Finding Zoe

by Brandi Rarus

  TOP TEN FINALISTS AT THE MISS DEAF AMERICA PAGEANT. MY GOOD FRIEND, ANNE MARIE, MISS DEAF MINNESOTA AND FIRST RUNNER UP, IS ON MY LEFT.

  And so it began. I was the keynote speaker at NAD state association banquets, conferences, and pageants. I spoke at corporations and deaf schools—both residential, stay-away schools, which deaf students from deaf families often go to, and public schools with deaf programs similar to the one I had attended. I learned about the laws relating to education and about my rights as a deaf person, such as Public Law 94-142, which is a plan that helps children with special needs participate in school. I learned about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which hadn’t yet been passed but soon would be, thanks to a push from the Gallaudet Protest. I learned about our right to have interpreters and closed-captioning for TV, and a whole world opened up for me regarding the ways that technology could make deaf people’s lives a lot easier and more enjoyable (and back then technology was nothing like it is today).

  I signed the national anthem at a Chicago Cubs baseball game and, at the college level, for Fresno State in California, among other teams. I never liked performing those musical numbers though. I couldn’t really feel the rhythm and didn’t feel confident in my performance. Public speaking was more my strength, and due to the Gallaudet Protest, I had many more requests to give speeches and talks than prior Miss Deaf Americas. I went from city to city, encountering so many different people, places, and experiences. Only occasionally, I felt a little sad thinking about my friends partying back at school and the fun I was missing out on.

  One of my advisors from school, Tom Holcomb, helped me with the content and ideas to use when developing my presentations and talks. In my travels, I gave workshops or speeches on “Deafness 101” and “Deaf Culture in the Workplace,” where I shared how employers can create a positive environment for their deaf employees by providing interpreters, TTYs (Text Telephones), and occasionally having silent lunches where no one speaks but instead practices signing. “Disability Awareness Week” was a very busy travel time for me. I spoke at dozens of large corporations and agencies, including Bell Labs (AT&T), the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Transportation, to name just a few. Because I wanted to be sure that people understood everything I said, as a rule I used interpreters to voice for me when I gave my presentations, and used my own voice when I was talking one-on-one or with family and friends.

  For me, though, the most fulfilling and humbling part of being Miss Deaf America was visiting the deaf schools or mainstreamed programs and having those sweet little kids look up to me as a role model. I remember once, when I was six months into my reign and had come home for winter break, several of the local schools had scheduled appearances for me, including one elementary school with a deaf program very similar to the one I had gone to. I spoke at their all-school assembly, which had both deaf and hearing students attending, and talked about what it was like to be deaf, the kind of technology we used to assist us, and how cool sign language was, and I answered questions from the audience.

  After the assembly, I visited a third-grade deaf classroom where the kids had made me cards to thank me for coming. One adorable little boy with red hair and dimples handed me his card. On the front, he had drawn balloons next to a girl who was wearing a dress and a crown. Inside the card, he had drawn smiles next to his note. As I read it, he looked up at me with his big brown eyes. It said, “Dear Miss Deaf America, I am sorry you are deaf.”

  Whoa. I was right back at camp with Father Tom. My heart ached for him, for me, for every person who had ever felt unworthy. I kneeled down next to him and signed, “You are sorry that I am deaf?”

  “Yes,” he signed, not at all upset. It was probably an attitude picked up in the schoolyard.

  “No. You must not be sorry,” I responded. “I am not sorry. Look at me. I am doing well. I am in college. I am happy. I am Miss Deaf America. Being deaf is a great thing, and it’s great for you, too. Do not be sorry!”

  He just looked at me and nodded, then gave me a big hug. I don’t know what happened to that little boy, but he represented the epitome of my two years as Miss Deaf America. I realized then how very important it was that mainstreamed deaf kids, or any deaf kids for that matter, felt proud of who they are and of our culture.

