Burn Down the Ground (9 page)

Dad gave me an inquisitive glance. My shrieks inside the metal cab of the Chevy must have given his ears a piercing shock. Shana and Stacey froze and their eyes grew wide with fear. My father just grinned and looked back at the road ahead.

The girls and I burst into heaving laughter. We caught our breath and they joined me in screaming, “BITCH! SHIT! ASSHOLE!” Dad grinned with eyebrows raised in suspicion. I could bet money that he knew exactly what we were up to, but still he just smiled and kept driving so as not to spoil our fun.

“Your daddy is the best!”

“Yeah, he’s so cool!”

They didn’t have to tell me. I already knew.

The pride I had for my father was reinforced every school day when Bus #9 rounded the corner to drop off the older kids at Montgomery Junior High. A row of shanty houses was directly across the street from the school. The dwellings were so tiny and dilapidated that I would have thought they were abandoned if not for the fresh laundry hanging from the clotheslines. Most of the shacks had broken windows, some haphazardly boarded up. Porches were collapsed, structures tilted, and roofs were patched like quilts.

Often, I stared at them from the bus window, wondering who lived there and imagining how tough their lives must be. Seeing such extreme poverty, I thanked God I wasn’t so unfortunate.

These tumbledown houses helped put everything my father had done on Boars Head into perspective. Dad was smart and skilled. He had managed to provide us with water, plumbing, and electricity and I was certain he’d never allow us to live like these poor folks.

My father’s accomplishments on Boars Head over the past year and a half were extraordinary. And when a young man driving a large truck filled with sand caused the bridge on Boars Head to collapse, he became a superhero.

The loss of the bridge stopped all traffic in and out of Boars Head. We were stranded. Dad immediately took charge. Unknown neighbors emerged from the hidden recesses of that forest. Most of them had never seen a deaf person, but they trusted my father as a leader capable of ensuring their survival.

After clearing the wreckage and disassembling the remains of the bridge, Dad designed a new one and constructed it with more modern, solid materials. Members of the neighborhood pooled funds together to pay for the supplies and Mom photographed every step of the process so we’d have evidentiary proof of this catastrophic event and epic recovery. Once the framework and metal rods were in place, a ton of concrete was poured and evenly spread. When it was almost dry, Dad signed one corner with his name and the year, 1980. As long as we lived there, I proudly pointed out the signature to anyone who visited. If they were skeptical, I had the pictures to prove it.

The Army Corps of Engineers inspected Dad’s handiwork and deemed it capable of holding up to a thirty-thousand-pound load. The new overpass changed our lives. It opened up the remote area to more comforts that other people took for granted. Dad’s bridge connected our private hideaway to the world. Years later, it allowed the passage of oil tankers and drilling equipment.

But back in the spring of 1980, the new bridge meant that Bus #9 could drive down Boars Head. We were spared the long slog to the bus stop at the crack of dawn and the afternoon trudge home in the blistering Texas heat.

By building that bridge, my father became a living legend both on Boars Head and among my friends. But every hero has his weakness. For Dad it was his deafness, and the hearing world held the kryptonite.

One afternoon, Dad and I were on an errand in Conroe and I suggested we stop at the Pizza Inn.

“No! We will NEVER eat there, EVER!” my father signed. His eyes became angry slits as he mouthed the word “EVER” through clenched teeth and lips pinched so tight they turned white.

“You want pizza? We’ll go to Pizza Hut instead.”

“But Pizza Inn is the same!” I argued as he circled the town in search of a Pizza Hut. “Why can’t we just eat there?” I didn’t see the point in rejecting one over another when they were practically identical, even down to their red roofs.

“Because,” my father signed, “they had me arrested.”

“Arrested? Why?”

“Why? For nothing!” Dad pulled into a Pizza Hut parking lot and turned off the ignition. “On my way home from a construction site, I stopped in for dinner and a beer. The next thing I knew I felt a tap on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw a policeman standing over me. I was tired from long hours of work and fell asleep in the booth. Why didn’t the waiter or manager try to wake me? Why send a cop? They said I was passed out and arrested me. I wasn’t drunk; I was
sleeping
.”

