Hurt Go Happy

by Ginny Rorby

  J-O-E-Y. SIGN NAME J-Y.

  NICE MEET YOU. MOTHER YOU?

  When Joey nodded, Sarah shook her mother’s hand. DEAF YOU? she asked Ruth.

  NO, Joey answered. MOTHER HEARING.

  NO A-S-L?

  Joey shook her head.

  GOOD, Sarah signed. WE KEEP SECRETS. She grinned and left to join friends.

  Joey looked at her mother. “I just had a whole conversation in sign,” she said. “I was getting so scared, but now I think I can do this.” She took a sip of Coke, watching Sarah as she squeezed into a booth with friends. I have to do this, she thought.

  Ruth closed her eyes and let her head drop. She dug in her bag searching for a Kleenex, then used the napkin to dab her eyes and blow her nose. “I can’t imagine what I’m going to do without you,” she said when she gained control.

  “They send us home every weekend. You won’t have time to miss me before I’m under foot again.”

  “I know, but eventually you’ll make friends here and spend weekends with their families. Our lives are about to change.…” She watched the kids for a moment, then took Joey’s hands in hers. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, I feel like I’ve done everything wrong since the day you were born.”

  “No, Mom, you haven’t.” She squeezed her mother’s hand, but couldn’t think of what to say to make her feel better.

  Another group of kids came in and the hugging started again. “This is where I belong, Mom. Here I won’t be different.” Joey laughed. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Ruth nodded, but her expression was still sad.

  “Mom, what made you change your mind?”

  Her mother shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  Joey couldn’t stop crying as she watched her mother drive away. She didn’t want anyone to see her so she walked to the park down the street from the school. Its manicured lawn was full of Canada geese, hundreds of them. Possibly even Gilbert. The sight of them was almost more than she could bear. She felt so desperately alone as she sat on a swing and cried and cried. Even Sukari was with someone who loved her.

  It was nearly sunset when she started back toward school. She stopped once to look back at the geese and wondered how they’d found one another, and how they knew this was where they should be. She remembered how frightened Gilbert had been when Ray put him on the other side of the fence, separate from those he loved but plunked down with others just like himself. Here she was, all alone, trying to fit in where maybe she didn’t belong. As the light faded and she walked toward her new life, she suddenly remembered that Gilbert had adjusted. She’d come home from school one day to find a note from her mother: The man who has Gilbert called to say he is fine. He’s still a bit of an outsider on land, eating a little distance from the others, but in the water, they all follow him. As it turns out, she’d written, he has the longest neck. Joey squared her shoulders and smiled, Long necks run in our family.

  The first letter from her mother came a few days later, along with one from Kenny. His was scrawled on notebook paper and said only that school wasn’t the same without her, Kristin had been picked up for shoplifting, and Roxy was back.

  The note from her mother was cheery with news of Luke and full of questions about her progress and how she liked her roommate. It ended with the answer to Joey’s question of why she’d changed her mind.

  It was a long ride home without you and all the way I found myself wondering why I had decided to let you go. I sure had lots of reasons not to, but none of them held up very well after the party that night. Everyone was having such a good time—except you. On some level, I knew that. Asking you to help me watch Luke was my lame way of trying to include you. Over the years, I’ve tried to convince myself that you didn’t miss what you couldn’t hear. I let myself believe that in spite of what you said, you were fully integrated into the family, that you’d do well in school if you tried harder, and that our friends were your friends. When I saw you watching my lips and trying to tap out the rhythm, trying to experience the music, trying to take part in the fun as simple as it was, I felt so ashamed, and then you asked if I was crying over that old song. I had the nerve to tell you that I was crying for all the things I had wanted to do with my life. There you were, fighting daily for the right to make your own choices while I stood in your way and wallowed in self-pity. I’ve missed what I’ve missed because I made wrong choices and I was still making wrong choices—for you this time. I’ve spent the last seven years of your life unable to face the fact of your deafness by ignoring your drive to learn to sign. I believed all along that I was making the right decisions for you, just like I’d believed it was the right choice to marry your father. If I could be that wrong then, maybe I’m wrong now. It breaks my heart to think I may have been robbing you of a fuller life, but to realize that and to continue to do so would be unbearable.

