Burn Down the Ground (2 page)

I
tugged on the belt loop of Mom’s skintight jeans, and waited for her to look down and acknowledge me. I wanted money to play Space Invaders in the bowling alley arcade, but she was concentrating on reading the lips of a balding deaf man who had two hooks for hands. Despite having no fingers, he tried to communicate
with American Sign Language (ASL), scraping the curved metal claws against each other as if he were giving a Ginsu knife demonstration. My mother was an expert lip reader and kept her eyes focused on his mouth to make sense of the flurried flashes of metal; she bobbed her head up and down to let him know that she understood.

I stared at the beige plastic attachments that encased each wrist and wondered how they stayed connected to his fleshy stubs. Did he take them off at night? Were they suction cups or drilled into his arms? I shuddered at the thought and watched how he made the hooks open and close.

Was he born that way or did he have an accident? After contemplating both scenarios, I decided it would be better if he were born without hands. That way he wouldn’t know the difference. I couldn’t imagine that the world would be so cruel as to take the hands of a grown deaf man.

As I stared at his signing, his hooks brushed perilously close to my face, causing me to reel back in fear. I had a brief horrifying image of running for my life being chased by him, with his grunts and wheezing breath hot on my neck. But Mom, who made fast friends with everyone she met, was perfectly at ease.

I yanked harder and smacked her round bottom.
“MAAAAMMMMAA!!!”

“What?” Mom signed by waving her hand with the palm side up, exasperated at my persistence. “Can’t you see I’m talking?”

“Need quarter,” I signed back.

Mom could partially hear when she wore powerful hearing aids—one of which was always on the fritz, in need of a battery or screeching like brakes crying for new pads—but they were useless in the din of crashing bowling pins. For all practical purposes,
she was as deaf as every other grown-up gathered in the dingy Tulsa bowling alley smelling of fried food, cigarettes, and beer. They had traveled here from all parts of the country to compete in the 1978 National Deaf Bowling Tournament, where Mom was scheduled to defend her title as women’s singles champion.

This event was the type of activity the Deaf community created so that members could mingle. In the days before the Internet and mobile gadgets, the best way for the Deaf to socialize was old-fashioned face-to-face time through clubs, travel groups, cruises, and sporting events like fishing and bowling tournaments. While some fathers may have gravitated toward fishing and hunting, mine liked bowling because he could smoke, drink, and carouse between rounds. Mom liked it because she was damned good, with a 164 average. Usually her winnings were enough to pay for our trips with a little profit to boot.

The National Deaf Bowling Association was founded in 1964, but the women’s singles had only been around for four years and Mom was already a force to be reckoned with. She loved to brag about how she was knocking down pins while knocked up with me. She’d bowled three days prior to my birth and was back in the alley three days later.

The wooden lanes and alley lights may as well have been the stage and footlights of Broadway. She was a star and I was proud to say she was my mother.

Mom answered my plea for a quarter by pantomiming empty front pockets and signing, “I’m out. Go ask your daddy.”

Without hesitation, I turned on my heels and skipped to the bowling alley lounge, where I found my father leaning against the pool table holding court among a small gathering of onlookers.

He held a cold can of Coors Light and a lit Kool in one hand and was signing with his free hand.

“Two deaf people get married. The first week of living together they find it hard to talk in the bedroom after they turn off the lights.”

I caught Dad’s eye and he gave me a quick wink as he gave the ASL sign for “wait” by wiggling his slim fingers palm side up, revealing the calluses from his years as a construction worker. Unlike my mother, Dad didn’t speak at all other than an occasional shout of a name or profanity aimed at a Dallas Cowboys game. When he did, his voice came out in an oddly high pitch with too much air behind it. He couldn’t read lips as well as Mom and didn’t move his mouth much when he signed.

I let him finish the joke that he didn’t bother censoring, even though I was nearby. I had watched him tell it at least a dozen times. As he signed, the ash on his cigarette grew longer.

“After several nights of misunderstandings, the wife comes up with a solution. ‘Honey, we need simple signals in the bedroom at night. If you want to have sex, just reach over and squeeze my breast once; and if you don’t want to have sex, squeeze it twice.’

