Singing Hands Read online

  Singing Hands

  Delia Ray

  * * *

  CLARION BOOKS

  New York

  * * *

  Clarion Books

  a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003

  Text copyright © 2006 by Delia Ray

  The text was set in 12-point Minister Light.

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South,

  New York, NY 10003.

  www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ray, Delia.

  Singing hands / by Delia Ray.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In the late 1940s, twelve-year-old Gussie, a minister's daughter,

  learns the definition of integrity while helping with a celebration at the

  Alabama School for the Deaf—her punishment for misdeeds against her

  deaf parents and their boarders.

  ISBN 0-618-65762-2

  [1. Conduct of life—Fiction. 2. Deaf—Fiction. 3. People with disabilities—

  Fiction. 4. American Sign Language—Fiction. 5. Family life—Alabama—

  Fiction. 6. Clergy—Fiction. 7. Alabama—History—20th century—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.R2101315Sin 2006

  [Fic]—dc22 2005022972

  ISBN-13: 978-0-618-65762-9

  ISBN-10: 0-618-65762-2

  MP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  * * *

  For Robert and Estelle

  and their daughter Roberta,

  who keeps her family's stories alive

  * * *

  * * *

  Warmup

  Up until the summer of 1948, when I was twelve, probably the worst thing I ever did was hum in church. I started out humming quiet songs like "Beautiful Dreamer," letting the notes ease out in a slow, whispery voice. I would glance sideways and check over my shoulder for any "Ears" who might have slipped into the congregation. Then, if everybody else around me kept staring straight ahead, with their hands folded neatly over their pocketbooks and prayer books, caught up in another one of Daddy's sermons, I would try humming louder. My little sister, Nell, sat beside me with no more than a tiny smile playing along the corners of her perfect red lips. I knew she would never tattle. Nell and I were only fifteen months apart, and we had an unspoken rule: the sister who tattled would endure weeks of shame and loneliness.

  After a few Sundays without getting caught, I started humming louder and livelier songs—"I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover" or "Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pandowdy." Seeing my lips pressed together tight and a sweet, blank expression locked on my face, no one at Saint Jude's Church for the Deaf had any idea I was holding a private humming concert.

  I knew I was probably going too far the day I decided to perform all four verses of "Dixie" right through Holy Communion. But I couldn't seem to stop myself. Nothing else exciting was happening that summer. And it felt heavenly to burst out with noise in Daddy's silent, sweltering church, where the only other sounds were flies buzzing against the windowpanes and the streetcar rumbling along Jefferson Avenue.

  I kept humming even when we all started down the aisle toward the altar. Unfortunately, my sixteen-year-old sister, Margaret, had had her fill of my humming. From her usual spot in the back row of the choir, she glared at me as if she could shoot poisoned darts from her eyes. When that didn't work, she threw herself into a small coughing fit to try to get me to hush up. But nobody in the choir noticed her sputtering—not even Mother, who was the unofficial director of the group. She and the other choir ladies were too busy signing the words to the Communion hymn, working to keep their graceful hands in unison.

  When Daddy reached my spot at the altar railing, he smiled at me and placed a dry Communion wafer in my cupped palm. I paused "Dixie" only long enough to swallow it, wash down the postage-stamp taste with a sip of wine, and make the sign for Amen. Then, with the most powerful hum I could muster, I started into the refrain—the "Away, away, awaaaaaay down sooooooouth in Dixie" part. I winked at Margaret on the way back to my seat. Ha! There was nothing she could do right in the middle of the service—right in the middle of Saint Jude's, smack dab in the middle of a sanctuary packed full of deaf people who worshiped their deaf minister, Reverend Davis, as well as his dear deaf wife, Olivia, and their three lovely hearing daughters, Margaret, Nell, and, in the middle, me—Gussie, secret humming goddess of the South.

  Of course, my unusual performance of "Dixie" in church should have been my grand finale that summer, the ultimate test of what I could do without getting caught. But it wasn't. Humming was just the warmup.