  Ironically, the first big assignment during my reign, given to me about two weeks after I was crowned, was attending a conference at the AG Bell Association. The AG Bell Association is an “oralist” organization comprised of doctors, speech therapists, and audiologists—all hearing professionals, who like their founder, Alexander Graham Bell, believed in “oralism”—that teaching deaf children how to speak was the best way to raise them. Eric’s father, who, in addition to being the president of the Clarke School for the Deaf, was also the president of AG Bell, invited me to attend, so Eric and I went together.

  There was a political issue there. The NAD (whom I was representing) and the AG Bell Association, while politically friendly, had very different philosophies on deaf education. The NAD, founded by deaf people and representing the Deaf community, strongly advocated the use of ASL and discouraged oralism. In fact, there was a big to-do in the Deaf community that Miss Deaf America was dating the son of the president of the AG Bell. I remember being so surprised initially that the NAD had decided to send me. Perhaps, it was a gesture of goodwill.

  However, no sooner had Eric and I arrived at the conference, than the buzzing began, “Look, Eric, the president’s son is signing instead of speaking,” people were saying.

  Soon Eric’s father, who performed the opening ceremony, began speaking. After a few opening remarks, he scanned the room until he found Eric sitting next to me and then locked his eyes on him and said, “Many of you know my son, Eric, who is a criminal justice major at the National Technical Institute of the Deaf. He is deaf and signs. I am not upset that Eric signs, nor am I upset that he has chosen to live in the world of the Deaf. But when he was a child, I wanted to be sure that later on he would be able to make that choice for himself. Today Eric chooses when to speak and when to sign; that is his choice to make.”

  His words reverberated through me as if I somehow knew that I would be making a similar decision one day, but it wasn’t until many, many years later that I fully appreciated why.

  My next assignment about two months after that landed me at Gallaudet University at the biggest celebration ever to take place in the school’s history. It was a triple whammy: the inauguration of I. King Jordan, the school’s 125th anniversary, and homecoming weekend—all rolled up into one big fête. The spirit at the school was still soaring. Gallaudet had its first deaf president—it was an immeasurable morale boost! A big parade was scheduled to kick off the festivities, and I was invited, as Miss Deaf America, to sit in a car with the student government president and the homecoming king and queen.

  Tim Rarus was the homecoming king.

  I remembered seeing him on television being interviewed by Tom Brokaw and how taken I had been with his passion and energy, his beautiful signing, and how inspiring he had been at the Capitol. He was easy on the eyes, too. That’s why I was completely shocked when he didn’t sign a single word to me the entire time we sat next to each other in the car. Not even a hello. I was invisible to him. I thought that he was cute and was attracted to his energy and air of confidence. However, I couldn’t get over how a person could be so rude. I just couldn’t fathom it, so I wasn’t about to admit to myself that I admired him.

  It wasn’t until several months later that I realized that he felt that I was too “oral” for him. Tim was one of the many culturally deaf people of that era who didn’t socialize with deaf people who spoke and didn’t use ASL—some were pretty militant about it. Even though I signed, I used a version of SEE (Signed Exact English), which is different from ASL. We understood each other fine; we just didn’t express ourselves in the same mode of sign language. Yet, to Tim, I may as well have been a foreigner with a different langua
ge, culture, customs, and way of thinking.

  ME AND TIM IN GALLAUDET PARADE CAR. TIM WAS THE HOMECOMING KING.

  Back then, most oral people, like me, wanted to engage more significantly with the culturally deaf, but not all of them wanted to mingle with us. Later, when Tim and I first began dating, some of his friends had a real problem accepting me. They gave me the sign, hearing-minded, which means someone who is hearing, but it’s all in the head—in other words, a deaf person who tries to pass off as hearing. It’s not a positive comment. At first, it really bothered me, and I tried so hard to prove that I wasn’t hearing-minded, but eventually I came to my senses, realized it was a xenophobic label, and chose to ignore it.

