In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World

19. Mary

19 Mary And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. —Exodus : One day in June Momma had a stroke. One day in June Momma lost her language. The phone rang. I was listening to music, quiet, at rest.A strange woman’s voice said, “I was with your mother, sitting on a bench in front of the supermarket. I touched her to tell her I was leaving, tapped her shoulder, and she fell over. I screamed for help, the supermarket manager came, he called an ambulance, they took her away. I have her purse, that’s how I have your number.” “Where is my mother?” “I don’t know. Maybe the manager knows.” I swallowed fear, wrote down the woman’s phone number, called the police, the local hospitals, until I found Momma, conscious , her white hair streaming down her face, her teeth missing , intubated, thrashing her right leg, her right arm tied to the bed, her left side inert, paralyzed. In the days and months to come, the fingers of her left hand curled into her palm, rigid, useless. She was left-handed.  The young emergency room physician at the University Hospital at Fort Lauderdale gently said, “The CAT scan shows that your mother had a massive right-brain stroke.” I was silent. He continued, “The best is that she will be in a wheelchair; at worst bedridden, a vegetable.” “Will she be able to talk?” I hesitated. “She’s deaf, from birth, sign language is her . . .” His clear blue eyes flickered, interrupting me, his words carefully chosen, “If she survives the next few days she may be able to use her right hand as a communicator.” I didn’t tell him that we spoke to each other left hand to left hand. I looked into his tired face and saw Momma tell me, as she did so often, “I want to die, I want to sleep with Ben.” And I said, “Please do not resuscitate my mother. Be gentle with her.” He answered, “I will write the order. Go to her, take any valuables home with you.” “Momma,” I wanted to shout with my hands, “wake up, see me, tell me you know me.” I removed the restraint, took her right hand in mine, and slowly removed the rings my father had given her. I put them on my hand. I stayed with her, soothing her, hoping that at some unconscious level she sensed my presence. The next day, Friday, I was in her hospital room. I took her limp right hand into mine and signed my name, pushing my fingers into her palm as I would push them into a blind deaf person’s hand. Over and over, I signed her name: Mary, Mary. Momma, Momma. She opened her eyes. I looked for a sign of recognition. There was none. The nurse placed a suction tube in her mouth. “This removes the phlegm, we don’t want her to aspirate.” Momma protested, banging the air with a chop, hard, in the deaf way that demands, Mary  “Stop at once!” Her hand flailed against mine. A word. She was in there, alive. Idrove home in a rush hour storm, the sky so black, the water so thick on the road, sheeting from the heavens that I pulled over, turned on the radio and heard Beethoven’s crashing Ninth. His deaf symphony. In this first moment of calm, in the downpour blocking all visibility, I saw Momma’s hands in the windshield, talking to me, asking me something. I was tired, dizzy. A police siren screeched, wailed into my ear. I turned on the ignition, pulled out. There it was, an overturned car, blue lights flash, visible in the wet charcoal light, blocking the street. Cars collected in puddles, water splashed. Visibility was dangerously limited. The only open path, narrow. I cried. I made nursing home arrangements, funeral arrangements and planned her way back to life, to speech. Monday. I walked into her hospital room, the silence deep, heavy. I signed, “Hello Mom,” and touched her head. Her green eyes squinted a smile. I signed my name into her hand. I signed the word hospital, the word stroke. I said aloud, “Do you understand, do you know me?” Suddenly she grabbed my hand, opened her palm flat for...