Page 41 of The Sign for Home

In the middle of laughing with Martin and Big Head Lawrence, two hands grabbed you by your backpack, yanking you away from your friends. The hands started flinging you around in a circle until they let go, and because of your bad balance you were flung violently to the asphalt. Pain shot through your skull and right wrist. You wanted to run away, but you lost your cane and didn’t know which way you were facing, or if the attacker would strike again. Then a foot kicked you in the back of your knees and you went down again. Next, they tore your backpack, filled with all your expensive accessibility equipment, from your back. What seemed like several sets of fists attacked you all at once, punching you on all parts of your body. One fist landed on the side of your head, another punched you in the stomach, a third pulled your legs out from under you, and again you were on the ground. That’s when one of the Deaf Devils sat on your legs while another sat on your chest. It was hard to breathe. The boy on your chest dug his knees very hard into your arms so you couldn’t fight back. Then a boy stood over you. You squinted your eyes, trying to find a face. You caught pieces of eyes, a nose, a mouth. It didn’t matter. You knew who it was. Crazy Charles squatted down over you and started writing something on your face. The crisp chemicalsmell of the Magic Marker mingled with the scent of your blood. You felt the stab and stink of a wet marker tip pressing unknown words into the flesh of your forehead and your cheeks. This was followed by another deluge of punches to your stomach and face, over and over. You thought you might die.

After several minutes the punching suddenly stopped, and you felt the boys’ bodies being pulled off yours. Your eyes were filled with blood, so you could see less than nothing.

You raised your bruised body to its feet and found your way to the wall, to anchor to something. Without your cane, without any vision at all, without someone to guide you, you were lost. You wanted to run, but you weren’t even sure it was safe to move. You felt footsteps moving in different directions. Most moved away from you, but one person came closer. You wiped your wounded eyes on your shirt, and then someone touched your arm. At first you pulled away, thinking it might be Crazy Charles. But then you recognized the touch, the smell.

(This is the part. This is the part you are not allowed to tell Cyril. This is the part. Do not say it!)

A moment later your cane was back in your hand. You felt someone’s hands, smaller, softer, rise up into yours. You were relieved, shocked, and embarrassed. Your vision was blurred from the blood, but there was enough light for you to make out the thick mop of black hair, the beautiful brown skin, the blackest of eyes.

“Who was it?” Cyril suddenly asks. “Was this the friend? The one you cared about?”

You don’t answer him. You just tell the story.

You reached up to touch her face, to make it stick inside your brain. The ghost child nervously pushed your hands down and signed, “Not here. Dangerous,if people see. Don’t worry. Bad boys won’t bother you again. I bite bullies and kick them and beat them with your cane. I very strong. I tell Crazy Charles I was person who squirt pee in locker with toy water gun. But he won’t fight me. Why? Long time ago, we classmates old school. We friends. I only one can understand his terrible sign language. Crazy Charles pea brain—bully. He won’t hurt you ever again. I will protect you!”

“Protect me?” you repeated the ghost child’s words.

You felt the air from her mouth sting the open wounds on your lip. There was no confusion now. The ghost child was a living, sighted, short-but-strong Deaf girl who just beat up a bully. A girl whose skin smelled like jasmine, turmeric, and coriander. A girl you had already kissed, and who you wanted to kiss again, even with the blood on your face and the ache in your ribs and stomach.

“Will tell me your name now?” you begged. “Please tell me! I want protect you too!”

The girl fingerspelled her spoken name into your palm. You had never felt such a name before. Her last name was longer and contained the letter M and ended in a train of Es. Three more times you asked her how to spell her first name—one time it had twice as many letters since there was a long version and a short version. The longer version, she told you, was the name of her mother’s favorite movie star, who drowned in a bathtub. The short version looked like the wordshh, a sound you used to practice in speech therapy, a sound someone makes when they press their finger to their lips asking you to keep secrets. You would always remember this. The spelling you wouldn’t.

“Name-sign, what?” you finally asked.

She showed you. It was the letter S placed at the side of the eye above the cheek, then twisted up and down like one was pretending to cry. You asked her the reason she was given that particular name-sign.

“Because when I first came school I cry, cry, cry! One week. Two week. Kids gave me name-sign because me like crying baby.”

You repeated S’s name-sign once on your body, and then a second time on S’s body, and then…

Arlo’s hands froze in midair as if some invisible being whispered to him to be silent. A moment before his face had been enraptured, but all of a sudden he looked desperately sad.

“What’s wrong?” I signed. “Don’t stop. What happened? Did she become your girlfriend? What were the letters you remember of her name?”

And that’s when the Able-Ride van arrived. Part of me didn’t want to tell him, but I had to. He started gathering his things. I interrupted him.

“Maybe you can finish the story tomorrow?” I asked, a slight pleading to my request. I needed to know. Was this the secret he had told Hanne?

“No!” Arlo signed, almost petulantly. “You always asking, asking, asking… enough! Finish! I wrong telling story. Bad story. Sin story. Sorry. Please shhh… don’t tell anyone. Okay? Secret. Okay?”

“Okay. Sure,” I signed, concerned that I had said something wrong. “Our secret. You better get on the van before it leaves.”

Then, as he was boarding the van, he turned around at the last minute.

“Cyril? Tell you more stories… I can’t. Never again. Okay? Shh. Forget everything. Important. Forget everything.”

And that was it.

16ESSAY CRIT

I woke up thinking about Arlo’s story in the middle of the night. Images of Crazy Charles and the mysterious dark-haired ghost child with the pretty fingers floated across my brain. I was certain Hanne knew more, and considered calling her and waking her up, demanding she tell me or I would share no more of my stories of Arlo with her. The story of this DeafBlind man’s life had become a bargaining chip. It was all too clear I had become obsessed. I hated not knowing things. It was a good quality in a sign language interpreter, but painful at times nonetheless. I did my best to get back to sleep, but I managed only another three hours because my phone started ringing at 7 a.m. It was Ange from the agency saying she got a call late at night from Clara Shuster at the Abilities Institute asking if I could interpret an 8 a.m. meeting between Professor Bahr and Arlo.

“Um… that’s in an hour. You know I’m not a morning person. Why isn’t Molly doing it? Aren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses naturally early risers?”

“You were specifically requested,” Ange said, clearly happy that one of her interpreters had made a good impression.

“Okay, I’ll head right over,” I told her.

---