Say Her Name

by Stefani Deoul

  They turn. Imani says something to Jimmy I can’t hear, but definitely isn’t a, “we’ll come too,” as they wave back in acknowledgement.

  Plan confirmed, Joe and I hustle up the street. At first, I thought he was quiet walking with us because the meeting was so intense, and even though that is most likely true, I suddenly realize he’s not so much introspectively quiet as he is nervous, edgy, his eyes darting, looking desperately for a place for us to go inside and sit, which is naturally, even in the city, suddenly nowhere to be found. We walk block after block, his unease increasing my agitation with every step.

  Finally a beacon, and we escape into one of those ubiquitous New York City, open 24/7 bodegas, where there’s always something for everyone, hot salad bars, cold salad bars, paninis, snacks, and, most importantly, at least in this one, an upstairs loft space for dining. Joe buys himself a Coke, but I just shake my head. I want whatever this is to be over and done. And then again I don’t.

  Dread is a very not-so-funny thing.

  We get upstairs and find it is mercifully empty.

  Taking off scarves, gloves, and coats before I dash down and into the bathroom buys me at least ten more minutes before I have to face the inevitable. But now it’s here. Out of ways to delay, we sit on opposite sides of an only slightly grimy four-top tucked in the far corner.

  Joe turns, reaching behind him to his coat, fishing out what is now a fairly creased envelope. He sets it on the table and pushes it forward, halfway toward me. Then takes his right hand, closes his fist, places it over his heart, and moves it up and down. I watch his face as he signs. He’s sorry, very sorry.

  I stare at the envelope as if I touch it, it will burst into flames, or maybe I will. So I just let it stay there, halfway between us, not quite touching the cheap plastic white and gray salt and pepper shakers. I stare at it for maybe two minutes, maybe ten. But finally it’s time. I give a big sigh and reach for it. It won’t say anything I don’t already know.

  It’s short. All it says is, “I did try, but I can’t.”

  I exhale, complete with raspberry. Pass the paper across the table to Joe. He reads it, gives a nod, and passes it back.

  We both sit here, me trying to stare at the note as though somehow my laser beam eyes will cause its disintegration, he playing with the cap from his soda, clearly not sure what to do with this, or me, or both.

  “I did try to warn you, she’s cray-cray.” Joe’s voice breaks the silence, a forced half laugh.

  But the truth is she’s really not.

  He signs. It’s a sign I don’t know. He signs it again slowly, only this time he says it out loud for me. “Identity Politics.”

  I have to say, not what I was expecting. And I must look confused, because he continues speaking, explaining, “Everyone has some. You have some. Your identity? Female. Lesbian. Jewish.” He counts them all off. “And maybe you also have queer as in lgbtq, or eyeglass wearer, or Jean’s sister, or Jimmy’s friend. Or maybe.” He stops talking mid-sentence, running his hands through his hair. Suddenly his hands jump, middle fingers extended, “fuck!”

  But it’s not anger. He’s not mad, at least not at me I don’t think. I think he’s frustrated at being left here trying to make this all somehow make sense.

  “Look,” Joe regroups, “you speak French?”

  At my wary nod, he continues.

  “And you speak English?”

  “Yes,” wary and then some.

  “Good,” Joes smiles, extends his hands, “now speak them both at once.”

  It takes a second for the absurdity of his demand to register. Before I answer, he’s continuing.

  “In the deaf community we have many identity politics. For example, if you could speak French and English at the same time, you would be amazingly capable of simultaneous communication, or sim-com.

  See, most hearing people think, even sometimes demand, deaf people should be able to speak whatever their hearing language is while signing, word for word, at the same time. As though sign language, a language that does have its own grammar and syntax, is somehow not a real-language.”

  Joe’s eyes roll and his hands flail in his favorite exasperation gesture before he continues. “And that’s maybe one example. But that example is between hearing and non-hearing, and sometimes the biggest identity fight is the one between hearing deaf and non-hearing deaf.”

  Joe stops again. He’s scowling, and obviously annoyed at himself, clearly still not communicating precisely what he wants. I watch him fidget, glance at me and glance away in that well-established movement better known as the age old “should I tell her, or not” dilemma.

