Big D Little d
"I am not Deaf," I told her, "I am deaf." I made air quotes with the first "Deaf." Honestly, I didn't expect her to understand. She was hearing. But her thick brown eyebrows pushed in toward her nose, wrinkling over it, making her look adorably confused. She hadn't looked all that remarkable to me until then. I hadn't noticed her hazel eyes until her dark brow forced my eyes up from her lips.
Despite what anyone thinks about lipreading, it's 70 percent guesswork. Some mouths are easier to read than others and I'm sure that's why I started talking to Hollisha. Her mouth was perfect. Each time she said her name, I got chills. It was an extraordinary provocative combination of shapes for a woman's name. The "O" at that beginning put her mouth in the position for dirty thoughts and the "lish" gave a hint of tongue and teeth. The entire name finished off with "a," leaving her lips parted as she eased into a smile.
She smiled a lot and her bright white teeth stood out against her caramel colored skin.
"I wasn't raised deaf, with ASL and around other deaf people. So I'm considered deaf with a little d in Deaf culture. I was mainstreamed in school." My hands itched to sign the words instead of speak them, but I knew it would just distract her and her eyes would be focused on my hands, instead of on my face. I liked her focus on my face, where I could subtly scan hers. My vision wandered from her lips to the rest of her face. There was a gentle blush on the apple of her cheeks and she would chew on the inside of her lip from time to time. I thought about taking a step back. Hearing people were odd about their personal space, and uncomfortable with the constant eye contact, but Hollisha was bold. She stood straight and faced you, meeting your eyes when she spoke.
"Mainstreamed?" Her head tilted. Kinky golden brown curls flopped then bounced from their resting place on her shoulder. I couldn't stop my eyes from going just a little lower. The view just below the barely tamed curls looked like a pleasant handful, two pleasant handfuls, to be precise. She had nice breasts. Normally I would use the word 'tits,' but something about her made that and any crude word seem wrong to use, even in my head.
I quickly forced my eyes back to her mouth, even though I was finding it just as provocative. "I went to a regular public school," I told her.
"Where did you learn sign language?" she asked. Her gaze softened, like the angle of her shoulders.
A lump formed at the base of my throat and stuck there, my pulse thumping past it, trying to shove it out of place. I should ask her out. I should have told her that I would teach her everything there is to know about how to speak with your body. I should have promised her that my hands would teach her more about communication than any other guy could, because I knew how to use them for more than writing and jacking off. But in the end, I just told her about my ASL classes in high school. She listened politely, smiling and nodding until someone came by and tugged her arm.
"Oh, I have to go," she apologized as she started to pull away. "My next class is starting." She took one step backwards, smiling regretfully. "Well..." She took another step away, still facing me. "I'll see you next Monday!"
She didn't turn away until then. She had wanted me to stop her. The realization made the lump grow in my throat. She had done it slowly, deliberately. She had given me the time I needed to keep her from walking away.
I should have stopped her, asked her for an email. I could have made an excuse for that. I might miss a class, maybe she could fill me in. We could study together. I should have asked for a phone number to text her at. I had the same excuses there. But I just let her walk away from me. I could only admire the rear view for a bit before she disappeared into the crowd.
My hands feeling free at last, I finger-spelled her name in the air. Hollisha. It felt good. Active. Pretty.
I hadn't been in the 'Deaf' community until college. They accepted me like a lost sheep coming back to the fold. A lost sheep whose parents were hearing, so of course they couldn't understand, and what a shame they didn't teach me in my own 'native' language: sign language. I knew exactly what they would tell me when I said I met a girl, a hearing girl. They would say: "Peter, it wouldn't work. It's like a Jew dating a Muslim, there's just too much distance and ambivalence between the hearing and Deaf cultures."
Maybe they were right, but luckily for me... I didn't really care.
---------Part 2---------Holisha----------
"If the world were perfect," I said, "I could get paid for talking all day."
"Hollisha, you crazy." Danique slapped my arm lightly and swayed back, a grin lighting up her dark skinned face. I smiled wryly back, but I didn't really feel it.
My mother hated when black people 'talked' black. She said it showed a willful desire to undo everything black leaders had achieved during the civil rights movement. She said the black community wasn't interested in moving forward, but in proving how truly ignorant they are when they spoke like 'poor black trash from the cotton field' after having equal schooling and opportunity. "Did Martin Luther King Jr speak that way?" she would ask every time one of her children slipped into 'Ebonics.'
The sign language book was in my lap, hidden from Danique's view. I wasn't taking ASL. I had no real reason for studying it except that I knew I'd see Peter in History class and I thought it would be cool to be able to say a few things to him in sign language. After all, I knew how to greet people in Spanish, French, and Portugese. I could say 'where's my pencil' in Russian and 'thank you' in Japanese. I liked languages and I liked learning, but I didn't want to answer a bunch of questions on why I was studying something not on my class list. I would get teased. I was always teased for reading in high school. "Did Martin Luther King Jr. make fun of people for getting A's in class?" My mother would say. She had a series of lectures in her head that she repeated every time we had some problem she thought was the fault of 'black thinking.'
I had white friends too, lots of them, but as soon as a white person sat down in the group, everyone spoke the same King's English that my mother was so insistent we speak at home. Her mother had been the same with her, and was with the grand kids. There was no 'po' people, they were 'poor'. There was no 'fixin' to' there was "I'm going to" in her house. Though Gran never brought up Dr. King like he was the Messiah of the black people. She had Jesus in that place.