  Chapter 1

  For a minister's family, church never ends with the last Amen. After services every Sunday, it was our job to stand outside next to Daddy and Mother, nodding and shaking hands with everyone as they filed down the steps. In between smiling and signing good morning, Margaret scolded me. She seemed more annoyed with me than usual, probably because of the heat. Even though it was only June and the beginning of summer vacation, Birmingham already felt like a stew pot. The smell of hot tar drifted up from Jefferson, and I could see tiny beads of sweat gleaming on Margaret's upper lip.

  "What were you thinking?" she fumed. "We won't even talk about how sacrilegious you are. But just imagine how horrified Daddy would be if he could hear you. What if somebody's hearing relatives or kids were there? What if the bishop had decided to visit today?"

  "All the other kids were in Sunday school," I said. "And there weren't any other Ears around. I checked."

  Margaret rolled her eyes with disgust.

  Just then I spotted Mr. Runion working his way toward us. He was grinning and bobbing his head, like always. "Oh, boy," I breathed. "Here it comes." Nell let out a little whimper.

  For as long as I could remember, old Mr. Runion had tried to make us laugh by shaking our hands so hard and so fast that our arms turned limp as noodles. I know I must have laughed at the trick when I was six or seven. But now, after endless Sundays of being cranked and wiggled and jolted like a jackhammer, I was tired of the joke.

  Nell pretended to be coy. She quickly pushed her fist into the pocket of her skirt, but Mr. Runion stood in front of her and held out his hand until she had to surrender. Nell smiled weakly until her turn at arm rattling was over. Mr. Runion let out one of his high, giggly laughs, then moved on to Margaret.

  Margaret didn't even wait until he had finished with her before she started nagging me again. "I'm telling you, Gussie," she said, her voice shaking along with her arm, "you went too far today with all that loud humming. I'll have to—"

  Mr. Runion was standing in front of me now. But this time I was ready for him. I grabbed hold of his knobby hand and shook back for all I was worth, not letting loose until he pulled away. Mr. Runion looked surprised. He blew on his thick fingers and flexed them as if they had been stuck in a bear trap. "Good grip," he signed, and then moved away.

  Nell snickered, but Margaret didn't even congratulate me for setting Mr. Runion straight. She was still lecturing. "I mean it, Gussie," she went on, "if you keep this up, I'll have to tell Daddy."

  "Uh-huh, and if you do," I said sweetly, "I'll have to tell Daddy about the time you and Anna Finch sneaked the Communion wine out of the kitchen pantry and had a little tasting party."

  "That was three years ago," Margaret snapped, momentarily forgetting to keep smiling and talking through her teeth.

  Mother shot us a hard look and Margaret rubbed her hand across her mouth as if she could erase our conversat
ion. Mother's lip-reading skills were legendary. As a young student at Gallaudet, the college for the deaf in Washington, D.C., she had won every lip-reading contest she ever entered.

  Mother and Daddy were so good at knowing what we were saying, even when we mumbled or muttered, that I often wondered if they had been playing some sort of strange, elaborate trick on us all these years. Maybe they were just pretending to be deaf, I sometimes thought. Supposedly, Mother had lost her hearing as a baby after a terrible case of scarlet fever, and Daddy told us he had been struck deaf by lightning when he was eight as he stood on his front porch watching a fierce thunderstorm churning up the sky. But just maybe all those stories were lies. Maybe they were just waiting to catch us in the act, to catch us when we screamed up and down the stairs at each other before school every morning or played the radio too loud or gossiped about the ladies who rented the spare bedrooms in our big creaky house on Myrtle Street.

  Mother gave us another frown, then turned away. "See?" said Margaret. "You're going to get us both in trouble."

  I studied Mother's face for a minute, checking to see if anything was amiss. But I could tell she had already forgotten about any problems Margaret and I might be having. As usual, she and Daddy had all the worries of their congregation to attend to. I watched their hands flying and sympathetic expressions flitting over their faces as they patiently greeted one person after another. There was the young Jamison couple, who proudly hovered over their new baby wrapped in two layers of blankets even though it was hot as hellfire. They wanted to ask Mother endless questions about raising a hearing child. How would the baby learn to talk with deaf parents? When should children be taught to make their first sign?

