Page 75 of The Sign for Home

Just feeling the word in your hands sickened you. You were ready to scream your denial, but then something stopped you. You suddenly remembered that first time you had sex with S. You remembered the blood on the sheet. Had S lied to you? Did the blood mean you had hurt S that first time? Was that “rape”?

You started to cry so hard that it became difficult to breathe.

“Blood mean rape?” you told Molly while you wept. “Yes, yes some blood first time. But I didn’t know! We sex each other because love. I love S! S love me! Is S hurt? Please tell me!”

“So you weren’t part of the Deaf Devils?” Molly asked, speaking for herself. Her tone was more uncertain, like she was starting to believe you. “You didn’t force S to have sex with you?”

“No! Never force! We sweethearts. Me with Deaf Devils? Never! They bad gang. They hurt kids. Someone push me against hard wall. S run away!”

“But you signed the paper at the detention center,” Molly signed, her tone frustrated and confused. “It said that you were a gang member and that you raped S.”

You began to sob again: “Paper very small print. See can’t! Too dark. No magnifying glass. I can’t understand interpreter! Confused! I not rape S! I not Deaf Devils! Please, please, tell me where S!”

Molly disappeared into an hourlong secret conversation with Brother Birch. When she returned, her hands were cold and shaking. She started signing much more slowly than before, like she was afraid to speak.

“Sorry. Your uncle and I have some very sad news for you. After what happened in the bushes behind Forsythia House, something else very bad happened. Someone was hurt very badly.”

Molly’s hands stopped. Was she gathering herself? Was she talking to Brother Birch? Her hands stood still in the air under your own.

A heavy darkness poured into the bottom of your stomach. You considered blocking whatever Molly was about to say from ever making contact with your brain, leaving her words forever stuck in the in-between place of knowing and not knowing.

“After the police found you by Forsythia House, S must have gotten very frightened and started running. She ran to Magnolia House and up the steps to the roof.”

Molly’s words became a blur of horror that you would try to erase from your mind for the next five and a half years. It is only when you write the essay for Professor Lavinia Bahr’s class that you see Molly’s story appear again in your mind. It is only with your new friend Hanne that you dare to look at the words chiseled into your brain like the names on old-fashioned tombstones.

S walked to the edge of the roof.

Someone tried to stop her.

S jumped.

No one really knows.

You slammed your head on the table over and over. Molly pulled your shoulders from the table and forced her own quaking hands back into yours.

“The ambulance came and took S to the hospital,” she signed, her tears dampening her hands. She didn’t want to tell you the story. She had to force herself. “The doctors tried their best. But S’s injuries were just too serious. I’m so sorry, but S…”

The sign Molly used, the upward-facing five-hand collapsing through the hole of the other hand, was the same sign she used when she told you the sad news about your mother. The sign could still have meant so many other things:disappear, missing, lost.But you knew the word she meant.

32THE FACEBOOK PROFILE

I spent the rest of the day lying in bed staring at the ceiling, re-creating the story of Arlo and S’s last day in my head. There was no word in ASL or English that could capture the absolute injustice of it.

After opening a second bottle of red wine, I sat in front of my computer staring at Hanne’s photo of Arlo. One of his eyes looked directly at the camera, while the other was slightly crossed. He seemed to be looking at me and beyond me. In this world, but not of this world. At the same time there was something so familiar about him.

All of a sudden it wasn’t hard to see the resemblance. I just hadn’t wanted to see it before. It wasn’t exact, of course. They didn’t look like brothers or anything. Bruno was mixed-race and, when we first met, already in his midthirties. He also wasn’t blind. But I had to admit, the shape of the eyebrows, the dimples, that inner brilliance that pushed against the eyes, yearning to come out in spite of the world’s communication deficiencies, even some of Arlo’s sweet deaf chirps and sighs were similar. Both men possessed a powerful and innocent presence that inspired a desire to rescue and be rescued by them.

I switched tabs from Facebook to Google and typed in Bruno’s full name. I wanted to see if I could find some old high school or college photo that might have been posted online. I was only twenty-one when Bruno was my ASL instructor up in Rochester. I had always been attractedto older men and didn’t remember ever having seen a photo of Bruno in his younger days. What did he look like when he was Arlo’s age? My first search revealed nothing, only a dozen other people with the same name. I searched again, adding all the information I knew about him: Deaf, full name, his parents’ old address on Alfred Avenue, New York State School for the Deaf, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, professor, communications, class of 1992. I pressed Search. Because Bruno went to high school in the eighties and had no social media presence later in life, all that came up was his obituary and an entry on the NTID Alumni site for deceased members of his class, under the words “May They Rest in Peace”: Bruno James Sipkowski, Class of ’92, died January 2011.

That was all I could find.

In December 2010 I drove all the way to Rochester at about six in the morning. Bruno and I had broken up six months before, and I had promised to give him “space.” But that morning I knew I had to try one more time. I arrived at his house and looked up at the window of his old room, hoping to see his face look down for me, smiling like he used to do. I sat in my car for at least forty minutes, thinking about that first time we kissed in that room, the first time I had physically been with someone I actually loved. I could have knocked on the door that day, but I didn’t. If I did knock, if he did answer, I would have apologized for—what? Not coming sooner? Being afraid? Not being a better boyfriend? Something.

I closed the tabs of my hopeless search and returned to the Facebook Create Profile page. Name: Arlo Dilly. Age: 23. Occupation: Student. High School: The Rose Garden School for the Deaf. College: Dutchess Community College. Hometown: Poughkeepsie, New York. Religion: Jehovah’s Witness. Relationship Status: Single. Interested in: Women. I made sure to write enough personal information on his profile that if any of his old friends looked for him, he’d be easy to find. Next, I searched for the DeafBlind Facebook groups Tabitha had suggested, joining the ones with the most members. I read through some of the posts on the wall for DeafBlind Connections NY.There were a few announcements of DeafBlind get-togethers down in the city. One announcement for guide-dog applications from a place in Rochester. A DeafBlind guy from Mineola, on Long Island, wrote a post about his frustration with applying for housing. I saw a post from the previous week: “Hey, anyone on tonight?! I’m bored and want talk.” More than a few other DeafBlind folks chimed in, “Hey! I’m bored too. What’s happening?” Suddenly there was a lively group conversation about DeafBlind camps and a lousy co-navigator. Say what you want about the evils of technology, but the internet is definitely one of the greatest advancements in the world of the Deaf and DeafBlind. That is, if the person can both see and read well enough, and isn’t prohibited from using the internet.

I started building a network of connections for Arlo, friending a few dozen DeafBlind members on the pages. If hearing-sighted people had six degrees of separation, the Deaf had three degrees, and the DeafBlind maybe one and a half or less. One of those random DeafBlind connections had to know someone from the Rose Garden School. After friending at least fifty DeafBlind group members, I posted the following message on each group’s wall:

Hi. My name is Arlo Dilly, I was a student at the Rose Garden School for the Deaf in Ogdensburg, New York. I’m looking for my good friends Martin and Big Head Lawrence who would have graduated between four and six years ago. I don’t know their last names, but I was their roommate. If you know them could you ask them to send me their contact information. I live in Poughkeepsie, New York. I would very much like to hear from them. I miss them very much. Private message me here or you can send an email to…

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