I slipped the ASL book into my book bag and stood. "I've got history class now."
"Are you going to Tia's party on Friday?"
"Maybe." I pursed my lips and shrugged, non-committal.
Danique smirked. "Isha, you are the only person I know in college who thinks weekends are for studying."
I laughed and waved as I walked away.
There was something genetically wrong with me that made me early to every appointment. I blamed that on my father's race. White people were pleased with punctuality. My father was a detective and had been on the police force since before I was born. His hair was as light as my mother's was dark. They were like yin and yang when they stood together. White and black. I guess that makes me balanced somehow.
I sat in the empty classroom and opened my book.
----------Part 3-----------Peter------------------
I touched her.
I thought I'd go to class early, so I could see her when she came in, but she was already there. She looked up the moment I was on the other side of the doorway and smiled. I could feel my heart thud like a lead hammer, stuck on a hot anvil. Thump... Thump... Thump... My insides moved like time had slowed in that moment and I knew something was going to happen.
Her hands moved, curled, came together. The fingers of one hand rotated against the other and then she pointed at me. I was trying to put that smile on her face into my permanent memory banks. She looked angelic. Her hair was like a curly halo around her. It looked perfectly golden until she frowned.
My heart skipped, then went into fast forward. I focused as she repeated the hand movements. "How are you?" she signed, though it was a bit awkward.
I opened my right hand and tapped my thumb against my chest. "Fine," I signed back. I could feel my grin spreading from ear to ear.
She liked me.
At least she liked me enough to learn how to sign "how are you," which was a good start, right? I don't know what possessed me to sit by her, lean over the back of the chair and take her hands in mine. My body tightened when the blush spread across her cheeks. It must be something to be able to make skin like hers blush, right?
She didn't pull away. She let me take control of her hands. I tried to ignore her hazel eyes and focused instead on her hands. I curled her fingers with mine and then moved her hands gently into the correct positions for "how." Her fingers were strong, but her hands were soft. Pliable and cooperating, I repeated the motions with her.
Something clicked in my head, or maybe it was my mind.
Have you ever felt like you were a lost piece of a puzzle, wandering around looking for that space you belonged in? I felt suddenly and wholly pushed into place. My hands were still over hers when her eyes flashed up toward the door. She pulled her hands away, putting them in her lap and I followed her gaze. My interpreter had entered the room.
Hollisha was blushing more now, but so was I. I could feel the tingling heat spread over my cheeks. We didn't say anything to each other for the rest of class, but my hands still felt her warmth. And no matter how much the professor talked about the Civil war, all I could think of was: I touched her...
-----------------Part 4------------------Hollisha-----------------
"I gave him my number," I said, retying the ribbon on my kimono blouse. I leaned forward in the drivers seat, pulled down the sunshade and flipped up the cover on the lighted mirror.
"Your number?" Chenda asked. Her round face was heavy with question. "Your phone number? I thought you said he was deaf." She was like I was, in a way. Half Asian and half white, caught up in a culture war in her own family. She looked like such a mutt, her brown eyes were almond-shaped but not slanted, her face round without a broad forehead. Her hair was dark brown, not inky black like her relatives, and luckily for her, straight hair was in.
"He is deaf," I replied, touching up my lipstick. I preferred light shades of pink and plum, though everyone tried to convince me I was 'warm' skinned and I needed reds and golds. "He calls me on something called Instant Relay... I think. He called me every day, twice on Thursday."
"How does that work?" She was still looking at me. I could see her fine black eyebrows shooting up and down with each question.
"Some guy, or even a woman, is on the other side, telling me what he's typing. I think he does it on the computer or something..." I shrugged, closed my lipstick and tossed it back in my black and pink sequined Hello Kitty handbag. "I have to wait for him to type something, then I talk, then I have to say 'ga,' which means 'go ahead.' Hello, ga. How are you? GA. I'm fine, ga." I laughed. "It's like I'm in the army!"
"That's ... weird." She shook her head and opened the passenger door to get out.
I pulled the strap of my handbag over my arm and exited with her.
"Thanks for coming Isha, I know you hate these things." Chenda pressed her thin lips together, looking through her artificially enhanced lashes at me. "I'm sure I'm not the only one who will need a designated driver."
I shrugged. "You can always count on the Mormon girl to drive sober." I smiled, thankful for all those acting classes.
She took a step toward me and put a hand on my arm. "Please don't call the cops if you see someone doing drugs. You promised." Her eyes were focused like a laser on mine.
"I won't call the cops," I promised... again. In my mind, I already had a back up plan. I would just call 911. That's not really the cops and I could do it completely anonymous.
"It's why no one invites you to these parties," she emphasized to me.
I nodded my head. It didn't really bother me that I didn't get invited. I hated going to places filled with smoke and pot, having to breathe it in. I would go home smelling exactly like all of the things I hadn't done there. But even when I didn't go, I still got called to give my drunken friends a ride home. I wished there were more good Mormon girls here, we could hang out. There were more here in Houston where I was going to school, but half the people I ran into thought Mormon was some sort of foreign entree.
"I'll be good," I told her. I always was.
