I'll Scream Later (No Series) (3 page)

M
Y PARENTS
’
DECISION
to have me grow up at home, go to mainstream schools, live in and cope in a hearing world, was, without question, the most important of my life, and one that I will forever be grateful for.

At the same time, they wanted to make sure I could navigate the Deaf world as well, so my earliest memories are of moving constantly between the two. Feet firmly planted in both.

As soon as they began to finally accept that I was Deaf, my parents threw themselves into finding out everything they could about how to help me navigate life.

The first group of specialists they consulted suggested that I be sent to a school for the Deaf, essentially institutionalized, which was the most common practice at the time. So my parents packed me and Marc into the backseat of the car and drove to St. Louis, which had two highly regarded schools for Deaf children.

One of the schools specialized in the oral tradition—no signing, you were instead taught how to speak and read lips. The other was more focused on teaching American Sign Language as the foundation for communication and developing an understanding of Deaf culture. Both boarded students through the week, with weekends spent at home.

After the visits, my parents sat in the car in the parking lot of the last school we visited and, once again, cried. They couldn’t live with the notion of shipping me off to a boarding school, but they weren’t sure what other options were left to them.

Ultimately, they decided that they would find a way for me to attend mainstream schools with Deaf-education programs—that
usually meant long bus rides, but allowed me to live at home. They found a doctor in the area who specialized in the oral tradition, essentially teaching the Deaf to speak and to rely on lipreading for communication, and I started working with him several times a week by the time I was three. I was fitted with hearing aids to assist any residual hearing that might be there. I had one for each ear, although the doctors had determined that I had absolutely no hearing in one ear and was roughly 80 percent Deaf in the other.

I didn’t appreciate these efforts at the time. The speech lessons were extremely difficult, especially for a three-year-old—sometimes I screamed going in and coming out of them. I did grow to accept them, the lesson learned was not to reject help—I knew at some point in my life I wanted to be able to speak as well as I possibly could.

As a child, I also hated those hearing aids. I was forever trying to get rid of them, tossing them whenever they bothered me, resulting in periodic searches through the neighborhood with a reward of candy or a dollar offered to any kid who found and returned them. One day I threw them out the car window, and my aunt Sue stopped in traffic and retrieved them before anyone ran over them. The worst time was when I was in the fourth grade. I had slipped them into my brown paper sack during lunch. The bag, and my hearing aids, both went into the furnace. This time it truly was an accident, but no one believed me.

My dad was always trying to smooth things over. When people on the street would ask about the hearing aids, my dad had two stock answers. If an adult asked and it was baseball season, he’d say I was listening to the Chicago Cubs on a transistor radio and if they were nice, I’d tell them the score. If a kid was asking, he’d tell them I had bubble gum in my ears, and then I’d chime in, “You want some?”

With my dad working long hours running the used-car lot, my mom shouldered much of the tough stuff—taking me to doctors, always looking for better answers, arranging and shuttling me to speech lessons, as well as dealing with a child whose energy level and interest in exploring the world were extremely high.

O
VER THE YEARS
, various theories emerged on why I became Deaf. One doctor suggested that maybe it was genetic. When my mother heard that, she searched for anyone on either side of the family who was Deaf.

She still tells the story of meeting a woman one day at the beauty shop. After hearing about my condition, the woman said she, too, had relatives from the Gomel area of Russia who knew of the Matlins, and that several of the Matlin women were hard of hearing and one was profoundly Deaf. But it always seemed a story born more out of desperation than reality—one that my mom wanted to believe—but no records were ever found. To my knowledge, I am the only person in my family who is Deaf.

Just this past summer I wanted to try to better understand the possible causes for my deafness and I turned to Dr. Patricia Scherer, who is founder and president of the International Center on Deafness and the Arts in Northbrook, Illinois, and was an innovator at Northwestern University for years before that. She and the center have been so instrumental in my life, and she probably knows more about my history than anyone else, having known and worked with me since I was a small child.

As she recalls, about ten years ago a Chicago doctor who was doing pioneering work with cochlear implants approached her wondering if I might consider one.

“When he asked, I said I honestly don’t know,” said Dr. Scherer. “Part of me was thinking that Marlee would be a good candidate, but another part of me was saying, ‘I don’t think she would want that.’ But I told him her mother was still living in the area, so he got in touch with her.”

At a meeting with the doctor and Dr. Scherer, my mother brought all my old audiograms, as well as X-rays of my inner ear from soon after the initial diagnosis. After reviewing the files, the doctor said the X-rays and audiograms indicated that I had a genetically malformed cochlea. That meant that I could likely hear when I was born, but that my hearing would recede over the first couple of years of my life.

Around that time I was giving a speech in the Chicago area, and during the question-and-answer session afterward, someone asked me where I stood on cochlear implants, an extremely divisive issue in the Deaf community. I said that I wasn’t opposed to them, but that they were not for me. When my mother heard that, she never broached the idea with me or talked to me about the X-rays.

