Love for a Deaf Rebel - Derrick King (top 100 novels .txt) 📗

what it was—was our final hurdle.

I walked across the street to Pearl’s for brunch. While she toasted waffles, she asked me to check out her diving equipment. It was stored on top of cartons of World’s Finest almond chocolates. The fundraising chocolates were labeled Silent Leadership Association.

I took a box to the kitchen.

“Whose chocolates?”

“Silent Leadership Association. I store them because I can’t trust other SLA members not to eat them. There are many deaf groups fighting. Deafies are weak to make progress. I started SLA to make strong association for leadership of all deafies who will join.”

“How many members do you have?”

Pearl shrugged sadly. “Few.” She opened a file from her desk and showed me a logo. “My sister draw for me for SLA.”

“That is a nice logo. If there are already many deaf associations then another one will divide deafies even more.”

“No because they will join SLA for strong deaf leadership. But few in SLA want to help me sell. These chocolates are for future sale.”

“The expiry date is next month. Can I see the contract?” Pearl handed me a letter from her file. “This is a final demand for payment threatening to hand your invoice to a collection agency. Do you want me to help?”

Pearl nodded and looked relieved.

A few days later, I called the general manager of World’s Finest Chocolates and asked for Pearl’s debt to be canceled.

“Thanks for calling,” he said. “Communication with this group has been difficult. This group didn’t know how to organize a fund-raiser. My staff should have checked whether the Silent Leadership Association was a registered society and begun with a small order, so we are as much to blame as they are. I’ll write it off and close the file.”

Pearl’s stillborn deaf association and her unmarketable chocolates were naïve, but her initiative impressed me. I found myself wondering how successful Pearl would have been, and could still be, if she had a mentor. Most people overrate their importance in other people’s lives, and I was no exception.

It took Pearl and me two years to eat the chocolates.

Our next date was at the Ridge Theater, where we saw a Spanish movie with subtitles. As we sat in the theater, I was surprised to see Eugénie walk past the footlights, smile at me, and sit at the other end of the theater. She and I had seen more foreign films than Hollywood films and plenty of both. The Ridge had been our favorite haunt. While we were together, Eugénie and I had worked our way through every non-bondage position in The Joy of Sex. Now, ten years later, I was working my way through every sign in The Joy of Signing!

After the movie, Pearl came to my place and pointed to the map hanging on my wall.

“Roads I’ve ridden on my motorcycle. All states, all provinces, half of Mexico. Eugénie and I rode across Canada for our honeymoon. I want to ride to South America. That’s why I study Spanish. I have a pen-pal in Madrid. I ride safely, no tickets. How long until I can sign?”

“Depends on how much we have a conversation. For example, we eat together, I can teach you each food. It’s easier for you to remember while we are doing. English—The red dog is under the table. ASL—Under table dog red. It’s easy. I have seen so many people who learned ASL. They become more smart than they were before.”

I stared at Pearl, baffled.

She laughed. “I was joking.”

“Hello,” I signed, using the sign in the textbook.

“That is for USA. Almost same to Canada but like this is for children.” “Hello,” she signed the Canadian way. “For adult.”

“Sometimes deafies fingerspell words.”

“For names and other weird words. Local names we usually name it by our signs.” “Granville Island,” she signed. “Our invention. G plus island sign. You’ll meet deafies children who are hearing—very smart than normal children. My friend Elizabeth has a hearing son 8 years old. He learns both deaf and hearing worlds. So many deafies have hearing children. Few deafies has generations all deafies. My family is nothing. I am only one deaf. Jodi and I talked a lot about having kids.”

“If you wanted kids, then why did you buy a small condo?”

“For investments, I don’t like to waste $ on rents. I don’t know how long I find Mr. Right. My friends teased me which—deaf or hearing husband I prefer to have. In my teenage I made it clear to my deaf friends that I forbid about marrying a hearing man.”

“Why did you change your mind?”

“I thought of having hearing husband cause of few good deafie husband. But many mixed marriage failed because the hearie got bored of effort to talk to the deafie. Then the deafie married a deafie and become happy. Depends on communication and trust.”

I felt a twinge of disappointment to realize that as a potential mate, I would be Pearl’s second choice.

Pearl drove me to the empty New Westminster condominium she was struggling to sell. The radio in her red Buick Skyhawk roared with static when she turned the key. I turned it down and tuned in a station. Pearl felt the dashboard and drove off.

Her condominium was bare but for a mattress, a propane barbecue, and a makeup table.

“Why do you have a radio in your car?”

“It is impossible to buy a car without a radio—discrimination!”

We locked the door and walked upstairs to Elizabeth’s flat. When we rang the doorbell, a handsome boy opened the door and signed rapidly. We walked in, and Pearl turned the light switch on and off a few times to announce our presence.

A slender brunette came from the kitchen and signed; the boy interpreted. “I’m delighted to see you. I’m so happy Pearl has a boyfriend. This is my son, Kieran.”

I was amused that Pearl had told her friend I was her boyfriend when we had yet to kiss! After a look around her spartan two-bedroom apartment, we sat down to dinner.

“Your scuba gear—why did you sell it?” I said, with Kieran interpreting.

