Orchid of the Bayou: A Deaf Woman Faces Blindess, The Kitty Fischer Story

9. At Home At School

9 cA:Home At School I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. -JOHN LENNON AND PAUL MCCARTNEY, "1 AM THE WALRUS" We may have been too young to explore the mysteries that sparkled like firecrackers around and inside us, but we sure knew they were there. David Oglethorpe called the enclosed sliding board on the playground "the kissing hall."To this day, he claims to have been a kind ofelementary schoolyard masher. I never met him-or anyone else-on the sliding board. Either he was after older prey, or perhaps he was dreaming. Once, David went right to the principal to ask the definition of a new word. We'd all seen it. It was scrawled on the walls of the buildings by the river. David, still making up for the time he'd spent in public school in terms of his English vocabulary, encountered it in a public bathroom in downtown Baton Rouge. None ofus knew the word that so puzzled him, though in this day and age every fifteen -year-old certainly knows it. The word wasluck. Lillian Jones, a former supervising teacher, was the principal when David needed to know the definition ofthis word. "Look it up," Mrs. Jones told David, when he entered her office to question her on the subject. 102 cA't Home At School Reluctantly, David dug up a small dictionary from the English department. Repeated checking revealed that the dictionary chose neither to supply the definition he sought, nor even another look at the word itsel£ Unabashed, David returned to Mrs. Jones. Qyite abashed, Mrs. Jones sent him to a male teacher. The teacher sent David back to Mrs. Jones. Giving in to the inevitable, Mrs. Jones scrawled another word on a piece of paper. "That word means this word," she said, David looked down and saw: intercourse. "Now look up that word," said Mrs. Jones. David returned to the dictionary and progressed in the subject that used to be called the facts of life. He even pursued the subject in speech class. This class was the cause for considerable complaint for David and the others who attended it. I don't doubt that speech is important, maybe even terribly important, but sometimes poor speech is worse than no speech, and the emphasis hearing people put on tone and pronunciation is a constant source of irritation to deafpeople. People hear whatever it is that makes our accent "dea£" and look at us like we've sprouted broccoli from our eye sockets. In school, speech class meant time spent doing exercises that were neither pleasurable nor meaningful. David was somewhat mollified, however, when the speech teacher turned out to have very big breasts. He was totally reconciled when the weather turned warm and the teacher turned to low-cut clothing. Remonstrated for taking too overt a peek, he was unrepentant. "I may be deaf," he told the teacher bluntly, "but I am sure not blind. I can see!" We were all teachers and all students of this subject, and we pursued it avidly. Jeanette returned from Christmas vacation with a lesson from her mother. ''Adam and Eve didn't eat an apple," she told me. "That was not the sin that got them kicked out ofthe garden." Oh, no? "They had sex," she said, her signs very small. 103 Orchid ofthe'Bayou Sex? Could any word be more explosive? I stared at her too astonished for words. "It makes sense," I decided at last, after turning the thought around in my mind, though I still wasn't quite exactly sure what sex was. It was Pat Harsh, dear serene Pat, who tumbled into the most trouble. Pat, the most quiet and innocent of all of us, was asked to be a lookout for the students who were necking in the dark hallway near the laundry. Apparently for some students, necking turned into more extensive involvement. When they were surprised by an adult, they were all summarily suspended. Pat was rounded up in the same bust, although she stood outside of the main arena of action, and virtually alone. Deeply shamed, she was sent home. Only her mother's trust and understanding kept her from despair. To return to school, a letter of apology was required. At first Pat wouldn't write it. She was innocent, she protested. Her mother knew that...