--------------------------------part 5----------------------------Peter-----------------------
I asked her out, but Hollisha said she was busy Saturday and for some reason, Sunday wasn't even an option for her. I found out she was going to a party Saturday evening "with a friend." I hoped it wasn't some other guy. It took some genuine detective work to find out where the party was. She'd given me the name of the hostess and even the area of Houston it would be in: The Heights. Asking around on campus, I found out more details and put it all together.
I hadn't been in Houston for long, and most of my forays off of the campus had been few and far between. Frankly, it was a pain in the ass to go off campus. I had to pay extra attention in the supermarket, look over my shoulder constantly to check if someone behind their cart was saying 'excuse me,' trying to get past.
I had a good voice. I hadn't gone deaf until I was six or seven. I already knew how to speak. But in many ways, speaking to the hearing only exaggerated the problem of not being able to understand them. They would rattle on, treat me like one of them. While it was easy to read Hollisha (she kept her eyes on me and her face up), other people were always looking up or down, side to side. It wasn't the Texas twang that got me--I grew up in Louisiana--it was the international nature of Houston and the myriad of accents. Convenience stores and fast food places were the worst. People with foreign tongues and strange accents were always behind the counter, looking down to check the order, over their shoulder to shout something to the kitchen. I tried to stick to places I knew and people that knew me.
I hated communicating via notebook. I always had one when I went out, and a nice black ink pen, but it made me feel like an alien. But the great thing about college parties was the music was always so loud, everyone there was effectively deaf. They spoke with gestures and exaggerated pronunciation. They communicated exactly the way I did.
I only asked two questions when I arrived: "Have you seen Hollisha," and: "Where is the beer?" The later I only needed to ask once before I was led to the stack of 12 packs. I left a donation in the jar for the first round.
I had been 21 for half a year, but college had made me a social drinker long before that. I liked the buzz and the way alcohol warmed me on the inside. It didn't take long for me to get drunk at the party. I hadn't meant to, but there was all this free beer.
Something about getting sloshed made me shorter tempered. It's not like I had a long fuse to start with. When I bumped into the big guy, I couldn't understand what he was saying, but it was clear he had a short fuse too. There was a question, I could see it on his face, but I shook my head to let him know I didn't understand.
It was obviously the wrong answer.
He talked, and talked, getting more and more red faced, puffing out his chest, trying to back me down. I had no idea what he was saying. He was such a blustery giant, I couldn't be sure he was actually speaking English. I sure as hell wasn't going to be backed down and act like some retard you could pick on, so I stood my ground. My teeth ground in anticipation and I must have put my beer down, because both my fists were balled tight.
And then she was there.
Hollisha slid in between us, looking up at the drunk giant, waving her finger at him. Her back was to me. I couldn't read what she was saying, but the giant's face went from shocked, to ashamed in less than two minutes. His shoulders slumped long before he slunk away.
She turned on me. The fire behind her eyes was... Well, I could see why the giant slunk away. If she had looked like an angel before, she looked like a Valkyrie now - ready to shove some giant lance up my ass. Her hands were on her hips, shoulders square, all the angles of her body as hard as the lines on her face.
"Are you drunk?" She asked me like it was a bad thing. Like there weren't at least fifty other drunk people wandering around the first floor of the spacey house. Like there weren't fifty more doing even worse things upstairs.
I blinked at her, grateful I didn't have a beer in my hands. I swallowed hard. I guess my brain was working just enough to speak, but I couldn't stop my hands from signing the words. "What did you say to him?"
She straightened a little and before she could answer, I asked the next question. "Did you tell him I was deaf?" I could feel the anger in my face, even if I couldn't hear it in my voice.
I didn't want to be treated like I was handicapped.
Her brows arched and she did that black girl thing--that thing they do with their neck where their head sways from side to side while they are talking to you. I think I would have preferred the finger wagging. "I told him I remembered when he couldn't throw a football. I remember when he was in third grade and got sent home because he peed his pants and I knew his mother had been in the hospital and why was he here getting drunk when his mother probably needed his help." Her head was still moving on her neck. "What did YOU say to him?"
"I didn't say anything!" I protested, my hands moving just as quickly as the words spilled out of my mouth.
She scrutinized me for a moment, pursing her lips together. The anger drained from her face until all that was left was a look of disappointment. I think I'd rather she did her black girl head thing.
"Where's your friend?" I asked, composed enough not to sign it.
She turned her head, pointing her finger, then looked back at me before speaking. "She's drunk too, sitting over there on that guys lap. I'm supposed to make sure she doesn't go home drunk with anyone." Hollisha's eyes filled with far away thoughts. Her face turned sad and melancholy drew her eyes down.
I tilted her chin back up. "What's wrong?"
"I don't belong here."
I had no idea what to say in reply. I knew she was right. I wanted to be where she was. And if she didn't belong here, where did she belong and... could I go too?
------------------------------part 6-----------------------------------------------Peter-------------------------------
"I don't belong here," Hollisha said, shaking her head. I wasn't sure she was talking to me then, but once her hazel eyes focused on me, I couldn't look away. "Do you know how disappoint it is to see people you respect acting like teenagers?"
"A lot of them still are teenagers," I replied, feeling myself sobering with each sentence.
"Not teenagers!" Her teeth clenched and the hazel irises that had been focused on me swam about in their white orbits. "Tollers!"
"Tollers?" I took a step closer to her, trying to understand.
She held her hand up, in my face and finger spelled. "Toddlers."
