Page 66 of The Sign for Home

“Now, before we move on, I want to remind everyone that a week from this Friday we will be having our travel essay field trip to Albany! Remember to dress comfortably and bring that extra money for lunch! Also, certain people owe me assignments.”

When the professor says the wordassignments, all the excitement you had been feeling about Protactile suddenly seeps out of your body onto the floor. You remember the promise you broke to Jehovah God and Brother Birch. You want to believe the professor is talking to the other students, but Cyril’s fingers draw the professor walking over to your desk. Now you wish Cyril would turn off the touch signals.

Something has made Molly go silent. When Molly starts to interpret, the professor’s words come out of her fingers with Molly’s own bitterness.

“So, Mr. Dilly, hopefully whatever your interpreters are up to is not making you forget to do your homework. Do you have that personal essay for me?”

“What is the professor talking about?” Molly asks you privately. “You never told me about any personal essay.”

You say nothing to Molly. Cyril draws the professor’s face on your back: a circle, with her two black arched eyebrows puzzling themselves.So where is the personal essay?Then Cyril draws Molly’s angry face. The muscles of your back and shoulders tighten. Can Cyril feel it? Does Professor Bahr know how impossible it was for you to complete this assignment? You wish Hanne were here with you, to share the blame. Does Molly even imagine you’d be brave enough to betray Brother Birch and Jehovah God and write the story of the saddest, most important day of your life?

You can’t breathe.

28THE ARGUMENT

Arlo just sat there, ignoring Professor Bahr’s request for his assignment. Like Mindy had taught me, I used my two fingers like a paintbrush, drawing Professor Bahr’s expression of anticipation on his back, a straight line for her mouth (not happy, not sad) and her dramatically arched eyebrows.

“Did you or did you not do the assignment, Mr. Dilly?” Professor Bahr asked sternly.

I drew a big question mark on Arlo’s back to emphasize the teacher was waiting for him.Come on, come on!I thought.Either hand in your assignment or just admit you didn’t do it.My stomach clenched in anticipation of bad news, and I longed for it to be over with. But, instead, Arlo reached into his backpack and pulled out a thick pile of papers. Twenty pages? Thirty pages? It was far longer than Professor Bahr had required. All of us were shocked. Arlo held the stack out toward Professor Bahr, turning his head slightly away, as if he was disavowing what he had written. Molly stared intently at the dangling document, attempting to capture what might be printed beneath the cover page.

“My, my, my, Mr. Dilly,” Professor Bahr said, smiling and taking the stack from Arlo’s hands. “You have outdone yourself! You only had to do seven pages, but this is practically a dissertation!”

Professor Bahr flipped through the pages with an expression of both pleasure and disbelief. Molly glared at me as if I had just done somethingunforgivable, her lips squeezed into thin slits, her eyes absurdly wide, as if she had telekinesis and was attempting to make my head explode. She signed to me without voicing or interpreting to Arlo:

“What was that? What did he just give her?”

“I have no idea,” I signed back. “I guess just his homework. What’s wrong? The professor was just trying to get him to open up with a personal essay and find his voice. Nobody expected him to write that much. It’s awesome!”

Molly dismissed me with gritted teeth, then craned her neck to see Professor Bahr perusing Arlo’s essay. I immediately fantasized about Molly trying to snatch the essay back and me wrestling her to the ground, rescuing the document and getting it back into Professor Bahr’s hands. Although in my fantasy I also got a chance to read it first. Truth be told, I was as curious as Molly. What had Arlo written? And why had he not shown me? The professor closed the essay and set it on her desk. I quickly stood up under the pretense of stretching and was able to glance at the title page: “Mine Very Sad True (AND SUBLIME) Love Story by Arlo Dilly.”

I started smiling so hard I was on the brink of rocking my body the way Arlo did when he was happy. At that same moment Molly, who had also seen the title page, placed her hands back into Arlo’s.

“Did your uncle approve?”

Before Arlo could respond, Professor Bahr held up his essay like it was some holy document and addressed him loudly enough for the whole class to hear.

“Well done, Mr. Dilly! I’m already engrossed. I look forward to reading this from cover to cover. Perhaps we can read some of it to the whole class?”

Molly’s eyes fixed on the pages in Professor Bahr’s hand. She was no longer interpreting, lost in some thought. Arlo was waiting. I leaped out of my chair and tapped Molly on the shoulder.

“My turn,” I signed. “Take the back… or take a break.”

I nudged Molly out of the seat before she could refuse, and then interpreted what Professor Bahr had recently said about reading the story out loud in front of the class. Arlo went pale and started shaking his head rapidly.

“No, no!” he signed anxiously. “Very personal story. Please don’t read for whole class. Okay? Please.”

Professor Bahr nodded her head in understanding.

“The best writing is the most personal, Mr. Dilly,” she said, “even when we need to work on possessive pronouns! But I shall respect your wishes, of course. Class, and I’m speaking to all of you, not just to the brilliant Mr. Dilly. When we share with others the secrets hidden inside us, this—THIS—is what saves us!”

Professor Bahr mimed holding a knife in her hand. She was always a little dramatic, but suddenly she was really pouring it on.

“We must take the dagger that is our pens, our pencils, our computer keyboards, and we must slice open our chest and spill the blood onto the page that gushes from our pulsing hearts! Do you understand, class?”

All the hearing-sighted students stared at Professor Bahr silently. Perhaps they were wondering if she had finally gone mad from all their misplaced apostrophes. Arlo, however, rocked excitedly, nodding his head.

Professor Bahr smiled at him and then began explaining how all the great writers drained their own lives for their masterpieces: Melville, Fitzgerald, Joyce.

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