The story was infuriating. Even though I was a child, I was convinced that if I had been with him that day I would have been able to prevent the whole misunderstanding.

“They didn’t even bother trying to talk to me because I am deaf. They discriminate!”

I nodded my head in agreement. I knew that some people treated deaf people differently. While staying with my maternal grandparents during one summer vacation, I befriended a girl named Tina, who lived next door. I asked my grandmother if she could spend the night.

“Sure,” Grandma Worth signed. “She can have dinner with us if she wants. We’re frying catfish Grandpa caught.”

Excitedly, I called Tina and was disappointed when she told me her mother wouldn’t permit it.

“How come?” I whined.

“ ’Cause your grandparents are deaf.”

I was dumbfounded and pressed her for an explanation. Tina said her mother was concerned about what might happen in case of an emergency.

“Well
we
can hear and your house is just right next door,” I rebutted.

“It’s dangerous to have children in a house without any hearing people,” she said, parroting what she had probably heard her mother say. “What if they had a heart attack or the place caught fire?”

My face started to burn. Tina’s house was barely fifteen feet from ours. Help was right there. Besides, my brother and I stayed home alone all the time. Having two adults with us, deaf or not, was more supervision than usual.

During dinner, my grandmother asked why Tina wasn’t with us.

“She’s grounded,” I lied. There was no use making her feel bad because Tina’s mother was ignorant.

When my father was arrested at Pizza Inn, his older hearing sister Edith was visiting us from Oklahoma. She was staunchly religious and her icy cold stare could scare Satan himself. Accompanying Mom to bail Dad out of jail was as offensive to her as Darwin’s theory of evolution. “Does this happen often?” she primly asked Mom.

“Oh no! Never!” Mom replied, sticking to my father’s version of the facts. “He wasn’t passed out; he was just tired from working overtime.” But my mother wasn’t telling the whole story. She conveniently left out the fact that Dad, alone, had downed a full pitcher of beer. Not only was he passed out drunk in public, but this
had
happened before, just never at Pizza Inn.

My mother could paint a rosy picture. While my father would tell a lie to dig out of trouble, my mother liked to pretend that everything was in order by slanting the truth. She protected her own image by keeping her husband’s problems private.

A week after Edith returned to Oklahoma, cash and checks arrived in the mail from my father’s family, though no one said anything about Dad’s public drunkenness and arrest. “We don’t need money,” Mom sniffed. “But we’ll take it. Heck, if they’re just giving it away.”

When Dad’s court date arrived, Mom called in sick to work so she could serve as his interpreter. Her poise and eloquent speech seemed to sway the judge and he tossed out the charges. The ruling granted my father smug satisfaction that he was right. Pizza Inn was overrun with discriminating bastards and had him arrested
because he was deaf. We never ate at Pizza Inn again, with or without Dad.

Before school recessed for Christmas break in 1980, my fourth-grade teacher gave us an assignment to make a homemade booklet of gifts. Each page was to be dedicated to a member of our family. It was up to us to describe the gift we would present if money were no object. It could be anything, not necessarily something that only came in a box. It could be a hope, a dream, anything.

I was a dedicated, eager-to-please student and I took the assignment very seriously, giving deep thought to what I would give to my parents and brother. Each page started the same: “If I could give you anything in the world it would be …” I gave my brother “peace.” I gave “happiness” to my mother. And to my father, I gave “the ability to hear.”

Initially, the thought of sharing my book with my mother excited me. I thought that happiness was something that she would really appreciate. She was always stressed and worried about money. She often complained about needing help around the house. She worked all day and lamented at how exhausted she was from the workload. Sitting at her desk with piles of bills and her checkbook, she sighed heavily and snapped at David or me if we interrupted her.

My excitement at presenting Mom with her gift began to fade when I considered how my father might react to his. The usual presents he liked were tools, cartons of cigarettes, or a “World’s Best Dad” beer koozie. I worried that he would misinterpret my hypothetical gift. I didn’t want him to think I didn’t like him the way he was.

After Dad read my present for him, his only reaction was a quick “Thank you.” He looked back down at the page and his chin wrinkled,
a sign he was contemplating my wish. He set the booklet on the counter and went into the living room to watch television.