  You don’t remember how I used to sing to you when you were a baby. Singing is a joyful thing. More than anything, I want you to hear music again, but if that never happens, then at least I want you to have the chance to sing. Learn to sing with your hands, honey.

  All my love, Mom

  Joey folded the letter and held it against her heart for a moment before putting it in her pocket. She was learning to sing with her hands. It somehow seemed so appropriate that her life, like the sun, should have changed direction with a summer solstice.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  FOURTEEN MONTHS LATER, NOVEMBER 1993

  FREMONT, CALIFORNIA

  Joey closed her eyes against the signing hands of her classmates as they followed Mr. Henderson’s interpretation of “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music. She remembered this song, from before she was deaf, being sung by the nuns at the convent. With her eyes shut tight, Joey pictured herself like Julie Andrews, turning slow circles on a golden hilltop, arms open. She didn’t see the classroom door open or Mr. Jacobs wave for her attention. Even after someone nudged her and Mr. Henderson signed that she had a phone call, it took a moment for Joey to realize that PHONE YOU was not part of the song.

  The TTY was in the office. Joey followed Mr. Jacobs across the courtyard. At the receptionist’s desk, she typed, “Joey here,” then “GA”, which meant “Go Ahead,” on the TTY keypad.

  “Hi, honey, it’s Mom here. GA,” appeared slowly, letter by letter, across the narrow screen at the top of the machine.

  Joey’s stomach lurched. They didn’t have a text teletypewriter at home, so her mother, who hated using the message-relay service, never called her. She said it was like having someone listen in on your conversation. On top of that, her mother, Ray, and Luke were coming down for the annual Veterans Day open house. She was sure this call four days before they were to arrive meant bad news. “What’s wrong? GA,” she typed.

  For a moment, there was no response; then, achingly slowly, came her mother’s answer: “We’re all fine, honey.” Another long pause. “It’s Sue Carey.” The relay operator’s misspelling of Sukari.

  Joey gripped the edge of the desk, but the next line to come up said, “Can you come home on the afternoon Amtrak? GA.”

  “Is she dead? GA.”

  “It’s not that. GA.”

  “What then? GA.”

  “It will need some explaining,” came her mother’s cryptic answer.

  * * *

  When the baby across the aisle began to shriek, Joey plucked out the hearing aids—another gift from Charlie—she wore only when she left campus and put them in her coat pocket. The racket reminded her of the temper tantrums Sukari had when she was a baby. She smiled at the young mother trying desperately to quiet her child and wished for the millionth time that she was either totally deaf or not deaf at all. She hated the in-between, where the sound she could hear was an irritation. She put her head back against the coarse fabric of the headrest, closed her eyes, and tried to let the rumble of the bus drown her thoughts. She was exh
austed from the dash to get packed, the race to the train station, and then the three-hour wait in Martinez for the bus to Willits, where her mother would pick her up. She was on the final leg and wanted to sleep and not dream, but all she could think about was Sukari and what might have happened to her.

  Except for a single visit shortly after Joey started CSD, she and Sukari had been apart for over a year—Joey in Fremont, and Sukari in Fresno with Lynn. Joey’d ridden the train that day, too. From the window she’d seen Lynn sitting trancelike on a bench, unaware that the train was in until Joey touched her arm.

  HELLO. WELCOME, Lynn signed. She was hugely pregnant and let Joey help her stand before they hugged.

  Lynn, whose sign language skills were still minimal, must have said something when Joey leaned to pick up her bag, because when she stood, Lynn pushed Joey’s bushy auburn hair aside to see her ears.

  “Sorry, I forgot them,” Joey said. She kept her hearing aids in an abalone shell on her desk in the dorm and hadn’t given them a thought until that moment.

  Lynn crinkled her nose. MY SIGN LANGUAGE, she paused, thinking, then shrugged and said, “is terrible.”

  “We’ll manage,” Joey said. “We always did before.”

  “Sure we will,” Lynn said.

