And thus, with phone in hand, she stares me down, waiting. I give. She flourishes the phone and types.
“Schmoop has a c,” a suddenly helpful Ari chimes back in. “It’s schmoop, s-c-h-m-o-o-p. Without the c it’s a website for people who want to skip the read and go straight for the study guide.”
Imani squeals and I brace myself for what’s coming. I might not know schmoop, but I know whatever schmoop is, they are going to think it’s hilarious. And, yes, I’m correct as roughly ten seconds later Imani proceeds to read aloud, apparently for her own benefit and delight because we all know it’s not for mine.
“A fanfic,” dramatic pause, “with LOTS of fluff,” dramatic pause, “or with a more intense level of fluff.” This time the pause comes with a hand to heart and a shoulder lean in. “So fluffy, as to say it was schmoop.”
She accentuates her enlightenment with a snap z formation, complete with pucker/duck face, hair toss, lean back, smirk, tight-lipped grin, concluding by throwing a knowing glance at Ari.
I give her performance a seven. A little overwrought for my taste.
“Oh my god, Ari, it’s perfect. You are so totally right.” Her voice is way too soprano and fake. All that’s missing is a clutching of her throat. Forget seven. Her performance is rapidly sinking to a five.
“Sid, you have officially become a schmoopie. You are so busy researching and outlining your own fanfic romance, you are totally lost in real life.”
Our waitress interrupts my education of schmoopification, but I know it’s only a brief respite. This will be too entertaining for a simple “moving on.”
And because there’s no win here for me, I go big, ordering both a black & white shake and a basket of fries. Carbs and grease are a necessary counter in times such as this. It’s hard to over-petulant one’s self with a mouthful of fries and a shake chaser.
“And,” Imani returns to the land of talking, “it’s becoming treacly, maudlin, and way too sugary.”
I need those fries. Now.
“Because if I understand this correctly, to be schmoopy is to make others wince,” Imani pauses for a second. “No, too soft. To be schmoopy is to make others vomit with your cavity-inducing essays of affection.”
And just as I am about to whip around and protest, Ari gets back in the game, raises her “wait one moment” finger. “But to want schmoop? Perfectly normal, don’t be alarmed. We all want schmoop. Submit.”
Submit? Submit to what exactly?
First of all, this is not fair. I mean, really, how would she know?
Maybe because you have a notebook filled with dates and trivia and quotes all about Ava. Maybe that’s how.
And second of all, even if it is true, she doesn’t need to be snarky about it all. Romance should be sweet.
I am not rising to this bait. Nope, not biting. I am going to sit here and focus on the slit in this gnarly, cracked, red pleather booth and pick at its threads instead. No eye contact, apparently, is no deterrent for Imani.
“You know what,” rhetorical question. There’s no pause to see if I want to know. “It’s time for you to put on your big girl pants and go ask her out. I mean really, at this point it’s worse than online dating; it’s profiling. Verging on stalking. Which is not funny and definitely not cool.”
And with that, while I am studiously not making eye contact, Ari sneaks around, grabs my phone, and gives Imani a nod while airdropping an address, all before I can react. Then Imani throws some cash down on the table, and the two of them pull me out the door, push me down to the subway, onto the platform, and into the car, keeping me there until we exit at the DUMBO station in Brooklyn.
Yeah. I know. I never did get my fries. Oh, that wasn’t your concern? Fine.
DUMBO is an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, and not the better-known elephant. Not that I would think you would think it was the elephant, but maybe you thought it was shaped like an ear or something. You know, we can all find ourselves flummoxed at times.
I remember driving through Dutch Pennsylvania when I was about ten. And they had a town called Virginville. Now that might have been a bit more of a snort-giggle than a flummox, but I was only ten.
Anyway, if you go up to the top of One World Trade Center and look across, DUMBO is the neighborhood set right in between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge, and it’s really expensive and very tech-centric.
And since, of course, I already boned up on Ava’s Mom and Dad, I know they are big tech guru people, so it makes perfect sense.
