Love for a Deaf Rebel - Derrick King (10 ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Pearl tapped her arm. “Tell him you’re hard-of-hearing and can interpret,” Pearl signed, as the woman interpreted. I was astonished at the transparency of her interpretation; it was as if Pearl had spoken to me herself.

“So fast! I’ve never heard Pearl speak before,” I said, as the woman interpreted.

“When people hear my accent, they don’t realize I’m hard-of-hearing. They think I’m Swedish,” she signed and said. She pulled her long hair back to reveal a finger-sized hearing aid behind each ear. “I’m Jodi.”

“Don’t interpret everything,” Pearl signed, as Jodi interpreted.

I laughed. “I must be careful about what I say.”

“Derrick is curious—his eyes sparkle,” signed Pearl. “Will you eat with us?”

“No. I can’t jog home with a full stomach.”

“Then rest with us,” signed Pearl, “so you can run faster on your way home. Today we will eat Vietnamese food.”

We sat down at the Muffin Granny. Pearl put her bag in Jodi’s lap for safekeeping and went to buy food.

“Is it hard for hearing people to learn sign language?”

“That depends on you,” said Jodi. “How badly do you want to learn?”

“That depends on Pearl.”

Pearl and I became friends slowly and cautiously, seeing each other for lunch two or three times a week for two months before we progressed to a date. Our first date was on 14 April 1984—for dinner, at Pearl’s invitation. With a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates, and a notepad, I walked across the street from my apartment, one of the best-kept buildings on the street, to her apartment, one of the most run-down.

At the entrance, I studied the intercom. Her suite was the only unit with OCCUPIED instead of a name. I rang the buzzer. A few seconds later, the electric door opened. I walked down the corridor and saw Pearl peering from a door. She grinned and waved. I followed her into her one-bedroom flat, and she bolted the door behind us. Pearl accepted my gifts with a nod, a smile, and a sign I didn’t understand. She handed me a corkscrew and two glasses. I poured the wine, and we raised our glasses in a silent toast.

Pearl’s apartment was simply furnished and tidy. A crochet project lay on her coffee table. The wooden-cabinet TV played silently while white-on-black text scrolled across the bottom of its screen, decoded by the Sears TeleCaption decoder sitting on top. I had never seen captions before, but now I could read the news line by line.

I walked over to her TV and tried to turn its green tint into natural color, but its picture tube was worn out. Pearl didn’t have a videotape player, so her home entertainment was books and green-tinted TV.

Next to the sofa stood a bookcase with Reader’s Digest, Introduction to Psychology, two McCall’s Cooking School binders, and a Hume Moneyletter binder. On her desk sat a telephone, lamp, keyboard device, and a box with wires leading around the room and up the wall to the doorbell panel and the bedroom. Charcoal drawings and oil paintings hung on the walls, original artwork.

We sat at the kitchen table and smiled.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Deaf Aids. If a doorbell rings the lamps would flash slowly. If the telephone rings, the lamps would flash fast. Those pictures that my youngest sister Carol who is artist drew.”

Silent News and the Dictionary of American Idioms for the Deaf lay on the kitchen table. I picked up the dictionary and browsed through it.

“Do you know many idioms?” wrote Pearl.

“I know all of these.”

“Idioms confuse and cause a problem to have deep English communication. Now captions teach me. Before captions I don’t understand TV.”

The telephone rang, and the lamps in the living room and bedroom began to flash. Pearl sat down at her desk and put the telephone handset on the keyboard device, a Krown Research Porta-Printer. It bleeped as green fluorescent text flowed across its one-line screen and text printed on a strip of paper, like a receipt scrolling from a cash register. Pearl typed her reply, removed the handset, and hung up.

I sat on her sofa and wrote, “What computer is that?”

“TTY, not computer.”

“What does TTY stand for?”

“Telecom? Device for the Deaf. TDD or TTY. Before 1980 deafies must ask hearies to phone. Now all have TTY. This is new. $600.”

I tried to imagine living without understanding television or being able to use a telephone.

“When you call me you can call the telephone company MRC—Message Relay Centre. I have unlisted number. I don’t want hearies to call without a TTY. Some deafies put number in phone book. Bad! Thieves know owner is deaf and rape if name of woman.”

“I see a hearing aid on your shelf. You are not deaf.”

“I am deaf. I understand nothing with a hearing aid. Only noise.” Pearl jammed her little finger in her ear and wiggled it to show me it was itchy. “I never use hearing aid. School force kids to use. I did not like.”

“You must have had a hearing test.”

“Many. I tested myself too. I hear birds fly, stars twinkle, and sun shine. Do you understand?” Pearl smiled. “But I can’t hear my TV without captions.”