  Still, aside from Lynn’s observation of how happy she looked, they rode to the house in an edgy silence, Lynn maneuvering through traffic, grimly, as if counting the minutes until this visit was over.

  Joey forgot her discomfort when she saw Sukari on the back porch riding her tricycle around and around her tire-swing. The sliding glass doors were closed, so Sukari hadn’t heard them, and that gave Joey a moment to take in the room.

  A huge chain-link cage had been built on the back porch. Joey could see why. The screen was poked out in all the lower corners and there was a long crack in one of the sliding glass doors. The concrete floor was littered with Sukari’s toys, and ropes crisscrossed the cage from high corners. Still, it was a cage. Joey felt the sting of tears coming, but smiled and glanced at Lynn. The expression on her face was sobering. It reminded Joey of the fatigue and exasperation her mother showed after dealing with Luke all day, but there was more to it than that. Lynn’s mouth was touched with bitterness.

  Lynn looked at her and tried to smile. “She’s a handful.”

  Sukari suddenly stopped ramming her swing and looked up, then stared at them as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

  I-SEE-YOU, Joey signed.

  Sukari began to pant-hoot and shake her hands with excitement. The racket she made must have been deafening to Lynn because Joey could hear it faintly herself. She put a finger to her lips.

  I-SEE-YOU, J-Y, Sukari signed. COME HUG. HURRY. HURRY.

  Lynn opened the sliding glass door and tapped Joey’s shoulder. “We had to do this,” she said apologetically, then dialed the combination of the padlock.

  “I know,” Joey said.

  Sukari signed, HURRY, HURRY, until the gate swung open, then she climbed Joey as if she had rungs and wrapped her in powerful, long arms. Joey closed her eyes and buried her face against Sukari’s neck, gulping in her musky smell.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said, kissing her leathery palms, before stepping into the cage. She moved debris with her foot to clear a corner and sat down. “I brought you a present.” Joey pretended to search her pockets.

  WANT ME. HURRY, Sukari signed, flailing her hands.

  The gift-wrap didn’t fool her. She began to food-grunt, an uncontrollable reaction to the sight of food. RAISIN, HURRY.

  Joey handed them over.

  Sukari ripped the paper and the box, flinging raisins across the floor. After she’d collected a handful and stuffed them into her mouth she signed, RAISIN LOVE ME.

  Joey stayed the weekend and Lynn let Sukari sleep in the guest room with her. But on Sunday afternoon, when they began trying to lure her back onto the porch, Sukari got suspicious and refused to go near it. Out of desperation, they borrowed the neighbor’s dog to scare her into her cage.

  Even after six months, Joey still cried over the memory of Sukari clutching the chain-link wall, yanking on it with her hands and feet and screaming as Joey, tears streaming down her face, walked out the door.

  For a while after that Lynn wrote breezy notes about Sukari’s antics, but after the birth of her daughter, those stopped.

  The bus driver reached across the aisle and tapped her knee. “Willits,” he said.

  Joey sat up and rubbed her eyes. She was glad she’d worn her new red sweatshirt with DEAF PRIDE embossed across her chest, because she’d fallen asleep without remembering to tell him she couldn’t hear the towns when he called them out. “Thanks.” She yawned.

  “Is she here for you?” he asked, exaggerating the words and pointing toward her tired-looking mother at the curb.

  “Yes, sir.” Joey waved.

  “Am I glad to see you.” Ruth folded Joey into her arms before she was fully off the bus. A rear door of her mother’s Ford Explorer swung open. Luke scrambled out and ran into her arms.

  “How’s school?” Joey asked him. “Can you add yet?”

  “One plus one is two,” Luke shouted. “Two plus two is four.”

  Her mother covered his mouth with her hand.

  Joey hitched him under her arm and carried him to the car.

  “Sit with me,” Luke shouted.

  “No, we want to talk,” Ruth said.

  “Bummer.” Luke snapped his fingers.

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “I’m afraid this is only the beginning. He comes home from kindergarten with a new expression every day. How’s Michelle?”

  Michelle was Joey’s roommate, and it was her family with whom Joey lived on weekends. What started as a once-a-month treat from having to travel all the way to Fort Bragg and back each weekend had become a permanent arrangement when Joey proved to be the more trustworthy babysitter for Michelle’s little sister. “She’s in love.”

