Listen! Read Free

way I worried about Mam. I want Katie to have a childhood. I don’t want her to have any guilt about me.”
    “She won’t,” said Liz. “Now, go to sleep, Roma. Get some rest on the train. We survived childhood. You did your best, and so did I. Would we have changed our lives if we’d had the chance? Probably not. I’ll see you in the morning, at the station.”
    Roma said goodnight to Liz and turned out the light in her roomette.

Chapter Four

The Language They Used
    The wheels of the train hurried along the tracks. Click-a-clicka, click-a-clicka. Then there was a bump, followed by another. Click-a-clicka started all over again. The same rhythm as before.
    The rhythm reminded Roma of songs she sang to Katie. She loved to sing to her daughter. Lullabies and rhymes and songs of all kinds.
    There was an old woman
    Who lived in a shoe
    and
    Hush little baby, don’t say a word,
    Papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird
    and
    When you wake, you shall have
    All the pretty little horses.
    As a child, Roma had heard none of these.
    Mam did not sing because she had never heard a song. Roma’s father worked away from home most of the time. That’s why Roma learned lullabies and nursery rhymes only after Katie’s birth. She sang them as if they were prizes she and Katie had won.
    Mam, because of her deafness, had no way of knowing songs or rhymes. These had not been part of a deaf child’s life. The earliest language Mam had spoken was with her hands. She read lips, too, and received language through her eyes. Alert and quick, she didn’t miss much, but she could not sing or rhyme. She did know stories, however. Stories she told with her hands.
    Liz and Roma watched the hand-stories and signed back to their mother. Moving hands and fingers filled the air with language. From high chair, crib, and stroller, the girls used their baby hands to speak. They learned two languages: the spoken word and American Sign Language. As they grew older, they spelled out names of people and places in sign language. They used the hand alphabet and became good spellers.
    The house filled with visible language.
    Eyebrows lifted, eyebrows lowered. Faces frowned or grinned or laughed or became serious or sad. Lips moved. Lips were read. With fingers, Roma and Liz wrote words in the air. To get Mam’s attention, Roma and Liz flicked light switches off and on. They tapped Mam’s arm or pulled at her skirt. They stamped their feet on hardwood floors to make the wood vibrate. Their mother felt the vibration and looked their way.
    The sisters pounded their little fists on tables and chairs. They banged at walls. Doors slammed. Everyone was noisy. That’s what their house was like. Noisy.
    Their mother swept the floor, picked up a waste basket, and crashed it down. Mam did not knowshe was making so much noise. Upstairs, Roma and Liz shouted to each other from room to room. Mam did not know they shouted behind her back. The sisters could be wicked, and Mam wouldn’t know. How could she know, when she was deaf?
    When the girls were in the same room as Mam, their behaviour changed. They did not shout. Their mother was too quick for them. If they talked behind her back, she somehow knew.
    “Roma! What did you say?” Mam would ask. “I know you said something.”
    “Nothing,” Roma lied.
    “Liz? What did you say?”
    “Nothing,” Liz lied.
    But Mam knew they had spoken. She could tell by looking at their faces.
    *
    Roma thought about the kitchen in their house. The noisiest place of all. When Roma was a child, Mam banged pots and pans and lids and spoons. Mam taught the girls to bake. On baking days, dishes piled high in the sink. The heat of the oven filled the room. Windows clouded over with steam.
    The stove in the kitchen burned coal in winter, wood in summer. On hot days when they had to cook, they burned a few sticks of wood. Just enough to heat food or cook a fast meal. In winter, the stove had to be kept going all the time.
    Mam had a