On the Beat of Truth: A Hearing Daughter's Stories of Her Black Deaf Parents

7. Silent Herbert

95 7 Silent Herbert “Thank God I am deaf, because you talk, talk, talk.” The year is 1949. I am still six years old. Evening comes later and later since spring has come, and the advent of summer is just around the corner. I’ve crawled into my bed, which I share with Shirley, exhausted from working with Mama all day. I am so tired, I can’t sleep and crack my eyes open to stare at the darkness. As I glance around our bedroom, I feel a gentle wind drifting through the two windows, both of which are wide open to allow the maximum breeze to come through the screens. The whippoorwills are noisy. The crickets are making loud sounds, too, as if they are welcoming the pending night. I finally fall asleep to their noises. The next day, I go to school as usual. When the school day comes to an end, I trudge the eight blocks home with my heavy book bag crisscrossed over my shoulder. I am tired today, perhaps it is from loading myself down with books, or maybe I’m not getting the rest I need. I don’t know. But I do know that as soon as I walk in the door after school, Mama is waiting for me at home to help her with the chores. It is wash day today. At least once a week, we have to do the wash in the old wringer washing machine with its rollers on top of the mechanical tub and the swirling agitator in the middle of it. Mama has pulled the machine from the back of the kitchen and puts it next to the sink so she can hook the hose to the faucet. Water flows through the hose filling the tub with water. On the Beat of Truth 96 “Come here, Maxine. Put clothes here.” She has a batch of dirty clothes to cram into the tub, especially Daddy’s shirts and khaki pants stained with greasy shoe paste, leather grime, and black shoe polish. I stuff the clothes in the tub, fill it with soap powder, and watch them swirl around, changing the once-clear water to a dirty gray color. She pulls the hose off the faucet and lets the dirty water rush through the hose, emptying the water out of the tub. She repeats the entire process again, this time to fill the tub with clear water to rinse out the soapy suds. After about thirty minutes, Mama releases the rinse water through the hose again. The water splashes in the sink, leaving the cloths limp at the bottom of the tub. That’s when Mama picks up each piece of clothing and gently slips it between the two rollers that squeeze water out of the lifeless material. “Be careful, Maxine. You put your arm there and rollers break your arm.” She insists that I hand her each soaking wet article of clothing, and she, in turn, slides it through the two rollers . All of this work—the washing, rinsing, and wringing of clothes—takes about two hours. It is easy to see why Mama wants my help, since she is clearly tired and breathes heavily, only to sigh that we must now begin cooking dinner. Mama loves to boil vegetables, whether it is carrots or potatoes or rice. Her favorite is rice, which she boils for almost an hour in lots of water, so much water that the rice has to be strained through a colander to draw off the excess water in the pot. She then fries hamburger or fish for the meat entrée. She uses lard or leftover grease to fry everything. Soon however she discovers that some foods need not be soaked in lard. “Look Maxine, hamburgers not need grease for cook. I see now. I put grease before, now I see not need. Not need put lard (in) pan for cook sausage. Wonderful! Now I cook potato salad.” I don’t know where Mama gets the recipe for potato salad, but it is Silent Herbert 97 delicious. She chops potatoes, green peppers, and onions, and scoops out mayonnaise with relish, making it all glue together. The crème de la crème is the addition of celery seed to the entire batch of potato salad, making it outright scrumptious. I don’t know why she doesn’t cook it every day...