Page 45 of The Sign for Home

“Before… why not tell me Mama dying?” your hands shouted. “Not take me see her, why? Wait wait long time! Now too late! Now she…”

Gone. There would be no fixing this. Your mama was not one of the chosen ones. She didn’t lead a spiritually strong life the way Brother Birch had. She loved you too much. She didn’t spend enough time at the mall or going door-to-door. She would be one of the masses of sinners who wouldneed to wait until Judgment Day. When would you see her again? Tomorrow or in a thousand years? And what ifyoursins could not be forgiven?

You weren’t crying. You should have been crying. You wanted to cry, if only to let more air inside. But you couldn’t. You could barely breathe, much less cry.

Instead, you vomited all over Principal’s carpet.

Over the next few days other students, strangers even, came up to you and patted you on the back in that way that said:You are the saddest boy in the world. Thank God this didn’t happen to me. One day at lunch, Big Head Lawrence told you he would ask his mother if you could come live with his family. Molly told him that was impossible. That’s when you learned that you would be living with Brother Birch from then on.

“He is your guardian now,” Molly signed. “That means Brother Birch is like your father now.”

“Long time ago my father disappear,” you signed.

“Yes. I know,” she replied. “But Brother Birch will watch over you and take care of you like a father.”

For the first time in your life, you felt lucky to be going blind. Your blindness allowed you to make people disappear when you wanted, placing them in the blurry unreal place in your peripheral vision. You reserved the small clear spot for a blank wall or the floor. A completely empty world. That was true. That was real.

The night before you were to go home to Poughkeepsie for your mother’s funeral, five nights after she had already died, someone walked into your room at two in the morning. You knew the smell of the body; you knew the feel of the breath. When her hand reached out to touch you, you slapped it away and leaped from the bed, flailing your hands.

“Not visit me long time, why?!” you screamed. “Leave me alone, why?! Before you promise will protect me! My mama dead! I hate you! I hate you! Fuck you! Go away! Never come back! I want you die!”

Your body fell back onto your bed, shivering with rage andembarrassment. Something broke inside you, dislodging what had been deeply stuck. Finally tears gushed from your eyes, snot from your nose. S stroked your hair with one hand while the other rode the weeping earthquake of your back. When your sobs grew stronger, S climbed into your bed, weaving her body into a protective web of arms and legs. After your crying subsided, you felt the cold chill on your wet face, the clog of your nose, the salt-stuck eyelids that were so exhausted from squeezing themselves dry.

S pressed her perfect fingers into your palms.

“Sorry. I not come long time. Why? Because dorm boss catch me sneaking out late night.‘You bad! You bad!’They bawl me out many times. Later, I hear your mama die. So sad! I say,I must see Arlo! I don’t care if punish!I sneak, try visit you! But nighttime dorm boss catch me and lock my door. Visit you… impossible. But tonight, I wait until late, then climb out window. Window locked? Not. Ha ha! Stupid dorm boss. Tonight, I will stay with you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I won’t leave you alone again. Never!”

You pushed yourself halfway out of S’s net of limbs. Suddenly you wanted—you needed—for S to understand about the wound you felt. You wanted to explain that there would be no more summer vacations where your mama would sit out on the grass with you and tickle your nose and eyelids with a twig or leaf. There would never be another autumn where your mama would let you jump in the leaf piles at the Kingdom Hall. You would never smell her orange blossom perfume again or get to rub your face into the cotton of her dress or eat her thick peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches or get to feel her soft fingers awkwardly signbad boy, good boy, hamburger, love you. But the only thing you were able to sign to S was:

“Me? What do? What do? No family. No mama. I will alone forever.”

Then you fell into S’s arms again and the turbulence of your sobbing made the bed rumble. After what seemed like thirty minutes of uninterrupted weeping, S pressed her finger to your lips like the S-H-H of her forgotten name.

“Shh. Shh. Careful,” she signed. “Will wake up roommates. If dorm boss catch us, will trouble.”

S slid off the bed to leave, but you grabbed her arm.

“Please. Don’t leave. Please stay.”

“Don’t worry. I not leave. Never leave. Follow me. I know secret hiding place.”

You took S’s arm. The world you had known a few days ago had vanished. You needed to trust someone. Slowly, carefully, S guided you across the floor to the door. After checking outside to make sure no one was around, she led you down the hall to the janitor’s closet by the bathrooms. The flat soles of your bare feet flapped on the freezing hard floor. Even though you were already six foot, S treated you like you were smaller than her, and she pushed you into the cramped supply closet and told you to sit on the floor.

“Wait here. Back one minute.”

The door closed. You were alone. The stench of old moldy mops, bottles of cleaning supplies, and soiled rags filled your nostrils. You lifted your arm to cover your nose, and S’s spicy-sweet smell still clung to the fabric of your pajama sleeve. It soothed you. Two minutes later S returned with a blanket from your room. Sitting on the cold closet floor next to you, she covered both your bodies with the blanket. This made you tell S the story of how your mama would let a smaller you climb under the covers of her bed on winter mornings and you would pretend you were living in a very warm cave deep under the earth. And your mama would sometimes pretend that she was a monster attacking the cave from outside the blanket. The memory of the blanket cave caused you to cry again. S hugged you tightly. You should have been embarrassed to cry in front of S, but you weren’t. You let your tears flow for several minutes straight into S’s thick hair. Her beating heart merged with your own. The thought occurred to you:Sorrow has edges. The pain will end.You pulled your arm free from S’s embrace and stroked her soft, elusive face. A face, you imagined, that must be the mostbeautiful face on earth. You needed S to know you more deeply. The more S knew you, the more real S became. The more real you became.

“Can I tell you long story?” you signed.

“Yes! Tell me very long story. Stay here all night.”

An avalanche of words released from your fingers. You told S everything, about how you cried too when you first came to school; about not knowing who your father was; about hating your uncle; about Martin and Big Head Lawrence being your first real friends; about getting so sad when S stopped visiting. You told secret upon secret, never concerned about Jehovah God’s watchful eye.

“You… how old?” you asked.

“Sixteen,” she signed.

“Impossible,” you joked. “You so short! Ha ha!”

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