In Silence: Growing Up Hearing in a Deaf World

Prologue

Prologue Keep silence before Me, O islands, And let the peoples renew their strength; Let them draw near, then let them speak; . . . —Isaiah :  If there were a way, if I could, I would write this book in sign language. I cannot. Signs do not transpose to the printed page; they are understood only in the flesh, hand to hand, face to face. And so I write in universal printed English, words to conjure the magic of my first language—words my mother taught me, words my father taught me—words told by the flick of a finger, the sweep of a hand. Sentences, liquid, rising not from the human voice but from the human body. My first memory is the memory of a word signed by my deaf mother. She signed the word baby for me, cradling an imaginary infant in her arms. She crooned the words with her voice, aloud, high-pitched and musical, to me. I was her baby, her firstborn. I can see her swaying, holding me to her, telling me to go to sleep. It was bedtime. Words fell from her hands and I learned them, imitating them like any child, in any language.  Prologue My language, like my mother’s, was in my hands. My spoken language, until I was five, was like hers, broken. My father Benny’s deaf voice was harsh to the hearing ear. But not to mine. He put me on his shoulders and danced me around the room, hands silent. He was holding my ankles. He sang. What it was I do not know. I can hear him, but I can’t repeat his song. When he put me down he wanted to play. He teased and we laughed. All in sign. We lived in two worlds as I was growing up, our private world and the “hearing” world outside. I was on intimate terms with silence and the language of silence. But my parents’ oral words hit hearing ears like jagged stones on rooftops. And I, a small child, hung my head, unable to speak in clear sentences. Benny stroked my head and signed, “Never mind, hearing not understand deaf words. Stupid people.” My ears tightened. When I was a child we lived in isolation, celebrating life in our quiet enclave. My mother signed, “I have three nice rooms.” And in those three nice rooms, with “good furnitures,” I grew up. My younger brother Fred and I. My mother washed clothes on a metal washboard on cold winter afternoons and created a festival. “I make warm steam, make rooms warm for children, snow outside, but here I wash and you wring and we have small party for us alone.” Her mouth still, her fluent hands signaled, “Come use hands, I show you, together we do, and then you alone, Ruth.” With five-year-old hands I twisted the warm water from my undershirt. My mother said now, both in sign and voice, “Use hands harder, harder, use hands and squeeze to make a clothing dry.”The language was perfect. Momma was perfect. Here she was Prologue  not deaf, here no one stared at my mother’s wonderful sign song. We were in harmony and I was warm. But not safe. I was sickly. My mother explained, “You have tonsils infections, make you sick too often, running nose, coughing.” I looked at her in trust. And she signed, “Tomorrow we go to a hospital, nice place, there good doctor cut out bad tonsils, make you well and after you eat lots and lots cool ice cream.” My mother held my small obedient hand and led me to the hospital. I lay on the operating table and struggled to stay awake, to remain alive. I was frightened of the damp ether mask that put me to sleep. I awakened after the surgery with a cold, thick, red sausage-like ring around my neck. I vomited. I tried to speak. “Momma,” I signed, “I have no voice.” “You have voice. Be patient. Tomorrow you will speak. Today you will sign to me. I will tell nurse what you want. She will understand my speak words.” My voice did return but the fear of never being able to speak lingered on. I was confused. I had questions to ask, but I was too young to form them. I was afraid: afraid of silence, afraid of unknown sound, afraid of my distorted...