Page 9 of The Sign for Home

Following her to the bed, you felt the piles of clothes: your favorite polo shirt, underwear, corduroy dungarees—the kind you liked to run your fingers across, feeling the scratchy velvety ribs. Why wereyourclothes out? Your hands searched across the span of the bed until they hit something large and hard with a texture like the sandpapery skin of a snake.

Sniff.

The smell of old shoes and cardboard. Your mother’s big suitcase.Packing?Yours was always the smaller suitcase. Why wereyourclothes going intohersuitcase? A waft of cold air blew against your face. The front door opened.

Sniff.

Your stomach clenched. The oily smell of Tiger Balm and a bacon breakfast:No, no, no! Brother Birch is here.

Brother Birch, your mother’s uncle, the most respected elder in your entire Kingdom Hall. You hated him when you were little. Brother Birch, who forced you to sit motionless during the long and boring Public Talk, and if you squirmed he would press his fat thumbnail into your thigh, clamping his thick, hairy, calloused hand across your mouth if you dared to scream out. Back then, like your mother, he knew no sign language.

“Brother Birch drive us?” you asked anxiously. “Your clothes… where? We go together? Please talk something! Mama!”

You shook her cold hands, hoping words would free themselves. When they didn’t, you reached up to her face and met her quivering lower lip, a worried brow, and wet cheeks. You traced the liquid to the source at the corners of her eyes.

“Crying? Mama? What for? What for? What for?”

Suddenly, as if a tornado had lifted you, Brother Birch yanked you by the waist from your mother’s side. Instinctively, your feet kicked backward, landing your heels squarely into his shins. He dropped you and your elbow cracked onto the hardwood floor. Weeping, your screams vibrated through your body. Mama pulled you up to her chest, stroking your hair, kissing your forehead.

“Don’t want go with Brother Birch! Please, Mama, please!”

“No… bad boy,” she signed, awkwardly. “Yes… good… boy.”

Again Brother Birch wrestled you from your mama’s arms and dragged you, screaming and kicking, across the floor and out the door. The cold morning air stung your tear-spattered cheeks. The rising sun shot stinging glares into your eyes. But when your limited vision adjusted, you saw a large, strange woman opening the door of a white van. The suitcase with your clothes getting put in the back.Where are they taking me?Despite fighting for your freedom, Brother Birch managed to get you into the back of the van. The van driver laid her fat body across yours, suffocating you. Theyintended to break you. You had no choice. You pushed the air from your lungs up and across your vocal cords until the sound vibrated behind your nose.

“Sss… sorry!”

Finally getting off you, they strapped the buckle tightly across your lap. The cold, scratchy vinyl seats smelled like plastic. The van’s engine rumbled. Gas fumes and the stink of a freshly lit cigarette burned your throat. You thought your body was quaking from its tears until you realized the van was moving. How would you find your way back home if you could no longer see? You pressed your face into the cold window, screaming and signing as large as you could.

“Mama! Mama! Please! Can’t see! I want stay home! Please! Stay home!”

The van jerked to a stop.

Had your mama heard? Any moment the door would slide open and she would pull you into her soft-as-pillows arms and take you back into the house and feed you Tang and Oreo cookies, just like the two previous times this happened. She would kiss you a hundred times all over your face, then press her fist into her chest, signingSORRY, SORRY. But you would turn your angry head away and cross your arms just so she knew how much she had hurt you. But then you would forgive her.

You waited. You waited. You waited.

When the sad memory is over your fingers are curled into fists. You are back inside your basement room, sitting in front of your computer. You are twenty-three years old. Your mother has been dead for six years. Brother Birch takes care of you now and he often pats you on the back and can sign “Good boy. Good Arlo. Jehovah God loves you. I love you.” You take a deep breath. The giant white cursor is still flashing on the screen. There are no footsteps any longer, only the constant vibration and rhythmic throbbing of the clothes in the dryer. You return to the page that talks about the ADA law. You start to read.

6FIRST DAY OF CLASS

One of the best things about working as a freelance sign language interpreter was that I rarely had to work in one place for very long. Most gigs were two-hour-minimum one-offs: doctor’s visits, Social Security appointments, job interviews, that sort of thing. Even the longer assignments, like semester-long college classes, never lasted long enough for me to start disliking any one place or person very deeply, or vice versa. I have always been someone who could love just about anyone or anywhere for about two hours. After that it’s diminishing returns.

While Dutchess Community College isn’t nearly as stately as nearby Marist or Vassar, its lovely setting on the side of a hill gives it some of the best views of the countryside outside of Poughkeepsie. As soon as I got off the elevator on the third floor, I got a whiff of that “first day of school” smell. Even in middle age it immediately made my stomach slightly queasy. Being the only redheaded, gay kid growing up, I was a target for bullies and hated school. My best friend, Hanne, was the one saving grace during my junior and senior years. Then again, I spent half the time blowing off classes so I could cruise older, married guys during lunchtime at Kaal Rock Park or in the JCPenney bathrooms upstairs at the Galleria. As irony would have it, I often ended up interpreting the same classes I used to skip.

As soon as I turned the corner toward the Office of AccommodativeServices, I saw Arlo and his interpreter, Molly Clinch, standing by the door, with Snap lying at Arlo’s feet looking bored. Arlo wore the same outfit I saw him in at the Abilities Institute: khakis and blue oxford shirt buttoned to the neck. The look seemed out of place next to all the T-shirt-and-shorts-wearing students swarming the hallway. Molly looked exactly the same as that first day: same headband, same world-weariness, but instead of a polka dot skirt, this one was black and printed with violets. I decided to hang back for a moment just to get a handle on how Molly worked with Arlo. I quickly figured out that she and Arlo were having some sort of disagreement.

“Please,” Arlo begged. “Maybe just try, okay?”

“No,” Molly signed, her eyes widening in annoyance. “That’s not your section for the class. The booklet says it’s closed. That means it’s full. Finish. End of story.”

“I know. But yesterday Disability Office advisor email me. Say if professor sign permission paper… then… fine. Join class… can!”

I missed what Arlo signed next but was able to glean that he found something on a website that rated the professor as the best writing teacher at the college.

“Website said other teacher ‘boring’… very low rating. Can we try join class? Please?”

Molly shook her head, her thin lips squeezed tight. She looked at Arlo more like an aggravated mother than an interpreter.

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