Singing Hands (3 page)

"Gah!" I cried. "That stinking tattletoad Margaret! Did she really have to tell him that, too?"

Nell tried not to smile. I was famous for inventing catchy new insults like "tattletoad." "Daddy wants to see you in his office, Gussie. He sent me up to get you."

I crossed my arms over my chest, plunked myself down on the edge of the bed, and stared stubbornly out at the green shimmer of catalpa leaves just beyond our window.

"You better go on, Gus," Nell said, coming to sit beside me. "Don't worry. How bad can it be? Daddy's so soft, the worst he'll do is probably make you pick dandelions for a couple days."

"Oh, boy," I mumbled, stuffing my feet back into my scuffed oxfords. Once or twice a summer Daddy got it into his head that we needed to decapitate the hundreds of dandelions in our yard, removing the yellow heads by hand before they went to seed and made a hundred more dandelions.

But the thought of what my punishment would be wasn't occupying my mind nearly as much as how I could get back at that goody two-shoes, two-faced, two-timing Margaret.

"Good luck," Nell called as I trudged down the hall. I glanced into Margaret's room as I passed. "Jeez," I growled. Just looking at her perfect room infuriated me. I could have gone on and on, listing in my head all the things about Margaret's room that made my blood boil.

1. Penmanship and spelling-bee ribbons tucked into the corners of her mirror. All first or second place.

2. Stuffed lamb, BaBa, always propped neatly against her pillow. Of course he still had his two button eyes and velvety ears even though he was as old as she was.

3. Arrangement of never-overdue library books by her bed. One neat "recently read" stack on one side. One "still-in-progress" stack on the other.

4. Clear view of the front walkway from large set of double windows with flouncy tieback curtains. Perfect for seeing Mrs. Fernley's latest outfits and spying on the neighbors.

5. Double bed instead of a twin. Plus big, breezy bedroom three feet eight inches wider than the one her sisters had to
share.

I stopped listing as the sound of Mrs. Fernley's music grew louder. She always turned the volume up for her favorite parts. Now a woman's silvery, mournful voice floated down the dark staircase from the third floor, where Daddy kept his office across the hall from our two renters.

I took my time on the narrow stairs, feeling the temperature rise and hearing the notes climb higher with each step. I had to admit, opera was growing on me a little. I even recognized this one—
Madame Butterfly.
Mrs. Fernley had been thrilled when I asked her the name of it as we passed in the hall one day. She had closed her eyes and sighed, gathering her thoughts, then gone on and on in a trembly voice for nearly ten minutes about "Puccini's masterpiece." I could hear her now behind her door, crooning along with the record.

I paused at the next room down the hall, Grace Homewood's. It was a lucky thing for Miss Grace that she was deaf—in case she didn't care for opera. I pressed my ear against her door to listen. Silence, as usual.

Miss Grace had moved in last year, too, just a week after Mrs. Fernley. Still, I barely knew a thing about her, mainly because she was hardly ever home. She worked at the downtown public library six days a week, shelving and checking out books. And every Sunday her stern-faced hearing parents came over from Mountain Brook, the rich side of town, to take their daughter out to their church and for an afternoon meal. But even when she came home at night, Miss Grace was as quiet as the hushed rows of books at the library where she worked.

I suppose that, besides being deaf, she had good reason to be quiet. Miss Grace was a war widow—a fact that seemed especially unfair considering she was only twenty-four years old and the prettiest woman I had ever seen outside of fashion magazines. Her husband had been shot straight through the heart. It had happened three years ago during World War II, on Okinawa Island near Japan. On the day Miss Grace moved into our house, I caught a glimpse of her husband's photograph when I was helping to carry her boxes upstairs. Corporal Homewood stared out from a silver filigree frame nestled in one corner of a cardboard carton, looking fearless and handsome in his crisp Marine Corps uniform.

Nell and I were constantly begging Mother to tell us every tantalizing detail she might know about the Homewoods. But Mother claimed she knew only two things: Corporal James Homewood had been a hearing man, and he had left for the Pacific just two months after their honeymoon.