Until then, I had no idea she could finger spell. She did it well, but I was too busy fighting the embarrassment, heat flushing over my face. "Oh, toddlers."
"You know how toddlers get into everything, play with dangerous things," she continued. Deeply involved in the conversation, I don't think she would have cared if I could hear her or not. I think it was just one of those moments where you just need to talk. Even a deaf person understands that. "It's worse because these people know they are playing with fire." She gestured around the livingroom. "That's why I'm here, right? I'm the firefighter. I'm always here to put out my friends when they set themselves on fire." Her hands opened and she gestured. She would have been signing 'what' in ASL, her mouth parted and question written all over her face. "When all they have to do is stop playing with matches!"
I was starting to notice that Hollisha was overly fond of analogies. She had used them in class, in conversations with me on the phone, and she was using one now. My eyes flashed to our right while she gestured, seeing our reflection in the mirror that covered the wall behind the bar. The view of her body was interrupted in the mirror by stacks of glasses on shelves. When I looked back, she was repeating herself. "I don't belong here."
For a moment, she looked so alone that it hurt not to reach out and touch her. While her eyes were at my chest, her gaze was miles away. She put one hand on her stomach, and then the other on her chest, just above the wonderful cleavage I had been looking down on. I watched her hand on her chest, her long, careful fingers curled together. The gentle curves pushing at her neckline rose and fell with her hand. When I looked back up to her face, I felt dumbstruck. She was so achingly beautiful. It wasn't only what I could see with my eyes, it was like she was glowing from the inside. I didn't think it was the beer, but then again, at that moment, I didn't care if it was.
"I have to leave," she said, and suddenly the spell was broken. I couldn't move as she pushed past me. I felt planted in my place, rooted and immovable as a tree. I watched as she grabbed and pulled her friend away from the disappointed male companion on the couch. Hollisha and her friend argued and struggled, but went steadily toward and eventually out the door.
It felt like a half hour had passed since she left. And I was still there, stuck to my spot, blinking, and wondering what had happened, going over the conversation in my mind. At least, going over everything I could remember.
I heard the noise. The pop filled my ears as the vibration hit the air. I felt a rush past my face before the glass exploded. I heard that too. A high pitched sound that wormed into my ear. Shards of glass flew around me before the realization hit me. Gunshot.
People were already running when my feet were set in motion. I ran out of the house, struggling and shoving like 12 dozen other college kids.
The next morning, I read the article in the newspaper about it. The owners hadn't known about the party their daughter was throwing. Someone had found her father's gun in a drawer and accidentally shot it. The family was asking for witnesses to come forward. Police were considering negligence charges. There were too many fingerprints on the gun. It had been passed around like a toy, the HPD spokesman said.
I should have called Hollisha. I should have apologized for... something. I couldn't stop thinking that if I had kept her there, that bullet would have gone through her and not the mirror.
--------------------------------part 7---------------------------------Hollisha--------------------
"Chenda whined all the way home," I told Jane, sitting beside me on the pew.
At least once a month I tried to make a trip back home to spend the weekend with my family. Victoria wasn't far from Houston, just a two hour drive, and my father had made the regular visits a 'condition' of supporting me at the University of Houston (and helping pay for the apartment I shared with Chenda and two other students). WHen people ask me about Victoria, I always say that it is a small city trying to be big.
"She'll thank you later," Jane said. We went to the same high school growing up, but more importantly, we went to the same ward. Victoria Ward covered a huge area including Victoria, Goliad, Edna and several counties. Mormon kids had to stick together, they were few and far between, and those of us who stuck it out were as thick as thieves. After years and years of having people on both sides of the racial divide use terms like 'black friends' or 'white friends,' I decided there were in fact two groups of friends, Mormon and Non Mormon. I was half black and half white, but I was fully mormon. It was easier to be 'Mormon' than either black or white, when you were only half of each.
In school, they called her "Plain Jane," though she really wasn't plain at all. She had the golden hair you find on the romance novel heroines. She was petite, with blue eyes. It would amaze me if she ever got called chubby. If she was plain, it was the sort of plain that Mormon churches were.
Our churches were very functional. I thought it was because the maintenance of each chapel was the responsibility of each ward (congregation) that used them, but my father said that God was practical. Things that did not serve to bring people in closer communication with God were of no use in a church building. His opinion came from years in the military (and military school). Churches needed the same sort of practicality, functionality and cost efficiency. My mother had a similar opinion, but came about it in an entirely different way. She said that our churches were plain so that we, the members, weren't distracted by idols. She called everything an idol if it didn't bring you directly closer to God: paintings, crosses, cricifixes, huge stain glass windows, even candles, cups and books. She had been raised Catholic, and was one until a few years after I was born. Her conversion was not to the practicality of the church, like my father, but to the way the church brought people closer to God. She liked the plainness of the Mormon church and the emphasis on personal communication, one on one, with God.
The bishop stood at the podium to start the meeting, and I leaned over, to whisper to Jane, "At least I didn't have to hear her moaning and groaning with her hangover yesterday. I'd rather spend a week with my father than one hangover day with Chenda."
"It's good you drive back home once in a while," Jane said and pushed me affectionately with her shoulder.
"Well, I have to come home anyway," I whispered and shoved playfully back. "It's one of the conditions my dad set for me going to U of H and paying for my apartment."
"But you earn the money for your food and your apartment."
