Listen! (5 page)

The next day, after Mother left for work, my sister and I walked beside the river.

“I should have thrown the shoes into the river,” I said. “Mother didn’t know we’d find shoes in the box. Not until she came home from work yesterday.”

But I knew our mother really couldn’t afford new shoes. I knew I’d have to wear the ugly shoes on the first day of school. And every day after that.

I hated getting on and off the school bus because I didn’t want anyone looking at my feet. When I walked in the terrible shoes, I could hear the noise of thick heels.
Clomp, clomp, clomp.
I felt as if I had flashing lights on my feet.

I knew the other girls at school talked about my shoes. No one said anything directly to me. I was already different because my parents were divorced. I was different because my parents were deaf. I wanted to fit in, and I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.

After a few weeks, the heel on one of my shoes began to loosen. It wobbled on the nails that held it. I was glad the heel had started to come off. If I could make it break, I’d get new shoes after all.

I scraped the wobbly heel against rocks. I scraped it against the floor. Everywhere I went, I tried to make the heel snap off the shoe.

At school, when the weather was good, students had to line up outside. Girls in one long line, boys in another. When the bell rang, we marched inside and went to our classrooms. Our teachers followed us into the school.

In early October, rain had fallen for days, making the ground wet and muddy. Students could not line up outside the school until the rain stopped.

When the sun shone again, I took my place in line and waited for the bell to ring. I scraped my shoe along the muddy ground. I was still trying to break the heel.

To my surprise, the wobbly heel suddenly fell off. At the same moment, the school bell rang, and students ahead of me began to move. I had to start walking, so I left my heel behind, in the mud.

Now, instead of a heel, three nails stuck out of the bottom of my shoe. I had no heel, but I had nails to walk on. Every time I took a step, the nails rang out against the floor. My broken shoe made more noise than it had before the heel fell off. I tried to walk on tiptoes down the long hall. When I reached my classroom, I quickly sat at my desk.

My teacher, Mr. Peters, came up beside me and placed the heel on my desk.

“Is this yours, Eve?” he asked. “I found it in the mud outside.”

I nodded, my face red with shame. Everyone stared at the big clunky heel on my desk.

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to press the heel back onto the nails.

When I got home from school, Mother was still at the canning factory.

I took off both shoes and ran toward the river. My sister ran along beside me.

“What are you going to do?” she said. She could see the shoes in my hand.

“I’m going to throw them in the river,” I told her.

“You’d better not, Eve,” she said. “Mother will be upset.”

“I don’t care,” I said. And I really didn’t care.

When we reached the shore, I threw the shoes as hard as I could. I watched them bob up and down in the water before they sailed away.

The next morning, I told Mother I couldn’t find my shoes. I told her I couldn’t go to school.

Mother made me look in every room of the house. She made my sister look, too. We searched until the school bus arrived. Mother had to leave for work and I still had no shoes to wear.

My sister was loyal. She did not tell on me.

I stayed home from school that day, and my sister rode the school bus without me. When Mother returned home from work, we searched for the shoes again.

Mother was not happy with me, but she finally took me to the shoe store. She had to buy me a new pair of shoes.

I never told my mother about throwing the shoes into the river.

I was not proud that I did not tell the truth. But I got to own a pair of normal-looking shoes. I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me or laughing because we were poor.

*

Because Eve knew how to perform, she made the others at the table laugh. Roma and Liz and Jessie understood Eve’s story very well.

Roma’s sister Liz worked as a musician and music teacher. She held up a black and white photo that Roma had seen before.

“I was sixteen in this photo,” said Liz, as she passed it around the table. “Roma was eighteen and had already left home. She won a scholarship and lived in residence at university. After Roma left, I lived alone with Mam. I still had two more years of high school.”

Liz continued. “The photo shows the living room of the house where Roma and I grew up. I am sitting on a piano bench, facing a piano. My
hands stretch over the keyboard, and a music book is propped in front of me. But I am not looking at the notes on the page. As you can see, I’m staring down at the keys. I have a serious look on my face.”

*

Liz’s story:

You won’t be surprised when I tell you that Mam always wished for a piano. Many of Mam’s deaf friends owned pianos. Why did deaf people want pianos?

Anyway, Mam could not afford a piano. So one of our grandmothers decided to search for one. She found and bought a second-hand piano, which she gave to Mam for her fiftieth birthday.

A big moving truck arrived at our house to deliver the piano. The following week, my grandmother paid to have the piano tuned.

Mam loved that piano. Right away, she wanted me to learn to play. I banged at the keys, but Mam didn’t want that. She wanted me to learn properly. Roma had left home, so I was the one who had to learn. That’s what Mam thought.

I had no interest in learning piano. I wanted to listen to the radio. At my high school, I had learned the words to popular songs. I began to go to school dances with my friends. I wanted to know all the songs we danced to.

My teachers knew I could sing, and I often sang in school concerts. When I performed in a concert, Mam sat in the audience. She couldn’t hear a single note. Mam also came to watch my school plays. She took her seat but did not hear a single word. She came because that’s what other mothers did.

