My Life with Kangaroos: A Deaf Woman's Remarkable Story

2. School Years

12 2 School Years AFTER my family moved to the Basel suburb of Riehen, I was sent to a kindergarten for deaf children. While there, I was much more interested in the wonderful colors displayed on the blackboard than in the lessons or playtime. When I discovered that chalk could be rubbed off, I put this knowledge into action by erasing a picture on the board. The teacher, displeased by this, sent me out of the class and closed the door behind me. Shocked by her punishment, I ran through the halls, opening every classroom door, but no one would let me in. Eventually I found myself in a long hallway where all the doors were locked. Not knowing what else to do, I sat down and cried. This, to be sure, was an ominous beginning, but since my mother did not find the personnel at the kindergarten particularly congenial , she removed me and hired a private teacher. Despite this, I went in fact from the frying pan into the fire. This teacher, whose face I have forgotten, would frequently lock me in the bathroom when my parents were not at home, and here I was terrified that I would never be able to open the door. All my shrieks of distress were in vain. Happily, though, my parents soon realized what was going on and dismissed this individual. Then, on May 1, 1938, a woman named Rosa Hunziker arrived at our house. Having come from a large farming family in the canton of Aargau, she became my nanny and teacher. After just a few 9781563685590_My Life with Kangaroos.indd 12 4/8/13 11:04 AM School Years 13 days, even before I had really begun to speak, I lovingly named her Auntie. Auntie taught me the names of my parents, relatives, and friends, as well as those of animals and important objects, and how to say them. She drew and painted clear, bold pictures of things of the most varied kind and attached the corresponding word to each. In this way, I could remember them more easily. This so inspired me that I began to invent new words. One morning I pointed at the sun, drew a picture of it, and then tried to find a suitable word for it. Under it I wrote or.4 At a loss for the real word, I pressed my pencil into Auntie’s hand, and she wrote “sun” for me. IN THE spring of 1940, people were afraid that German troops would violate the Swiss/German border near Basel. The threat was so serious that we moved to Grindelwald for safety. I was six years old and hardly aware of the war going on beyond the frontier. Only the huge suitcases and the large wicker hamper were indications that the family would be away for several months. At first it was quite strange to be living in the chalet with Auntie and Peter, my younger brother, who was also deaf. I missed not only my parents, who had not yet arrived, but also my beloved playthings, which had been forgotten in the haste of packing. Happily, our parents later joined us in the mountains, and Mummy gave me a heavy shoebox. I could hardly contain my joy; inside was a locomotive that one could wind up and set down on the floor to run. I was very fond of it, viewing it as a little animal on wheels, made of tin and with a small engine inside instead of organs. When we went for walks, I took this tin creature along and held it lovingly under my arm. I even took it to bed with me. Every day after lunch I would “study” Otto Schmeil’s Animal Life and thought about the illustrations. One evening I said, “The bird has no arms” (I didn’t yet know the word “wings”). “The bird has no ears,” I added. The illustrations of skeletons, teeth, and the 4. Decades later I learned to my astonishment that or in French is “gold” or “golden” in English and appears in Italian as oro. I was not so wrong after all. 9781563685590_My Life with Kangaroos.indd 13 4/8/13 11:04 AM 14 MY LIFE WITH KANGAROOS anatomies of human beings and animals interested me greatly. I knew, for example, that the abdominal cavity contained intestines but wanted to know from Auntie where chewed...