  “Ava’s parents put her in a school when she was little.”

  Joe leans in, so I do too, and as he returns to signing, it strikes me how, even then, he “whispers.”

  “I don’t know, maybe four or five. She was not allowed to be who she is. She was not allowed to ‘be deaf.’ She had to be hearing. No sign. Only lip reading.”

  Joe’s anger as he tells this story is palpable. He pauses and I nod, remembering the story of Alexander Graham Bell and the Oralists. As Joe nods back, he switches to speaking aloud, which I know is to take no chance that what he is going to say will be “unheard.” “I don’t know when, it might even have taken a couple of years, but she tried to kill herself.”

  He pauses. Gives time to let that bombshell land.

  “She got very lucky.” Joe sits back, the need to whisper gone. “The pricey psychiatrist her parents picked told her parents to change.”

  “So,” Joe switches back to signing, “you come along, a hearing person.” His face is one of overly dramatic shock. He returns to using his voice, laughing a bit. “I didn’t give you two thoughts. But you hung in there. And then Ava . . .”

  Joe shakes his head, his signing becoming exaggerated, filled with faux shock, or maybe even real shock, I’m not sure.

  “. . . queen of deaf people, goddess of sign, went and hung in there, too. I couldn’t believe it. She went further than I ever thought she could or would. I just think she can’t. Not now. Maybe not ever.”

  And as I’m digesting all of this, Joe shares one last thing.

  “Did Ava ever tell you she can speak?” My look must reflect my shock as he shrugs, continuing, almost apologetically, “better than me, actually.”

  And now I just want him to go. He doesn’t want to, but right now I want to not be with him or anyone. I just sit, staring out blindly, until he finally stands.

  From the corner of my eye I see him turn back around. I don’t react. He moves on. He’s halfway down the stairs when he stops, tossing a sugar packet he’s glommed at me. I look over, startled by the packet, but not by the action. I remember the first time Ava did that throw-something-at-me thing. It’s called beanbagging and is, so I have learned, a perfectly acceptable way in the deaf community to get a person’s attention. And it works; I’m listening.

  “Just so you know, I didn’t come today so I could bring you that letter. I brought you that letter because I was coming, and I thought it was better to come from . . .” Joe’s hand suddenly releases the railing and his index fingers hook in a kind of easy C-shape. One hooks the other, and then they reverse. “. . . friend.”

  I nod, but he isn’t finished. He lingers on the step, something else clearly on his mind.

  “And” his right hand travels up to his forehead, thumb touching his temple then moving down to meet his left hand’s thumb already extended, leaning inward, a signed accompaniment to his voice. “Remember, it’s my body, too.”

  Now satisfied all his messages have been delivered, he’s gone. I stay a little while longer, but I can’t think here. It’s time to move on. I’d already texted home saying I was with Joe grabbing a bite, so it’s not like I have to rush anywhere, which, as I fold the note in half and stick it in my coat pocket, is good. Now I just have to decide where I want to go.

  FIFTEEN

  Which truly wasn’t anywhere I
expected to be.

  First, it’s cold so I decide to head back and find the subway. I quickly get to the Twenty-Third Street F/M subway station, not the one I’m looking for, but the one that is here. And since I’m not sure where I want to go, this seems like a fine idea. And thus, shuffling down the steps to the first landing, I come face to face with the jumbo William Wegman mosaic of his Weimaraner dressed in a yellow coat.

  And his eyes capture me. And my mouth pulls off my glove, freeing my hand to run down the dog’s nose. And the tile makes it feel wet, as though the mosaic is almost alive.

  I scooch myself against the black tile wall on the other side and decide that sitting here, keeping company with this puppy, isn’t where I wanted to go, but now it’s exactly where I want to be.

  I hear the occasional annoyance of commuters as they stumble upon me, but I don’t care. I ignore them all.

  “Hey.”

  I didn’t hear the voice, but I do see the shadow come over me. I look up. It’s Jimmy. I glance past him. No sign of Imani. We both know I checked. He nods and sits down next to me. He hands me half of a now-cold street pretzel.