"By working for my dad." I shook my head hopelessly. "I can tell myself I earned it by working for him doing research in the big city for his cases, but in the end, it's still his money supporting me away from home. I come home because I want to keep going to school in Houston, not because I miss Victoria."
"One day," Jane said softly, "you will."
Despite what anyone thinks about lipreading, it's 70 percent guesswork. Some mouths are easier to read than others and I'm sure that's why I started talking to Hollisha. Her mouth was perfect. Each time she said her name, I got chills. It was an extraordinary provocative combination of shapes for a woman's name. The "O" at that beginning put her mouth in the position for dirty thoughts and the "lish" gave a hint of tongue and teeth. The entire name finished off with "a," leaving her lips parted as she eased into a smile.
She smiled a lot and her bright white teeth stood out against her caramel colored skin.
"I wasn't raised deaf, with ASL and around other deaf people. So I'm considered deaf with a little d in Deaf culture. I was mainstreamed in school." My hands itched to sign the words instead of speak them, but I knew it would just distract her and her eyes would be focused on my hands, instead of on my face. I liked her focus on my face, where I could subtly scan hers. My vision wandered from her lips to the rest of her face. There was a gentle blush on the apple of her cheeks and she would chew on the inside of her lip from time to time. I thought about taking a step back. Hearing people were odd about their personal space, and uncomfortable with the constant eye contact, but Hollisha was bold. She stood straight and faced you, meeting your eyes when she spoke.
"Mainstreamed?" Her head tilted. Kinky golden brown curls flopped then bounced from their resting place on her shoulder. I couldn't stop my eyes from going just a little lower. The view just below the barely tamed curls looked like a pleasant handful, two pleasant handfuls, to be precise. She had nice breasts. Normally I would use the word 'tits,' but something about her made that and any crude word seem wrong to use, even in my head.
I quickly forced my eyes back to her mouth, even though I was finding it just as provocative. "I went to a regular public school," I told her.
"Where did you learn sign language?" she asked. Her gaze softened, like the angle of her shoulders.
A lump formed at the base of my throat and stuck there, my pulse thumping past it, trying to shove it out of place. I should ask her out. I should have told her that I would teach her everything there is to know about how to speak with your body. I should have promised her that my hands would teach her more about communication than any other guy could, because I knew how to use them for more than writing and jacking off. But in the end, I just told her about my ASL classes in high school. She listened politely, smiling and nodding until someone came by and tugged her arm.
"Oh, I have to go," she apologized as she started to pull away. "My next class is starting." She took one step backwards, smiling regretfully. "Well..." She took another step away, still facing me. "I'll see you next Monday!"
She didn't turn away until then. She had wanted me to stop her. The realization made the lump grow in my throat. She had done it slowly, deliberately. She had given me the time I needed to keep her from walking away.
I should have stopped her, asked her for an email. I could have made an excuse for that. I might miss a class, maybe she could fill me in. We could study together. I should have asked for a phone number to text her at. I had the same excuses there. But I just let her walk away from me. I could only admire the rear view for a bit before she disappeared into the crowd.
My hands feeling free at last, I finger-spelled her name in the air. Hollisha. It felt good. Active. Pretty.
I hadn't been in the 'Deaf' community until college. They accepted me like a lost sheep coming back to the fold. A lost sheep whose parents were hearing, so of course they couldn't understand, and what a shame they didn't teach me in my own 'native' language: sign language. I knew exactly what they would tell me when I said I met a girl, a hearing girl. They would say: "Peter, it wouldn't work. It's like a Jew dating a Muslim, there's just too much distance and ambivalence between the hearing and Deaf cultures."
Maybe they were right, but luckily for me... I didn't really care.
---------Part 2---------Holisha----------
"If the world were perfect," I said, "I could get paid for talking all day."
"Hollisha, you crazy." Danique slapped my arm lightly and swayed back, a grin lighting up her dark skinned face. I smiled wryly back, but I didn't really feel it.
My mother hated when black people 'talked' black. She said it showed a willful desire to undo everything black leaders had achieved during the civil rights movement. She said the black community wasn't interested in moving forward, but in proving how truly ignorant they are when they spoke like 'poor black trash from the cotton field' after having equal schooling and opportunity. "Did Martin Luther King Jr speak that way?" she would ask every time one of her children slipped into 'Ebonics.'
The sign language book was in my lap, hidden from Danique's view. I wasn't taking ASL. I had no real reason for studying it except that I knew I'd see Peter in History class and I thought it would be cool to be able to say a few things to him in sign language. After all, I knew how to greet people in Spanish, French, and Portugese. I could say 'where's my pencil' in Russian and 'thank you' in Japanese. I liked languages and I liked learning, but I didn't want to answer a bunch of questions on why I was studying something not on my class list. I would get teased. I was always teased for reading in high school. "Did Martin Luther King Jr. make fun of people for getting A's in class?" My mother would say. She had a series of lectures in her head that she repeated every time we had some problem she thought was the fault of 'black thinking.'
I had white friends too, lots of them, but as soon as a white person sat down in the group, everyone spoke the same King's English that my mother was so insistent we speak at home. Her mother had been the same with her, and was with the grand kids. There was no 'po' people, they were 'poor'. There was no 'fixin' to' there was "I'm going to" in her house. Though Gran never brought up Dr. King like he was the Messiah of the black people. She had Jesus in that place.
I slipped the ASL book into my book bag and stood. "I've got history class now."
