Deaf in DC: A Memoir

4. Prep or Freshman?

14 4 Prep or Freshman? SINCE IT WAS EARLY AND THE DEAN’S OFFICE WAS NOT open, Godsey took me around the SUB. He introduced me to the students he knew. I had met many Americans in India—they were all “Americans .” Here, however, they were not from America; they were from Florida, California, New York, and other states! Of course, I was from India; nobody asked about Himachal Pradesh or Punjab. Godsey walked me to what he called the Hall Memorial Building. I wondered if the right name was Memorial Building Hall but didn’t ask. Dean Phillips’s office was the first room as we entered the building. Godsey talked to the secretary who took me into the dean’s office as Godsey waved a farewell to me. Dean Phillips was tall and gaunt and peered at me from behind his glasses. I clasped my hands to say “namaste,” the traditional Indian greeting, but saw Dean Phillips’s quizzical look and moved my hands quickly to my sides. After trying to sign something, he gave up and wrote on a piece of paper, “You are two weeks late.” As if I didn’t know that. If only he knew how I had to spend more than two weeks wandering around the corridors of Indian bureaucracy with my elder brother Narain! I started to explain the reason, spelling slowly, but he waved both his hands in front of him to make me stop. Then I asked him the most important question by touching the pinky and ring finger with my right index finger. He looked at my file and touched his ring finger. Now I knew I was a freshman and felt relieved like a person who has finally learned about his identity. He then wrote on the paper that I must go get my physical and register today in another room in the same building and also to get my ID card. Following Dean Phillips’s instructions, I walked across the campus back to Fowler Hall. There was a small hospital there, but they called it the infirmary. The “infirmary” was bustling with students who were p r e p o r f r e s h m a n ? 15 anything but infirm. Presiding over the students was a tall, beautiful woman in a white nurse’s uniform. This was Donna. She was not a nurse but, as I learned later, the receptionist there. She carried a clipboard and signed to each student making notes. I watched Donna as she worked. The most interesting thing about her was her smile. It never left her face. She smiled narrowly or very broadly, but she kept smiling. That made me think of a hospital, any hospital, in India. The receptionist, if there was one, gave you dirty looks and made you sit and wait. The nurses were rude and the doctors condescending. Donna was very different. It was a very novel American experience for me. I had to show my sealed envelope with my chest X-rays and other medical information to ensure that my living in America would not endanger other people. The U.S. embassy had already checked that out, but for some reason, it had to be done again here. Donna took my envelope and seeing that I didn’t understand signs, wrote that I should wait and all would be taken care of. I read her note and looked up at her and she gave me a 220-watt smile. A student with some bandages on his face was the only person who looked infirm in the infirmary. He was signing very fast to some students. From some of the gestures he made, I understood he was explaining how he had gotten hurt. Since he used the gesture for driving a car, I assumed he had a car accident and thought of hundreds of Americans who died in car accidents. After he had related the story a couple of times to different groups, the student noticed me. He began to spell using the British Manual Alphabet when he learned I didn’t know American signs. He was Hartmut from Germany. His class ranking was index finger, so he has been here for two years. Slowly and painstakingly, he told me how his car had hit a side rail resulting in his face being banged on the steering wheel. I tried to tell him to be careful in the...