  I take a bite. It’s gone cardboard. I take another.

  “Did you know,” I try to swallow, but it’s stuck in my mouth. I ignore it as best I can. “That tears aren’t all the same? It’s true. Their actual chemical composition is different based on whether or not they’re happy tears or tears caused by stress, or grief, or . . .” my voice trembles and I fall silent.

  Jimmy wraps me up, pulling his arms tightly around my shoulders. But he doesn’t baby me. “You hurt her, Sid.”

  I nod into his coat. “I know. But I don’t know how to fix it.”

  “Ah, Sid, sometimes your job isn’t to fix it. Sometimes it’s only to own it.”

  He gives me a big hug and kisses the top of my head. I suddenly wonder how he knew where to find me. Even I didn’t even know where I was going. I’m guessing my confusion is showing because Jimmy starts laughing.

  “Come on, Sid. Of course, I know where to find you. You are after all my OG, my Original Girlfriend. Finding you was as simple, or maybe as complicated, as knowing you.”

  And he walks away, climbing back up the steps. He’s laughing and flashing stupid, oversized, wannabe gangsta signs, but I’m not laughing. Even as the dark exit is swallowing him up, another figure is entering. She takes the railing, approaching cautiously, but not angry I don’t think. Maybe, more concerned.

  She stops as she reaches me, “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  Unlike Jimmy, she doesn’t join me on the floor. She sits on one of the bottom steps where she can see me. We sit, trying to gauge what the other one is thinking or waiting for or needing.

  I suddenly blurt out an embarrassed confession. “Don’t think I have a girlfriend anymore.”

  If there’s one reason why I love Imani so much, and always need her so much, this is it. There’s no fake, “I’m sorry.” Instead, she looks at me and leans in, like she’s going to push down my hair, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t come close enough for that. “How does that make you feel?”

  And in that moment, as I think, I realize the answer maybe isn’t what I think it will be or even, honestly, what I think it should be.

  “I dunno. Sad. Maybe.” And I wince and twitch, and then come clean. “Relieved.”

  “Relieved?”

  “Yeah. I knew Ava was kind of playing me. No, that’s not exactly right. It wasn’t really playing me—maybe, I don’t know, maybe breadcrumbing me, but whatever it was I couldn’t seem to stop it. Like I was powerless somehow.”

  Imani stares at me. I see the hundred questions piling up, but all she does is say “Powerless.”

  It’s half question, half statement, all back to me. I turn the thought over in my head. Sadly, I will have to stick with it. “Yeah.”

  “Why’d you do it?”

  I hear Imani’s question, but it’s only a faint echo of the one I’ve been discussing with my new friend Slicker, the dog in the yellow coat.

  “I’m not sure. It was like from the first moment I saw her, I was quicksanding. And then, you know, she threw out that challenge to find her. And somewhere in there, I don’t really know where, it morphed. It became my own fantasy about us, and then I think I got trapped in it.”

  Suddenly I scoot closer to Imani, as though her nearness is bringing me clarity.

  “It’s like there were all these levels, and somehow if I met all the challenges and leveled up all the levels, I would be the worthy one, and I would win the fair maiden’s hand and, and, and . . .” I’m stumbling, but I have to finish. “And there would be some grand ‘my shero’ moment.”

  And OMG that sounds so incredibly lame I just stop. I can’t believe that’s what came out of my mouth.

  I look at Imani, who’s looking at me, kind of like I have, maybe not two heads, but at least a head and a half. Thankfully she is not rolling on the floor, or onto the floor, laughing.

  “Shero moment.” I cringe, but own it out loud. Once again Imani is trying to maintain her matter-of-factness. Although, this time maybe her face is contorting just a wee bit, but not unkindly. “Hmmmm.” She looks at me, her nose wrinkling, “I’m guessing not so much.”

  “Yeah.” I give a big sigh. “Nope. Not so much.”

  And that confession seems for this brief moment to be enough. But neither of us moves. We sit, knowing there is more to give and to receive.

