Listen! (2 page)

As a child, Roma often spoke for her deaf mother. Most strangers could not understand Mam’s voice. But Roma could understand every word Mam spoke. Hers was the first voice Roma ever heard.

Roma also became Mam’s ears. As soon as she could talk, she told her mother what was going on.

She told Mam when footsteps walked up to the front of the house.

When someone knocked at the door.

When Mam’s dog raised his head and began to bark.

What the minister said in church.

When the phone rang, Roma picked up the receiver. She listened to the caller’s voice and passed on the message. She told the caller Mam’s reply.

Roma was always in the middle. Listen and tell. Tell and listen. She became her mother’s ears and voice.

When the kitchen sink leaked, Roma phoned the plumber.

“I am four years old and my mother is deaf,” Roma said into the phone. “Our sink is broken and we need a plumber.”

She gave the plumber the house address. At an early age, she had to memorize her address and phone number.

Roma also went shopping with Mam. “A pound of sliced baloney,” she told the grocer. “Sliced thin, please. A small jar of mustard and a can of beans.” The grocer did not understand Mam’s voice.

At Woolworth’s lunch counter, Roma ordered a cup of tea for Mam.

In the shoe store, she told the clerk the size of Mam’s feet. “Size eight, please. My mother wears size eight.”

Sometimes, a sales clerk said, “What’s the matter with your mother, little girl?”

Roma replied, “There’s nothing wrong with my mother.” And there wasn’t. To Roma, Mam’s deafness was normal.

When hearing people visited the house, Roma had another job. Her mother told her to remember what everyone talked and laughed about. She did not want to miss anything.

“Listen!” she told Roma. “Listen to what the others are saying.”

Mam and Roma both knew that visitors often spoke quickly. Or changed the subject suddenly. Or turned away, and their lips could not be read. A man might have a beard or a mustache that covered his lips. A woman might put a hand up to her face when she spoke.

Later, after cousins and aunts and uncles went home, Mam sat Roma down. “What did he say? What did she say? Tell me the news,” she said.

And Roma tried to remember and report.

Mam wanted to know everything.

If visitors knew how to use sign language, Roma did not have to be in the middle. Mam had learned to lip-read and to use American Sign Language as a small child. The special school she had attended was the Ontario School for the Deaf in Belleville. Back
then, deaf children lived at the school ten months of the year. They were allowed to go home during summer, and sometimes at Christmas. They studied the same subjects as all Ontario students, but they had special classes, too. Some deaf students learned to use their voices and to lip-read. All had to learn sign language. For ten years, Mam lived in the girls’ residence and made many good friends.

When Roma and her sister, Liz, were born, Mam taught them to sign. The two sisters used their hands to create language from the time they were babies.

But most hearing visitors who came to their house did not know American Sign Language.

While Roma was growing up, she was the bridge between hearing and deaf worlds.

“Listen!” Mam said. “Tell me what is happening.”

Roma reported back. If she wanted to help Mam, she had to know what was going on.

Roma heard a loud blast from the train’s horn and stretched her legs again. The train was slowing, maybe stopping at a small station. She lifted the blind to look and saw nothing but darkness. She pushed the blind back down and sank into the pillows again. The trip had begun to raise memories of events she hadn’t thought of for years. Maybe she should phone her sister. She and Liz talked on the phone every week. They always had. Ever since they’d left home and married and had children of their own.

As the train began to move faster again, Roma punched in the numbers on her cell phone. Liz sounded sleepy when she answered. A buzzing noise could be heard through the phone.

“Roma?” said Liz. “Is that you? It’s late. Where are you calling from?”

“I don’t know,” Roma said. “I’m on the train, but I don’t know exactly where. There’s nothing to see outside but the night. The train is speeding along the track, and I’m sitting in my bed.”

“I’ll be at the station to pick you up,” said Liz. “But not until morning.”

“I know. I’m just thinking about things.”

“What things?”

“I’ve been thinking of Mam and how much I miss her. I’ve been thinking about you, too. And of all the times I worried about Mam.”

“I know you worried. Even after we left home, you used to phone me,” Liz said. “You’d say: ‘What if Mam lets the stove go out? What if the pipes in her house freeze in winter? What if? What if?’”

“Well, I couldn’t change overnight,” said Roma. “I also worried that someone would break into our old house.”

“Mam always had a dog,” Liz said. “You know that. When one dog died, she got another. When you and I weren’t home, the dogs acted as Mam’s ears. She loved every one of those dogs.”

“Her first dog was Chip,” Roma said. “A mutt Father brought home one summer. You weren’t very old at the time.”

“I remember Chip. He became Mam’s special dog,” said Liz.

“He didn’t look dangerous or mean,” said Roma. “He wasn’t even very big. He only reached as high as Mam’s knees.”

“He looked like a dog pirate,” Liz said. “He had a black patch around one eye.”

“Chip didn’t like you and me,” said Roma.

“But he loved Mam,” said Liz. “She was the only one allowed to pat him.”

“Chip threatened to bite everyone else,” Roma added. “Even us.”

“Father trained him to scare strangers.”

“You and I weren’t strangers,” said Roma. “But Chip was Mam’s warning signal. If anyone came up the walk, he raised his head and barked.”

“Then he ran to Mam and brushed against her leg,” said Liz.

“Why did he try to bite us?” Roma said. “We lived there.”