In some ways it doesn’t matter because it won’t change anything, it won’t change who I am. But it would be nice to get the facts straightened out, just for my own sense of sanity. I’m not so much angry as curious. I want to be able to tell my children about my life and where I came from—why, how, what, and who I am—so that they can tell their children.

When I talked to Dr. Scherer last summer, she took me to a room they have at the Center on Deafness and the Arts, where I started acting. It had all the various displays of the body so you can see how everything works, including an ear with all of its intricate pieces identified. She walked me through an explanation of what likely happened—from the initial malformation of the cochlea to how it would cause me to progressively lose my hearing as a child.

And so at forty-two, I think I finally learned how I lost my hearing. But what I realized is that all that really matters is that this is the life I’ve been given, with all its many aspects. I am proud to be a Deaf person and wouldn’t know life any other way. Yet, I have never wanted my deafness to define me as a person, or as an actress. I am many, many things, and only one of them is Deaf, and I’m at peace with that. But it wasn’t always so.

N
INETEEN SEVENTY WAS
a significant year for me—it could have been the end of everything; instead it became the beginning.

Most summers we had a college student come and stay with us, essentially as a summer nanny. The program was designed to give students who’d grown up in rural areas exposure to the city. This year, our summer girl was a University of Michigan student named Jean.

One day Jean was driving me and my brother Marc in a convertible with the top down. We were headed somewhere none of us can remember anymore. She made a left turn right into the path of an oncoming car, which slammed into us. My brother Eric was at a friend’s house and remembers getting the call to come home, there’d been an accident, and we were in the hospital. He was the “adult” in charge. My parents had flown to San Francisco just that morning. When they walked into their hotel to check in, they were given a note at the front desk to call the hospital. They did, but the hospital refused to give them any details over the phone. They flew right back immediately. My mother still avoids San Francisco because she associates it with bad news.

Of the three of us, my injuries were the most severe. My nose was bleeding—a man was holding me and I helped myself to the handkerchief he had in the front pocket of his suit. My pelvis was fractured. Marc hit his head near his eye, and Jean had cuts requiring stitches. This was before seat belts were the first thing you thought of when you got in a car, and it’s a miracle that we weren’t badly hurt.

Marc and I shared the hospital room for the few days we were there. Neither of us was happy about the interruption in our sum
mer vacation—why couldn’t it have happened during the school year! Marc was given a box of Bazooka gum, and I kept wanting some. But sharing wasn’t easy—he couldn’t move, so he kept tossing pieces of gum into my crib!

He still remembers the nurses going insane from a whistling noise they couldn’t identify. They would pop their heads into the room, scout around, but they could never discover the source of that irritating noise. It was my hearing aids going off, and Marc decided he wasn’t about to tip them off.

When we got back home, it felt as if a prison sentence had been lifted! The doctor told my mother that we could basically do anything we felt up to doing. I felt like playing nonstop to make up for the lazy summer days I’d missed out on.

Jean was more traumatized than anyone else. She was horrified that we had been hurt while in her care, and as soon as she was better, she apologized to my parents, then left for home. My family stayed in touch with her for years afterward and we all think of her fondly, though she would never stay another summer with us.

A couple of years later I found out how lucky I was to have had such a short recovery and no cast. My family was going out that night, and just before dinnertime I was ready and bored. I decided to go into the backyard while we waited for my mom to finish getting ready.

We had a swing set with seats made of wooden slats. I must have been standing up on the swing because I got my foot caught between the slats, then fell—snap, that was the sound of my right leg breaking. I didn’t hear it, but I sure as heck felt it, screaming at the pain.

So it was off to the ER again. Thankfully it was a clean break, no surgery needed. This time when I was released it was with a big plaster cast. It didn’t take me long to figure out how to get around. I was back on the block in just days with all the problems and perks a cast brings with it—getting all my friends to sign it, going nuts when I had an itch underneath it. My mom just remembers I worked it.

W
HEN
I
WAS
five, I started taking sign-language classes. I remember my first night class with a Deaf teacher, Samuel Block, who is
still alive today, now in his nineties. This changed my world. Communication and meaning flowed back into my life at full force. He was so sweet, so smart, and so full of life.

The temple we went to on Friday nights, B’nai Shalom, catered to both the Deaf and hearing Jewish community and had a rabbi signing at services, so I began to understand my religious heritage. A Sunday-school class was taught by my soon-to-be-aunt Sue, who was majoring in speech audiology and was a fluent signer. In that class was a six-year-old named Liz Tannebaum.

I still remember meeting Liz for the first time. She was the first kid who looked like me and was Deaf like me that I connected with completely. I just knew it in an instant. I walked up to her and asked, “Who are you?”

“Liz.”

I giggled. “Hi, Liz, where do you live?”

“In an apartment.”

