In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World

Epilogue

 Epilogue There is a legend that tells of a young man named McCarthy who had a speech impediment, a man without song on his tongue. One day, walking on the grounds of a grand Irish castle, he saw a damsel in distress. She had fallen into a swift stream. Rushing to her aid he pulled her from the churning water. She was a witch and offered him a wish, a single wish, as a reward for saving her life. He asked, without hesitation, in his mumble, to be able to speak properly. She directed him to Blarney Castle’s parapet, where he would find a stone . . . and he was to kiss the stone. So goes the tale of the Blarney Stone. So goes the gift of gab, the smooth talk, the Irish lilt. Not so for Benny, for Mary, there is no stone for those who have never heard a birdsong, the lark on the wing, but there is melody. There is melody! The sounds may croak and grate, screech and shout to the hearing sense, but there is melody. There is an aria for every deaf hand, a swell of tuneless music for every deaf voice, but there are no witches, no fairy godmothers, no . . . wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thy hands? —Ecclesiastes :  Epilogue stones to kiss, no blarney . . . no imperfect sound to make perfect . It is. It is another language, another dance: its own ballet, its own strut, its own gorgeous expression. Benny was my Blarney Stone, my fairy godfather. The elocution lessons he gave me were confined to the grace of my hands, to the curve of my neck, to the tilt of my head, to the lift of my eyebrow. He cautioned me to be clear, to speak with open hands, with an open heart. He showed me exquisite arrhythmic sign, punching and dropping words into the air, patternless poetic creation . No, speech did not perish in his hands. They spoke to stone walls, to people, to animals, to me. He taught me how to make my hands laugh, to flutter them in snowfall, to press down with them, pouring rain onto the city streets. He taught me to turn my wrist in delicate slow motion, to pray to God with supplicating fingers. His hands jumped, mocking their fine expression, to humor me. There was no silence in his hands. They were his literature. But when I was younger, I waited for my literature. I believed that my voice was struck dumb by deafness, that it hid in silken corners, purloined, waiting, always waiting to emerge. I waited for my life to start with real language, void of hands. My tongue would speak and not lie inert in my mouth as I spoke with my hands. I listened to strange voices practicing melodies I would imitate. I wanted to enunciate sounds that would place me among the hearing forever. I wanted to erase my hands. And then, in time’s passage, I caressed my hands, myfirst voice. In the end, words, volumes of words, all signed, were the eloquent metaphor of my life. It was the language born of hands that was my beginning. I pay homage to the language I spoke as a child, to the language I still speak, not a patois, but words richly defined, sibilants Epilogue  and vowels, signed and spoken in deaf voice, a strong binding cohesive voice linking me to life. The astonishing word power unleashed by sign is at times epic. An immense power, a cantata curving with rainbow clarity. Great mystery resides within the crucible of hands. Within the hand that speaks is the hand that touches. It is the hand that heals, the hand that pats away the tears that slip down the cheek. It is the hand that clasps with pleasure. It is the hand that comforts , the hand that wipes the perspiring brow, the hand that cups the chin in thought. It is the hand that teaches, that reaches for the butterfly, that speaks when words fail. It is the hand that doodles and scribbles, that computes and calculates. It is the hand that plucks apples from September trees. It is the hand that waters the plant, that diapers the baby, that massages and soothes. It is the hand that fires a gun, draws a saber, reins a horse. It...