  Then along came Mrs. Thorp, a crabby widow who walked with a jerky limp and had to spend five minutes every Sunday describing the pain in her left heel to anyone who could stand to pay attention. Everyone knew her pain came from stomping on Kanine Kare dog food cans after her snorty little pug, Bertie, finished each meal. But Mrs. Thorp refused to believe that flattening cans could be the cause of her trouble. "I had this limp long before Bertie came along," she claimed, chopping out her words with angry fingers.

  I heaved a long sigh. Usually we would be on the way to Texas by now to stay with Mother's sister, Aunt Gloria. Until this year, we had spent most of every summer vacation in Texas. The tradition had started when we were babies, and Mother and Daddy had realized that we might never learn to talk properly if we had only their speaking voices to imitate. So each summer Aunt Glo and Uncle Henry became our substitute speech teachers. Aunt Glo, who could never have children of her own, was more than happy to pour all of her lost years of mothering into two short months with her adoring nieces.

  But all that was behind us this year. The As and Bs on our report cards assured Mother that our grasp of the English language seemed to be just fine, and with Daddy gone more and more these days, she hated to give up our company for the whole summer—as well as the extra hands for chores. Then Margaret had to clinch the argument by piping up that she was getting too old to be shipped off for the entire summer, and she couldn't possibly endure the separation from her precious crowd of beaus and girlfriends for that long.

  So it was decided. Instead of two months in Texas, we would be staying only one measly week ... at the end of August. Now the thought of spending the majority of our vacation in humdrum old Birmingham, without Aunt Glo's barbecued spareribs or the lazy afternoons at her country club, made the time stretch out in my mind like an endless desert.

  "Who's that?" whispered Nell. A tall, serious man in a striped bow tie had cornered Daddy.

  I shrugged. I had never seen him before. Daddy was nodding at him so patiently, even though I knew he must be melting in his stiff white collar and layers of vestments. Then he touched the stranger's elbow and led him back into the sanctuary toward his cramped little office, where he always took people for private conversations.

  "Shoot," Nell said, following my gaze. "Guess that means Daddy won't be coming to Britling's with us."

  "Nell," I said peevishly, "when was the last time you remember him coming to Britling's Cafeteria with us?" Nell knew that Daddy had only an hour's break before he had to rush across town to hold services for his colored deaf congregation at Saint Simon's.

  "I know," Nell said meekly. "I was thinking he might want to since we just got out of school and all, and it's the beginning of vacation and—"

  "Huh," I grunted. "Fat chance."

  "He can't help it," Margaret cut in. "It's his job. He has to take care of people."

  "You mean deaf people," I muttered. I stared at all the hands flashing around me, moving so fast I could never understand everything they were saying no matter how hard I tried to learn more signs. And the expressions on their faces! They were so ... so exaggerated, leaping from joy to dismay, barely anything in between. Sometimes I felt as if I had been dropped down in the middle of a secret club, one where my father, Reverend Davis, was president.

  I would never belong to the club. I wasn't deaf. I wasn't a natural at signing like Margaret or pretty as a porcelain doll like Nell. And I certainly didn't have the heart full of bounty that Daddy had preached about in his sermon that morning. The only thing I felt like doing was shaking an old man's hand until his teeth rattled.

  Chapter 2

  Mother rarely used her voice in public. So my sisters and I froze in surprise at lunch that afternoon when she decided to speak up and ask the waitress for Worcestershire sauce. Her words came out sounding two octaves too high, and garbled, like her mouth was full of marbles. Of course, we Davis girls could understand Mother perfectly. We were used to deciphering her speaking voice, but the waitress looked completely baffled.

  She turned to Margaret. "What'd she say?" she asked flatly.

  But Mother didn't wait for Margaret to answer. She was angry.