“You are now my best friend!”

No discussion, no debate. And so we have been for nearly forty years now.

The relationship that Liz and I have has been a defining one in my life, and I can’t imagine it without her. We were soon inseparable, spending weekends, vacations, any time we could together. We’ve shared secrets and growing pains—from our first boyfriends, first French kiss, first joint, and the list goes on.

We’ve been there for the births of each other’s children, through marriages and divorces. We’ve had good times and bad, and we’ve both done things to each other that have left a few scars. We’ve weathered it all together, and when trouble comes, I always know that Liz has my back, and I have hers.

W
HEN
I
WAS
seven, I would also discover music. You might not think music would be a turning point in my life, but it was.

The summer of 1972 my parents sent me to a day camp specially designed to work with Deaf children and their hearing siblings. Although my brothers didn’t go, I did and I loved it. Dr. Pat Scherer, who was running the camp, first came into my life here. She says:

“We were doing things in the camp like music, poetry, memorization, art—activities you would do with normal six- and seven-year-olds. One of the songs they picked to do was ‘John Brown’s body lies amouldering in the grave,’ and I noticed Marlee really liked doing this, so I encouraged her to perform it with the hearing children. And when we had the program for the parents, she really stood out. The love for what she was doing just showed through.”

I remember standing on stage, signing as the others sang, feeling the vibrations of the music rumbling up through the floor under my feet and up through my body as I moved to the beat. I remember the audience, the faces smiling at me, watching, the hands applauding. I loved it. I felt at home and knew I wanted to have this feeling again. I was hooked.

This time in my life was the beginning of my education about living in the real world beyond the safety of my Morton Grove neighborhood, where I knew just about everyone and they knew me.

While my mother focused on the schools and the doctors, my dad focused on acclimating me to the world. When we would go out to eat, which was pretty often, he always had me order my own food. He says, “Marlee had some Deaf friends who would not speak yes or no, couldn’t speak. I always wanted her to order, to keep repeating it until the waiter got it.”

In what would become a tradition for years to come, just about every Sunday my dad would take us on a family outing, to petting zoos, to carnivals, apple picking, strawberry picking—if there was a fruit that could be picked, the Matlins were there—water parks, bumper cars, and on special occasions to the Dells in Wisconsin, a big amusement park filled with rides, anything to make sure I experienced the world at large.

Dad had just one rule when we hit the amusement parks—be willing to try everything once, even if you’re afraid, still try it once. There wasn’t much I was afraid of—except a massive roller coaster. Liz, who often came with us, and I stood in front of it and trembled. Surely we wouldn’t really have to ride this. We were both terrified. But my dad insisted, despite the tears and the trembling.

I had never been on anything so fast in my entire life, with its wild swoops and stomach-churning dips and razor-sharp turns, the wind rushing past my face, our screams trailing behind us. It was amazing, and I blame my love for speed on those early rides.

Later I would graduate to cars that I loved to push to the limit, the wind rushing past, the radio cranked up so I could feel every thud of the bass, every beat of the drum, my laughter trailing out the window behind me.

During one weekend trip to the Dells, we saw a helicopter flying over the park. On the way home, my dad spotted a sign that offered helicopter rides for a few dollars. He says, “I stopped the car and went and got tickets to take Marlee and Liz up in this helicopter. I give each of them a ticket, and these two girls are crying like you can’t believe. I told them. ‘You’ve got to be brave and do it once. If you don’t like it, you never have to do it again.’ And they’re crying but they get in, and of course Marlee, she loved it.”

Over and over he would demand, try it just once, see if you like it. And I would. And often the “thing,” whatever it was, that I feared the most turned into something I would come to love. I have to believe my dad’s habit of putting me in those situations, then forcing me to face my fears, to push past them, helped me learn to believe in myself, that I could do anything—including one day tackling Hollywood.

One thing I refused to tackle, though, was an inflatable trampoline that my brother Eric and his new girlfriend, Gloria, got for my fifth birthday. At first I loved it and spent hours jumping on it the day I got it. That night when I went to sleep, I dreamed it turned into an octopus, and I flipped out! I wouldn’t go near it, convinced that it would swallow me whole. Not even my dad could coax me into this one. I don’t remember feeling quite as frightened by a nightmare as a child ever again. Gloria remembers that trampoline as her introduction to the family—a rocky start to say the least.

The trampoline didn’t stay, but Gloria did. She became like a big sister to me, hanging around our house more than her own, eventually marrying Eric, which was such a good thing because I loved Gloria so. There have been difficult moments in my life since
then when I’ve needed someone I could count on, and Gloria has often been the first person I’ve called.

She was always so patient with me. When I was younger, she would sit on the bed and let me brush her long, beautiful hair for hours. She shared her
Glamour
and
Cosmo
magazines. We even cooked together. It fit that we all soon began calling her Glo—she does. Great catch, Eric!