Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love (3 page)

Upon graduation in 1920, my father was able to land his first job, the job that would last his working lifetime.

“In the Great Depression,” he told me, “I was lucky to have an apprentice job with the
New York Daily News.
I knew it was because I was deaf and so wouldn’t be distracted by the noise of the printing presses, and the clattering of the linotype machines, but I didn’t care. I also didn’t care that the deaf workers were paid less than the hearing workers because Captain Patterson, the big boss, knew that we wouldn’t, couldn’t, complain. He knew that we would be happy for any job, at any wage. We were deaf. He could hear. And he was right. The hearing people ran the world.

“But those were tough times for me. By the time I gave my mother money out of my small pay envelope at the end of the week, for my room and board, and then some more for the household expenses, there was not much left over. My hearing brother and sisters did not have steady work. My mother and father were the janitors of our building, so they had little ready cash. It broke my heart to see my mother on her hands and knees, shuffling up and down the hallways, washing the wooden floors with hot, soapy water she dragged along behind her in a big wooden bucket. Her hands were always red and raw. To this day I can’t get the memory of her chafed hands out of my mind. When I finally got my union card and made good union wages, I could give her enough money every month so she didn’t have to do that anymore. You can’t imagine how proud I was that I, her deaf son, could do that for her.”

As an apprentice, he explained to me, he worked the night shift. It was known as the “lobster shift,” for no reason that he was ever able to explain to me. As a boy, I reasoned that since he worked nights while everyone else was asleep, including fish in the ocean, it must be that lobsters were awake during those hours, and hence the name.

Being a printer was the only job my father ever had, and he loved it. He would work for the newspaper until he retired over forty years later. In all that time he worked side by side with hearing co-workers, but he never really knew them. Like most in the hearing world, they treated him as if he were an alien—primitive, incapable of speech, and lacking human thought: a person to be avoided if possible, and if not, ignored.

After an apprenticeship of many years, my father was issued a union card. It was the proudest moment of his life. It was tangible proof that he was as good as any hearing man. Even in the dark days of the Depression, when one out of four men were out of work, he, a deaf man, could support himself.

And, he reasoned, he could also support a wife. My father was tired of being alone in this hearing world. It was time, he thought, to create his own silent world. A world that would begin with a deaf wife.

One bleak winter day, while we were sitting at the kitchen table, the rain sleeting against the windows of our Brooklyn apartment, his hands told me the rest of his story, in which began my story:

“Sarah was a young girl. She had many friends. She liked to have fun.

“I first noticed her at the beach in Coney Island. She was always laughing.

“All the deaf boys were crazy about Sarah. Even the hearing boys.

“There were many handsome boys on the beach. All the young boys had muscles and chocolate tans. They could jump and leap over each other’s backs. They could do handstands.

“I was older. I didn’t have muscles. I couldn’t stand on my hands if my life depended on it. I didn’t have a brown tan. I would get sunburned. My skin turned red. And then I would peel.

“It didn’t matter. The handsome young boys with their chocolate skin and big muscles only wanted to have fun with Sarah. They were not serious boys. They had no jobs. So they had plenty of time to play, and make muscles, and get brown skin from the sun.

“I was a serious man. I had a job. A good job. The best job. I was no longer an apprentice printer. I had a union card, just like the hearing workers.

“I didn’t want Sarah just to have fun. I wanted a wife for all time. I wanted a mother for my children. I wanted a partner forever. We would be two deaf people in the hearing world. We would make our own world. A quiet world. A silent world.

“We would be strong together, and strong for our children.”

Then, just as the rain stopped and thin rays of sunlight striped the tabletop, my father smiled to himself, his hands thinking…

“Maybe we would have a little fun before the children came.”

Lost in reverie, his hands, bathed in golden light, now lay silent on the kitchen table. Time passed. I sat and watched his still hands, waiting patiently for them to continue his story. I loved the quiet time we spent together, and I loved the stories his hands contained.

My mother at Coney Island

Then my father’s hands came alive again, eloquently describing a warm spring afternoon in 1932 Brooklyn.

“I knew I had to make a good impression.

“I had to dress well. I wore my best suit. Actually, it was my only suit. The big Depression was still going strong, and I watched every dollar.”

He tells me his suit was a fine wool serge that cost him two weeks’ salary. Its jaunty design was at odds with the feeling of dread that grew in him that day as he set off for the apartment where Sarah lived with her family, having written to her father asking if he might pay a call.

The scene unfolds with cinematic vividness as my father’s hands recount each stage of his quest.

He descends with the crowd, down the stairs from the subway platform, sweat dampening his armpits, and exits the station into the frantic gay activity of Sabbath shoppers rushing about, making their last-minute purchases for the evening meal.

