Sign Language
by Mary Tischler
The woman in the seat next to mine smiled and looked away quickly as I put my suitcase up in the overhead bin and sat down. She gazed out the window where men with thick earphones waved orange light sticks around in some strange aeronautic alphabet of directional signals. She was gazing and sketching in a notepad.
I took her quiet nod of head and her terse smile to mean simply that she was one of "those" airplane passengers, the "silent type". But when the flight attendant came around to bring drinks, this woman could not ask for what she wanted. What I mean is, she could only mouth the words and no sound came out, just a slight hiss of air. She was hand-signaling to the flight attendant, right in front of my face, her fingers in the shape of a "C".
"A 'C' for coke?" asked the flight attendant. No, no, the woman shook her head. She flipped the cover of her small, spiral bound steno notepad over and with her pen wrote "cranberry juice" and held it up for the flight attendant to see. The flight attendant said "Ah" and motioned with her hands the OK sign. She rummaged through her cart to find a cranberry juice, a plastic glass, some ice, a napkin, and handed the drink to me. I placed it on the woman's tray. "I'll have the same," I said. I looked over to the young woman and smiled. She smiled meekly and nodded at me, peering out from behind a few strands of blond hair covering her right eye.
The wall between us fell, the invisible barrier now pierced. I saw her more clearly and I could feel myself becoming visible as well. She had lips as rosy and natural as her cheeks, and faint wisps of blond hair on the skin at the base of her jaw, just under her ears. But her eyes, though smiling, seemed tired, streaked red, and the skin underneath them drooped and was darkened.
She motioned with her hand at me a "hello" and took a sip of her cranberry juice. She picked up her steno pad again and handed it to me tentatively. In all she had three different steno pads, with many different messages, although they all started the same. I read them all. This is how they started.
On the first page, "I lost my voice." I glanced a concerned look her way.
On the second page, "I must apologize." No, no, I shook my head. It's OK, I motioned.
On the third page, "I am not deaf, I can hear you, I am just mute." I embarrassingly put my hand down.
And on the fourth page, "My grandma says my voice was stolen by the nightingale, who was consumed by jealousy. The nightingale thought no voice could be more beautiful than her own, but when she heard mine she was ashamed of her voice and stole mine away, so that no one might hear it and say it is more beautiful. But my grandmother says that one day, when the wind is right, my voice will be carried back to me, tied to the ankle of a pigeon, transcribed by a legendary king in some far away palace, who tricked the nightingale into revealing where she had gotten the second voice that sung in harmony with her own. I am to swallow that note, and my voice will return."
That was the end of the similarities between the notepads. As I flipped through them quickly, I could see that each book went on with different stories about voice, or foreign languages and their translations, or sketches of symbols in different sign "languages", and their meanings, page after page. On the very last few pages of one of the steno books were the drawings of the men on the tarmac, ears protected, orange light sticks in various formations against the double yellow streaked pavement, against the white cloud streaked sky.
I turned the steno books around and started flipping the pages in the other direction. On these pages were simple words, or commands, like "thank you" or "one moment" or "more coffee, please" or "cranberry juice". Some were scribbled in large letters, alone on the page; some were crowded together at various angles. I wondered if she ever tired of it, if she ever wanted just to give in and throw up her hands.
Fascinated by the first story about her grandmother, birds and kings, I mouthed to her, trying to ask if I could read further. Her face fell, with a look of frustrated disappointment. She flipped me back to the third page, "I am not deaf . . .". She poked at the page with her index finger, pointed to her ears, and then cupped her right hand over her ear to listen to me.
"I am so sorry," I immediately stammered, whispering at first until she cupped her hand over her ear more forcefully and I realized I needed to talk to her like a normal person, with a normal voice, so she could hear me. "Thank you," I said. "This is so interesting."
I continued to read.
"My grandmother promised God that until Elvis was found alive and well that she would not speak a word lest her granddaughter be struck dumb. Well, Elvis hasn't been found yet and Grandma broke her promise when she yelled 'Ow' out loud after she fell down and broke her hip. I didn't think that would count, but it did. So now I can't talk. If you see Elvis, tell him to go public for me, will you? I want my voice back."
"Grandma says in my former life I must have been a tree, because trees don't talk. Grandma says my illness must have reawakened my former tree self and suppressed my voice. I asked her what kind of tree I was supposed to be. Grandma sighed deeply and took a deep breath up her nose. 'Sycamore,' she said. 'You must have been a Sycamore because that's what you smell like.' I wrote that it was probably just my shampoo. She looked at me and said simply, 'So?'"