“The husband replies, ‘Great idea. If you want to have sex, pull my dick once. If you don’t want to have sex, pull it a hundred and fifty times.’ ”

His audience erupted into a variety of loud grunts and squeals of laughter. One waved his hands, while another signed ASL letters, “H-A-H-A-H-A.” Dad chuckled at himself with a slight curl of his upper lip, making a dimple appear in his right cheek. He took a drag of his cigarette and the long, crooked ash finally broke off, landing on the worn, booze-stained carpet. A few
flakes floated onto his dark blue jeans and he sent them flying with one forceful burst of breath. He inspected his appearance and brushed off the remaining ashes before he asked, “What’s wrong?”

I signed back, “Need money.”

“Okay, but don’t waste,” he warned before making a big production out of retrieving his wallet and fishing through its contents. I’d always thought of my father like a deaf Elvis. Tall, muscular, and handsome with dark hair combed back into a modern pompadour, he could charm the skin off a snake. His friends were caught in his magnetic spell and kept their eyes trained on our exchange. Dad seized the opportunity to remain in the spotlight. He grabbed my shoulder and whisked me around to face his fans.

“Do you know my daughter? Her name K-A-M-B-R-I.” In ASL, it is customary to introduce someone by first spelling out the name letter by letter followed up with a shorthand sign, a “Name Sign,” to refer to that person. A person’s Name Sign often uses the first letter of their name in ASL incorporated with the sign that indicates a physical or personal characteristic, such as a big smile or a goatee or, in my case, my temperament as a baby.

Dad signed each letter slowly so they had time to soak in my unusual name. He then drew a tear on each of his cheeks using the middle finger of the ASL letter “K” to show them the sign he and Mom had created for me.

“Why tears with a ‘K’? Because when she was a baby she never cried. No. Never. Always laugh, laugh, laugh.”

He patted my head and smiled. I looked back at the adult faces staring at me and forced my lips into a smile—not quite the hyena Dad was describing—as I waited for the money. As was
always the case when I was introduced to deaf people, the first question was, “Hearing?”

Dad signed, “Yes, hearing.”

I sensed a twinge of disappointment in their expressions, a typical reaction when deaf friends learned I wasn’t one of them. I understand it now, but as a seven-year-old kid I found myself wishing I had been born deaf, too. Then I would belong to the tight-knit Deaf community instead of being just an honorary member.

“Very smart,” Dad bragged. “Good girl. Nickname ‘Motor Mouth.’ ”

You know you talk a lot when your deaf family nicknames you Motor Mouth.

Dad passed me a crisp bill, and my eyes widened when I saw it was a five. Five bucks would get me an icy Dr Pepper, greasy crinkle fries, and plenty of games in the arcade.

“Share with your brother,” he signed with a warning raise of his brow.

David could fend for himself. Besides, I reasoned, he was three and a half years older than me and better at most video games. One quarter lasted him a hell of a long time; surely he didn’t need any more money. After a quick thank-you to Dad and a half-assed wave to his friends, I left the dark, smoky hideaway and headed straight for the snack bar.

In the game room, I found David dominating Space Invaders, as usual. He swayed and ducked, jerked the joystick, and repeatedly bashed the fire button as a crowd of admiring onlookers grew around him. He must have been within reach of the machine’s high score, a feat I’d witnessed him achieve once before.

“Totally rad!” a kid shouted, giving David a slap on the back.

“Yeah, totally!” said another with a high-five. My brother accepted the accolades from his minions, who always flitted behind him, with a smug smirk.

“That was so neat, man!”

A freckle-faced kid challenged, “Yeah, but can you reach the
end
?”

“Video games don’t end,” another kid stated with certainty.

“Oh yeah? Well then how far does it go?”

We weren’t totally sure. Each round became progressively harder so it was difficult imagining a game lasting forever. But if you were winning, why would a game just quit? David seemed in line to be our exploratory leader, a twentieth-century Christopher Columbus.

I smacked down a quarter on the glass screen with a crack, claiming my place as the next player in line, and waited for him to lose.

“Go away,” he demanded. “You’re gonna fuck me up.”