I haven’t been to DUMBO recently, but I always love coming here in the summer. It’s all cobblestone streets and converted warehouses, and when you peek down the streets, there’s always amazing views of the bridge. And they have Movies with a View, where they set up this outdoor movie screen and you sit on a blanket on the grass and watch movies with the city as your backdrop, and there is also Jane’s Carousel, and ice cream at Fulton Ferry Landing from a shop located in the old fireboat house. Fulton Landing is actually the site of the original ferry that ran between Manhattan and Brooklyn, starting way back in 1642.
And then we could go get chocolate at Jacques Torres or go to a show at St. Ann’s Warehouse, or . . .
. . . and wowzerhole. I realize I have unwittingly switched over from “my memories” to my date night fantasy. I also realize I have stopped walking and Ari and Imani are about two feet ahead, just waiting.
And they’re right, big sigh, schmoopie is me.
We persevere until I get to the front of the Water Street address I know by heart, trying to gather enough courage to push the buzzer. But my palms are sweating and my heart is beating and I’m not sure this is a good idea.
Clarifying. I do think coming here was good. After all, I didn’t come voluntarily; they dragged me. Which gets me much closer than climbing the steps at the West Elm, Dumbo location, and peering down from the roof did. Hey, smitten kitten. You do know.
But now that I’m here, fantastic, I can leave knowing my way right to the door. So, I can come back another day and actually buzz. Baby steps. No need to rush things along. Save some for another day. Plan.
I like a plan. I Inhale a deep breath, turn around. And freeze. Before I can so much as take a step forward, standing watch across the street, feet planted firmly, I see the dynamic duo, arms crossed, staring me down. Imani uncrosses hers just long enough to make the brusque hand-down wave, the universal signal for get back to it.
I am beaten. I exhale. Turn back around. Buzz.
My buzz is answered by their buzz, and with that, I am in.
The lobby is new, modern, sleek, and rich. Not particularly helpful. Would dingy be better? Hard to say. But the sleekness makes me feel slightly grungy. If I’d known, I would have worn much better shoes, or at least my Sally Ride Vans.
I take the elevator to the sixth floor, drop my backpack for a minute, and clean my glasses. Twice. I make my way down the strategically lit, elegantly appointed hallway to the corner unit. There’s a bell, but before I can ring it, the door is opened and she’s in front of me. Pale green eyes wide open, her dark hair loose, hanging just below her shoulders. Zoinks.
I gulp, but cannot make my brain connect to my hands, never mind how to make them sign. I just stand here and stare. I see a small scar, tiny, white, off the corner of her mouth. Her lips, well they’re really nice, boofy.
Mind game moment: I flashback to being fourteen, sitting in the lunchroom. Imani is taking one of those magazine quiz things and she’s rattling off what everyone’s lips said about them. She had pointed at Eda, who was a senior, and the hottest girl in class, and said, “according to the chart, her larger lower lip means she’s a pleasure seeker.”
Uh huh. Pleasure seeker. Wowzerhole. I just stare.
Maybe for ten seconds. Maybe for thirty. Ava finally breaks the silence, her facial expression turning slightly annoyed, her shoulders scrunching a bit, as her open-palmed hands give a small side-to-side shake, signing “
what?”
Which, if I read sign while adding facial expression, is kind of an impatient, “well, what do you want?” and definitely not a “what, OMG, can’t believe it’s you, how cool is this?”
I somehow connect that I need to stop staring and answer, fumbling, but getting my hands moving long enough to force a sign attempt along the lines of “my name is Sid, and I’d like to ask if you’d maybe go to the movies with me.”
My hands feel three sizes too big for my wrists, but I finish and stand there, still out in the hallway, now feeling incredibly awkward. And although I had practiced this sentence an estimated three zillion times, judging from the look on Ava’s face, I’m not certain that’s what I actually signed.
There is no answer forthcoming, and now it’s getting really awkward.
I scrunch up my face and hold out my hands, turning them from palm down to palm up, while I shrug. I’m not sure if I am signing anything pertinent at this point, but I got nothing.