"Are you going to Tia's party on Friday?"
"Maybe." I pursed my lips and shrugged, non-committal.
Danique smirked. "Isha, you are the only person I know in college who thinks weekends are for studying."
I laughed and waved as I walked away.
There was something genetically wrong with me that made me early to every appointment. I blamed that on my father's race. White people were pleased with punctuality. My father was a detective and had been on the police force since before I was born. His hair was as light as my mother's was dark. They were like yin and yang when they stood together. White and black. I guess that makes me balanced somehow.
I sat in the empty classroom and opened my book.
----------Part 3-----------Peter------------------
I touched her.
I thought I'd go to class early, so I could see her when she came in, but she was already there. She looked up the moment I was on the other side of the doorway and smiled. I could feel my heart thud like a lead hammer, stuck on a hot anvil. Thump... Thump... Thump... My insides moved like time had slowed in that moment and I knew something was going to happen.
Her hands moved, curled, came together. The fingers of one hand rotated against the other and then she pointed at me. I was trying to put that smile on her face into my permanent memory banks. She looked angelic. Her hair was like a curly halo around her. It looked perfectly golden until she frowned.
My heart skipped, then went into fast forward. I focused as she repeated the hand movements. "How are you?" she signed, though it was a bit awkward.
I opened my right hand and tapped my thumb against my chest. "Fine," I signed back. I could feel my grin spreading from ear to ear.
She liked me.
At least she liked me enough to learn how to sign "how are you," which was a good start, right? I don't know what possessed me to sit by her, lean over the back of the chair and take her hands in mine. My body tightened when the blush spread across her cheeks. It must be something to be able to make skin like hers blush, right?
She didn't pull away. She let me take control of her hands. I tried to ignore her hazel eyes and focused instead on her hands. I curled her fingers with mine and then moved her hands gently into the correct positions for "how." Her fingers were strong, but her hands were soft. Pliable and cooperating, I repeated the motions with her.
Something clicked in my head, or maybe it was my mind.
Have you ever felt like you were a lost piece of a puzzle, wandering around looking for that space you belonged in? I felt suddenly and wholly pushed into place. My hands were still over hers when her eyes flashed up toward the door. She pulled her hands away, putting them in her lap and I followed her gaze. My interpreter had entered the room.
Hollisha was blushing more now, but so was I. I could feel the tingling heat spread over my cheeks. We didn't say anything to each other for the rest of class, but my hands still felt her warmth. And no matter how much the professor talked about the Civil war, all I could think of was: I touched her...
-----------------Part 4------------------Hollisha-----------------
"I gave him my number," I said, retying the ribbon on my kimono blouse. I leaned forward in the drivers seat, pulled down the sunshade and flipped up the cover on the lighted mirror.
"Your number?" Chenda asked. Her round face was heavy with question. "Your phone number? I thought you said he was deaf." She was like I was, in a way. Half Asian and half white, caught up in a culture war in her own family. She looked like such a mutt, her brown eyes were almond-shaped but not slanted, her face round without a broad forehead. Her hair was dark brown, not inky black like her relatives, and luckily for her, straight hair was in.
"He is deaf," I replied, touching up my lipstick. I preferred light shades of pink and plum, though everyone tried to convince me I was 'warm' skinned and I needed reds and golds. "He calls me on something called Instant Relay... I think. He called me every day, twice on Thursday."
"How does that work?" She was still looking at me. I could see her fine black eyebrows shooting up and down with each question.
"Some guy, or even a woman, is on the other side, telling me what he's typing. I think he does it on the computer or something..." I shrugged, closed my lipstick and tossed it back in my black and pink sequined Hello Kitty handbag. "I have to wait for him to type something, then I talk, then I have to say 'ga,' which means 'go ahead.' Hello, ga. How are you? GA. I'm fine, ga." I laughed. "It's like I'm in the army!"
"That's ... weird." She shook her head and opened the passenger door to get out.
I pulled the strap of my handbag over my arm and exited with her.
"Thanks for coming Isha, I know you hate these things." Chenda pressed her thin lips together, looking through her artificially enhanced lashes at me. "I'm sure I'm not the only one who will need a designated driver."
I shrugged. "You can always count on the Mormon girl to drive sober." I smiled, thankful for all those acting classes.
She took a step toward me and put a hand on my arm. "Please don't call the cops if you see someone doing drugs. You promised." Her eyes were focused like a laser on mine.
"I won't call the cops," I promised... again. In my mind, I already had a back up plan. I would just call 911. That's not really the cops and I could do it completely anonymous.
"It's why no one invites you to these parties," she emphasized to me.
I nodded my head. It didn't really bother me that I didn't get invited. I hated going to places filled with smoke and pot, having to breathe it in. I would go home smelling exactly like all of the things I hadn't done there. But even when I didn't go, I still got called to give my drunken friends a ride home. I wished there were more good Mormon girls here, we could hang out. There were more here in Houston where I was going to school, but half the people I ran into thought Mormon was some sort of foreign entree.
"I'll be good," I told her. I always was.
--------------------------------part 5----------------------------Peter-----------------------
I asked her out, but Hollisha said she was busy Saturday and for some reason, Sunday wasn't even an option for her. I found out she was going to a party Saturday evening "with a friend." I hoped it wasn't some other guy. It took some genuine detective work to find out where the party was. She'd given me the name of the hostess and even the area of Houston it would be in: The Heights. Asking around on campus, I found out more details and put it all together.