  “Who this week?”

  Joey laughed. “I don’t bother with their names anymore. It’ll be really scary when her mother actually lets her date.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. She’s so boy-crazy.”

  Joey knew she shouldn’t tell her mother about Michelle, but she felt compelled. Being open about her roommate might reassure her mother that she had better sense. At sixteen, Joey was six months older than her mother had been when she fell in love with her father.

  They passed the old Willits barn. Three miles of small talk was enough. “So tell me about Sukari,” Joey said.

  “Not now. The road’s too twisty,” Ruth answered.

  Route 20 was thirty-three miles of curves. It was the shortest way to the coast across the stretch where the two North Coast ranges shouldered each other, but it was not a piece of road to take your eyes off. “You’re right.” Joey turned to talk to Luke but he was hypnotized by his Pac-Man game, leaving Joey to stare out the window, lost in memories of Sukari.

  Ray came out of the house and waved as they pulled in. HOW SCHOOL? he signed, then grinned. RIGHT?

  Joey laughed. YES. RIGHT. “School’s fine. School’s great. You’re really clicking along.”

  Ruth tapped her shoulder. “He’s about a quarter of the way through the book Charlie gave you, and Luke’s got the whole alphabet and a few words under his belt.”

  “Oh, Ray, that’s so nice of you.”

  WANT US TALK, he signed.

  Joey hugged him, quickly, then turned to take her overnight bag from the backseat. That’s when she saw a familiar car parked under the fir tree.

  “What’s Lynn…?” She looked toward the house.

  Lynn stood at the window, holding her baby, whose hand she lifted and waved at Joey.

  The hand Joey lifted in return trembled. She turned to Ruth. “You said she wasn’t dead. Is Sukari dead?”

  “She’s not, honey. I promise.”

  Ruth set their meeting up like a conference on the deck off the upstairs
bedroom. There was a notepad for Lynn to write on and glasses filled with iced tea and an ominous box of tissues.

  As much as she loved babies, Joey couldn’t even pretend interest in little Katie. She could think only of Sukari as she faced Lynn and her mother. If Sukari wasn’t dead, how much worse could it be that Lynn had felt obliged to drive up here, probably passing Joey’s bus on the way?

  Lynn stuck a pacifier in Katie’s mouth, and sat down, heaving a sigh so heavy that her long bangs fluttered. The look she gave Ruth was full of resignation and something else that it took Joey a second to recognize as thinly veiled hostility. Not at all what she’d expected. For some reason, she had assumed that they were in this together. Why she thought that, she didn’t know. Perhaps because they were adults, who seemed to enter into conspiracies against kids even when they didn’t like each other.

  The day was bright and sunny. An Anna’s hummingbird dived in and hovered near the baby’s red cap, then zipped away. If the scene had been caught in a photograph it would be one of those shiny-postcard moments.

  Ruth held a letter out, which Joey took. The return address was Lynn’s and the postmark was four months old. It was still sealed but Joey was sure that her mother had either read it or knew what it was about. Why else would she have kept it from Joey? And was this the reason Lynn seemed hostile toward her mother?

  Lynn avoided looking at her and reached instead to shift the baby so that she was sitting in a pool of sunlight. Her face, for that moment, was filled with affection, very different from how Joey remembered her with Sukari during her Fresno visit. With a sick feeling in her stomach, she got up and took her letter to the creek side of the deck. It opened easily.

  Dear Joey, I am so sorry to have to tell you this, and I want you to know that I did everything I could to avoid it, but we had to give Sukari to a zoo.

  After hours of dread, relief swept over her. A zoo. That was okay. It wasn’t what she would have wanted for Sukari but she’d been on a field trip to the Oakland Zoo and seen the chimps there. They’d seemed happy, chasing each other, swinging on ropes, and spinning in tires. She’d much prefer to see Sukari there than on Lynn’s cramped little porch. Joey looked up, almost smiling, but the expressions on their faces frightened her again. Her fingers tightened on the thin paper in her hands as she read on.