  Even though Tim ignored me, I let bygones be bygones. However, the following spring, he brushed me off again at a reception on Capitol Hill that was being sponsored by Tony Coelho, a Democratic congressman from California and a primary sponsor of the ADA. The reception was in honor of me, as Miss Deaf America, and I. King Jordan, and it was sponsored by the NAD and NTID. The incident happened while Tim was on the receiving line, where people first shook hands with I. King Jordan’s wife, then I. King Jordan, and then me. Tim shook their hands and then walked off. Strike two, I thought.

  The following summer, our paths crossed yet again when I was asked to speak at the Youth Leadership Camp (YLC) located in Pengilly, Minnesota, also sponsored by the NAD. YLC attracts the brightest deaf children from all over the country and teaches them leadership skills by introducing them to leaders in the Deaf community. Tim was working there as the Dean of Boys. After arriving at camp, I went into the dining hall and saw Tim sitting at a table eating. Our eyes met, but that was the extent of our interaction.

  Later that evening, after making a presentation to the campers, I joined the staff at a bar in town. There must have been twenty of us sitting around the table. Tim was sitting directly across from me, but at first we didn’t speak to each other. One by one people began leaving, and when only four of us remained, he and I started talking. After about ten minutes I just looked at him and said, “I have to tell you that I really don’t like you.”

  “Don’t like me?” he said.

  “No. You were very rude to me the last two times we met.”

  “I was?” he said, genuinely surprised. It was then that I realized that he hadn’t been trying to be a smart-ass or be mean or rude to me that day in the parade car. Because of his background, it’s like he didn’t even see me. It’s just that I was everything he wasn’t. Mainstreamed. Oral. I had a hearing family and had gone to NTID instead of to Gallaudet. I didn’t use ASL. He wasn’t interested in people like me. I didn’t fit into his world.

  “Yes, you were rude,” I continued. “We sat in that car for over an hour, and you didn’t say a single word to me.” Then I said, “I don’t know what you call that, but I call it rude.” He didn’t miss a beat.

  “A strong girl. I like that,” he said. “Thanks for your honesty. I will try to do better next time,” he promised with a huge grin on his face, as if he were totally amused by me.

  For the remainder of the evening, I could feel the attraction between us and left the bar not sure of what had happened, but knowing that something had. The next morning when I saw him in the administrator’s cabin, I felt butterflies in my stomach.

  “Good morning,” he said to me.

  “Good morning, Tim.”

  “I just want to point out that I said, ‘good morning’ and am not being rude to you today,” he continued, that adorable grin back on his face.

  “Good for you. You just earned a brownie point,” I shot back.

  After that, I was keenly aware of his presence whenever he was around me during the day. When we made eye contact, it was electric. I knew he was watching me. He knew I was watching him. After seventy-two hours, we were together, just like that. Like fate, we started a conversation and never stopped. A few days later, while we were in the dining room eating lunch, he teased me, saying that he had been in the audience at the Miss Deaf America Pageant rooting for the Gallaudet contestants.

  “Yeah, well, I bet you’re glad that I won now.”

  I was scheduled to stay at camp for three days, but ended up staying for two weeks until the summer ended, as “friend of the Dean.” Tim drove me home to Naperville, where I stayed with my mother for a week and then told her that I was driving back to school with friends but, instead, drove to Washington, DC, to be with Tim. He had just graduated from Gallaudet the previous May and had taken a job working for John McCain, whom he met through DPN (Deaf President Now), and who represented his home state of Arizona.

  Before leaving, I met Matt at Friday’s Restaurant, where we used to go. While we weren’t “together” anymore, we’d left things open, never saying that we were “finished.” We had stayed in touch over the years, seeing each other when we could. That night we had another conversation about our deaf and hearing issues, and, again, he tried to reason with me. But by then, I was crystal clear that I would not compromise my communication. Matt’s family and friends were all hearing. I wanted my deafness to be a part of who I was. I didn’t want to have to choose anymore. With Tim, I didn’t have to.

