Deaf American Prose: 1980-2010

Lytopedia

Joseph Santini 265 Lytopedia I’d been waiting with my eyes barely open, world colorless and blurry, for hours. My hands clutched the ground tightly to keep myself from moving. My impatience kept me almost unnaturally rigid; I tried to relax. We had been running fast earlier that day, and I could see no sign of our being followed, but my mother had forbidden me to hunt, to show off my woodcraft. As if I wasn’t good enough, strong enough to support her. Tonight I would prove her wrong, one way or another. I was fourteen: nearly adult, back home. I ought to be treated as if I was. When the moon set and I saw the light’s quality changing I slithered from my fake sleep, poised to go: then turned to see the faint glow of my mother and my sister, gilt with starlight. handovermouth and brushedcheek curled catlike near the meeting roots of a red-barked tree, still fallen in sleep. They were motionless except for breathing; I nodded. Carefully I focused and controlled, by an act of will, each muscle in my body, slipping and rumbling over the cracked leaves and limbs of the forest earth, making no vibration to disturb the sensitive granite they slept on. I feared my nervousness and excitement would, by themselves, send tendrils of meaning into the ground, to make my mother feel and waken. We had been on the run for two weeks, moving in ever-narrower circles that confounded the red-coated doublecrooks. We were hungry; scrub and brush were okay for a week, but I wanted meat, and was tired of my mother’s lack of trust. not now, we need to keep hiding now, until we are sure, until we are safe. I felt very safe, very sure of myself. Nearby I found a likely place to start, littered with scat and some old bones. A raccoon maybe, or a pig. I sat to watch and wait, while the Moon danced above me through the stars. The dry signs were all I saw, however. When I returned to the copse of trees, barely haloed and silvered at its rim, it was nearly dawn and I was empty-handed; the Milky Way had slid halfway down the sky, and the Moon paled to meet the sun. I should have been warned by the lack of game. Why else would the animals have disappeared? In my mind I was successful, for having gone out, if nothing else. At the time. When the morning was full and the moon long-gone I was woken, exhausted still, by my grey-eyed five-year old sister. We were alone, our mother gone out foraging. Her hands moved accusingly. you slept forever. Italics in this story indicate the user is signing or thinking in a signed language that doesn’t yet exist, although part of it may seem familiar if you know American Sign Language. Main_Pgs_1-330.indd 265 3/28/2012 10:24:58 AM 266 Joseph Santini I was fully wakened by the shock of thinking my mother had let me sleep this late—and of what she thought of me. Then I remembered what I did last night. Part of the price, I thought. did she say anything? I asked. just we’ll stay here a couple days. brushedcheek tugged my sleeve. bathroom, please, she begged. So we went. There was a tiny stream nearby, which we’d been using for necessities. When we’d washed up further upstream she asked me to tell her a story. We sat by the water, propped, hidden all around by dense vegetation, the sun a golden disk made distant by flocked green leaves. I thought for a minute of trying to remember one of the half-finished stories from my childhood, back home, before we came to this country; all the stories I remembered required two tellers, four hands, and I had no idea how to conjugate things so that they made sense for two palms alone. I settled for telling her a story/song/poem of our mother’s. It was meant for four hands, also, but I could manage with two, because my mother had taught me that way four years ago, when we had come here, where we were alone. i wrote it, I remembered her telling me; i can therefore change it. And, more seriously, and with mystery: it is a song of the inner eye. The sunlight...