"Grandma said she saw a medicine man hovering over me when I was very ill. That night when Grandma went to bed the medicine man visited her in her dreams. She begged him to help me. He said there wasn't anything he could do, but he could take my voice with him, to the land of the ancestors, so that I could ask them for help in healing. The next day I woke up and I could not speak, but I felt much better. Grandma told me about the medicine man. We're still waiting for him to make his way back. Grandma says she thinks he got lost, but I don't think he'll ever come back. Still, we put a big sign up on the roof for him."
I kept flipping the pages and on each one a new story or drawing appeared. On one page was a secret code for the alphabet and some words written out in the code with their English translations underneath like "takes . . your . . breath . . away" or "flowers . . have . . language . . too . . a . . language . . of . . petals". On another page were drawings of finger positions for American sign language. On another were drawings of molecular chains written out in scientific nomenclature. On still another were drawings of Navajo symbols; I noticed the one for "happiness" placed next to the one for "rain".
The stories and pictures went on until at long last I reached the end of the third book, all the while exclaiming, in a normal voice now, how wonderfully creative it was, and how strange it must be not to be able to talk. She motioned and then wrote, "No, no. I can talk, you can see that here on these pages, and with my hands, can't you?"
"But what I mean is, don't you find it difficult? Or should I say, don't other people find it difficult to talk with you, and not just to you?"
She wrote, "Of course, sometimes. That's the problem. Most people just talk at me. They don't have the patience to talk with me. To read my notes. They treat me as if all I need is a cranberry juice, or a sandwich, or to use the bathroom. They point a lot. It's comical sometimes, but mostly sad. It gives me a lot of time, anyway, to come up with these stories." Her eyes still drooped, but she had a soft twinkle in them. I could see now that they were blue, in the pale and diffused light of the airplane's cabin.
I was enchanted, but I was also curious. I wanted to know exactly how she had lost her voice, or if she ever really had it to begin with. "So . .", I approached the subject with hesitation. She swept her bangs away from her face, and they stuck behind her ear for a few moments. "Have you always been mute? " She shook her head no. "Well," I went on. "How did you lose your voice, then? Really, I mean?"
She looked at me with such a sadness in her face I immediately regretted asking her. She looked away out the window, tears welling up in her eyes. I wondered if the invisible wall was coming back up, but she wiped her eyes, looked back in my direction, picked up her steno pad and wrote, "So, where are you going?"
We continued with light conversation from this point, me talking and talking and she scribbling and scribbling. I tried to write out for her some nautical flags that a friend of mine had taught me. He had designed some T-shirts and used nautical flags to spell out "DO ME" on the front of the shirt. I could feel her laughter shake our row of seats. Nothing but silent air came out of her throat. I wished that I could tell her more about the signs for nautical flags, or the Navajo symbols I had learned, but I couldn't remember much about them. I made a mental note to myself not to let the study of these things get away from me. She said she has studied all kinds of signs now.
As our light hearted conversation continued, I could not help but bring it back around again to her voice--or her lack thereof. Over the gentle rumbling of the jet engines, and with the recircled breath of everyone in the plane, I told her, "You know, you should think about getting this published or something." She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders, shaking her head. She picked up the steno pad on her tray table, pressed it to her heart, and hugged it.
"No," she wrote, "too personal."
Just as the flight attendants started to prepare for landing and the ground loomed up at us ever closer, the blond woman, whose name I learned was Clara, pulled out a fourth notebook from the bag below the seat in front of her. She wrote on the first page and flipped it over. She paused. Then she began writing on the second page, and brought the cover of the steno pad over and closed it up. She turned her hair swept face toward me and looked at me with her blue eyes. She played with the spiral wire on the notebook, plucking at it like a guitar. It made my teeth hurt and suddenly I could taste the metal fillings in my mouth.
"What?" I said, and she finally pushed the fourth spiral notepad against my chest, my hands fumbling for it. She turned away and looked out the window at the darkening sky, the rising ground.
I flipped the top cover over and read the first page. "I am not really mute," it read. "I can find my voice again and you can help." I looked up at her astonished. I thought maybe it was a joke, maybe she wanted to believe her voice would come back by some miraculous Elvis appearance, or homing pigeon showing up at her windowsill. She motioned for me to keep going, read the next page.