I hadn't been in Houston for long, and most of my forays off of the campus had been few and far between. Frankly, it was a pain in the ass to go off campus. I had to pay extra attention in the supermarket, look over my shoulder constantly to check if someone behind their cart was saying 'excuse me,' trying to get past.
I had a good voice. I hadn't gone deaf until I was six or seven. I already knew how to speak. But in many ways, speaking to the hearing only exaggerated the problem of not being able to understand them. They would rattle on, treat me like one of them. While it was easy to read Hollisha (she kept her eyes on me and her face up), other people were always looking up or down, side to side. It wasn't the Texas twang that got me--I grew up in Louisiana--it was the international nature of Houston and the myriad of accents. Convenience stores and fast food places were the worst. People with foreign tongues and strange accents were always behind the counter, looking down to check the order, over their shoulder to shout something to the kitchen. I tried to stick to places I knew and people that knew me.
I hated communicating via notebook. I always had one when I went out, and a nice black ink pen, but it made me feel like an alien. But the great thing about college parties was the music was always so loud, everyone there was effectively deaf. They spoke with gestures and exaggerated pronunciation. They communicated exactly the way I did.
I only asked two questions when I arrived: "Have you seen Hollisha," and: "Where is the beer?" The later I only needed to ask once before I was led to the stack of 12 packs. I left a donation in the jar for the first round.
I had been 21 for half a year, but college had made me a social drinker long before that. I liked the buzz and the way alcohol warmed me on the inside. It didn't take long for me to get drunk at the party. I hadn't meant to, but there was all this free beer.
Something about getting sloshed made me shorter tempered. It's not like I had a long fuse to start with. When I bumped into the big guy, I couldn't understand what he was saying, but it was clear he had a short fuse too. There was a question, I could see it on his face, but I shook my head to let him know I didn't understand.
It was obviously the wrong answer.
He talked, and talked, getting more and more red faced, puffing out his chest, trying to back me down. I had no idea what he was saying. He was such a blustery giant, I couldn't be sure he was actually speaking English. I sure as hell wasn't going to be backed down and act like some retard you could pick on, so I stood my ground. My teeth ground in anticipation and I must have put my beer down, because both my fists were balled tight.
And then she was there.
Hollisha slid in between us, looking up at the drunk giant, waving her finger at him. Her back was to me. I couldn't read what she was saying, but the giant's face went from shocked, to ashamed in less than two minutes. His shoulders slumped long before he slunk away.
She turned on me. The fire behind her eyes was... Well, I could see why the giant slunk away. If she had looked like an angel before, she looked like a Valkyrie now - ready to shove some giant lance up my ass. Her hands were on her hips, shoulders square, all the angles of her body as hard as the lines on her face.
"Are you drunk?" She asked me like it was a bad thing. Like there weren't at least fifty other drunk people wandering around the first floor of the spacey house. Like there weren't fifty more doing even worse things upstairs.
I blinked at her, grateful I didn't have a beer in my hands. I swallowed hard. I guess my brain was working just enough to speak, but I couldn't stop my hands from signing the words. "What did you say to him?"
She straightened a little and before she could answer, I asked the next question. "Did you tell him I was deaf?" I could feel the anger in my face, even if I couldn't hear it in my voice.
I didn't want to be treated like I was handicapped.
Her brows arched and she did that black girl thing--that thing they do with their neck where their head sways from side to side while they are talking to you. I think I would have preferred the finger wagging. "I told him I remembered when he couldn't throw a football. I remember when he was in third grade and got sent home because he peed his pants and I knew his mother had been in the hospital and why was he here getting drunk when his mother probably needed his help." Her head was still moving on her neck. "What did YOU say to him?"
"I didn't say anything!" I protested, my hands moving just as quickly as the words spilled out of my mouth.
She scrutinized me for a moment, pursing her lips together. The anger drained from her face until all that was left was a look of disappointment. I think I'd rather she did her black girl head thing.
"Where's your friend?" I asked, composed enough not to sign it.
She turned her head, pointing her finger, then looked back at me before speaking. "She's drunk too, sitting over there on that guys lap. I'm supposed to make sure she doesn't go home drunk with anyone." Hollisha's eyes filled with far away thoughts. Her face turned sad and melancholy drew her eyes down.
I tilted her chin back up. "What's wrong?"
"I don't belong here."
I had no idea what to say in reply. I knew she was right. I wanted to be where she was. And if she didn't belong here, where did she belong and... could I go too?
------------------------------part 6-----------------------------------------------Peter-------------------------------
"I don't belong here," Hollisha said, shaking her head. I wasn't sure she was talking to me then, but once her hazel eyes focused on me, I couldn't look away. "Do you know how disappoint it is to see people you respect acting like teenagers?"
"A lot of them still are teenagers," I replied, feeling myself sobering with each sentence.
"Not teenagers!" Her teeth clenched and the hazel irises that had been focused on me swam about in their white orbits. "Tollers!"
"Tollers?" I took a step closer to her, trying to understand.
She held her hand up, in my face and finger spelled. "Toddlers."
Until then, I had no idea she could finger spell. She did it well, but I was too busy fighting the embarrassment, heat flushing over my face. "Oh, toddlers."