  Usually there was no problem at Britling's. In fact, Mother always chose the cafeteria for Sunday lunch because you barely had to ask for a thing. You lined up at the gleaming stainless-steel counter and chose from a selection of roast beef or fried chicken or turkey with all the trimmings. Then you found your seat, and waitresses in spotless starched aprons scurried by with pitchers of iced tea and water.

  But our waitress today must have been new. I didn't recognize her, and Margaret and I had already reminded her twice to bring us iced tea, and Nell was missing a fork from her set of silverware. Then, to make matters worse, the condiments—the usual spicy relish, the ketchup, the Tabasco and Worcestershire that Mother loved—weren't on the table.

  "Worcestershire sauce," Mother said again, her voice creeping higher and louder. "Worcestershire sauce!" A strange collection of consonants bubbled out of her mouth. The other diners around us were turning to stare.

  Mother looked stricken. She was always so dignified, especially on Sunday mornings, outfitted in her best brown silk dress with white polka dots, and her dark hair brushed into neat waves under her hat, But now I could see a flicker of panic in her eyes and a flush spreading over her powdered cheeks.

  The waitress put her hands on her hips and said loudly, "Ma'am, I truly have no idea what you're saying. So you can just stop shouting at me whenever you're ready."

  Mother closed her mouth, pressing her lips together tightly. She dropped her gaze down to the roast beef and gravy congealing on her plate. It was Nell who hurried to her rescue first. "She said she would like some worsh ... some woo-chester—" Nell couldn't say it, either. The waitress rolled her eyes.

  Right then I hated that waitress more than anyone I had ever hated in my life. I hated her brassy blond hair and the lipstick stuck in the creases of her mouth and the way she kept tapping her pointy pink fingernails on her hips. It wasn't Mother's fault she couldn't speak well. She had lost her hearing long before she ever learned to talk.

  I couldn't keep quiet anymore. "She said," I yelled across the table, "she wants some steak sauce!"

  All at once, the dining room
fell completely silent.

  "Well, my Lord," the waitress muttered, rolling her eyes again. She spun on her heel, snatched up a bottle of the sauce from a nearby table, and brought it down in front of Mother with a loud thunk. None of us moved until she had sashayed off.

  "You shouldn't have yelled at her, Gussie," Margaret said under her breath. Two spots of red still flamed on her cheeks.

  "No. Gussie was right," Nell said. "We should complain to the manager."

  But Mother shook her head hard, which meant the subject was closed. For a while we sat quietly, trying to eat. Mother didn't touch the Worcestershire. She cut a small, perfect square of meat. Then, after forcing a bite into her mouth, she patted her lips with her napkin and signed that she was going to the ladies' restroom.

  Ordinarily I couldn't wait for dessert at Britling's. But now the thought of my usual slab of the chocolate cake with fudge sprinkles or the cherry cobbler topped with whipped cream turned my stomach. I felt as if people were still gawking, and, sure enough, when I glanced at the table where the waitress had fetched the steak sauce, a pair of plump twin girls sat calmly examining us.

  I kicked Nell under the table. When she looked up at me, I waggled my fingers and smiled. Nell knew immediately what I was planning.

  I signed slowly and elaborately to make sure she would get every word. "There are two girls behind you.... Twins.... They can't stop staring. Poor things. Not too smart. And they look just like their father. Same red hair. Same frog eyes.... But wait. Their brother is very handsome. Maybe sixteen or seventeen. Looks like he has his eye on Margaret."

  "Please stop, Gussie," Margaret whispered. "Haven't you embarrassed us enough for one day?"

  But of course I wouldn't stop. It wasn't so long ago that Margaret had played the game along with us. Actually, Margaret had been the one to invent the Poor Deaf Girl Game. Together we had spent hours at Morgan's corner drugstore, sitting at the soda fountain, signing dramatically to one another. The object was to see how many people we could fool, how many gullible folks we could trick into pitying us. "Look at those poor deaf-mutes," they would say, or, "See them just a-talking away on their fingers. Wonder what they're going on about."