Hands of My Father

by Myron Uhlberg

  When we arrived at Celia's, my mother would immediately go to the kitchen—from which the most amazing odors were emanating—to help her mother and younger sister, Mary, cook the feast that they had been preparing all the previous week. The chicken had been plucked and was in the oven, the brisket lay marinating in a roasting pan, and an enormous cow's tongue sat simmering in a pot on the stove; now all that was left were the finishing touches—each of which “touches” for anyone else would constitute an entire meal for a family of four.

  My brother and I quickly joined our cousins who, having traveled the farthest, usually arrived first. My favorite cousin was Stephen, my uncle David's son, who was just a few months younger than I. Stephen was nothing like me—he was tall and slim, where I was of average height and more muscular. He was fair-skinned and blond, where I was dark-haired and swarthy in complexion; in the summer I tanned, while he sunburned. He swam, as did his father, like a fish, while I resembled, like my father, an anchor in the water. Where he was extroverted, I was introspective. In short, as opposites in every way, we were perfectly suited to be the best of friends and, we assumed, friends for life.

  While the cousins played, my father would join my mother's brothers David, Harry, and Milton, where he would promptly produce a pipe from his jacket pocket and begin elaborate preparations for a fresh bowlful of Walnut tobacco. Although my father was deaf and his brothers-in-law knew not a single word of sign language, within minutes of greeting one another they were deep in discussion—of a sort. This “discussion” consisted of exaggerated speech on their part, and sheer guesswork involving lipreading on my father's part. The misunderstandings that this area of “discussion” produced were comical, even more so because my father, being a comedian at heart, often exaggerated his malapropisms.

  Politics was a subject of particular interest to my father and Milton, my mother's youngest brother. Because of his experience growing up poor during the Great Depression, Milton held strong beliefs on the superiority of an egalitarian, socialist society over the dog-eat-dog ways of capitalism, and before the war he had fought in Spain as part of the anti-Francoist Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The other two brothers weren't much interested in politics. David, the oldest, was known far and wide in Brooklyn as “the Duke of Coney Island,” and as I later learned, his interests lay basically in wine, women, and song. Harry, the middle brother, was as taciturn as his famously taciturn mother and betrayed no apparent interest in any subject whatsoever, least of all politics.

  My mother's oldest brother, David, the Duke of Coney Island

  But David and Harry were both fascinated by the lengthy political conversations between my father and Milton, not because of the content (which was slight) but because of the manner in which they conducted these pseudo-debates. Lacking a common language, my father and Milton communicated in mime. Of course, my father was the more gifted in this physical language, but Milton managed to hold his own—if not in technique, surely in inventiveness, enthusiasm, and conviction. One of the recurring bits involved pipe smoking.

  All three of my mother's brothers were pipe smokers. No sooner did my father put his empty pipe in his mouth than they followed suit. There they sat, thoughtful looks on their faces, four men with pipes in their mouths, staring expectantly straight ahead, like an ad for Walnut tobacco, the premier pipe tobacco of its day. However, in this case only my father had Walnut tobacco in his tobacco pouch. The others had rough-cut, no-name brands of lesser quality.

  This frozen tableau was broken when my father began to load his pipe. The sweet aroma of his fine-cut tobacco caused his brothers-in-law's nostrils to flare, as they sniffed the air expectantly. When my father completed the task of lovingly tamping down the tobacco in his pipe bowl, Milton waved his empty pipe in front of my father's face. My father studiously ignored him.

  Then my father ever so slowly lit his pipe with a wooden match and drew deeply. Holding that first mouthful of smoke within his bulging cheeks for the longest time, he opened his eyes wide, curled his lips up around the pipe stem in exaggerated satisfaction—and winked, all the while looking at Milton and shaking his head no.

  I knew my father to be the most generous of men, so I understood that his broad gesture of refusal to accede to Milton's request was only the opening gambit—triggered by the political concept of “sharing”—of a prolonged discussion of the relative merits of Stalinist Russia and its Communist system, versus Harry Truman's self-reliant America, all done in mime, worthy of the opening act in a Coney Island vaudeville show.

  Milton, taking his cue, acted out the sharing of his inferior tobacco with his two brothers, making it clear to my father that they got their bowlfuls before he got his. This was to symbolize the Soviet principle of sharing; one for all, and all for one. Then to underscore the point, only after his brothers had lit their pipes did Milton light his—with a paper match, the people's match. Unfortunately, even after repeated attempts, his matches wouldn't light.

  Taking the paper matches from Milton, my father, in broad gestures, struck match after match under Milton's nose, making sure that they would sputter but never light. Once he'd exhausted Milton's pack of proletarian paper matches, he dismissively made the sign for the hammer and sickle in Milton's face, scowling in perfect imitation of the photograph of Joseph Stalin at Yalta.

  Begging a kitchen match from David, Milton lit his pipe. He drew on his pipe until his cheeks bulged, then blew a cloud of smoke in my father's direction. As the acrid odor of Milton's burning pipe tobacco passed in front of my father's nose, he gagged and grabbed his throat. As his eyes turned up in his head, he collapsed into the waiting arms of David and Harry.