“My husband left me. It cost two thousand, but I sold it for one thousand. He sends money, but I have to work in a picture-frame factory. They say it is noisy, but I don’t care.”

“You must be a special son, with two deaf parents,” I said to Kieran, who interpreted professionally, without reacting to anything he was interpreting unless it was directed to him.

“I learned to sign at two and to talk at three,” Kieran signed and said.

“And to fingerspell at five,” signed Elizabeth.

“I’m listening through a perfect interpreter. Jodi interprets well, but Kieran speaks naturally, and he signs naturally, too.”

“He was a devil,” Pearl signed.

Elizabeth laughed. “Kieran would turn the TV all the way up and then ignore our neighbors when they pounded on the walls. When the doorbell rang, he would turn the TV down. When I answered the doorbell, the neighbors were furious, but nothing was wrong!”

“It was fun,” Kieran signed and said.

We laughed.

“I’m lucky we weren’t thrown out of here,” signed Elizabeth. She high-fived Kieran.

Kieran called Pearl “Auntie Pearl.” Pearl seemed to envy Elizabeth, even though her job must have paid half of what Pearl’s job paid, because she had a son, and she received alimony.

I was making guacamole when Pearl dropped by for another chat. I picked up the notepad and pointed to the sofa. She sat down, knees together.

“Often I don’t like to use voices—in public, talk to new people. There were times when I got scolded for using voices because it was not clear or the timing was wrong or I am too loud or too soft. Teachers and Mother tell me my speech is understandable. Then when I go outside people just stare at me! Shit! I get so embarrassed. It is hard to speak when you hear nothing. When we are together I feel—mellow feeling with you.”

I put my arm around her, and she turned to me. We kissed passionately.

“You are a wonderful kisser. I can see us now: waterproof notepaper in the bathtub! I have more motivation to study ASL.”

“I really like a man to be real. Why most men are never real? Why most men are so ‘covert’?”

Pearl had just told me that she didn’t trust most men, but I didn’t worry that she could feel that way about me.

“Do you have hiking boots? Let’s hike The Chief Trail. I’ll come next Sunday at 9:00.”

On Sunday, Pearl was waiting for me, wearing expensive hiking boots. They looked brand new. We walked to the parking lot and climbed into her car. As she put the key in the ignition, a warning buzzer sounded. Pearl sat bolt upright and stared at me.

“The sound warns you a door is open. You never heard that before?”

Pearl lifted her hair to reveal her hearing aid. She removed it and put it in her purse. She must have worn it in her car for the first time, for me.

Most of the trail was narrow, so I gestured for Pearl to take the lead. I watched her hold the trees as she passed. She told me later that this was because she, like many deafies, found it difficult to balance because of the defects in her inner ear that caused her deafness. We hiked without signing, absorbed in our thoughts.

As we picnicked at the summit, a flock of sparrows descended on our sandwiches. A foot from Pearl’s face, I blew a whistle to chase them away. Pearl stuck her finger in her ear and wiggled it to show me she heard it. I used my portable ham radio set to make a telephone call to Vancouver, and Pearl was amazed. Cellphones weren’t yet available, so for me to make a telephone call from a mountaintop seemed incredible.

During our descent, I blew the whistle behind her, curious to find out how close I would need to be for her to hear it. I blew it so loudly that my ears rang, each time closing the distance, but Pearl didn’t react at all until I was just a few steps behind her. She turned and smiled; she knew I had been testing her.

Pearl came across the street with a bottle of red wine and knocked on my door. She removed her shoes, put the bottle on the table, and sat down at my piano. I sat down beside her. She smiled, took her hearing aid out of her purse, and put it on. She rested her hand on the piano and looked at me expectantly. I played As Time Goes By.

“Do you listen to music with your hearing aid?”

Pearl shook her head.

I played middle C pianissimo, then piano, then mezzoforte. Pearl heard the loudest note and nodded. I repeated the experiment at higher and lower pitches.

“You can hear four octaves with your aid. From here to here on the keyboard. Now listen without your aid.”

Pearl took it off. I pounded middle C so loudly I was worried my neighbors would complain. Pearl could not hear it.

“Put your aid on. Sit where you can’t see my hands. I’ll play two notes—tell me if they are higher or lower.”

She put her hearing aid back on. I played pairs of notes. Pearl “heard” the order correctly half the time, so she was guessing. With a powerful hearing aid, her right ear could hear a loud tone only as a noise like static.

Pearl removed her hearing aid. “Peace.” She pointed to the lyrics: A kiss is just a kiss, and she kissed me.

“You make wonderful kisses. Who taught you?”

She pointed at me.

I put a Moody Blues record on the turntable. “Never Comes the Day” from On the Threshold of a Dream filled my ears.

I feel her gently sighing as the evening slips away.

If only you knew what’s inside of me now,

You wouldn’t want to know me somehow.

Pearl walked to my record shelf and studied the covers.

“You put the names together but Beethoven is after Mozart. Beethoven was the most famous deafie.”

“Yes, but if he was born deaf he wouldn’t be famous. I put them in birth order because each composer learned from those who lived before.”

She took Die Kunst der Fuge from the beginning of the shelf. “So