I flipped the first page over and read the next. "All you need to do is take this piece of gum and this pen and write 'Honor' on the gum. When I eat the gum, my voice will come back." She smiled shyly at me and held up a pen and a piece of gum that had been in her shirt pocket.
"OK, what the hell? Why not?" I said. I took the piece of gum and I took the pen, pulled the seat tray down in front of me and wrote "HONOR" on one side of the gum wrapper. She reached for it but I stopped her hand. I turned the gum over and wrote "HOPE" on the other side, and handed the piece to her.
"Maam . . . your tray . . . we're landing, please bring your tray . . ." The flight attendant grabbed at my tray before I could and closed it up before she could finish telling me to do it myself.
Clara took the piece of gum, looked at both sides lovingly and sighed. She unwrapped it carefully, folded the wrapper and put it in her pocket. She placed the gum in her mouth and chewed. She chewed and chewed and the plane wobbled and surged and suddenly the ground rushed up to us, the wheels hit, the force threw us gently back in our chairs. We had landed.
The plane quieted down again as we taxied to the gate. Clara was still chewing and she leaned over to me. In a faint, ever so slight voice, she whispered, "Thanks. I'm not really mute. My grandmother died two weeks ago and I haven't talked since. We were very close." She drew her head back as she saw my eyes widen. "You're not mad, are you?" she whispered, as tears began to well up again in her eyes.
What could I say? I shook my head slowly, from left to right, grabbed one of her books, and pointed to the third page that read "I am not deaf . . ."
I was simply speechless.
I was not in the least bit angry. If I could one day have a granddaughter such as her, I would be the happiest grandmother ever. Memories of my own grandmothers passed through my head, and lingered with me for the entire drive home. As I left I said to her, "You keep it up. You're a wonderful young woman. Don't you worry. Your grandmother's memory will always be alive in you." The words floated out of me as if I wasn't even saying them. I didn't really know what to say. I wanted to say something nice. Something encouraging. Something soothing. Somehow her silence suddenly made the most sense to me now.
I took my place in line and started walking out of the plane, leaving her behind. I was silent now, except for the thoughts in my head, walking out into the crazy Michigan winter--humid, wet, 61 degrees. I didn't look back and I never saw Clara again. But somehow I know she is talking and singing and laughing and screaming her "Yawp" again, now, out to the world.
I took her quiet nod of head and her terse smile to mean simply that she was one of "those" airplane passengers, the "silent type". But when the flight attendant came around to bring drinks, this woman could not ask for what she wanted. What I mean is, she could only mouth the words and no sound came out, just a slight hiss of air. She was hand-signaling to the flight attendant, right in front of my face, her fingers in the shape of a "C".
"A 'C' for coke?" asked the flight attendant. No, no, the woman shook her head. She flipped the cover of her small, spiral bound steno notepad over and with her pen wrote "cranberry juice" and held it up for the flight attendant to see. The flight attendant said "Ah" and motioned with her hands the OK sign. She rummaged through her cart to find a cranberry juice, a plastic glass, some ice, a napkin, and handed the drink to me. I placed it on the woman's tray. "I'll have the same," I said. I looked over to the young woman and smiled. She smiled meekly and nodded at me, peering out from behind a few strands of blond hair covering her right eye.
The wall between us fell, the invisible barrier now pierced. I saw her more clearly and I could feel myself becoming visible as well. She had lips as rosy and natural as her cheeks, and faint wisps of blond hair on the skin at the base of her jaw, just under her ears. But her eyes, though smiling, seemed tired, streaked red, and the skin underneath them drooped and was darkened.
She motioned with her hand at me a "hello" and took a sip of her cranberry juice. She picked up her steno pad again and handed it to me tentatively. In all she had three different steno pads, with many different messages, although they all started the same. I read them all. This is how they started.
On the first page, "I lost my voice." I glanced a concerned look her way.
On the second page, "I must apologize." No, no, I shook my head. It's OK, I motioned.
On the third page, "I am not deaf, I can hear you, I am just mute." I embarrassingly put my hand down.
And on the fourth page, "My grandma says my voice was stolen by the nightingale, who was consumed by jealousy. The nightingale thought no voice could be more beautiful than her own, but when she heard mine she was ashamed of her voice and stole mine away, so that no one might hear it and say it is more beautiful. But my grandmother says that one day, when the wind is right, my voice will be carried back to me, tied to the ankle of a pigeon, transcribed by a legendary king in some far away palace, who tricked the nightingale into revealing where she had gotten the second voice that sung in harmony with her own. I am to swallow that note, and my voice will return."
