If a Tree Falls (25 page)

My mother came in and offered to help rinse Juliet’s hair. Juliet was yelling in protest, and I struggled to keep hold of her and the oversized towel she was now only half-wrapped in. My mother went to her cabinet and quickly returned with two cottonballs. She gently lodged one in each of Juliet’s ears. “She may not like the feeling of water in her ears,” is all she said. I looked into my mother’s face and smiled out a “thank you.”

Juliet relaxed, or resigned herself, and I cradled her over the bathtub as my mother rinsed Juliet’s hair, careful
not to get any water in her eyes or ears. The soft flow of warm strawberry-scented water gently rippled and ran from Juliet’s silky hair.

“You are a wonderful mother,” my mother said to me, her eyes fixed on the run of water. “I’m so relieved, Jenny. Relieved that you can mother your children in a way I wasn’t able to mother you.” As I watched my mother guide the stream of water over Juliet’s hair, I could almost feel the water trickle at my own temple, the quick soak of the cotton ball chilly along the rim of my ear.

When my mother’s eyes met mine, they were the softest, palest shade of sea.

Later that night, at bedtime, I looked on as Juliet put her favorite pink pony to sleep. She nestled the pony’s head on her pillow, then picked up a book. But rather than pretend-read it to the pony, Juliet began to rustle the book’s pages loudly, just by the pony’s ear. To me, she said simply, “My pony likes hearing for sleep.”

I spoke to Juliet about her sleep problems, as my mother had suggested a while back.

“Juliet, would you want to try sleeping with your sound? Grandma thought you might want to. You can leave your
processor on, you know. Then you can hear all the sounds of the house while you’re sleeping.”

Juliet nodded her head.

I settled Juliet into bed, with her processor on. But within a few minutes, she yanked it off. “No—I don’t want my sound,” she said. She wasn’t used to sleeping with sound; or maybe she preferred the quiet. I braced myself for the repeat awakenings, hoping that Bill at least would get a good night’s sleep in his hotel, after work.

As I lay in bed that night, I thought about my mother and me: how we were both climbing a steep learning curve, straining to listen. How it was deafness that brought us here. My daughters’ deafness. My ancestors’. My mother’s. My own. How we were reaching out. An embrace by the river’s edge, pockets empty.

I felt full of forgiveness then, toward my mother and toward myself. I
was
mothering my children whole, in spite of my holes, my impediments. The impulse to tune out—familiar to all parents, yet more concerning to me given my history—would not rule me. I could combat deafness in myself as much as in my girls; I was sure of it. For the first time in my parents’ house, I was moored. Sophia and Juliet were breathing softly, sound asleep in the bed beside me. Teaching me.

Sometimes I stared at my hands, my arms—I had located my historical inheritance there, somehow—in the run of veins that bulged close to the surface of my skin, crisscrossing thick and blue. At birth, my blood had to be transfused four times. Whose blood went in, whose out? My father’s? My mother’s? My mother’s blood was RH negative, not to be lent again. But I was certain: what pulsed in my veins was undeniably hers. And what pulsed in hers, the inheritance of the ages. A swelling emptiness, a deafness to fight against. I would fight to hear my girls.

Back home on a Monday afternoon, Juliet was talking to Sophia, telling her about her first day at the Clarke School preschool program. Sophia was to start her new school the next day.

“Sophia, we’re gonna have caterpillars and butterflies at school. It’s really true. And Miss Heather gave me a snack. And I rided the bus!”

I heard Sophia gently correct Juliet:

“You’re supposed to say I
rode
the bus. C’mon, Juliet, let’s play in the fort.”

With a running start from the front hallway, Sophia and Juliet hurtled over the couch and landed in a sea of pillows walled in by tall cushions.

The veins in my hand throbbed and my wrist flicked as I thought of strings tugging in the night. In deafness, my ancestors found a way to hear their babies. And they gave to their babies a way to be heard.