  He was everything I ever wanted. He was handsome, charming, and the epitome of deafness—the personification of the world and culture for which I’d been yearning. I’d never met anyone so motivated, passionate, and knowledgeable about deaf people and Deaf rights. I admired that. Tim was a fixture in the Deaf community. Almost everyone I met in my travels as Miss Deaf America knew him. Half of them had said to me, “Sure, I know Tim. I changed his diaper.” I remember thinking, What? But that’s the Deaf community. Because Tim’s mother was a strong deaf advocate when he was a child, she took him with her to deaf events all the time, so he grew up as one of the community’s children.

  Through his actions and words, Tim validated my thinking and concerns about being deaf and about how deaf people truly were and should be treated. From the moment of his birth, he was immersed in Deaf Culture. Tim’s family was in that small 10 percent of the population where both the parents and the child are deaf. He had come from four generations of deafness—his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents on his mother’s side all were deaf. His sister was deaf.

  Tim’s grandfather, mother, and stepfather were all strong deaf advocates and had been on the NAD Board of Directors for years, so there was always political talk going on at his house. As Miss Deaf America, I represented the NAD, so when we sat down to dinner, I could relate and felt included and accepted.

  Being with Tim’s family was like being in a Deaf Mecca, from the way that they signed to their involvement in deaf advocacy, from their awareness about their rights as deaf people to their unequivocal sense of belonging to and believing in the Deaf community, which was like their family. I was new to the scene, and it was all so powerful and moving to me. Awestruck as I was, I felt right at home because they were all so warm and accepting. More than that, I felt like I had found a new family. It was because of hanging around with them that I just naturally changed my signing style from SEE to using more ASL.

  SEE is based on English grammar and is not at all like that painting-a-picture kind of signing that you see with ASL. For example, when Tim tells a story, he brings such fullness to his descriptions. They’re visualized with details that are hard to capture using written English and would be rare for someone who’s reciting a story. Everything is placed, the whole scene is set up, and you can see where everyone and everything is. Because Tim thinks visually, as do most deaf people, ASL is a much more intrinsic, intuitive way of communicating for him. The emotions and grammar of what he is saying are expressed not only through signs but also through his movements and facial expressions, just as they are expressed through a person’s vocal intonations in spoken English. Tim brings his humor and his entire personality to whatever he is saying.

  Being with Tim’s family made me realize just how different his upbringing was
from mine. To have actually grown up in a family that had total, unlimited communication was astounding to me. I remembered sitting in the movie theaters with my friends and in church feeling so different and isolated. Tim always had an interpreter at church and always went to the captioned movies (whatever few there were). I was amazed by how our experiences of learning about ourselves and the world were so different.

  As a child, Tim didn’t even realize that he was different from most people. His parents had told him about the big, wide, hearing world out there, and he knew that all of his neighbors were hearing, but it had no meaning for him; he was just busy playing and being a kid. Yeah, they’re hearing, whatever, he thought.

  As Tim grew older, his mother told him about the barriers that deaf people had faced in the past—how they couldn’t drive or get jobs and had to depend on hearing people for just about everything. Prior to the 1960s, before there were TTYs, if deaf people wanted to call a doctor, for example, either they had to walk or drive to a hearing neighbor’s house and have the neighbor make the call for them, or drive to the house of a deaf friend who had a hearing child. The TTY brought us independence and freedom; now, just like the rest of the hearing world, we could finally stay home and call our friends and families. Later, when the ADA was passed, it required the usage of Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS), which came before the Video Relay Services (VRS) that we use today. TRS was a telephone system that allowed people with TTYs to connect to an operator who would then relay their communication to hearing callers who did not have a TTY. But even with the TTY, communication was limited, at best. The need for connection and communication has always been so paramount for us because we’ve never had enough of it.