Then she is signing back. Rapidly. And I am lost. Totally. At which point her eyes flicker over me, dismissively. She turns around, and I realize we are not alone. There he is, her friend, Joe. Only now he is looking at me with something like pity and shaking his head.
Ava turns and flashes a handful of signs, rapid-fire, over at him. He answers her just as rapidly, and then they both stand silent. Finally, Joe shrugs and turns toward me. He signs as he speaks.
“She says to tell you asking isn’t good enough if you can’t understand the answer. But nice try.”
My first thought is, “for real?” while my face gets hotter. I think my mouth is actually gaping, but the shock of her casual ingratitude for all my work, my effort, tossing it away like some kind of garbage, is keeping me rooted to the spot even as I wish to move.
I tell myself to pull it together and walk away, go back down the very clean hallway, put one foot in front of the other, when I look up and see, just above Ari, the Brooklyn Bridge visible through the condo’s floor to ceiling windows.
Peregrine falcons nest on that bridge. You know they were once nearly extinct in the Eastern US. But they survived. And they thrived.
I meet her eyes, even as I speak carefully to Joe. I use any signs I can kind of figure out. “Tell her I’ll be,” and then I finger spell, “back.”
When I shift my eyes back to Joe to make sure I’m understood, he’s grinning and making the universal sign, you know, the one where you take your index fingers and circle around your ear, for crazy.
I have to admit, he’s probably not wrong.
THREE
Which is why we, you and I, and Imani, are now in an American Sign Language immersion class, where I am in the process of learning several things.
One, I have hands that don’t like to follow directions. My brain says do this and my hands do that. Note to self, pianist is an unlikely career.
Two, Imani has no such challenges. She already speaks six languages fluently, and as I have just said, is rapidly adding a seventh here. And she’s beginning her new linguistic journey with every swear word she can think to translate. Which is of no help to me, but does have everyone else charmed. Totally. Current thinking, I hate her.
Three, I will always speak sign language with an accent. I know, who knew?
I’m not talking about ASL vs. BSL a.k.a. British Sign Language. Although I am happy to know that ASL and FSL a.k.a. French Sign Language are similar, thank you, Laurent Clerc. Well, except if you wish to sign merde. Then they are completely different in movement.
Nor am I talking about a generational thing, like your parent’s idea of hipster anything vs. anyone under the age of twenty!
I’m not even talking about New York accented sign, where yes, you can actually tell which borough someone grew up in with reasonable accuracy.
Nope. It turns out I will always have an “outsider’s” accent simply because I didn’t grow up speaking sign, and I am a hearing person. And no matter how fluent I become, I will always have a touch of hearing-ese to give me away.
And finally, number four of things I have learned. There are vast cultural gulfs between the hearing and deaf worlds, which I will not detail here other than to say, Alexander Graham Bell.
Yep. Turns out, when Bell set out to invent a telephone, he was not doing it for me or you, but for his wife, his mother, and the family business. Alex, as I like to call him, was an educator of the deaf, son of a deaf woman, married to a deaf woman, and a die-hard oralist, who believed the best way to educate the deaf was to force them to speak and learn how to read lips.
Good old Alex actually supported laws prohibiting the deaf from marrying each other in a belief they might eradicate deafness. Needless to say, Alex is now Mister Bell, and he and I no longer have a loving relationship. Wowzerhole.
Anyway, enough of him.
It might be useful to know there are completely different forms of sign depending on if you use ASL or SEE—which is Signed Exact English—or PSE—which is Pidgin Signed English. Quickly, ASL is its own language, and it’s concept based. SEE is sign based upon accurate translation of English, nothing conceptual about it. PSE is a combination generally used by English speakers learning ASL, so it uses ASL signs and grammar, but because a lot of PSE users are from the hearing community in some form, it uses English syntax.
Immersion, we now all understand, is a tricky thing. I’m fingering as fast as I can, so we can all agree I am reasonably fluent in the aforementioned PSE—if I was, oh, maybe, six years old.
However, my classmates and teacher, all of whom learned the highly embellished, dramatically emoted comitragic story from Imani, reassure me I should be conversant enough to make another approach.