David was skinnier than a dried stick of spaghetti and, at ten years old, already as tall as many adults. Like me, his hair was as white as hotel sheets with skin browned from frolicking every day in the blazing South Texas heat without a drop of sunscreen. David returned to concentrating on his game, so I ignored his command and lingered long enough to see him lose a turn.

“See!” he yelled as he gave a quick jab to my arm. “Look at what you made me do!”

I yelped in pain and poked the lump where he had knuckle-punched me.

“I told you to go away,” he hissed. “Stop watching me.”

The End was apparently not in sight as long as I was present. David’s cronies sneered at me. I was jeopardizing my brother’s
attempt at immortality, so I retreated to the Pong machine. When I ran out of quarters, I sprinted back to the lanes, where the hook-handed man was stepping up to bowl. He had replaced his right hook with a special contraption that gripped his bowling ball. As he charged down the alley, he used his left hook to whack some lever or button that sent his ball barreling toward the pins. I had no idea how many he knocked down or if his aim was any good. Did it matter?
A deaf man with hooks for hands was bowling
.

When the bowling was finished, my parents’ night was just getting warmed up. Every night out to a Deaf event ended the same way. My mom and dad stood gathered in a circle of deaf family and friends for what seemed like an eternity while I did absolutely nothing, waiting impatiently to go home. Drink after drink crossed the bar—more Coors Light for Dad, Seven & Sevens for Mom—as Deaf community gossip was dished with a flurry of hands.

Unlike other kids absorbing adult chatter, my “listening in” required eyes and dedicated attention. I was tired and desperately wanted to go, but getting a deaf person to leave any social engagement was harder than eating spaghetti with a knife.

Hoping my parents would notice, I made a dramatic production of pushing together three plastic chairs to serve as a makeshift bed. I draped Dad’s denim blazer over me and waited for them to call it a night. I almost wanted to walk up to the alley manager and tell him to flick the lights on and off, the best way of telling a group of deaf people it was closing time. Although I was too big to be carried around like a baby, when my father roused me, I pretended to be fast asleep. He scooped me up and carried me to the car. I buried my face in his neck and breathed in his trademark scent of Jovan Musk and beer and nicotine. My
parents, never extravagant with accommodations, unloaded us at a roadside motel for the night.

The next afternoon, a local news reporter arrived at the bowling alley to cover the final day of the tournament, creating a buzz. A slim strawberry blonde, my mother was easy on the eyes. For the first few years of her life, she could hear without the help of hearing aids. This meant she could speak more clearly than most of her hearing-impaired peers, making her the unofficial ambassador to the hearing world. Naturally, the reporter chose to interview her.

Mom was scheduled to close the annual ceremony by performing several songs in ASL, accompanied by a live band. More thrillingly, however, the concert was going to be shown on television.

There weren’t many occasions for Mom to get gussied up, so when the opportunity presented itself she went full glitz. Seeing her leave the motel room dressed in three-inch heels and a shiny, short-sleeved maroon wrap dress that clung to her tan skin and showcased her enormous breasts, you’d have thought she was headed to New York’s Studio 54 instead of a run-down bowling alley. At thirty-one, she was in the prime of her life and the center of attention. She loved every minute of it.

The reporter chatted with my mother, who was standing near the band, two guitarists and a drummer, who were setting up their instruments at the far end of the establishment. The cameraman turned on the bright spotlight and with a quick toss of her head and flash of a smile, Mom was “on.” Before the reporter could even ask a question, Mom declared, “We are
deaf
not
dumb
.”

To this day, the phrase “deaf and dumb” is the most offensive
insult to a deaf person. Mom wanted to make it clear that just because a person couldn’t hear didn’t mean they lacked intelligence.

I stood directly behind the cameraman and admired how proudly she stood, with both shoulders back. Even now, as a woman in her sixties, she carries herself with the same poise and grace at a backyard barbecue as at a wedding. She gestured to a table of merchandise like a TV game show model presenting an item up for bid. The table had items available for purchase, assorted T-shirts and handcrafted buttons proclaiming, “Deaf and dumb SMART.” They rested alongside an abundance of crocheted knickknacks, jewelry, and assorted keepsakes decorated with hands in the shape of the ASL sign for “I love you.”