  Watching this pantomime, Stephen and I, along with our younger cousins, would run to my father with handkerchiefs, cushions, and pages from the Sunday newspaper, waving them in his face, attempting to revive him.

  After a dramatic moment or two, my father would sit back up on the couch, draw a deep breath, smile, and in a show of East-West solidarity, offer his tobacco pouch to Milton.

  The meal itself was the second act of this vaudeville show.

  Since Celia had long ago exiled her philandering husband, Max, from her home, my father, being the oldest male in the family, was granted the right of seigneur, a role he played with broad comedie strokes. Sitting with great dignity at the head of the table, he would begin by pressing the edge of the carving knife against the ball of his thumb to test for sharpness, which of course brought forth gasps from my younger cousins. Then tilting his head sideways, he proceeded to perform a maneuver in which he appeared to insert the knife into his mouth (shielding most of the action with his opposite hand and a napkin), while his Adam's apple jerked up and down like a fishing bob with a hooked fish at the other end. Withdrawing his blade, he turned back to the table, and with his tongue flattened, he opened his mouth wide, revealing an empty dark cavern. I had seen my father perform this act many times, but he was so expert at it that even I could believe that he had cut off his tongue with the sharp carving knife—and then swallowed it. The sight of the large inert cow's tongue, severed at its root, lying lifeless on a platter in front of him, probably reinforced the illusion. Then my father winked and proceeded to carve the tip of the cow's tongue and place it in his mouth. While we sat mesmerized, he began to chew. After a moment of exaggerated chewing motions, he opened his mouth and ever so slowly stuck out his tongue, now magically restored.

  The table broke into applause. Only Celia and Harry sat stone still, their faces as inexpressive as the granite ones carved into Mount Rushmore. Celia had the thinnest lips of any adult I ever knew, lips as straight and rigid as the edge of a ruler. As a child she had walked the muddy roads in the Pale of Russia, while being told that the streets of America were paved in gold. After hearing this fabulous story for years, one day she embarked, alone, for America. Immediately upon arriving in the Lower East Side of New York, her uneducated but acutely observant mind informed her that the streets of America wer
e not paved in gold but rather were covered in horseshit. She did not have much to say for the rest of her life. And the only sweetness she allowed herself to experience was the lump of sugar she held between her teeth as she sipped her tea from an old jelly glass.

  Moving into the next act, after the meal had been consumed— minus tongue for us kids who, after my father's performance, wanted no part of that vile organ—the men and children went to the living room, while my mother and her sister cleared the table. Once my father was settled, he would make four-cornered hats from the pages of the Sunday newspaper for us kids. Then, staring appraisingly at each of his brothers-in-law, he would affect an air of studious concentration, until he had his aha moment and began to make a hat for each of them.

  The making of a newspaper hat involves some twenty-five well-executed steps. In the process of transmuting a flat, one-dimensional sheet of newsprint into a three-dimensional newspaper hat, various possibilities appear along the way.

  At step fourteen, my father produced a pirate hat. Placing it with authority on his head, he formed his hands into a pistol and proceeded to empty Milton's pockets. Once Milton's pockets had been turned inside out, the pirate hat was placed on his head. Bereft of all possessions, Milton was now a pirate as well and could similarly steal the possessions of others. My father had made his political point.

  Taking another sheet of newsprint, he again applied himself to the folding and scoring process. Step fifteen consisted of turning the pirate's hat sideways, so that it was now a bishop's miter. Solemnly making the sign of the cross, he took the hat over to Harry—who had married an Italian Catholic girl—and put it on his head. Then, placing a linen napkin on the floor, he knelt at Harry's feet, kissed Harry's wedding ring, and bowed his head, beseeching Harry's blessing. More from the desire to take the spotlight off himself than to engage in my father's nonsense, Harry made a lame version of the benediction.

  My father picked up another page from the Sunday paper. This time he selected a page from the comics and began folding. At step sixteen, he held a perfectly formed sailor hat in his hand. Turning it this way and that, he admired the colorful hat, then placed it, at a rakish angle, on David's head. The Duke of Coney Island understood the gesture perfectly.

  Harry, who failed to see any humor in all this, promptly removed his hat, but the other two brothers wore their hats for the rest of the afternoon. Milton would, from time to time, form his own hand pistol and demand money from my brother, whose pockets had been loaded with change by my father so that this scene could be performed all afternoon long—to my brother's great delight.

  David loved his sailor hat and all that it implied, and he would pester his wife, Sylvia, for kisses and hugs, like any self-respecting sailor on shore leave in Coney Island. She, much annoyed and not thinking his importuning in the least amusing, would firmly push him away.

  Since my mother's brothers had very little in common (except that all three had married outside the Jewish faith, as had my mother's sister), they gladly allowed my father to stay center stage at these family gatherings, directing his various vaudeville playlets. This relieved them of the obligation to find something to talk about. My father, in turn, figured that his antics took the pressure off my mother to attempt to create the illusion of familial unity—an impossible task for the deaf daughter of a hearing family, none of whom knew a single sign.

  But my father had another reason for producing these performances. He once explained to me that it was a matter of control.

