Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love (9 page)

Sounds in the Night

O
ne night, long after I had gone to bed, I was awakened by strange sounds in our otherwise silent apartment. It sounded as if someone were being beaten, the blows accompanied by grunts and muffled screams.

I jumped out of bed and rushed to my parents’ bedroom. Their door was closed, but it was never locked as, being deaf, they dared not shut out their hearing son.

I threw open the door, realizing as I did that this was where the sounds were coming from. Rushing into the dimly lighted room, I saw my father on top of my mother. He was grunting, and she was moaning. It was a frightening sight. I leaped on my father’s bare back, screaming into his deaf ears, “Stop! Stop! You’re killing my mother!”

In shocked reaction, my father bucked me off his back, and I landed with a thud on the wooden floor. On went the lights, and
bang bang bang
went the broom handle Mrs. Abromovitz thumped against the ceiling of her bedroom one floor below.

My father picked me up in his arms. I was crying. He stilled my shaking and gently wiped away my tears with the tips of his fingers.

“What’s wrong?” he signed.

“Why are you beating my mother?” I signed. There are no fewer than five signs for
beat,
and I used every one of them.

My father watched my agitated performance in wonder, and upon its completion, he laughed uproariously.

Catching his breath, he signed, “Not
killing.
” Then after some thought he added, “We’re
exercising.
” And with that he laughed some more.

I, of course, had no idea what was so funny. But I was reassured by his easy laughter that everything was all right.

This must have been true, as all throughout my childhood I heard my father and my mother exercising on a regular basis.

4

Another Child

M
y brother, Irwin, was born the year I turned four. My mother’s parents, Celia and Max, had been against their deaf daughter having another child. Since they did not know with certainty why it was that she, their oldest child, had become deaf, they thought her children would most likely be deaf as well. The fact that I, their daughter’s firstborn child, could hear was for them no less than a miracle. But, they reasoned, why take a chance on another miracle? Better to be safe than sorry. “No more children,” her mother told her. “
One is enough!
” her father insisted, jabbing his forefinger at her.

My father agreed with both of them. This was rare—actually, unheard-of. My father considered his wife’s parents to be little better than uneducated illiterate immigrants, barely off the boat. He was particularly incensed, though he never openly showed it, when they butted into his family’s affairs. “Where do these immigrants get off telling me what to do?” his hands would mutter. “Just because I’m deaf they think me stupid; nothing more than a child.” But as my father worshiped his beautiful wife, who in turn had always basked in the undiluted love of her mother, he held his tongue—hands actually. In moments of extreme agitation, such as when his wife’s sister, Mary, wrote out his father-in-law’s dire warnings about how innocent and childlike and irresponsible my father was because he was a “deaf and dumb mute,” my father would literally sit on his hands so as to contain them, as if they possessed an independent will to strangle this Hungarian Gypsy fool.

But on this point, that one child was enough, he found himself in agreement with his in-laws. As was always the case, my mother ignored her family’s wishes entirely. She dearly loved her mother, Celia, but had always known, with a certainty beyond her years, that she was different from her mother and the rest of her hearing family. Her life now was with her own family, her deaf family. And she was determined to talk her husband into a second child.

She had been arguing with him about this for over three years—ever since they both concluded that my hearing was in no danger of being lost. He pointed out to her that they could much better afford to provide for one child than for two. It was 1937, and the Depression still gripped the country. “What if the newspaper cuts back my hours?” he argued intelligently. “I want another little baby,” my mother signed sweetly. “What if I have to go back on the lobster shift? How will you manage at night?” he pointed out reasonably. “Myron will help me,” my mother said.

All argument was useless; my mother wanted another baby in the house. And as my father adored my mother, he gave in. The outcome of this issue, as with all others, was never in doubt; what Sarah wanted, Sarah would have. And so she and Lou had another child.