That was the end of the similarities between the notepads. As I flipped through them quickly, I could see that each book went on with different stories about voice, or foreign languages and their translations, or sketches of symbols in different sign "languages", and their meanings, page after page. On the very last few pages of one of the steno books were the drawings of the men on the tarmac, ears protected, orange light sticks in various formations against the double yellow streaked pavement, against the white cloud streaked sky.
I turned the steno books around and started flipping the pages in the other direction. On these pages were simple words, or commands, like "thank you" or "one moment" or "more coffee, please" or "cranberry juice". Some were scribbled in large letters, alone on the page; some were crowded together at various angles. I wondered if she ever tired of it, if she ever wanted just to give in and throw up her hands.
Fascinated by the first story about her grandmother, birds and kings, I mouthed to her, trying to ask if I could read further. Her face fell, with a look of frustrated disappointment. She flipped me back to the third page, "I am not deaf . . .". She poked at the page with her index finger, pointed to her ears, and then cupped her right hand over her ear to listen to me.
"I am so sorry," I immediately stammered, whispering at first until she cupped her hand over her ear more forcefully and I realized I needed to talk to her like a normal person, with a normal voice, so she could hear me. "Thank you," I said. "This is so interesting."
I continued to read.
"My grandmother promised God that until Elvis was found alive and well that she would not speak a word lest her granddaughter be struck dumb. Well, Elvis hasn't been found yet and Grandma broke her promise when she yelled 'Ow' out loud after she fell down and broke her hip. I didn't think that would count, but it did. So now I can't talk. If you see Elvis, tell him to go public for me, will you? I want my voice back."
"Grandma says in my former life I must have been a tree, because trees don't talk. Grandma says my illness must have reawakened my former tree self and suppressed my voice. I asked her what kind of tree I was supposed to be. Grandma sighed deeply and took a deep breath up her nose. 'Sycamore,' she said. 'You must have been a Sycamore because that's what you smell like.' I wrote that it was probably just my shampoo. She looked at me and said simply, 'So?'"
"Grandma said she saw a medicine man hovering over me when I was very ill. That night when Grandma went to bed the medicine man visited her in her dreams. She begged him to help me. He said there wasn't anything he could do, but he could take my voice with him, to the land of the ancestors, so that I could ask them for help in healing. The next day I woke up and I could not speak, but I felt much better. Grandma told me about the medicine man. We're still waiting for him to make his way back. Grandma says she thinks he got lost, but I don't think he'll ever come back. Still, we put a big sign up on the roof for him."
I kept flipping the pages and on each one a new story or drawing appeared. On one page was a secret code for the alphabet and some words written out in the code with their English translations underneath like "takes . . your . . breath . . away" or "flowers . . have . . language . . too . . a . . language . . of . . petals". On another page were drawings of finger positions for American sign language. On another were drawings of molecular chains written out in scientific nomenclature. On still another were drawings of Navajo symbols; I noticed the one for "happiness" placed next to the one for "rain".
The stories and pictures went on until at long last I reached the end of the third book, all the while exclaiming, in a normal voice now, how wonderfully creative it was, and how strange it must be not to be able to talk. She motioned and then wrote, "No, no. I can talk, you can see that here on these pages, and with my hands, can't you?"
"But what I mean is, don't you find it difficult? Or should I say, don't other people find it difficult to talk with you, and not just to you?"
She wrote, "Of course, sometimes. That's the problem. Most people just talk at me. They don't have the patience to talk with me. To read my notes. They treat me as if all I need is a cranberry juice, or a sandwich, or to use the bathroom. They point a lot. It's comical sometimes, but mostly sad. It gives me a lot of time, anyway, to come up with these stories." Her eyes still drooped, but she had a soft twinkle in them. I could see now that they were blue, in the pale and diffused light of the airplane's cabin.
I was enchanted, but I was also curious. I wanted to know exactly how she had lost her voice, or if she ever really had it to begin with. "So . .", I approached the subject with hesitation. She swept her bangs away from her face, and they stuck behind her ear for a few moments. "Have you always been mute? " She shook her head no. "Well," I went on. "How did you lose your voice, then? Really, I mean?"
