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

15. The Notebook

197 15 The Notebook “But I don’t give up trying . . . trying to fit in, somehow.” It is an unbearably hot day, typical for Washington, D.C., with such intolerably high humidity that clothes stick to my body and perspiration rolls under my arms and down my back. School will be closing before long. The dense and stagnant air in my seventh-grade classroom refuses to move, making the air too heavy to even make a breeze. I sit on the hard wooden seat attached to my desk, tired and wanting to go home. But it is far from time to go. I have to suffer through Miss Meyers’s prattling voice as she teaches mathematics in the front of the class; she also supervises us in homeroom, which means I’ll have to endure her even further . She is a gray-haired, cocoa-colored spinster with a big butt. Her clothes are nondescript, except they do not fit her properly. Her pear-shaped body has rejected the off-the-rack garment; the top half of the dress droops too loosely around her neck and shoulders, while the bottom half is much too tight, so tight that the material becomes warped as it extends as far as it will go to accommodate her hips. The stretched material hugs the stays of her girdle, revealing the telltale signs of an old-fashioned halter reining it all in. She has buckteeth , making her lisp more pronounced as she sucks her teeth while whispering through her thin lips. She speaks in a light creaky voice, like a grasshopper’s legs creaking to make broken chirpy sounds. On the Beat of Truth 198 It is early afternoon. Miss Meyers is sitting at her desk peering through her rimmed spectacles, correcting papers, and occasionally cautioning us to cease talking and finish our assignments. That’s when I see a student give a green notebook to another girl sitting two desks ahead of me. After thumbing through it, that girl turns around, giving it to the girl sitting behind her, who also takes time to read it. Afterward, she gives it to the girl sitting next to her. Then that girl reaches across the aisle and gives it to still another student. I wonder what the notebook contains and wait for it to come to me, but it is passed to everyone except me. When it finally comes to the student ahead of me, I tap her on the shoulder, “Could I see that please?” She glances at the girl next to her as if asking for permission , and receives a noncommittal response; she hesitates, shrugs her shoulders, and gives me the notebook. I grab the book, flip through the pages and see at the top of the page the name of an obviously popular girl in our class. Below her name are individual comments by other students: “very pretty”; “She really knows how to dress.” Another wrote “cute.” Still another wrote the word “nice.” That’s when I realize that this is a book of opinions, a gauging of each person’s distinctive attributes. All the names have pleasant enough descriptions; I finally reach my name: “Stinko”; “Hot breath”; “Why doesn’t she brush her teeth?”; “She stinks”; “Her breath is awful.” The comments continue on and on, endlessly. My body freezes. I hold my breath as I stare at each comment, some written in blue or black or even green ink. I want to vanish, to evaporate into thin air. Then I put my head down on my folded arms on the desk, and begin to snivel. My whimpering becomes a wailing, which eventually becomes a fit of loud crying. No one says a word, not even Miss Meyers. As I continue my wailing, my bawling becomes louder The Notebook 199 and louder until reaching a crescendo that even cracks my ears. I keep my head down on the desk on top of my folded arms; I can never face the world again. Everyone ignores me; Miss Meyers pays no attention. As far as I know, she never looks up, until finally, after about twenty minutes, she says, “Maxine, you’re going to have to stop that crying.” But I can’t stop. I feel my chest heaving, my breathing interrupted by sobbing. When I try to muffle my crying, my sounds become moans, as I am consumed by the humiliation...