Page 27 of The Sign for Home

“Don’t worry, Molly,” I signed, grabbing up Arlo’s hands to interpret. “Mrs. Shuster won’t mind if I add a little time to the invoice. Arlo, let’s meet in the cafeteria in about thirty minutes, so I can prepare, okay?”

As I left I gave Molly a little salute but didn’t wait for a response.

When I finished prepping, I found Arlo sitting by himself in the cafeteria at a huge empty table with Snap asleep at his feet, one of her big paws resting on his sneaker. All around the room hearing-sighted students chatted away, eating sandwiches or working on their laptops. It was like Arlo had been banished to some lonely DeafBlind desert island. I could also tell he was having another one of those internal arguments. With whom was the big question. I touched his arm to get his attention, and his body jerked violently in shock.Hadn’t he been expecting me?Leaning back, he squinted and scanned the space where I stood. Then I reached out and fingerspelled my name in his hands. He smiled and suddenly looked relaxed in a way I hadn’t seen him around Molly or Mrs. Shuster. After I sat next to him, Arlo immediately pointed to a large-font printout of the assignment next to a magnifying glass.

“Poem,L-E-A-V-E-S of Grass.Wow! Good poem! But, honest… a little confused.”

“Poetry can be challenging,” I signed. “I’m curious. This poem, why’d you pick it?”

Arlo crunched his forehead and considered my question for an unusually long time, as if it were a test.

“I like grass,” he finally answered.

“Okay,” I signed, chuckling to myself. “That’s as good a reason as any.”

“Can you interpret poem for me?”

“Sure. I’ll give it a try.”

I rolled up my sleeves and began my stab at interpreting the text. As poems go, it wasn’t as hard as I feared. There was a little struggle over how to sign “hieroglyphics,” “Kanuck,” and “Cuff,” but then, just two lines later, Whitman writes, “Tenderly will I use you curling grass,” and then describes the grass growing from the “breasts of young men.”

After my first attempt at an interpretation, Arlo paused to look through his magnifying glass at his copy, focusing on the line:

It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men.

“T-R-A-N-S-P-I-R-Emeans?” Arlo asked. “Like bus or train?”

“No,” I signed. “You’re thinkingtransportation.”

(I had seen other Deaf readers—the ones who struggled with English—mix up words with similar shapes. I had often wondered whether they looked at words as pictures rather than collections of sounds.)

“Transpire here means toarise fromorhappen. Thathappenedand then thishappened. But it could also be signed ‘pop up’ or even ‘grow,’ depending on the context.”

Arlo nodded and repeated my definition verbatim. But I could tell he wasn’t getting it.

“Actually,” I signed, “I could express this entire passage like this…”

I created the graveyard in front of Arlo, showing that it was filled with young soldiers’ dead bodies. Whitman’s physicality lent itself beautifully to ASL. I mimed the grass growing from one of the bodies. Then the old poet lay down on the graves and imagined the grass being both the extension of the beautiful and noble dead young men and their reincarnated bodies.

Arlo nodded again and started to smile. His expressions gently shifted with each line of Whitman’s stanza, as if he was actually seeing it in his mind. His reaction encouraged me, and suddenly it was as if my fingers were on fire. I was momentarily the King of All Interpreters.

When I finally finished, I felt utterly spent, but also so satisfied. Arloeffused at how clear I had made the poem, and then asked if I could interpret the essay prompt for him. After reading it over I did a basic Englishy interpretation.

“Section 6 ofLeaves of Grassby Walt Whitman. Discuss the ideas and images of death and the sublime contained in Whitman’s poem excerpt. REMEMBER, I want to also hear your own reflections on what the poem means to you. What is your relationship to death? What is your relationship to the sublime?”

Arlo didn’t get it and asked me to sign it again, and then again. Each time when I fingerspelled “the sublime” he would look confused. Finally, he stopped me.

“Word: the S-U-B-L-I-M-E? Don’t understand. ASL what?”

Shit.I had hoped fingerspelling of the word would be enough. I really couldn’t think of any proper ASL sign forthe sublimein this context. I would have normally interpretedsublimewith the signs foramazingand/orbeautiful. I might have added chills shooting up my arm, but, if I was to be honest with myself, that wasn’t correct. The prompt said the expression was “thesublime.” It was a noun, not an adjective. The professor meant something more. Something I didn’t understand myself.

“Hold on a minute,” I signed. “I’m a little confused too. I need to google something.”

After a quick search I found something on the internet.

“?‘The sublime is primarily characterized by its ability to evoke powerful feelings.’?”

“Powerful feelings?” he asked. “Like car engine power?”

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