At night Nell and I loved to lie in our beds and speculate about Miss Grace's tragic life. Nell fantasized that maybe James wasn't dead but just missing in action somewhere, and any day he might recover from his case of amnesia, find his way home, and come striding up our front walk to retrieve his lovely bride. One night Nell even talked me into turning the lights back on and acting out the couple's reunion. Naturally, I had to play the part of the corporal. When Mother opened the door to find Nell sobbing in my arms, covering me with kisses, she just shook her head and went to bed.

"Augusta?"

I flinched, jerking away from Miss Grace's room. Daddy was standing across the hall in the doorway of his office, watching me. He must have felt the vibration of my footsteps on the stairs.
Augusta.
He always called me by my proper name, which I hated. The only thing I liked about it was that I was named after him—William Augustus Davis III.

"Come sit," Daddy said, motioning me into his office. I could barely hear his voice over the opera music. While Daddy spoke much more clearly than Mother, his deafness always made him sound as if he was straining to get the words out, as if he was constantly recovering from a bad case of laryngitis. "Just a minute," he said, settling himself behind his clunky Smith Corona typewriter. "I just need to..." His raspy voice trailed off as he pecked away at the stiff keys, already lost in thought.

If my father wasn't preaching or traveling, he was typing—letters or to-do lists or his next sermon. I plopped down in the cracked leather chair beside his desk to wait. I was glad to sit near the turret of open windows, even though there was barely enough breeze to ruffle the pages of the open Bible or the stacks of papers piled around the desk.

Daddy's office would have been my favorite room in the house except for the fact that it was broiling in the summer and freezing in winter. Like lots of Victorian homes in Birmingham, ours had a round tower that rose along one side of the house and was topped by a pointy, dunce-cap roof. Downstairs, the half-tower in Mother and Daddy's bedroom and in the parlor below were ringed with window seats facing an old crape myrtle tree. Although the tower in Daddy's office wasn't fitted with a seat, you could stand at the wraparound windows, look out over the crape myrtle branches, and see all the way over to Vulcan—Birmingham's most famous statue.

Vulcan was the Roman god of fire and metalworking, and years back some business leaders in town had decided we needed our very own Vulcan to honor all the iron and steel mills in town. If those businessmen had studied Roman myths like we did at South Glen Primary, they might have changed their minds. Vulcan was powerful, but he was also lame and ugly. Now a giant, not-very-handsome statue loomed in cast iron at the top of Red Mountain, keeping watch over Birmingham sprawled below.

Surely, Vulcan would have approved of the temperature in my father's office. I could feel the backs of my knees sticking to the leather seat cushion. Finally, I thumped my foot on the floor to get Daddy's attention. He looked up at me, his gray eyes glazed with concentration.

"Aren't you too hot up here, Daddy?" I asked, swiping my fingers across my brow to make the sign for "hot." The smell of dust and carbon paper and old typewriter ribbons hung over the room like a worn blanket.

Daddy shook his head. He was still in long shirtsleeves, with his stiff clerical collar fastened tightly around his neck. But like always, he looked cool as marble as he peered at me from behind his spectacles.

"Hmmmmmmmm," he began suddenly. "Hmmmmmmmmmmm..."

I could feel my eyes grow rounder. Daddy was trying to hum. But of course, it was a tuneless hum. How would he know how to carry a tune if he hadn't heard music—or any other sound—since he was a boy?

Then he stopped just as suddenly as he'd begun. "Is that a godly sound, Augusta?"

I stared back at Daddy blankly.

"Is it?" he asked again. "Is it a beautiful or holy or respectful sound? Is it a sound worthy of Saint Jude's sanctuary?"

"No, sir," I said.

Daddy stared at my lips, waiting for more explanation. When nothing came, he made the sign I had been waiting for. He touched his forehead with his fingers, then brought his fist toward me with his thumb and his pinkie stretched in the shape of a
Y.

"Why?" he asked out loud.

I couldn't tell Daddy why. He was too good. All around us, fastened on the cracked plaster walls, were dozens of photographs of deaf people he had helped—couples he had introduced and married, men standing in front of the printing press or factory line where Daddy had found them jobs, war veterans who had lost their hearing in battle and who my father had visited in the hospital day after day.