Sophia and Juliet were flourishing, and my fears for them receded daily, as Sophia spoke to friends on the phone, as Juliet took to whispering secrets in Bill’s ear. They were full of make-believe and surprises. Like natural wordsmiths, they concocted stories more imaginative than anything I could conjure up. Bailey, the goat, jumped high in the sky and floated motionlessly among the clouds to escape a monster’s notice; then, after a tasty lunch of cloud fruit, was led home by a baby “leader” owl, just hatched at the edge of the sea. They drew illustrations, invented sequels. They dialed my mother to share their tales, all parties using maximum volume telephone speakers.

I was frayed and tattered. Fatigued—but not unraveled.

My voice, like their voices, emerging. My ears, theirs.

We would hear each other.

And we would listen.

I jumped into the fort, to be with my girls.

THE STORY I HAVE WRITTEN has more to do with emotional memory and imagination than with history. In writing about the people I love, I have inevitably rewritten them to fit with my own perception of truth. As Mark Doty says, “distortion is the betrayal built into memoir, into the telling of memories.” The story I have written is singly my own.

Thank you to Marilyn Abildskov, my mentor, for perceiving the light of my story and for nurturing me until I could see it myself. Thank you to Rebecca Gradinger, my agent, for recognizing the emotional heart of my work, and for always encouraging me to return to my writing table. Thank you to Gloria Jacobs, my editor—full of wisdom, grace, and warmth—and to everyone at the Feminist Press who brought their expertise and enthusiasm to the production of this book.

Gideon Yaffe read an early draft by headlamp at 2 a.m. the first night of a visit, and spent the subsequent days in
thoughtful conversation with me as our kids rode endlessly on carousels. Becky Michaels read and
re-
read this book, and with her quiet brilliance found solutions to problems over which I’d still be scratching my head today. Diana Larkin and Missy Wick gave me countless hours of advice and lent me Northampton writing homes full of warmth and encouragement. Sarah Buss got me to Iowa City—my favorite of all writing places—and spoiled me every free minute I was there.

For years, I have sat, inspired, beside dear and extraordinary writers at workshops led by Robin Barber, Carol Edelstein, Linda McCullough Moore, and the MEOWS. Many wonderful friends have brought me wisdom about writing and parenting: Claudia Canale-Parola, Tracy Smith-Camenisch, T. Susie Chang, Barbara Considine, Nancy Garlock, Chaia Heller, Ann Hulley, Amy Kroin, Susan Leeds, Meredith Michaels, Julia Mintz, Robert Radin, Elaine Stinson, Stephanie Vargas, and Lynn Yanis.

Valerie Stanik, Phyllis Shushan, and Andrea Olkin helped me with family geneology. Liz Rosenberg supplied an eleventh-hour translation. Sarah Burkman, Liana Doyle, Lon Otto, and Sandra Scofield commented with discernment on earlier drafts. Marc Neisen helped me to unlock memories, and Lula Mae Asberry jumped at every opportunity to reminisce.

Sara Just and Keith Lucas have stood by me since the beginning. Cathy Bendor, the Karpels, Jennine Kirby, Lisa McLeod, the Millner/Newmans, Vance Ricks, Matthew Tarran, and Susan Verducci—ever true and lasting.

Janice Gatty brought Sophia and Juliet into the speaking world. Jean Ferris and Kathie Betts opened up all avenues of communication. Peter Kenny, Marilyn Neault, and Dennis Poe ministered to our every medical need. I can never repay them.

Becoming a parent has deepened my love and respect for my mother and father. Watching my daughters grow in their relationship with one another has strengthened my connection to my sister and my brothers. This book reveals a loneliness, a deafness I experienced within my family as a child. It is with open ears that I find myself received by them now.

My husband, Bill, with a tender, steady, and perceiving love, has journeyed with me on a circuitous path of loss to a wholeness we could have hardly imagined. I dedicate this book to him and to our daughters, Sophia and Juliet, who inspire me, improve me, and fill me, minute to minute, with joy and wonder.

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Published in 2010 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
feministpress.org

Text copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Rosner

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or used, stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and review.

First printing, May 2010

 

Rosner, Jennifer

If a tree falls : a family’s quest to hear and be heard / by Jennifer Rosner. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-558-61691-2

1. Deaf children. 2. Families. I. Title.

HV2391.R67 2010

362.4’20922—dc22

[B]

2010004198