No. No. No. No.
I can feel you, my friends, wrinkling your noses and scrunching up your faces in what is either massive confusion or apparent disgust, puzzled as to why I’m even bothering. Well, I can lie and say I don’t know why either, or I could lie and say I like a challenge, but between us the truth is far more base.
I am simply, hormonally, committed to this moment.
Which means I need a plan. Can you say, daunting? So, I think and discard, then Google and discard, until I find what might be a perfect Saturday night date, making it time for me to shut my overthinking brain down and make my move. Again. Well, after I practice. A lot.
Okay, maybe obsessively. Hey, it didn’t go so well last time. So yes, a lot. With Imani, Jimmy, Ari, Vikram, and anyone else I can find to “chat” with me. It is the first thing I do in the morning, and the last thing I do in bed while falling asleep at night. Sweet dreams are definitely not made of this . . .
. . . Date. Take both hands and form the letter “d,” which is a circle with a raised index finger. Then take both “d’s” and have the circle parts meet each other in the middle. Okay.
Now connect Date to Roller Derby. “D’s” to bent “V” hands, palms facing up, each in front of either side of my chest. Now moving them forward and back with an alternating swinging movement, then finger spell d-e-r-b-y.
Yes. Roller Derby. Girls on skates. Moving fast.
The Gotham Girls are a founding member league of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, and a spinning, spiraling, jamming, blocking, elbow-throwing group of awesomeness.
Tonight’s match is the Manhattan Mayhem vs. the Brooklyn Bombshells. And it’s happening at the John Jay College gym.
For the uninitiated, in an aside of perfection, John Jay College was founded as the only liberal arts college in the US with a criminal justice and forensic focus. Which tickles all my Velma bones no end.
And it’s located at 524 West Fifty-Ninth. Right in Midtown Manhattan. Which makes it super easy for everyone to get to.
I mean so perfect, right?
And as for roller derby? Come on, it fits my politics, my ideals, and my outsized fantasy of myself as a would-be jammer/warrior out there flying by on those skates, deking to the left, ducking to the right, score! IRL I think we ca
n all guess I probably would not be overly happy with other people’s elbows flying at my face, but in my mind I am jamming.
Well if not jamming, I am definitely, officially, flying. Off the wall. Off the tracks. Off the cuff. Off the rails. Well, not off the rails yet. That’s coming . . .
SHE SAYS YES.
. . . and it’s here!
I am now officially off the charts, the rails, the map!
My besties spring into action. A flurry of texts and I have both rounded up the troops and worked out an appropriate wardrobe. The latter part has less to do with me, and more to do with Imani’s, “what are you wearing?”
The result? I am nattily attired with black wing-tip Commanders, black jeans, with a white T-shirt and my favorite vest. I swiped Jimmy’s old varsity jacket from him a couple of years ago, because apparently it looks cool on me. Or so I’m told. I thought I would wear a sweater, but I apparently thought wrong.
According to Imani, and confirmed by Ari, “When the action gets going it will be too hot for a sweater, but you’d be stuck, because taking it off would reveal a now sweaty, slept-in looking T-shirt, which would totally destroy the look.”
Although I have an instinctive moment of need to respond with something snarky like “totes,” it is astonishingly followed by a moment of rethink, and to the audible relief of my personal fashionistas, I simply concur. Hey, tonight, I am not going to risk anything impinging on my cool vibe. And it is pretty amazing listening to them think through an outfit three steps ahead. Jacket it is.
For a finishing touch, we agreed on my très-retro analog watch with its big black cuff band. Actually, I’m not sure we agreed. Exactly. I think Imani just gave in. But this was a birthday gift from my Dad and, yes, it’s big. It’s really a men’s watch, but it’s got this great five-pointed star in the face, and I love it more than Imani does.
I have to say, creating an entire outfit for Comic-Con was less terrifying than this.
Before leaving, I check myself out in the mirror, and while taking a deep breath to theoretically calm my nerves I do have to marvel how impressive it is that Imani can do all this via text.
Say Her Name Page 2
