedly knew her language. I should have hugged her. I should have done something other than what I did.

My head began screaming:You useless idiot! You should never have taken this job! Fuck that agency for sending you here.

That was the moment I promised myself I would never take another DeafBlind gig.

And I didn’t—until that morning at the Abilities Institute. Until I met Arlo Dilly.

I was desperate. I needed money—a lot of it. Now past the age of forty, I sensed myself beelining for homosexual obscurity. In Poughkeepsie some of the local queens had a saying:If you wanna meet a man the odds are good, but the goods are odd. And boy were they. You could sleep your way through the locals in a week and a half. Otherwise you had to travel up to Albany (Smallbany, we called it) or try your luck with random weekenders up from Manhattan. They usually already had partners and looked at hooking up with the locals as some kind of bucolic novelty, like apple picking in the fall. If I was ever going to fall in love again, and not end up some depressed, lonely country queen who watched QVC andGolden Girlsalone in bed every night, I knew I had to get the hell out of Poughkeepsie.

And then I had my chance. Just two weeks prior an old Deaf friend called about a potential staff interpreting job outside Philadelphia. It was set to start in the fall if I could only save enough money for the relocation and tie up some loose ends (aka a boatload of credit card debt). Unfortunately, my five-day-a-week gig at the French Culinary Institute canceled at the last minute. (Deaf student became a vegan and dropped out.) The thing is, if you don’t have your summer booked by the end of May you’re screwed until September. It looked like my plan for escape had once again fizzled. So when Ange from the agency called and said there was a potential summer class, working with a DeafBlind guy for three hours a day, and the job would pay ten bucks an hour over my usual rate, I jumped at the chance. Fuck my rules, I thought. If I wanted to free myself from Poughkeepsie, I would have to get over my fear of working with the DeafBlind for three months.

So the only question was, could I actually do it? And would the DeafBlind guy want me?

3WHAT’S IT LIKE?

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