I laughed. Pearl fascinated me. She pulled a folder from her neatly labeled files and handed me an audiology report. It charted a trace of hearing at low frequencies in her right ear and no hearing whatsoever in her left. Pearl’s ears were useless.

I pointed to the chart. “140 decibels in your good ear. You hear a jet fly like I hear a pin drop.”

Pearl put a battery in her hearing aid, put it in my right ear, and turned it on. Feedback made it howl painfully loudly. I removed it.

“My breathing sounds like a vacuum cleaner!”

“Ha, your problem. Maple syrup spareribs are ready. My favorite.”

We took turns writing and eating.

“You need a decoder to see CC. When I was a child I could not understand TV.”

“Why do some TV shows have a little window with someone signing?”

“Deaf children can understand. Deafies don’t like signing boxes and prefer CC. Easy to read and learn English too. We have to wait for movies to be on video before we can watch captions.”

“When you were small did your family help you with the TV and telephone?”

“Until sisters got bigger then too selfish and busy. My family does not sign. In my youth no signs were allowed so today still no ASL in my family—only ‘home signs.’ Experts told family don’t learn any signs so I would force to be lipreader. Family only talk to me.”

“How much did you understand?”

“Few words. Mother always say I fool her and pretend I don’t understand. Families with deaf today sign—happy. New way is ‘Total Communication.’ My children will sign.”

“Your family can learn to sign now.”

“My sisters and brother learn few signs recently, but mother always refuse signs. I learned nothing until I went to school. There I learned to sign!”

“Your family is handicapped, not you.”

“True! I wanted to hurt my mother for not signing. I think she forgives me now.”

As the kettle behind me began to boil, Pearl gestured to let me know so I could turn it off. I laughed. She looked embarrassed, and I realized I had been rude when I laughed.

“I forgot you hear it boil. Deafies watch pot boil for each other.”

Pearl carried a pile of photo albums to the table and took me on a tour of her life. Her photos were organized and labeled. She looked happy in her photos, especially at college.

“Student in college in USA where I learned to become medical lab tech.”

From her photos, it was clear that attending college in a signing environment had been a happy time for Pearl. She had fewer photos after college. I was impressed that her mother had sent her to study abroad. She pointed at her ex-husband and grimaced. She pointed at her nose, then at her father’s matching nose.

“When friends looked at my pictures, they said my face does not change. My Father, we were almost same. Smart man in oil company, killed in the car accident. If my Dad is alive right now we would be multimillionaires. Mother. Works in the company kitchen. Warm but not close to me. Sister Debbie is 29. Her husband is teacher. I’m closest to Sister Carol, artist, 28. Brother Kevin is 22. He is manager assistant for cement basement and fire extinguish. You can see in Yellow Pages. He is handsome and charming. He would beat up anyone who bothered me if I asked. I have a hard time to say ‘Kevin.’ K is invisible on lips.”

“Try to say my name.”

“Derrick,” she said softly and unintelligibly, like Eh-ih.

“I can understand you a little bit. How do I sign ‘King’?”

“Fingerspell or we invent name sign. Most people use first letter of name and describe something about personality, looks, etc. King is like this.” She put her right hand on her left shoulder, formed a fingerspelled K, and curved it down to her right hip like a royal sash.

“Then like this for Derrick?” I made the same sign with a D.

Pearl laughed. “I approve your name sign. Only deafies can give a hearie a name sign. You are not suppose to change it.”

After an hour of exchanging gestures and notes, Pearl closed her last album, opened a drawer, and pulled out certificates for bookkeeping, office management, and est seminars. I was impressed by her continuing self-development. Pearl showed me how she had organized her drawers with hanging files, each with labeled tabs, but her files were nearly empty.

“I will show you my goals now.” Pearl showed me an expensive leather-bound desktop executive agenda, almost empty.

“You have no appointments.”

“Not yet.” She opened a section of her agenda labeled Things to Do Before I Die. Her five-year plan listed a dozen goals, including Find Mr. Right, Have kids before 35, Learn scuba, and Learn computers.

I pointed at the word scuba.

Pearl led me to her closet and yanked it open. I was surprised to see a dry suit, air tank, and a thousand dollars’ worth of diving equipment. She walked back to the living room and sat at the end of the sofa with her knees together.

“Your equipment looks new. How did you learn to dive? Did your instructor sign?”

“No lessons yet. I will learn with Jeff who signs fingerspelling. Jeff is my hearing friend that lives nearby. He has epilsy. He leaves his marijuana here because I don’t want him to smoke so much.”

“Isn’t scuba diving dangerous with epilepsy?”

“Never heard if.”

“Was Jeff your boyfriend?”

“A few times. Jodi liked you. Jodi is the most friendly girl than others deafies and HH. I envy her ability