Part 20 (1/2)

”Oh no,” she said quickly. ”Not just yet. I don't think I'm quite ready. I wouldn't know what to say to him.”

”There's not much you can say to him since he's deaf,” I pointed out.

”But he can read lips, can't he?”

”It's not like they make out in the movies,” I said. ”Lip-reading comprehension among the deaf population is about 10 percent, according to some.”

”Only 10 percent can read lips?”

”No. They understand about 10 percent of what you say when they're lip-reading.”

”I thought it was much higher.”

”Only 30 to 40 percent of English words can be distinguished by visual clues, so there's a whole lot of room for error and misunderstanding.”

”Oh.”

”Sign language isn't that hard,” I said.

”I could never learn that.”

”If you want to talk to him, you don't really have a choice.”

”I wouldn't know where to begin.”

”Neither did I, when he was little.”

”It must have been hard for you....”

”It was,” I said.

”Tell me about him. Please.”

”He's amazing,” I said. ”He's sweet, he's funny, and though he doesn't look it, he's strong. He's a little fighter. He's also a lover. He loves people, loves being around them, loves making friends, loves talking to his friends. Well, signing with his friends, I should say. He's very happy and well-adjusted. Very affectionate. I don't think there's a mean bone in his body.”

”He sounds like a wonderful child.”

”He is is a wonderful child. He's got his faults and failings, of course. All meth babies do. He gets very mad sometimes, throws tantrums and stuff. Mostly it's frustration because he can't communicate, or he doesn't understand something, or he gets mad at himself and starts getting down on himself.” a wonderful child. He's got his faults and failings, of course. All meth babies do. He gets very mad sometimes, throws tantrums and stuff. Mostly it's frustration because he can't communicate, or he doesn't understand something, or he gets mad at himself and starts getting down on himself.”

”Whatever for?”

”Kids make fun of him a lot. They make him feel stupid. Then sometimes he thinks he must be stupid because they keep telling him that he's stupid.”

”That's dreadful.”

”He can't hear a thing. I know that's obvious, but if you think about it for a while, you'll realize it's not at all simple. He has to try to guess what's going on. It can be very frustrating. Potty training, for example-that was absolute h.e.l.l. I couldn't just tell him what I wanted, and why I wanted it, and why he had to do it the way I wanted it done. It took him a long time to understand what the point was. He'd pee his pants and go hide because he knew I'd be mad, but he didn't understand why I was mad, and I couldn't tell him why I was mad. I couldn't tell him what would happen if he went to school and s.h.i.+t his pants, what the other kids would do, how they'd make fun of him, how it was all for his benefit. It's stuff like that. It can be very frustrating. Sometimes all that frustration builds up into a big tantrum.”

”I guess it would be frustrating.”

”Somebody told me a long time ago it was pointless to tell him that I loved him, that I had to show him. Took me a while to figure that out.”

”I don't understand.”

”Well, 'love' is just a word. It doesn't have a lot of context unless you show him what that context is. If you hold him, hug him, kiss him, hold his hand-that's love. It's very physical. It's something he can a.s.sociate with the word 'love.' Love means getting a smile and a kiss and a hug and all that stuff. Love means someone giving you a bath or buying you an ice cream cone. Deaf kids are very physical, always touching you, holding on to you, always checking in with you, and that's why Noah checks in with me every time he sees me. He won't be happy unless he can actually touch me, not just look at me or say hi, but actually come up and make physical contact like he has to rea.s.sure himself that I'm still there. Your body is like a map-and they can read that map. They may not be able to understand what the word 'disappointment' actually means, but they know it when they see it in your face. Since they can't hear you, they have to rely on seeing you to understand what you're talking about.”

”Mr. Warren is not the world's most affectionate man,” she pointed out.

”From what I've seen, neither is his wife.”

She admitted rather ruefully that was true.

”Getting involved with the deaf is not for the faint of heart,” I said. ”They look at you. They see see you.” you.”

”I imagine he does.”

”On the other hand, they live in their own world, and it's not that you're not invited, it's just that you don't live in that world of silence with them. So there's always a distance, a bridge you can't cross over, places you can't get to.”

”Sort of like being gay,” she observed, glancing at me and offering a smile as she said this to indicate that she meant no disrespect.

”Kind of,” I agreed. ”I guess we both live in our own worlds that outsiders can't get to. I never thought of it that way.”

”You're just as strange to me as he is,” she said, looking at me now, her gaze frank and suddenly unafraid. ”You can't know how much I've tried to understand you, Wiley. At the end of the day, I don't understand. I was always taught....”

She trailed off, then smiled.

”I guess there's no need to tell you about that,” she added.

No, there wasn't.

”I grew up in Jackson,” she said, folding her hands over her laps. ”During the 1960s. During the Civil Rights Movement. I saw all of it. The riots, the protests. All that fuss at Ole Miss when James Meredith enrolled. The murders. But you know what I remember?”

I raised my eyebrows.

”I remember Woolworth's in Jackson because my father worked there. I remember seeing a picture in a magazine of one of those lunch counter protests. And I knew that lunch counter, because I had sat there often waiting for my daddy to finish work and take me home. At that time, it was whites only, of course. But in this picture, they were trying to integrate the counter and there were a bunch of whites standing behind them, dumping food on their heads, laughing, making fun of them, with the police standing outside and doing nothing-and I remember staring at that picture all evening long. It was shocking. It opened my eyes to the world that I lived in. It showed me what that world was. Of course, everyone was talking about all of it, the protests, the killings, all of that, and I listened to it and never understood it until I saw that picture. Those black folks weren't hurting anyone, just sitting there and letting the people dump food on their heads. It made me sick inside. It was so stupid. And there were white folks sitting at that counter with them, trying to help them, and getting food dumped on them too because they were what we used to call race traitors.”

She fell quiet for a moment, rubbing her hands together.

”I grew up Baptist,” she said. ”I had a crisis of faith after all of that settled down. I had to ask myself how my church could have gotten it so wrong. All of it. Blacks. Slavery. Race. Thinking we were superior, that G.o.d wanted us to have slaves, that blacks deserved to be slaves. How could we have been so wrong, Wiley?”

She seemed like she really wanted an answer.

I had no answer.

”I tell you all of that as a way of explaining that when I look at you, I think about that picture, Wiley, and I have the same feelings in my heart, the same confusion and doubt. I know what my religion tells me. I know what society says about people like you. But you're nothing like what I've been told. My daughter ran off on her responsibilities. You stayed. We offered you a way to walk out. You refused. Ten years later, there you are, and there's my grandson, and you're at the prison waiting for my daughter to be released. My daughter! You're the one who's supposed to be the criminal, or mentally unbalanced, or unfit, but you've done your duty, you've raised this difficult child, and I didn't do a thing to help because I was afraid of what my husband would say, or what my church would say, or what people would think. I just thought to myself how ridiculous it all is. How stupid. I've been just as bad as my daughter, walking away from my responsibilities to my own flesh and blood because my church said I was supposed to. I'm not sure I have much faith in my church to tell me the proper way to deal with h.o.m.os.e.xual people.”

”Gay is the new black,” I pointed out.