“Mam kept telling us not to be afraid,” said Liz.

“We
were
afraid.”

Liz started to laugh. “Chip chased us up onto the kitchen table. Do you remember?”

Roma started laughing, too. “That happened a few years after Father died.”

“Mam went for a walk with Aunt Helen after supper,” said Liz.

“And Chip stayed behind to guard us. Mam never believed that Chip hated us, but he chased you and me up onto the table. Once he forced us up there, he wouldn’t let us down.”

“You reached over and grabbed the broom that leaned against the wall,” said Liz.

“I shook the broom and tried to scare him,” said Roma. “But no one could scare Chip. He stayed there, barking, baring his teeth. We finally had to sit on the table and wait.”

“Mam was back in five or ten minutes.”

“She blamed us,” said Roma. “She said that if we’d stop being afraid, Chip would leave us alone.”

But Roma and Liz had hated Chip, and the dog had hated them.

“The next dog was better,” said Liz. “He was a collie, wasn’t he?”

“A smart collie,” said Roma. “He always knew when Mam was alone in the house.”

“He knew she couldn’t hear him bark,” said Liz. “So when he was outside, he learned how to get back in. He jumped up near the kitchen window and scratched at the glass and moved his paws. Mam saw the movement, and opened the back door.”

“If he didn’t show his paws, he didn’t get in,” said Roma.

“All of Mam’s dogs had to be smart,” said Liz.

“I sometimes wonder how any of us survived,” Roma said. “Including the dogs. How did Mam manage all those years? Especially after Father died.” “She managed. And you and I couldn’t stay home forever. We went to school and studied hard and got jobs and moved away. Now we have families of our own,” said Liz.

“I hope my Katie never worries about me,” said Roma. “Not the way I worried about Mam. I want Katie to have a childhood. I don’t want her to have any guilt about me.”

“She won’t,” said Liz. “Now, go to sleep, Roma. Get some rest on the train. We survived childhood. You did your best, and so did I. Would we have changed our lives if we’d had the chance? Probably not. I’ll see you in the morning, at the station.”

Roma said goodnight to Liz and turned out the light in her roomette.

The wheels of the train hurried along the tracks.
Click-a-clicka, click-a-clicka.
Then there was a bump, followed by another.
Click-a-clicka
started all over again. The same rhythm as before.

The rhythm reminded Roma of songs she sang to Katie. She loved to sing to her daughter. Lullabies and rhymes and songs of all kinds.

There was an old woman

Who lived in a shoe

and

Hush little baby, don’t say a word,

Papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird

and

When you wake, you shall have

All the pretty little horses.

As a child, Roma had heard none of these.

Mam did not sing because she had never heard a song. Roma’s father worked away from home most of the time. That’s why Roma learned lullabies and nursery rhymes only after Katie’s birth. She sang them as if they were prizes she and Katie had won.

Mam, because of her deafness, had no way of knowing songs or rhymes. These had not been part of a deaf child’s life. The earliest language Mam had spoken was with her hands. She read lips, too, and received language through her eyes. Alert and quick, she didn’t miss much, but she could not sing or rhyme. She did know stories, however. Stories she told with her hands.

Liz and Roma watched the hand-stories and signed back to their mother. Moving hands and fingers filled the air with language. From high chair, crib, and stroller, the girls used their baby hands to speak. They learned two languages: the spoken word and American Sign Language. As they grew older, they spelled out names of people and places in sign language. They used the hand alphabet and became good spellers.

The house filled with visible language.

Eyebrows lifted, eyebrows lowered. Faces frowned or grinned or laughed or became serious or sad. Lips moved. Lips were read. With fingers, Roma and Liz wrote words in the air. To get Mam’s attention, Roma and Liz flicked light switches off and on. They tapped Mam’s arm or pulled at her skirt. They stamped their feet on hardwood floors to make the wood vibrate. Their mother felt the vibration and looked their way.

The sisters pounded their little fists on tables and chairs. They banged at walls. Doors slammed. Everyone was noisy. That’s what their house was like. Noisy.

Their mother swept the floor, picked up a waste basket, and crashed it down. Mam did not know
she was making so much noise. Upstairs, Roma and Liz shouted to each other from room to room. Mam did not know they shouted behind her back. The sisters could be wicked, and Mam wouldn’t know. How could she know, when she was deaf?

When the girls were in the same room as Mam, their behaviour changed. They did not shout. Their mother was too quick for them. If they talked behind her back, she somehow knew.

“Roma! What did you say?” Mam would ask. “I know you said something.”

“Nothing,” Roma lied.

“Liz? What did you say?”

“Nothing,” Liz lied.

But Mam knew they had spoken. She could tell by looking at their faces.

*

Roma thought about the kitchen in their house. The noisiest place of all. When Roma was a child, Mam banged pots and pans and lids and spoons. Mam taught the girls to bake. On baking days, dishes piled high in the sink. The heat of the oven filled the room. Windows clouded over with steam.

The stove in the kitchen burned coal in winter, wood in summer. On hot days when they had to cook, they burned a few sticks of wood. Just enough to heat food or cook a fast meal. In winter, the stove had to be kept going all the time.

Mam had a book called the Cook’s Book. She had written all the recipes by hand. She had been collecting these recipes ever since she’d lived at the School for the Deaf.