  “When I'm with Mother Sarah's family,” he told me, “I have no idea what's going on. Oh, they smile at me and talk to me, mouthing words as if I were an idiot, but we never have a real conversation. Then after a while they turn away from me and talk to each other, and I'm left feeling like a piece of furniture. But when I take charge, when I act out my little scenes with them, I'm in control, and I always know what's going on.” Then he added, “And it's fun playing the clown sometimes. As long as it's on my terms.”

  One Sunday there was a new and unexpected act in the monthly comedie playlet, one that my father did not direct or star in. And rather than his usual fare of farce and comedy, this one was a bit of melodrama.

  On that afternoon my cousin Stephen arrived late—without his mother—and without saying a word, he dropped a fat envelope in his father's lap. Turning quickly, he left my grandmother's apartment and closed the door solidly behind him. The envelope contained the divorce papers that David's wife was now serving on him.

  I never saw Stephen, my friend for life, ever again.

  20

  Sounds from the Heart

  Although he was deaf, my father could make vocal sounds; there was nothing wrong with his larynx. I can still vaguely remember the sounds he made when he was happy and the sounds of grief that poured out of him at the news of President Roosevelt's death. But the single explosive sound of fear he made one evening, the only time I ever knew my father to be afraid, is seared in memory to this day.

  It was early evening, and I was waiting for my father to finish his bath before my mother came home. She had gone to Coney Island to visit her mother and sister.

  As I played with my newspaper hat and tried to make one for my brother, my father's deaf voice shattered the heavy stillness of our usually silent apartment, bringing me instantly to my feet. He screamed, again and again, the screams colliding with each other, bouncing off the tile walls of our small bathroom until they were one huge all-enveloping sound of pain.

  I ran to my father, who was lying naked in the tub covered in blood. A shampoo bottle had shattered when he dropped it as he was getting out of the tub. In reaching down for it, he had slipped and fallen on a jagged shard of glass. Blood was pouring from a slab-size flap of skin that hung obscenely from his arm. Wherever I looked, I saw his bright red blood coating every white tile surface of the room.

  With one hand my father held the slippery, hanging red flap in place, while his other hand signed for me to get the towel, his every movement flinging more blood from his gaping wound. I understood and wrapped the towel as tightly as I could around his arm while he held the flap in place. My father gathered the ends of the towel and twisted them into a loose knot, effectively creating a tourniquet that slowed his loss of blood. My brother stood at the bathroom door, looking on at the bloody scene in horror.

  Furiously I stomped on the bathroom floor. Mrs. Abromovitz, our downstairs neighbor, recognized immediately that this was a signal of emergency and not the usual foot-stamping that our deaf family used to gain one another's attention. An ambulance soon arrived. I accompanied my father to serve as usual as his translator, and I brought my brother with us, as I was afraid that if left alone in our empty apartment, he might have a seizure after all the excitement.

  The emergency attendant who ministered to my father's wound on the way to Coney Island Hospital directed all his questions to me as soon as he understood that my father was deaf.

  “How did this happen?” he asked me in the back of the ambulance, as we careened around corners and sped down the streets of Brooklyn.

  I asked my father.

  “He slipped in the bathtub and fell on broken glass,” I interpreted.

  “Ask your father how much blood he's lost.”

  I asked my father.

  “How the hell should I know?” he answered me with one hand, while holding on to the blood-drenched towel with the other. “Is this guy an idiot?”

  “A lot,” I told the attendant.

  “Ask your father what his blood type is.”

  I asked my father.

  “This guy is an idiot,” my father responded with absolute disgust.

  “My father wants to know, what are the choices?”

  “A, B, or O,” the attendant said.

  I told my father his choices.

  “Tell this fool to shove his choices up his ass,” my father signed. “It's all alphabet soup to me. Just get me to a doctor!”

  I could feel my o
wn blood rising into my face and turning it bright red. I stiffened with shame.

  “He's not sure,” I said.

  As soon as we pulled up to the ambulance entrance of the hospital, I was told to go to the admissions office, while my father was rushed into the emergency room.

  For over an hour I tried to supply the answers to the multitude of questions asked of me about my father.

  “Is your father deaf?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can he hear if we speak loudly?”

  “No, he is deaf.”

  “Can he hear if we shout?”

  I didn't bother answering. This question had been asked of me many times when I was in public with my father. When I answered, “No, he is deaf,” hearing people would often then shout at him over and over. When he didn't respond, they would walk off in disgust.

  “Stupid hearing people,” my father always said to me when this happened. “Pay no attention to them.”

  “Where does your father work? Does he have insurance? Do you have a telephone? Do you have a mother? Is she deaf? What's her name? How can we reach her?”

  On and on it went. I answered as best I could.

  “How come you can hear?”

  I couldn't understand what that had to do with anything.

  “How old are you?”

  That one I answered with no problem.

  The flap of skin was sewn back to his arm with enough stitches to remind me of my model-train tracks, and he received a transfusion of two pints of blood. Then I spoke to my father's doctor. Or rather he spoke to me.

  “Tell your father he's lost a great deal of blood,” the doctor said.