The salt scent of the Atlantic Ocean hangs over every shop awning, every outdoor stall, reminding my father, as if he needed such a reminder, how far he had traveled this warm day from his familiar home in the northern leafy village reaches of the Bronx, after one trolley ride and three subway transfers, to the very end of Brooklyn, on the honky-tonk shore of Coney Island. And why has he come here on this warm spring day, sweat pooling at the base of his spine, palms moistly clutching now-wilted store-bought flowers? Today, this very afternoon, my father will meet, for the first time, the family of the girl he has chosen to be his wife.

Unfortunately for him, my future mother, waiting at home, believes he is hopelessly boring and much too old for her; besides, she feels, she’s too young to be married, there being so much fun to be had with all the good-looking boys who flutter around her like bees around a hive of honey every weekend on the hot sand of Bay 6, their hands gesturing wildly to gain her exclusive attention. And she could not banish from her mind the image of the hearing golden boy whose attentions she enjoyed so much and who said he loved her.

My father, circa 1932

Glancing nervously at the written directions, my father marches down the broad bustling avenue, so unlike the uneventful Bronx street where he lives. His hands at his sides rehearse the arguments he will employ this afternoon to convince this dark-haired young girl and her father that he is the one to whom she should commit her future. He has been marshaling the arguments in his favor for the past two weeks. He has a steady job and a union card. He is mature and serious. He is a loyal and dependable fellow, calm in an emergency. He can read. He can write. He can sign fluently. And if she will have him, he will love her forever. He finds himself impressed with his qualifications as he cycles through them. He is an up-and-comer. Besides, he has a full head of hair parted perfectly down the middle and a dandy mustache, and is altogether a fine-looking fellow.

Fifteen crowded blocks from the subway station, on a narrow tree-lined side street, he finds her apartment building, fronted with a narrow stoop, a five-story walkup in a typical dumbbell front-to-back floor arrangement.

Up goes my father. Up the stone steps of the stoop. Up the five flights of spongy wooden stairs. Up through the hallway smells of cooking and laundry and close immigrant living. Arriving at the door of 5B, he pauses. His future lies behind the dark wooden door. He thinks: What if her parents don’t like him? What if they disapprove of him? What if they think he is too deaf? What will he do if they don’t give their blessings to his cause? How will he endure if he cannot have this magnificent girl for his wife? He’ll do anything, he thinks, to win their approval. He’ll even move to Brooklyn, if that is the price he must pay to be accepted.

He knocks. The door opens, and he is greeted by a compact, tightly coiled, unsmiling man in mismatched jacket and pants who waves at him, making clumsy unintelligible signs with his large paint-stained hands. My father does not understand a word he is saying but reasons that this is a greeting of sorts, and an invitation to enter the apartment.

My father enters and in a single glance takes in the entirety of the apartment. From front to back, cheek to jowl, it is filled with large, mismatched pieces of heavy dark wood furniture buffed to a high shine. There seems to be at least two of everything, leaving barely space to move about. My father thinks this apartment looks more like a furniture shop on the Lower East Side than a living space. Unbeknownst to him, my mother’s father had rented all this furniture and arranged for it to be delivered just that morning with the thought of impressing him, the suitor of his daughter. My father is not impressed. He is confused.

My mother sits at one of the two dining room tables, and as my father signs his excited greeting to her, she bursts into tears. On the two couches, staring expressionlessly at my father, sit the family: mother, three sons, and another daughter.

Confused by the abundance of furniture, the stony looks of the family, and the tears of my mother, my father wonders what he has gotten himself into. He finally seats himself in one of the twelve chairs surrounding the two dining room tables, facing the family.

At once, as if in a coin-operated game at Coney Island, the frozen tableau comes to life, and all the members of my mother’s family break into excited gestures and frantic hand-and arm-waving. They are trying to put my father at ease, but their homemade signs are virtual Greek to his eyes. Perhaps, my father thinks, this is a Brooklyn accent.

My father smiles politely and occasionally nods in agreement at what he thinks is the appropriate time.

My mother wipes her tears away, and for the first time since her father opened the front door, she smiles a shy tentative smile. All doubt and confusion depart from my father’s mind. He addresses her father and begins to make his case in simple sign language and written notes. My mother’s father does not understand a word my father is saying. He does not understand the signs. Must be a Bronx accent, he thinks. And my father’s notes are largely incomprehensible to him.

Nonetheless he smiles from time to time behind his shaggy gray beard, nodding in tune with my father’s broad gestures. Emboldened by the seeming agreement, my father grows more expansive in his signs, describing his position as a printer at the
New York Daily News,
“lobster shift” to be sure, but daytime work just around the corner now that he has his union card.

My mother translates what my father says in their homemade signs. Now her father smiles broadly and nods energetically. He feels confident that this serious young deaf man really is the answer to his prayers. This is someone who is from his daughter’s world, someone who will be able to take care of her.

My father has no more to say. He has made his case to the girl’s father. But what of the girl?