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book called the Cook’s Book. She had written all the recipes by hand. She had been collecting these recipes ever since she’d lived at the School for the Deaf.
    Liz and Roma wore long aprons when they baked. Roma picked up the Cook’s Book and read aloud. “Two yolks eggs beaten up.”
    They laughed and laughed. Mam read their lips and laughed, too. “Let’s beat up the eggs,” Mam said.
    “Stir cookies and drop,” Roma read.
    They laughed some more. Liz pretended to drop cookie dough on the floor.
    Mam had written in the Cook’s Book: Roll in white eggs.
    Did it matter if they cooked with white eggs or egg whites? Mam didn’t seem to care. That was all part of her private written language.
    One day Roma learned to bake a cake. “How many walnuts should I put in?” she asked.
    “Ten cents’ worth,” Mam replied. Roma knew exactly what her mother meant.
    They baked on weekends to prepare dessert for the girls’ school lunches. Roma did more baking after Mam went out to work. A year after Roma’s father died, Mam began to look for a job. She found work at a shirt factory and sewed at a machine all day. At the factory, she did not have to use her voice. She could do the job, even though she was deaf. One other deaf woman worked there, and she and Mam became good friends. The two women ate lunch together and used ASL as their language. By four o’clock every afternoon, Mam arrived home from work.
    At nine years of age, Roma could make lunches for school. She baked cookies and cakes. She heated leftovers and set the table for supper. She knew how to scramble eggs, boil eggs, and fry eggs. Roma was best at making eggs on toast.
    *
    The family had a visible language for sickness during Roma’s childhood. The sickness language started with Mam’s worried face. Then Mam felt Roma’s forehead to check for fever and sent her up to bed.
    Mam banged around the kitchen. When Roma heard footsteps on the stairs, she knew what was coming. Mam carried up a bowl of warm milk sprinkled with pepper. Roma had to drink the milk and pepper because her mother believed this could cure almost anything.
    After Roma drank the last drop, Mam brought out the scrapbook. Looking through the scrapbook was part of being sick. The crisp covers. The slap-slap of paper. Pages stuffed with Christmas cards, old valentines, and birthday cards. Pictures cut from magazines, pasted to the pages. Pictures of animals and food and flowers. Pictures of kings and queens. Pictures of fancy clothes Roma’s family would never have money to buy. Colourful pictures of places they would never see. Looking at the scrapbook was like taking a trip to a different world.
    Mam sat at the edge of the bed, watching over Roma’s shoulder as they turned the pages. Mam remembered pasting every picture. She had begun to fill the pages when she’d lived at the School for the Deaf. Sometimes, a story went with a picture. Mam told these stories with her hands. She had filled the scrapbook with stories from her life as adeaf child. The scrapbook, brought out only when Roma and Liz were sick, became part of the family language.

Chapter Five

The Thimble Man
    Liz met Roma at the station when the train pulled in. The two sisters spent the afternoon catching up and preparing food. Liz’s husband and children went out for the evening, and now the women had the place to themselves.
    When Liz’s friends arrived, she introduced them as Jessie and Eve. She explained that her friends belonged to a group called CODA: Children of Deaf Adults. A few months earlier, Liz had contacted CODA in Montreal. She missed Mam, and she wanted to talk to other children of deaf parents. Ather first meeting, she had met Jessie and Eve. Roma had known about CODA, but had never joined.
    Now, Roma looked around the cozy dining room. Her sister sat at the head of the table. Jessie worked as a sign language interpreter. Eve was an actor who sometimes worked with deaf children in a theatre