She looked at me with such a sadness in her face I immediately regretted asking her. She looked away out the window, tears welling up in her eyes. I wondered if the invisible wall was coming back up, but she wiped her eyes, looked back in my direction, picked up her steno pad and wrote, "So, where are you going?"
We continued with light conversation from this point, me talking and talking and she scribbling and scribbling. I tried to write out for her some nautical flags that a friend of mine had taught me. He had designed some T-shirts and used nautical flags to spell out "DO ME" on the front of the shirt. I could feel her laughter shake our row of seats. Nothing but silent air came out of her throat. I wished that I could tell her more about the signs for nautical flags, or the Navajo symbols I had learned, but I couldn't remember much about them. I made a mental note to myself not to let the study of these things get away from me. She said she has studied all kinds of signs now.
As our light hearted conversation continued, I could not help but bring it back around again to her voice--or her lack thereof. Over the gentle rumbling of the jet engines, and with the recircled breath of everyone in the plane, I told her, "You know, you should think about getting this published or something." She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders, shaking her head. She picked up the steno pad on her tray table, pressed it to her heart, and hugged it.
"No," she wrote, "too personal."
Just as the flight attendants started to prepare for landing and the ground loomed up at us ever closer, the blond woman, whose name I learned was Clara, pulled out a fourth notebook from the bag below the seat in front of her. She wrote on the first page and flipped it over. She paused. Then she began writing on the second page, and brought the cover of the steno pad over and closed it up. She turned her hair swept face toward me and looked at me with her blue eyes. She played with the spiral wire on the notebook, plucking at it like a guitar. It made my teeth hurt and suddenly I could taste the metal fillings in my mouth.
"What?" I said, and she finally pushed the fourth spiral notepad against my chest, my hands fumbling for it. She turned away and looked out the window at the darkening sky, the rising ground.
I flipped the top cover over and read the first page. "I am not really mute," it read. "I can find my voice again and you can help." I looked up at her astonished. I thought maybe it was a joke, maybe she wanted to believe her voice would come back by some miraculous Elvis appearance, or homing pigeon showing up at her windowsill. She motioned for me to keep going, read the next page.
I flipped the first page over and read the next. "All you need to do is take this piece of gum and this pen and write 'Honor' on the gum. When I eat the gum, my voice will come back." She smiled shyly at me and held up a pen and a piece of gum that had been in her shirt pocket.
"OK, what the hell? Why not?" I said. I took the piece of gum and I took the pen, pulled the seat tray down in front of me and wrote "HONOR" on one side of the gum wrapper. She reached for it but I stopped her hand. I turned the gum over and wrote "HOPE" on the other side, and handed the piece to her.
"Maam . . . your tray . . . we're landing, please bring your tray . . ." The flight attendant grabbed at my tray before I could and closed it up before she could finish telling me to do it myself.
Clara took the piece of gum, looked at both sides lovingly and sighed. She unwrapped it carefully, folded the wrapper and put it in her pocket. She placed the gum in her mouth and chewed. She chewed and chewed and the plane wobbled and surged and suddenly the ground rushed up to us, the wheels hit, the force threw us gently back in our chairs. We had landed.
The plane quieted down again as we taxied to the gate. Clara was still chewing and she leaned over to me. In a faint, ever so slight voice, she whispered, "Thanks. I'm not really mute. My grandmother died two weeks ago and I haven't talked since. We were very close." She drew her head back as she saw my eyes widen. "You're not mad, are you?" she whispered, as tears began to well up again in her eyes.
What could I say? I shook my head slowly, from left to right, grabbed one of her books, and pointed to the third page that read "I am not deaf . . ."
I was simply speechless.
I was not in the least bit angry. If I could one day have a granddaughter such as her, I would be the happiest grandmother ever. Memories of my own grandmothers passed through my head, and lingered with me for the entire drive home. As I left I said to her, "You keep it up. You're a wonderful young woman. Don't you worry. Your grandmother's memory will always be alive in you." The words floated out of me as if I wasn't even saying them. I didn't really know what to say. I wanted to say something nice. Something encouraging. Something soothing. Somehow her silence suddenly made the most sense to me now.
I took my place in line and started walking out of the plane, leaving her behind. I was silent now, except for the thoughts in my head, walking out into the crazy Michigan winter--humid, wet, 61 degrees. I didn't look back and I never saw Clara again. But somehow I know she is talking and singing and laughing and screaming her "Yawp" again, now, out to the world.