I couldn't tell him I hummed because I was bored silly or because I wanted to see if I could get away with it or because there was this evil little itch way down inside me that I had to scratch once in a while by doing something downright mean.

So I just shrugged. "I don't know why," I whispered.

"Well, I think I do," Daddy said.

"You do?" I asked, glad that he couldn't hear the sharp edge of surprise in my voice.

"Yes," he said. "I do. When Mother told me what you had done, I was angry at first. Then I remembered that one of the most important ways hearing people worship is by singing.... I think you just need to sing."

"
Sing?
"

"I think it's time we sent you girls to the hearing church downtown. The Church of the Advent. You can join the choir there and go to proper Sunday school with a hearing teacher and sing as much as you like. And you can pray out loud and listen to the minister instead of watching the words signed. Mother and I have kept you with us at Saint Jude's too long. You're growing up. You need to worship with other hearing people."

"But, Daddy..."

My voice faded away.
He wasn't even going to punish me.
He was so good and so kind that he thought my wicked humming was all about my needing to sing God's praises out loud. It made me want to cry, his sweet smile and the way his clean-shaven cheeks had turned pink with the excitement of this amazing discovery about his daughter.

Finally, I just nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat and feeling more wicked than ever. Daddy rolled his swivel chair closer so he could reach out and pat my knee, then he rolled back to the letter he was composing.

I waved my hand to stop him. "What about Mr. Snider?" I asked too quickly. I made myself slow down. "That Mr. Snider ... Are you going to do like he asked and try to start another church in Macon?"

Daddy smiled again, but a tired smile this time. A shaft of sunlight glinted off his glasses. "Of course, Augusta," he said. "How can I say no? They need me."

As he went back to typing, I sank into the hot leather chair to watch, wishing for a normal father who could come home for dinner every night or take a nap when he was tired or hear the swell of
Madame Butterfly
drifting down the hall.

The very next Sunday, Nell and I found ourselves on the number 51 streetcar bound for downtown Birmingham and the Church of the Advent. At first I resented the idea of being pushed out of Daddy's church, all because of Margaret's big mouth. But now, with the breeze and the smell of mown grass wafting through the streetcar windows and more and more folks climbing aboard at each stop in their starched Sunday best, I felt like I was setting out on a holiday.

Nell didn't seem to share my new burst of enthusiasm. She sat next to me on the streetcar bench, latching and unlatching the clasp of her white basket purse.

"I still don't understand," she whined softly. "If you're the one who did all that humming, why do I have to go to the Advent, too? Why does Margaret get to stay at Saint Jude's?"

"Because Daddy thinks we need to sing," I said. "And didn't you hear?" I mocked in a fawning voice. "Everyone at Saint Jude's would be just beside themselves with grief if they couldn't watch Margaret sign so beeee-eautifully with the choir every Sunday. And what would they do if she wasn't there to fill in when they're short-handed at Sunday school? She has such a wonderful way with children, you know."

"Why,
yes,
" Nell drawled, playing along. "She certainly does."

Frankly, I wouldn't miss working in the Saint Jude's Sunday school one bit. I had only been asked to work there a few times, but that was enough babysitting duty to last a lifetime as far as I was concerned. Instead of coloring Jesus pictures or learning to sign the Lord's Prayer in unison when they were supposed to, most of the kids tore around the church hall like escapees from the zoo. Some were deaf. Some weren't. It didn't matter. One kid made a few signs to another and the next thing we knew, the whole bunch of crazy little rats were making paper airplanes out of the Sunday bulletins.

I looked around happily, inspecting our fellow passengers. "And wouldn't you rather be riding the streetcar downtown than have your arm shaken off by Mr. Runion?" I went on. "Besides, Mother's in charge of another one of those fellowship lunches in the parish house today after the service. Margaret will have to roll all that silverware in napkins and scrub out those nasty deviled squash casserole pans without us." I chuckled slyly.

Nell's mouth spread into a grin. "I guess you're right," she said, smoothing the scratchy hem of my old dotted swiss over her knees. We had both found new hand-me-downs to wear for the occasion. At last I was getting the chance to try out Margaret's frost blue taffeta with the swingy skirt and the mother-of-pearl buttons. Margaret had gasped when I came down for church that morning.