"You know how toddlers get into everything, play with dangerous things," she continued. Deeply involved in the conversation, I don't think she would have cared if I could hear her or not. I think it was just one of those moments where you just need to talk. Even a deaf person understands that. "It's worse because these people know they are playing with fire." She gestured around the livingroom. "That's why I'm here, right? I'm the firefighter. I'm always here to put out my friends when they set themselves on fire." Her hands opened and she gestured. She would have been signing 'what' in ASL, her mouth parted and question written all over her face. "When all they have to do is stop playing with matches!"
I was starting to notice that Hollisha was overly fond of analogies. She had used them in class, in conversations with me on the phone, and she was using one now. My eyes flashed to our right while she gestured, seeing our reflection in the mirror that covered the wall behind the bar. The view of her body was interrupted in the mirror by stacks of glasses on shelves. When I looked back, she was repeating herself. "I don't belong here."
For a moment, she looked so alone that it hurt not to reach out and touch her. While her eyes were at my chest, her gaze was miles away. She put one hand on her stomach, and then the other on her chest, just above the wonderful cleavage I had been looking down on. I watched her hand on her chest, her long, careful fingers curled together. The gentle curves pushing at her neckline rose and fell with her hand. When I looked back up to her face, I felt dumbstruck. She was so achingly beautiful. It wasn't only what I could see with my eyes, it was like she was glowing from the inside. I didn't think it was the beer, but then again, at that moment, I didn't care if it was.
"I have to leave," she said, and suddenly the spell was broken. I couldn't move as she pushed past me. I felt planted in my place, rooted and immovable as a tree. I watched as she grabbed and pulled her friend away from the disappointed male companion on the couch. Hollisha and her friend argued and struggled, but went steadily toward and eventually out the door.
It felt like a half hour had passed since she left. And I was still there, stuck to my spot, blinking, and wondering what had happened, going over the conversation in my mind. At least, going over everything I could remember.
I heard the noise. The pop filled my ears as the vibration hit the air. I felt a rush past my face before the glass exploded. I heard that too. A high pitched sound that wormed into my ear. Shards of glass flew around me before the realization hit me. Gunshot.
People were already running when my feet were set in motion. I ran out of the house, struggling and shoving like 12 dozen other college kids.
The next morning, I read the article in the newspaper about it. The owners hadn't known about the party their daughter was throwing. Someone had found her father's gun in a drawer and accidentally shot it. The family was asking for witnesses to come forward. Police were considering negligence charges. There were too many fingerprints on the gun. It had been passed around like a toy, the HPD spokesman said.
I should have called Hollisha. I should have apologized for... something. I couldn't stop thinking that if I had kept her there, that bullet would have gone through her and not the mirror.
--------------------------------part 7---------------------------------Hollisha--------------------
"Chenda whined all the way home," I told Jane, sitting beside me on the pew.
At least once a month I tried to make a trip back home to spend the weekend with my family. Victoria wasn't far from Houston, just a two hour drive, and my father had made the regular visits a 'condition' of supporting me at the University of Houston (and helping pay for the apartment I shared with Chenda and two other students). WHen people ask me about Victoria, I always say that it is a small city trying to be big.
"She'll thank you later," Jane said. We went to the same high school growing up, but more importantly, we went to the same ward. Victoria Ward covered a huge area including Victoria, Goliad, Edna and several counties. Mormon kids had to stick together, they were few and far between, and those of us who stuck it out were as thick as thieves. After years and years of having people on both sides of the racial divide use terms like 'black friends' or 'white friends,' I decided there were in fact two groups of friends, Mormon and Non Mormon. I was half black and half white, but I was fully mormon. It was easier to be 'Mormon' than either black or white, when you were only half of each.
In school, they called her "Plain Jane," though she really wasn't plain at all. She had the golden hair you find on the romance novel heroines. She was petite, with blue eyes. It would amaze me if she ever got called chubby. If she was plain, it was the sort of plain that Mormon churches were.
Our churches were very functional. I thought it was because the maintenance of each chapel was the responsibility of each ward (congregation) that used them, but my father said that God was practical. Things that did not serve to bring people in closer communication with God were of no use in a church building. His opinion came from years in the military (and military school). Churches needed the same sort of practicality, functionality and cost efficiency. My mother had a similar opinion, but came about it in an entirely different way. She said that our churches were plain so that we, the members, weren't distracted by idols. She called everything an idol if it didn't bring you directly closer to God: paintings, crosses, cricifixes, huge stain glass windows, even candles, cups and books. She had been raised Catholic, and was one until a few years after I was born. Her conversion was not to the practicality of the church, like my father, but to the way the church brought people closer to God. She liked the plainness of the Mormon church and the emphasis on personal communication, one on one, with God.
The bishop stood at the podium to start the meeting, and I leaned over, to whisper to Jane, "At least I didn't have to hear her moaning and groaning with her hangover yesterday. I'd rather spend a week with my father than one hangover day with Chenda."
"It's good you drive back home once in a while," Jane said and pushed me affectionately with her shoulder.
"Well, I have to come home anyway," I whispered and shoved playfully back. "It's one of the conditions my dad set for me going to U of H and paying for my apartment."
"But you earn the money for your food and your apartment."
"By working for my dad." I shook my head hopelessly. "I can tell myself I earned it by working for him doing research in the big city for his cases, but in the end, it's still his money supporting me away from home. I come home because I want to keep going to school in Houston, not because I miss Victoria."
"One day," Jane said softly, "you will."