My brother, Irwin, was born hearing. (Actually, ninety percent of all children born to deaf parents can hear.) When it was announced, at the hospital, that the new baby could hear, both sides of the family assumed that the
curse
of deafness had been broken. And with this baby, neither my mother’s nor my father’s family felt the need to make regularly scheduled weekend visits to our apartment for the yearlong ritual of banging on pots and pans.

F
rom the day my mother came home from the hospital, I was required to be my brother’s surrogate parent. No longer did my mother have to rely, as she had with me, on a ribbon tied from her arm to her new baby’s foot. That velvet ribbon was now replaced by me. For my mother, I was a much more satisfactory connection between her newborn son and herself. After all, a ribbon can’t speak in sign.

My brother’s crib was placed alongside my bed. When he awoke at night, crying for his bottle, it was my job to wake my mother. When he awoke at night with a stomachache, it was my job to wake my mother. When he awoke at night, fussy and fretful, it was my job to wake my mother. But as he grew older, he would sometimes awaken simply because he was no longer sleepy; then I would play with him as he lay on his back in his crib.

Irwin and I

Irwin was an extremely placid baby, somewhat on the chubby side, quick to make eye contact and just as quick to smile and giggle. When I looked at him, he would often cycle his legs and wave his arms in what appeared to me to be great excitement. I, in turn, would wave my arms back at him to see if I could get an even greater response. And if this failed, I would make faces at him. Having unconsciously learned from my parents the exaggerated facial expressions that are a part of deaf grammar, I would raise my eyebrows high and fatten my cheeks to bursting, to see if he would imitate me.

It was at such times—in the middle of the night—that I thought to teach my brother to speak. Our house was a silent one, and other than the voices that emanated from my radio, I heard no speech. But if my brother could learn to speak, I reasoned, I would have a companion, one whom I could talk to and who, in turn, would talk back to me. I was curious as to what his speaking voice would sound like. Being the child of deaf parents, I was acutely aware of the sound of speech—the way the people on my block articulated words, their accents, and in the case of my friend Jerry’s immigrant Italian father, the music of their speech. And so as my brother looked up at me—wide awake, and not in the least bit sleepy—I would look down at him and repeat words over and over again, hoping to elicit a response. Of course, at that early age none was forthcoming. Nonetheless I was determined to be for my baby brother the human replacement for the radio that had spoken to me when I was a baby. And in time, at an unusually early age, he did begin to speak.

A
black-and-white picture of my brother at about the age of three hangs on my wall of family photographs. An extraordinarily cute child, he is towheaded, with a hank of fluffy hair hanging down over his left eye. His look is one of pure Huck Finn mischief. His face is round, with cheeks so plump he might be hiding a small knobby crabapple in each one—to tease my mother, no doubt. His eyes are the outstanding feature of his face; they are large, dark, and lively. A deep shining intelligence illuminates them; they are looking off to the side, completely unaware of the camera, as if planning the next prank. The satisfied smile that forms on his lips suggests his sense of anticipation.

Irwin, circa 1940

My brother is wearing a sweater knitted for him by our mother. It bunches up around his waist, and the sleeves are rolled back to the middle of his arms. His chubby hands hang straight down, fat fingers like ten little sausages pointing to the ground. My mother was a skilled and inventive knitter and seamstress (no need, ever, for
patterns
), but she always made every garment too large. “So you won’t outgrow it,” she always signed, when I would complain about some article of clothing she had made for me that hung halfway to the floor. (Come to think of it, in all the years I was a child I never seemed to outgrow a single thing she made for me.)

Beneath the hand-knit sweater my brother wears a rumpled pair of shorts. The shorts expose his bare legs, which are also pudgy, with a pair of dimples at each knee. Hand-knitted patterned socks peek above his high-top laced leather shoes. One bow has become untied, and the laces trail on the ground at his foot. This photograph of my brother, taken by our father with his Brownie box camera, could have been painted by Gainsborough.

Two years later my brother would have his first epileptic seizure.