I was too uncomfortable to ask him how it made him feel, so I asked my mother instead.

“I’m sure he liked it, Kambri,” she reassured me. “He would finally be able to hear music.”

My father hated being deaf. To this day, he dreams about getting a cochlear implant, an electronic device that can help the profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing hear. There are two components to the implant. One part is the microphone, sound processor, and transmitter, worn externally on the scalp. The other is the implanted receiver and electrode system, which is surgically inserted under the skin behind one ear.

The Deaf community is divided on the use of cochlear implants. Many deaf people don’t perceive their hearing loss to be a handicap, but a cultural identity. That’s why the
d
in “Deaf” is capitalized when referencing the community, while a lowercase
d
for “deaf” means the inability to hear. The Deaf have their own language, arts, churches, and universities. Because of this, they are strongly bonded through shared history and life experiences, and view themselves as a distinct society.

Implying that implants are necessary is labeling deafness as a defect that must be corrected. In actuality, a deaf person’s ability to live a full life is not compromised by their hearing impairment. It simply requires making a few accommodations.

The contentious debate has some going so far as to say that implants are nothing short of cultural genocide, fearing that the devices will render the Deaf community and ASL extinct. Most deaf children are born to hearing parents who often choose implants without first learning about Deaf society. After being implanted,
deaf children are often not taught ASL, which fuels the fear that the community will die.

Others in the Deaf community view implants as a matter of personal choice. Since the devices don’t cure deafness, but merely restore some sense of sound, deaf people will continue to exist and ASL will remain a necessary and vital language. Opting for an implant is capitalizing on the advances in technology. Parents who elect to have the surgery for their underage children want to give their children advantages and choices. Even with implants, the device is “optional” and can be turned off at any time. And their opinion is that a child can always be taught ASL at a later age.

Dad viewed implants as no different as wearing glasses to correct his vision. To him, an implant would be like a really powerful hearing aid and he wanted one. But in 1980, cochlear implants were rare and expensive. The cost of one today averages forty thousand dollars and is often not covered by insurance. For my father, this meant an implant wasn’t even an option.

Like any deaf person, he was very proud and didn’t want to be treated like he was stupid or inadequate. He portrayed himself as too cool to be spoken to, and thus avoided rejection.

My father strode through stores with a swagger. When greeted by a cashier, he’d wink and flash a mischievous grin. With his good looks, he usually made the counter girl clam up and blush. If they needed to ask him a question, though, he had to explain. He’d point to his ear and shake his head, “No.”

Since Mom was able to hear, she could share things like music and movies with David and me. Dad was undoubtedly frustrated by this. When we shopped for a second car, he refused to pay for a radio as an added option. Every other kid at school had nice cars with air-conditioning and radios, so I pressed him for an explanation.

“Why should I pay extra for something I can’t hear?”

Dad’s reason annoyed me. I agreed that it wasn’t fair that he couldn’t enjoy music, but we lived in a democracy. My mother, David, and I represented the majority, Mom raked in a good portion of our family’s income, and we wanted a radio. Why didn’t her opinion count? But Dad was such a strong leader and I so desperately wanted to please him that I chose not to protest, and neither did Mom.

Our enjoyment of music wasn’t the only thing that separated Dad from his family. On rainy weekends, Mom drove David and me to the six-screen movie theater in Conroe. Horror movies were our favorites, so we planned our trip to see films like
Carrie
,
Halloween
, and every
Friday the 13th
movie.

In the early 1980s, there was no such thing as closed captioning in movie theaters, and even today the showings are limited in big cities and rarely offered in rural communities. Rather than join us for the movie marathons, Dad stayed behind to work on the Chevy or watch football by himself.

Despite public options being limited, he was still able to enjoy movies with us privately. My parents’ deaf friends, the Sloans, liked to borrow films with English subtitles from the public library or their Deaf club in Houston, and they showed them on a wall in the living room using a 16 mm reel-to-reel projector. But the selection was limited, so they often chose titles that were highly inappropriate for us kids, such as
The Exorcist
. I know full-grown adults who shudder at the mere mention of the movie, but I don’t. I laugh at the memory of a screening in the Sloans’ makeshift theater.