Show Me a Sign

Sally and George. I tap Thomas’s shoulder. “What was your life like before you came to the island?”
Thomas bends down and peers directly into my eyes. “When I was your age, I was a slave in the Colony of Maryland. I shall not recount to you the horrors of my passage to your country, nor the plantation life that shackled me and tore my family apart …,” he trails off, his signs seared in my mind.
I lower my eyes while he stands and takes up a rake to clear the barn floor of dirty hay.
Massachusetts abolished slavery within the state in 1783, before I was born, but still it is something the adults prefer not to discuss. There is one slave we honor, Sharper Michael, the only man who died on our shores during the War for Independence.
Reverend Lee, who once owned a slave, preaches against men being bought and sold as property. Grown folk say the past was different. But Reverend Lee says slavery is against God. The laws changed, and his heart must have too.
I raise my hand to get Thomas’s attention.
“I’m sorry,” I sign. I can find no better words.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” he signs back. “The loss of a loved one is the hardest thing to bear.”
He closes his fist on top of his heart, to demonstrate a pain I feel daily.
“I want to go back and change what happened,” I sign.
“Many people would like to turn back time,” Thomas signs. “We must move forward from where we stand. The sun rises every day, and time goes on.” Thomas makes the sign for “conversation” and the sign for “work.”
I have kept him long enough. He has a list of chores to do for Papa, and Mama is expecting me at home. Sally approaches and looks at me nervously, asking with her eyes if I have told her papa that she approached Bayard. I shake my head to assure her I have not. She smiles.
Looking up at the sun, I realize I’ve been gone for hours. I wave goodbye and trudge home.
I find the sitting room empty.
The smell of chicken soup and a wood fire wafts from the kitchen.
I can detect Mama’s footsteps upstairs. When the house is alive with activity, I sense vibrations through the wooden floors. Otherwise the house feels silent.
Silence. I’m sure that many hearing people, especially those who don’t know the deaf, imagine our lives are filled with silence. That’s not true. If my mind and heart are full of energy and fun, and I’m looking ahead with excitement, I don’t feel silent at all. I buzz like a bee in good times. Only in bad times, when I am numb and full of sadness, does everything turn silent. Like our house with just Mama and me in it.
I climb the stairs slowly. Mama must hear me, but she doesn’t come out to welcome me home. I peek into the room. She is at her loom, her back to me. She has a skein of spun wool in her hand. Her head is bowed. Is she weaving or crying?
I go downstairs. George’s bedroom is next to Mama and Papa’s and adjacent to the kitchen. I haven’t entered it since the accident. But I need to find the map to chart my course to the old marsh.

Everything is where George left it eight months ago. There isn’t a trace of sand. Mama must dust his bedroom while I’m out.
I am nervous as a bag of cats standing here, as if I should have asked permission to enter a room so familiar to me. I have not come here to steal anything, only to retrieve what’s mine.
The first object that catches my eye is the conch shell that George used as a paperweight. I pick it up and a memory floods back.
One August day when I was six years old, we swam for hours in the ocean with Papa. It was the day Papa taught me to float on my back. The water was warm on the surface and cold underneath. Then we combed the beach for shells. Most of them had been pecked at by hungry gulls. But George found the large pink one, perfectly intact.
Papa signed for George to hold it to his ear.
George did, and his face lit up.
“What do you hear?” Papa asked him.
“The ocean!” George signed, making rolling waves with his hands and arms.
Papa nodded.
“How do you know, Papa?” I signed.
“Mama and others have told me,” he explained. “If you travel from the island,” Papa told George, “take it with you. You’ll always hear our ocean.”
George smiled. Then something changed in his expression. Tears came to his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him, not wanting the sunny day to be spoiled.
“You,” he signed, pointing at me and Papa, “will never hear it.”
“Fine,” Papa signed, reassuring him.
Now I wonder if it was fine. Then I think of our history since Jonathan Lambert arrived. Papa was right. We are fine as we were made.
As I caress the shell, I wonder, Does it still make the sound of the ocean without George’s ear to hear it, or is the sea magic gone?
I put down the shell and cross the room to the chest of drawers. Instead of the map, I find a small box with an owl pellet. We found two pellets at the base of an oak tree last year. I thought they were dung.
“Mary, look,” George signed, holding them in his hand.
I took a closer look and noticed that the outside of the pellets was furry. I pet them gently, still a bit disgusted by their strong smell.
George laughed in his quick, relaxed way.
“Owls eat small prey and then regurgitate them,” he signed, finger-spelling many of the words. He was never a natural signer.
When he made the sign for “vomit,” I pulled my hand away. “Vile,” I signed.
He laughed again and signaled for me to follow him back to our house,