At home, Mam used hands and voice to talk to Roma and me. At our school, Mam never spoke. She did not like to speak in front of strangers. She knew her voice was different.

Did I feel sorry for Mam? No.

Did I feel sorry for myself? No. Deafness was normal in our family.

We were different. That’s just the way things were.

When I was a teenager, I owned a bright red plastic radio. I had bought it with babysitting money, and I kept it on a living-room shelf. Every day, I turned it on as soon as I came home from school. When Mam walked into the room, she put her hand
on top of my radio. She wanted to see if it was warm, and sometimes she made me turn it off.

“The radio uses too much electricity,” she told me.

The real reason, I was sure, was that Mam didn’t know what I listened to.

As soon as she left the room, I turned on the radio again. I memorized songs. I sat at the piano and tried to play tunes with one hand.

Seeing me at the piano did make Mam happy. She stood beside me and put her hands on top of the piano. The sound from the keys vibrated through the wood while I tried to play. Mam could feel the music through her hands. That is how she
listened
to music.

Before long, I was able to play songs using both hands. I learned to play by teaching myself.

Mam must have thought I played well. She didn’t know how many wrong notes I was hitting. When we had visitors, Mam asked me to play for them. I was too shy to do so because I thought I played badly. Years later, I studied music at university. But when we first owned the piano, I had never taken lessons.

One day, three of Mam’s close friends came to visit. Her three friends were deaf. While growing up, they had all attended the Belleville school together. Mam loved having her deaf friends visit. They came once a year when Mam took holidays from work. Her friends stayed at our home for two or three nights.

With four deaf people in the house, all language was signed. Hands moved so quickly, I had to pay attention to keep up. Mam laughed more when her friends visited. By then I was old enough to understand that she was probably really lonely.

Mam asked me to play the piano for her deaf friends. I could not say no, so I sat on the piano bench and started banging away. I tried to play songs I had heard on my radio.

Mam’s friends stood close to me and put their hands on top of the piano. They could feel the music. And while I was playing, they suddenly began to dance. The women took off their shoes and danced in bare feet. Vibrations from the music could be felt through the floorboards. We had hardwood floors in our house, and the smooth wood made dancing easy. Mam and her friends twirled around the room. I kept playing. I played every song I knew.

I glanced over at Mam and her friends moving in time to the music, their feet gliding over the floor. They were silent dancers.

One of Mam’s friends wore a yellow scarf. She took it off and waved it in the air. Someone else took the other end. The two women danced with the scarf fluttering between them. I tried to watch and play the piano at the same time.

The women moved with grace and joy. They danced by themselves and with one another. When I stopped playing, they stopped dancing. They could no longer feel vibrations through the floor.

I had never known that Mam could dance. I suppose if Father had been alive, I’d have seen my parents dancing. But Father had been dead for many years.

After Mam’s friends left, I asked her, “Why didn’t you tell me you knew how to dance?”

“Because you never asked,” she said.

“What else can you do that I don’t know about?” I asked.

“I can do many things that might surprise you and Roma,” said Mam.

*

“I’ve never heard that story,” Roma said to her sister. “I love to think of Mam dancing with her friends. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because you never asked,” said Liz.

After Jessie and Eve left to go home, Liz and Roma cleaned up. They put the dishes away and sat at the kitchen table. Liz poured two glasses of wine.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I heard everyone’s stories,” said Liz.

“I liked meeting your friends,” Roma told her. “The way they grew up wasn’t so different from the way we did.”

“We all became good listeners,” said Liz.

“We had good practice. We had to be listeners for our parents,” Roma said. “Every one of us.”

“A normal part of growing up. Normal in our families, anyway,” Liz said.

“Good memory training,” Roma said. “Acting as Mam’s ears and voice for so many years helps me now. Especially the way I recall people’s faces and stories in the clinic where I work.”

“And we all speak at least two languages,” said Liz. “You and I and Jessie and Eve.”

“That’s true. We’re all bilingual—English and ASL,” said Roma. “And most of us speak French, too.”

“Do you ever wonder if we had a childhood, Roma?”

“Yes. I sometimes wonder if I was born old.”

“You were the first-born,” said Liz. “Mam relied on you. You had to mature so quickly.”

“I also thought we were the only ones who talked behind our mother’s back,” Roma said. “Somehow, I feel better knowing that Jessie and Eve did the same.”

“I turned up the volume on my radio when I was upset,” said Liz. “Just like Eve. Having all that noise around me made me feel better. Even though Mam couldn’t hear what I was doing.”

“We tried to get away with whatever we could, I guess.”

“Do you wish we’d had a different childhood?” Liz asked.

“Not at all. I was so proud of Mam. She raised us by herself after Father died. She worked at the shirt factory all those years.”

“And look at the work we do now,” said Liz. “You interpret for deaf patients at your clinic. I teach music. Jessie is an ASL interpreter. Eve works with deaf children in theatre. The four of us are in the helping professions.”