  Finally, quietly, Imani says, “You know Sid, when it was your dead body, that was all we heard about, all we talked about, all we ran around town about, all we even LARPed about! Now it was my dead body, and it was somehow less urgent, less valid maybe, or maybe less meaningful.”

  For just a second I think to protest. Then I think again. She’s right. Even if my motives weren’t to ignore her dead body, the truth is I ignored everyone, and ultimately everyone includes her dead body.

  “And I was so pissed.” The narrowed eyes, the slight nod of her head tells me she knew I was going to say something and chose to shut up instead. It’s a “tell,” one I know well.

  “And Jimmy kept saying I should give you some room, that you know Sid, she’ll be there when you need her. That maybe I was even being a little jealous of this new girlfriend in your life.”

  Now there’s a thought I had not thunk, and probably never would have. Obviously, my wordless communication is working perfectly.

  Imani, well she doesn’t quite smile, but I do get maybe a grimace and a small shrug.

  “And I had to take a step back and acknowledge that was at least partially true.”

  I absorb that, but suddenly I realize it’s deeper. And I feel a surge of anger. “Let’s be real, you didn’t like her.”

  For the first time Imani looks away. It’s almost as though my anger pushes her face to the right. But when she turns back to me, her eyes are direct, and her voice is even. “No. I didn’t. I felt like she was sucking you in. That she wanted all of you, and I was scared she was going to get it.”

  I don’t answer. I sit there, rocking, thinking, until finally, “You should have trusted me.”

  Imani’s eyebrows fly up. Skeptical would be an understatement. But I am spared any flippant response by a loud, distracting noise. Imani uses the railing to pull herself up and take a look. “Sid?”

  As I unfold myself to join her, I realize by the pins and needles shooting through my left leg just how long I had been sitting on it. As I’m trying to shake it out, I see what, or who, she sees. It’s an elderly lady with one of those wire shopping carts, trying to pull it up step by step, one difficult tug at a time.

  We simply head down. I take the cart as Imani reassures the woman.

  “There’s no elevator in this station.” Her fair-enough complaints follow me up the stairs across the landing, up the next flight, where I set the cart down, keeping one hand firmly on its handle until they can reunite. She finally pulls herself up to the top of the stairs, g
lares at me, and continues her shrill listicle of Twenty-Third Street Station wrongs. “What do they think old people should do? Walk eight blocks in the ice?”

  And with that she grabs her handle and is gone. Her thanks unspoken.

  We watch her go, look at each other, eye roll. Then Imani looks at me and opens the door. We’re done in here.

  The cold air stings, but it also feels good.

  Imani suddenly laughs, “I can’t believe you, of all people, picked a subway cement floor to hide in. You? The germaphobe.”

  She’s right. Totally. I shrug, “It came with a dog?”

  I’m kind of wondering if I should go back to where we were, which I believe was Imani acknowledging she was maybe a little jealous of my new girlfriend, maybe even a bit inappropriate in her behavior, when I feel her firmly loop her arm through mine. And with that Imani is steering the direction of both our feet and our conversation.

  “You know, Sid, when I came to America I was terrified. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this. To state the obvious, at that time I didn’t actually know you. And after, when I did know you, I forgot all about it. So anyway, there I was, transferring into the seventh grade, after classes have already started, and after my not so fabulous teenage growth spurt has begun. They have me waiting in the office, they bring you in, and it’s like hey, we got you a best friend. Which would have been totally laughable except, on that day, in that meeting, I knew everything suddenly was somehow going to be okay.”

  I take a chance, turning to her, flashing a big toothy “of course” grin.

  “No,” Imani shoulder pushes into mine. “Not because you are sooooo fabulous. I remember those glasses. They were even sillier than that random thought of us two, instant best friends in the making, was.”

  She’s sadly not wrong.

  “It was . . .” Imani slows down, bites her lower lip, thinking. “It was because other than what we saw on television, which when you go to boarding school is limited, I didn’t know anything about America. I mean yes, I knew Disneyland and I knew for damn sure who the president was. I am, ahem, three-quarters Kenyan. It doesn’t get holier than Barack Obama.”